Richard and “CP24 Breakfast” host Nick Dixon have a look at some special streaming opportunities and television shows to watch over the weekend including the Disney+ animated series “Marvel’s Hit Monkey,” the Amazon Prime series “The Afterparty” and the classic Robert Redford, Paul Newman movie “The Sting” on HBO.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Inside Out” and “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Inside Out,” “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman” and “Deli Man” with host Marci Ien!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Adam Corolla holds the Guinness Book of Records title for “most downloaded podcast,” is the author of two books and a filmmaker whose most recent movie is a documentary called Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman.
Just don’t call it a documentary.
“I wanted to make this documentary feel like a movie and not a documentary,” he says. “Sometimes documentaries feel like homework. I think if you strike the balance correctly you can entertain and learn.”
Most of Newman’s fans found out about him through iconic movies like Cool Hand Luke, The Sting or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Not Corolla. He discovered Newman by buying and restoring the actor’s race cars.
“I always respected and appreciated him but I was never a big Paul Newman fan,” he says. “I knew his movies were some of the best movies but [I didn’t like him] any more than any other celebrity whose movies I’ve enjoyed. Tom Hanks didn’t race cars and I race cars but I don’t have six of Tom Hanks’s race cars so I figured I’d keep it to something I know. I have Paul’s cars which is what propelled me towards Paul Newman.“
The film paints a picture of a deeply private man who loved pranks, cars and cherished the outlet that racing gave him as a pressure valve release from the day-to-day of being one of the most famous men on the planet. It focuses on his passion for racing but this isn’t a film for gearheads only. Racing is treated as a portal into the actor’s personality, an entrance into what really made him tick. By zeroing in on one of his passions Winning gives us a broader look at what made the man tick.
“I don’t think he had a half assed way of doing anything,” says Corolla. “There’s a part in the Newman movie where he says, ‘I guess if I don’t want to do it anymore, all I have to do it stop.’ I always think about those words. All Paul Newman had to do was stop at any point. He didn’t need to do any of it. The salad dressing, the popcorn, the racing. He didn’t need the money. When Paul Newman sixty-five years old he could have just stopped, and he always knew, ‘If I want to stop I could just stop but until then, I’m busy.’”
NEED FOR SPEED: CELEBRITY RACERS
Screen legends Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman all had the need for speed that would have allowed them to turn pro, but they aren’t the only serious race car contenders.
Patrick Dempsey recently came in second at the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours in France and Furious 7 star Paul Walker competed in several top level amateur races.
When he isn’t playing Mr. Bean Rowan Atkinson is a car enthusiast, racing (and crashing) a McLaren F1 while Star Trek actor Eric Bana has been driving competitively since 1996. Jason Priestley began open wheel driving in 2002 and is co-owner of the FAZZT Race Team.
Less successful than his fellow actors—on the track, anyway—was racing wannabe Tom Cruise. Driving opposite Newman at the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) competition in the late 1980s, Cruise fishtailed twice and spun out completely on a turn. As far as Cruise was concerned the SCCA was nicknamed See Cruise Crash Again, with one of the drivers joking, “I drive faster going to work.”
“Racing became his passion and he went for it.” So says Paul Newman’s “Butch Cassidy and he Sundance Kid” co-star Robert Redford. Although Newman didn’t start racing cars until his late 40s, when most racers are thinking about retirement, it became a permanent part of his life following the making of the 1969 film “Winning.”
In that movie he plays Frank Capua, an up-and-coming racer with aspirations of winning the Indianapolis 500. For maximum realism it was decided the stars—Newman and Robert Wagner—would drive their own cars. He had always been interested in motor sport but had never been behind the wheel of a race car until signing up at a high performance driving school in prep for the film. He immediately felt the need for speed and became obsessed. “After that he got so boring,” laughs Redford. “[Racing] was all he talked about. It drove me crazy.”
As a driver and the owner of the Newman/Haas Racing team the actor would mentor Willy T. Riggs, the first African American championship racer, and win more than 100 races and 8 Drier’s Championships in IndyCar Series. Newman, after trying his hand at football and boxing, had found his sport. “I didn’t have any physical grace. The only thing I found any grace in was an automobile.”
“Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman” paints a picture of a deeply private man who loved pranks, cars and cherished the outlet that racing gave him as a pressure valve release from the day-to-day of being one of the most famous men on the planet. A combination of contemporary interviews with the likes of Jay Leno, Patrick Dempsey and “Cars” director John Lasseter and archival footage, the movie isn’t just a biographical look at one facet of Newman’s life. It focuses on his passion for racing but this isn’t a film for gearheads only. Racing is treated as a portal into the actor’s personality, an entrance into what really made him tick. By zeroing in on one of his passions “Winning” gives us a broader look at what made the man tick.
Director Adam Corolla (who restores and races Newman’s cars) is clearly a fan but it is his passion for both racing and Newman that fuels the doc.
At age nine Richard Crouse saw The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Paul Newman starred, John Huston directed and Richard was hooked on the big screen. Since then he has seen thousands of movies, written about most of them in the pages of Metro, talked about them on television shows like Canada AM, where he has spent the last decade as film critic and on the radio on his own syndicated Bell Media radio show The Richard Crouse Show. He is also the author of six books on pop culture history including Who Wrote the Book of Love, the best-selling The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, its sequel The Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, the bestselling Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils and the upcoming Elvis is King: Costello’s My Aim is True.
Read Richard’s list of books-turned-movies that are likely to be nominated for Academy Awards HERE!
