THE ANIMAL PROJECT - Film Review By Greg Klymkiw - Indie offers First-Rate Cast in terrific ensemble piece. THE 2014 EDITION OF TORONTO'S WORLD PRIDE FESTIVAL IS THE PERFECT REASON TO SEE "THE ANIMAL PROJECT".

The Love-Song of Two Human Animals:
Let's Get Physical

Ingrid Veninger is back with a new picture. The Animal Project is a beautiful film about a gay single Dad (Aaron Poole) balancing fatherhood with his career as a respected Toronto acting coach. Discovering that his latest thespian exercise, which allows actors to shed all their inhibitions is the very thing that allows him to be a better father and in so doing, releases feelings of unrequited love for his most talented student, a brilliant, handsome and wryly cynical young actor (Joey Klein).

Ain't love grand?

Joey Klein & Aaron Poole are so good they knock the wind out of you.

The masks we wear are what we use
to crash through our inhibitions.

The Animal Project (2013) *****
Dir. Ingrid Veninger
Starring: Aaron Poole, Jacob Switzer, Hannah Cheesman, Jessica Greco, Joey Klein, Emmanuel Kabongo, Sarena Parmar, Johnathan Sousa

Review By Greg Klymkiw

What a thrill it is to experience a first-rate cast serving up one of Canada's finest ensemble pieces in years. It should probably come as no surprise. With her latest film The Animal Project, Ingrid Veninger, the whirling-est-dervish director of independent cinema in our fair Dominion, successfully explodes all (well, most) pre-conceptions anyone (well, mostly me, probably) might ever harbour with respect to movies all about the love, pain and whole damn thing amidst the touchy-feely twee gymnastics actors go through on-and-off-stage. In fact, being a fan of all of Veninger's ebullient coffee-cream-Cassavetes-like pictures to date, I'll admit to feeling terrified that I'd even have to see it.

How will I ever forget that tell-tale aroma of putrescence as it wafted past my keenly attuned olfactory system? A mere trace of the lingering flatus, like some gently offensive perpetual mist in the dank hallways of a hooker hotel did cruelly signal to me that The Animal Project was about - ugh! - actors.

'Twas enough to render me apoplectic.

I immediately imagined a grotesque gag-me-with-a-large-wooden-spoon Toronto hipster vision of some insubstantial pageant, one in which dreams - nay, nightmares - are made of, one in which I'd have to nail my feet to the floor to keep watching, one wherein the potentially preferable choice would be to round my little life with one good mega-snooze.

I'm glad I did not succumb to this pre-conception.

In fact, within seconds of the picture's unspooling, I was hooked (line and sinker), realizing I was in for something far more substantial and downright entertaining. Actors at its centre or not, Veninger has crafted a movie that's rooted firmly in the ideal "all the world's a stage" territory and that actors, as indelibly written by Canada's poetess laureate of guerrilla-warfare-as-cinema, are living, breathing human beings with all the challenges anyone faces - no matter who they are or what they do. It is, happily, no stretch to declare that all the glorious men and women of The Animal Project are players on the stage of life, though like all of humanity, they are no "mere" players.

Leo (Aaron Poole) is a Toronto acting teacher in the midst of several life challenges. On the professional front, he feels like he's not adequately breaking through the barriers his adult students have set up for themselves. As actors they must discover those inner sparks within their own emotions to freely render performances that will evoke the sort of truth that must not only be their stock in trade, but eventually become almost second nature. Leo appears exasperated by his students' progress or lack thereof, though he doesn't overtly blame any of them for their less-than heartfelt efforts. The endless exercises he puts them through are not only boring him, but are, in fact, so uninspiring that his acting students are either bored with the proceedings, if not themselves and are predictably resorting to self indulgence and/or mind numbing inconsequence. Maybe it's even a bit of both.

Whatever the problem, he feels he's to blame.

On the home front, Leo's a single Dad trying to raise Sam (Jacob Switzer), his 17-year-old son who seems to get more distant by the second. The kid means the world to him, but here, on the stage of hearth and home, Leo continues to express self-doubt - if not in words, but by his actions. As a Dad, he's grasping onto a slender thread and feels it's about to snap at any moment. For his part, Sam's skipping classes at school, having ever-late starts to his days and sucking back dubies as if he's sensing an impending worldwide shortage of bud. He works prodigiously on his music, though his practising feels more like an assault upon his Dad's need for quiet and solitude. Neither seems to understand each other, but as such, they might understand each other all too well.

Ain't it always the way with parents and their kids? The trick is to make sure the twain shall meet.

That, however, is always easier said than done.

The intense loggerheads Leo and Saul find themselves at, have clearly been building for some time.

On a strictly personal front, Leo's clearly looking for something, but damned if he knows what it is. He carries the weight of his search into everything and it especially rears its head in the acting class in the form of a clearly adversarial relationship twixt himself and the cynical, laconic Saul (Joey Klein), clearly the most promising of the bunch. It's in this relationship where the viewer is gobsmacked with the realization that Klein and Poole are delivering exactly the kind of performances that keep one riveted to their presence on-screen. Quite often, these two actors smack you right in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of your proverbial sails and connecting with every nerve ending within your body and soul. As actors, they surely kissed the ground their writer walked upon for generating these characters. The intense loggerheads Leo and Saul find themselves at have clearly been building for some time. There's something unanswered, unacknowledged between them and we sense it has to eventually explode beyond the verbal and psychological. Like with all human animals it might need to get physical. They are, after all, both tough-minded sons of bitches. Fists might be the way to settle things, but then again, maybe not.

