Posts Tagged ‘Metro’

Douglas Coupland Reader Event Hosted by Richard Crouse

logoOn November 12th, in partnership with the School of Creative Industries at Ryerson University, Metro will hold a free reader event at the Ted Rogers School of Management, in support of TEMP, a very exciting Metro News initiative.

TEMP is a twenty part work of serialized fiction written by Douglas Coupland that began appearing in Metro on November 4th.

The evening will be hosted by Metro’s Reel Guys and In Focus columnist, Richard Crouse, and include discussion of the TEMP project, a reading of Temp by Douglas Coupland and a book signing.

We hope you can join us and look forward to a wonderful evening!

More details HERE!

From Beerfest to The World’s End: The drunken buddy comedy strikes again By Richard Crouse Metro Canada August 21, 2013

the-worlds-end-pub632This weekend as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost embark on an epic pub crawl in The World’s End, they are continuing a Hollywood tradition of raising a glass in the movies.

“Tonight, we will be partaking of a liquid,” says Gary King (Pegg), “although we may return with a twinkle in our eyes, we will be in truth blind… drunk.”

Pegg and pals add a sci fi twist to their story, but at its heart it’s a boozy comedy.

W.C. Fields pioneered drinking on film. During his 1930s heyday he made a name for himself with snappy one-liners like, “A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.”

He liked a cocktail off screen as well. On set he had an ever-present vacuum flask of mixed martinis he referred to as his “pineapple juice.” While shooting a movie in 1942 a jokester replaced his gin with real pineapple juice. After his first sip Fields shrieked, “Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?”

My Favorite Year, the 1982 Peter O’Toole comedy, was a fictional story based on a real life actor with a legendary taste for alcohol. O’Toole, a hellraiser who once went for a drink in Paris and woke up in Corsica days later, plays a character based on Errol Flynn’s appearance on Sid Caesar’s television program Your Show of Shows. Premiere Magazine ranked the performance number 56 on their 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time list.

More recently Beerfest celebrated ale quaffing in a story based on the von Wolfhausen family tradition of spreading relatives’ ashes on the official ground of the Munich Oktoberfest.

This down and dirty ode to drinking beer stars the members of Broken Lizard—the comedy troupe that gave us Super Troopers and Club Dread—and only has a 41% rating at Rotten Tomatoes but is worth a look if only to see someone drink their way out of a vat of lager.

In Barfly Mickey Rourke plays Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic writer and alter ego to real life poet and “crown prince of self-abuse” Charles Bukowski. “Anybody can be a non-drunk,” he slurs. “It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance.” He was so convincing in his portrayal that when Bukowski died The New York Post ran a picture of Rourke from Barfly rather than a photo of the poet.

You’re Next review: Be afraid–very afraid By Richard Crouse and Mark Breslin Reel Guys – Metro Canada August 23, 2013

youre-next-sharni-vinson-2SYNOPSIS: Nothing ruins a family reunion like an invasion of masked killers. On the occasion of their parents 35th wedding anniversary Davidson kids and assorted wives, girl and boy friends gather at a remote Tudor mansion—is there any other type in these kinds of movies?—to enjoy dinner and one another, but instead end up in a fight for their lives. Only one of the guests, Erin (Sharni Vinson), has the know-how to protect herself, but will it be enough?

STAR RATINGS:

Richard: 3 ½ Stars
Mark: 4 Stars

Richard: Mark, I don’t know what it says about me, but I really liked You’re Next. It’s disturbing, violent and without any redeeming social value, but I enjoyed sitting in the theatre with my hands over my eyes, afraid of what I might see next. I’m not usually a fan of head trauma, but from what I saw as I peeked through my fingers, it worked well. You?

Mark: Richard, I found it one of the best movies of its type ever. Home invasion films are my kind of scary because it could-and does-happen. But I did find some redeeming social value in it. I thought it turned out to be a sly satire on family dynamics and materialism. Without revealing too many plot twists-and I loved them all- this movie starts as one thing and becomes something a little deeper. And, yes, I don’t like to admit it, but I was scared through and through.

RC: It’s hard to discuss without giving away a major plot twist, but I will say there is a Manson Family aspect to the story that really creeped me out. That and the anxiety-inducing John Carpenter style score throbbing in the background. It’s all effective but it is the idea behind the movie that is truly disturbing.

MB: Let’s not leave out the creepy animal masks! And I learned a lot from the movie, like how much can be accomplished with a two by four and a simple set of nails. In fact, I just got back from the hardware store. I’m ready!

RC: It is a lesson in survivalism to be sure, but keeping in mind how it works out for everyone. I think I’ll stick to calling 911. Lessons aside, I did like that while there are a number of hysterical characters here—who wouldn’t be upset when your friends and family are being randomly murdered?—the hero, if you can use that word to describe someone who kills a person with a blender, is a woman. So often in these movies women are the scream queens while the men do the heavy lifting. Here, the only person with any self-preservation instincts is female.

MB: I think a blender is a perfect murder weapon for a woman-very Martha Stewart, in fact. Yes, this movie does have a strong woman at its centre, and it’s set up nicely in the beginning, with the family sneering at her for her survivalist training.