The Irish mafia isn’t given nearly as much screen time as their Sicilian cousins. For every Miller’s Crossing there are three Godfathers; a Sopranos for every Grifters. Road to Perdition sees Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, personal “Angel of Death” for Irish mob-boss John Rooney (Paul Newman). Sullivan, an orphan, had been raised as Rooney’s son, and carved a nice Norman Rockwellian life for himself, his wife and two kids. Each morning he has breakfast with his family in their lovely country home, before heading off to work to intimidate and kill Rooney’s enemies. Unbeknownst to Sullivan, his oldest son (Tyler Hoechlin) tags along on one of these missions, and sees exactly what his father does for a living. In a misguided effort to silence the boy Rooney’s son kills Sullivan’s wife and youngest boy. Revenge and the safety of his surviving son motivate Sullivan to hit the road. Road to Perdition is beautifully rendered look at 1930s depression era America. Director Sam Mendes has stayed true to the story’s graphic novel roots, and dishes up a spectacular looking film, one so finely detailed you can almost smell the gunpowder and smouldering cigarettes. Hanks is surprisingly effective as the strong silent hit man. His Sullivan is complicated, the actor subverts his natural likeability to present a man who is at once loyal and caring, but will put a bullet through your skull without a second thought. It’s a layered, subtle performance that moves away from the heroic characters that Hanks usually favours. Look for the supporting cast at awards time. Jude Law as a sadistic killer-for-hire shines, but it is Paul Newman that shows the rest of the cast how it should be done. His Rooney is a great cap to a distinguished career. I only have to wonder why an actress of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s calibre would take on the thankless and nondescript role of Sullivan’s wife. Is there really that little work in Hollywood for women that actresses of her experience must take whatever scraps are offered?
Hollywood legend Paul Newman, who won accolades for his roles in films such as “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Sting,” has died at age 83.
Newman, who had been battling cancer, passed away at his home near Westport, Conn., on Friday with family and friends by his side.
Newman’s movie career began in the 1950s and spanned six decades, making him one of the industry’s best-known stars. He often played rebellious mavericks and cultivated an enduring image of masculine cool that transcended his films and made him a cultural icon.
Alongside his wildly-successful motion picture career, Newman was a business man and race car driver who placed in the top five at some of the most competitive races in the U.S. during the 1970s.
The 10-time Oscar nominee was also an acclaimed director and a philanthropist who donated millions of dollars to charity.
Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who first met Newman in the 1950s, said the blue-eyed thespian was a selfless anomaly in Hollywood.
“I miss him like mad,” Plummer told CTV Newsnet Saturday afternoon.
“He was modest, he shunned fame – he was an actual real person for a change,” he said, adding that Newman was a modest, generous man who lived modestly despite his international fame.
“He was totally un-actorish,” said Plummer.
In the early 1980s, Newman started up the “Newman’s Own” brand as a way to sell his homemade salad dressing. The company, which also made popcorn, spaghetti sauce and other products, has turned into a multi-million dollar business which has donated $175 million to charities.
Even in his 60s and 70s, Newman kept up an impressive production pace with such films as “The Road to Perdition” and “Message in a Bottle.” However, the star pulled out of a plan to remake the play “Of Mice and Men” last spring because of health problems.
Even some of Hollywood’s biggest names were star struck by Newman.
“He’d slug me if I was to call him an icon that I was intimidated by,” said actor Tom Hanks in 2002 after the pair worked together on “The Road to Perdition.”
“But he’s much more than anything you’d expect. He’s much more relaxed, unassuming. He gets it. He understands that the biggest job of being an actor, the hardest thing to do is to really capture 45 seconds of truth on film in the course of a long day.”
Newman won three Oscars in his career, including two honourary trophies and a win for his turn in the pool-shark flick “The Color of Money,” which teamed him with Tom Cruise.
“There is a kind of empathy he has shown throughout his career for this kind of underdog,” said director Robert Benton of Newman in 1994.
“He just feels what they’re going through from the inside, just feels them. He loves the way people just barely get by.”
Newman, who married in 1958, also worked with his wife Joanne Woodward in films such as “Rachel, Rachel.”
Despite Newman’s heartthrob image and his bad boy onscreen persona, the couple’s long marriage was an anomaly in Hollywood.
When asked by Playboy if he was ever tempted to cheat on his wife, Newman replied, “I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?”
Though Newman got a relatively late start in the acting game, within a few years of his film debut in 1955’s “The Silver Chalice,” the actor was a major force on the big screen.
In 1958, Newman starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the celluloid version of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Three years later, Newman was cast as a pool shark in “The Hustler,” which would become one of the actor’s best-loved roles.
In 1967, “Cool Hand Luke” was released to critical and commercial acclaim, with Newman playing a rebellious convict bucking against authority. The character struck a chord with audiences and seized on the era’s anti-establishment mood.
Though other commercial and critical successes followed in the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t until Newman reprised his pool hustler role with “The Color of Money” in 1986 that he won his first contemporaneous Oscar.
With his famous blue eyes and handsome features, Newman was the typical Hollywood heartthrob, film critic Richard Crouse told CTV Newsnet on Saturday.
“He really set the template for the modern movie star,” he said, pointing to today’s stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney who split their time between film work and philanthropy.
Newman also blazed a trail for younger actors by picking tough underdog roles, such as his turn as a convict in “Cool Hand Luke.”
“There’s so many iconic images that are associated with him,” added Crouse, pointing to his buddy roles with Robert Redford in the massive films “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting.”
“He went beyond just being an attractive screen stud and became a really interesting actor, who brought something unique to every role he did.”
