Richard is a guest judge, along with comedian Fiona O’Brien, on the new Twitter game show “Brittlestar’s Really Great Show.” On this episode guests, lawyer and media personality Ethan Bearman and the Mayor of Stratford, Ontario Dan Mathieson, provide a story of an experience they’ve had in advance of the show. Brittlestar retells the story but changes one element, and the panelists have to guess what it is. It’s harder than it sounds!
The “Pop Life” panel, Pamela Ross, Culture Agent At Blue Rebel Works, Rachel Blake, Canada Regional Operations Lead at Twitter and Kris Martinez, Mayor at Gadventures, share their take on what matters most when it comes to a job – management style or work perks?
Tune in Saturday nights, 8:30 pm (ET) on the CTV NewsChannel and again at midnight on CTV or watch the whole thing HERE!
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Watch an encore presentation of “Pop Life” with Dan Lyons, author of “Lab Rats,” about the nature of work. Then, the “Pop Life” panel, Pamela Ross, Culture Agent At Blue Rebel Works, Rachel Blake, Canada Regional Operations Lead at Twitter and Kris Martinez, Mayor at Gadventures, share their take on what matters most when it comes to a job – management style or work perks?
Tune in Saturday nights, 8:30 pm (ET) on the CTV NewsChannel and again at midnight on CTV or watch the whole thing HERE!
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the family dramedy “Paper Year” and the doc noir “The Cleaners.”
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the family dramedy “Paper Year” and the doc noir “The Cleaners.”
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the return of marauding dinos in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the family dramedy “Paper Year” and the doc noir “The Cleaners.”
Richard sits in with CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to discuss the weekend’s flickers including “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the family dramedy “Paper Year” and the doc noir “The Cleaners.”
Nothing is forever, not even the internet. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube posts frequently disappear but where do they go and who makes the decision to wipe them from your feed? A new documentary, “The Cleaners” from German filmmakers Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block, reveals the people who decide if your post is too violent, too pornographic or even too political.
Call them “content moderators” or “digital scavengers” whatever you like, they are the folks who scrub your favourite sites of objectionable material. But what, exactly, qualifies as objectionable? Riesewieck and Block introduce us to a handful of scrubbers, most compellingly, the ones outsourced to the Philippines. We meet anonymous censors—their job contracts don’t allow them to share their names or the company they work for—like a devout Catholic woman who says she is keeping the Internet safe by eliminating “sin” and a man who recalls watching multiple beheadings. All spend their days looking at disturbing images and hitting either “ignore” or “delete” in response. Although nameless we learn of the mental toll of the job. Suicide, nightmares psychological problems are common.
We learn something about how they make the decisions of what we can and cannot see, but with every click of a mouse even more questions arise. Do they have too much power, sitting anonymously behind a computer screen 7000 miles from Silicon Valley? It is an almost unspeakably complex situation. Does deleting terrorist videos silence the terrorists or those who want to use those images to shine a light on atrocities being committed around the world? Who should be allowed to decide what is credible journalism and what is propaganda? Should social media companies co-operate with countries to ban material that is critical of their governments? How regulated do social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube need to be?
“The Cleaners” is a slick film with a film noir feel. It suits the exploration of the dark side of the cyberspace but ultimately the doc doesn’t shine much of a light on its subject. Stylish though it is, the film flits from topic to topic with the swiftness of fibre optic broadband. It covers too much ground, raising questions that are never answered. To be fair the subject of Internet censorship is relatively new and rife with legal and moral complexity.
At the very least this entertaining but unexacting documentary should inspire conversation about the control large, unaccountable corporations have over the flow of information into our homes.
Adrienne Batra and Joshua Ostroff join Richard and Beverly Thomson and CTV NewsChannel’s ‘Behind the Headlines’ panel. This week they weigh in on if Trump is giving Twitter a boost, whether or not are smart homes can be dangerous and funeral selfies!