On the Saturday October 14, 2023 edition of The Richard Crouse Show get to know Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. His film “The Thin Blue Line” placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made, and he has, in his films, documented everything from the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and physicist Stephen Hawking to a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
“The Pigeon Tunnel,” his latest film, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions.
“The Pigeon Tunnel” is as compelling as any le Carré novel. Cornwell/ le Carré knows how to tell a tale, and like any good spy, he knows what details to include, and which to hide away. Morris doesn’t attempt to chip away at the façade and get at the underlying truth, because he knows, in the hands of master storyteller, a good story is a good story, whether it is true or not.
We’ll also meet Robert McCallum, director of the Amazon Prime documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” an award-winning look at the life and legacy of legendary children’s entertainer Ernie Coombs.
Finally, we’ll chat with Tatiana Maslany. You know her as the Emmy winning star of thew science-fiction thriller “Orphan Black,” and as part of the Marvel Universe as the star of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” Today she joins me to talk about playing Jennifer, a Monarch butterfly who suffers from acrophobia, a fear of heights, in the new animated film “Butterfly Tale.” We talk Butterflies, Broadway and much more.
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” a look at the life and legacy of legendary children’s entertainer Ernie Coombs, now streaming on Amazon Prime, has the same brand of low-key kindness and empathy that made his show, “Mr. Dressup,” appointment viewing for several generations of Canadians.
The beauty of “Mr. Dressup,” which aired 4000 episodes chock full of songs, skits and crafts between 1967 and 1996, is that it was a simple, heartfelt program. So, it’s appropriate that director Robert McCallum leans into those qualities in this retelling of the life and legacy of the man and the show.
From his start in children’s entertainment as an assistant puppeteer to Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh and the move to Canada to the creation of his legendary CBC show and his decades long partnership with treehouse legends Casey and Finnegan, the film paints a vivid picture of the era through rarely seen archival footage and talking heads.
A generation or two of Canadians who grew up watching “Mr. Dressup,” including notable names like Eric McCormack, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Bif Naked, Michael J. Fox, Graham Greene, Peter Mansbridge and Andrew Phung chime in on the impact Coombs had on their lives.
More interesting is Judith Lawrence, Coombs’s puppeteer partner for much of the show’s run, who provides valuable insight to the inner workings of the show.
Along the way we learn about the foundations of the CBC that gave birth to “Mr. Dressup” and, much later, the budget cuts that threatened its existence.
But don’t come to “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” looking for dirt. There isn’t any. There are no bodies buried in the Tickle Trunk. It’s Mr. Dressup for goodness sake.
There are, however, heartfelt and tragic moments. The passing of wife Marlene is heartbreaking, not only because of the circumstances surrounding her death, but by the loss felt by a man who had given so many, so much.
“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe” is a feel-good blast of nostalgia, reminiscent of a kinder and gentler time.
Rock ’n’ roll and the movies have always had an uneasy relationship. For every film that hits all the right notes, like Quadrophenia or A Hard Day’s Night, there’s a host of tone-deaf films like Light of Day, featuring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett as musical siblings, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a glam-rock-and-disco re-imagining of the Beatles classic.
Rock ’n’ roll biographies are equally hit-and-miss. In The Buddy Holly Story, the toothy Gary Busey earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the rock legend, but Roger Ebert sneered that Dennis Quaid played Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire “as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak.”
This weekend, Jersey Boys — directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on the Tony Award-winning musical — tells the story of ’60s hitmakers The Four Seasons. Songs like Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You made them one of the biggest-selling rock acts of all time.
Lesser known than the Four Seasons but louder, faster and dirtier were The Runaways, the subject of a rambunctious 2010 movie. Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign, The Runaways focuses on two glue-sniffing, tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) who formed the underage all-girl band. The music of The Runaways was described as the “sound of hormones raging,” and this film captures that.
I’m Not There is a hard movie to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard-issue Hollywood biopics, there is nothing linear here, but then there is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie.
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is the title of eccentric English singer Ian Dury’s biggest hit and the 2010 biopic about his eventful life. Starring Andy Serkis, the film is as high voltage as one of Dury’s legendary live performances.
Finally, the film Control details the short life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis (Sam Riley). After seeing the film at Cannes, Curtis’s bass player Peter Hook said he knew the movie “would be very well received because, even though it’s two hours long, only two people went to the toilet the whole time. In fact, one of them was (Joy Division founding member) Bernard (Sumner). The other one was a 70-year-old woman.”
On the Saturday October 14, 2023 edition of The Richard Crouse Show get to know Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. His film “The Thin Blue Line” placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made, and he has, in his films, documented everything from the career of Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and physicist Stephen Hawking to a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