Maybe someone needs a hug.

I kid you not. As ludicrous (and twee-ishly sickening) as this may seem on the page, it makes perfect sense within the world of the film. Leo, for instance, once made a film with his son when Sam was just a child. In it, the kid was dressed in a bunny suit and wandering through the more groove-ola streets of Toronto offering, uninhibitedly, hugs to total strangers. Hey, don't knock inspiration. It's usually just around the corner, but we've got to grab it for dear life.

And WHAT inspiration! This might just be the acting exercise the doctor ordered. Inspired by a dream, his old film and by extension, his relationship with Sam, Leo wants his class to don animal masks and full body costumes, then go out into the world and offer, you guessed it, hugs. The potential for all inhibitions to break down on a professional, personal and just plain human level seems - possibly - within reach.

Wouldn't it be grand if life were so simple?

In spite of the seeming simplicity of an acting teacher forcing his charges to don masks to lose their respective blockages to get to the next level, is in fact, the sheer, astonishing brilliance of Veninger's writing here. It's this very basic premise which is what yields several layers of complexity and narrative flesh that eventually gives way to a multitudinous amount of tissue and viscera. This goes well beyond mere skin-deep, but takes all the characters and the film's audience, deep into the bone marrow.

Though Leo, Sam and Saul are the film's prime connective tissue, it's all linked to a varied number of interesting, cool and recognizable characters. We're treated to the journeys of the young man caring for his dying father (Emmanuel Kabongo), the wisecracking lesbian shielding the hurt of being dumped (Jessica Greco), the great-waste-of-life desk-job gent (Johnathan Sousa) who needs not only to act but find love, the lass from Kelowna (Sarena Parmar) who declares she wants to be an actress, but does so with a question mark at the end of her not-so convincing attestation. She probably needs to embrace the girl out-of-Kelowna by acknowledging she can't take the Kelowna out of the girl. Rather than trying to repress it, she needs to use it. Last, but certainly not least, we also become intimate with the tall drink of water thespian (Hannah Cheesman) who, armed with an array of technically sound accents and a voluminous array of auditions for awful TV shows, displays technical proficiency but hides the true talent lurking within and mostly, perhaps of all, the real person.

Veninger's script juggles this multi-character drama with considerable skill and as a director, her fly-on-the-wall perspective is astonishingly natural. In addition to a superb production design that's as much about character and emotion as it is about looking impeccably rendered, the film's visual gifts are always plentiful. The picture is gorgeously shot and Veninger maintains a relatively strict adherence as to where the camera always needs to be in terms of telling the tale visually (though always feeling perfectly natural with no labour seams visible). Given the unique nature of low-budget filmmaking, the movie's gifts are bountiful = everything from the breathtaking cutting, the first-rate sound work at every level and an evocative score. No stone was left unturned in this ravishing production.

The Animal Project is ultimately powerful stuff and its story, characters and thematic underbelly offer a universal resonance. It feels like the work of someone who's done some living and frankly, this is the kind of work that has the potential to touch a wide range of people. We discover, quite naturally and with no didacticism, that the masks we wear are indeed what we use to crash through our inhibitions to hit the raw nerves of truth and self-discovery in order to move forward in the world, with our spirit, soul, intellect and emotions. It's how we must live. Most importantly, though, the masks we wear are not enough. We must learn to wear them well.

The Animal Project is playing theatrically at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto at the year-round home of the Toronto International Film Festival. It's distributed theatrically by Mongrel Media, one of the country's safe harbours for cinema that's always fresh, new, exciting and fiercely independent. In the USA and the rest of the world, exclusive distribution is available through the exciting new home entertainment initiatives via VIMEO.

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Even the kiddies will be bored to tears with this one.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) *
dir. Thor Fruedenthal
Starring: Zachray Gordon, Robert Capley, Devon Bostick, Chloe Grace Moretz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This minor surprise hit is the sort of family film that makes me fear terribly for the next generation of children. If the title character is one that kids are supposed to identify with and in fact, do, then all of us oldsters are in for a rough ride in our august years when these brats grow up into bigger brats.

Not that there's anything wrong with upholding and extolling the virtues of a kid who is clearly an underdog, but the character of Greg Heffley (Zachray Gordon) is not only represented ever-so blandly by the generic young actor shoe-horned into the role, but is such an unpalatably dull and spoiled figure of boyhood that the film might be better titled "Diary of a Little Knob". And a little knob he surely is. That said, he comes from an entire family of knobs.

Living in a relatively affluent, bucolic, tree-lined suburb dotted with immaculate pre-war two-story homes, Greg is about to enter middle school convinced that childhood must be left behind n order to fit in, and most importantly to strive for acceptance based on beiing cooler than cool

Alas, he's a wimp.

We know this because the movie (and his character) tell us he is through clunky, all-over-the-map narration (striving to be clever with a myriad of animated comic book techniques, wipes and flashbacks, but falling short and feeling contrived). What's especially odd, however, is that Greg initially appears to be the unlikeliest candidate for wimp-dom. He's a fresh-faced, relatively articulate, seemingly innocuous and even sweet-looking young man. Granted, he's got a shorter, more slender frame than many of the jock-types, but he certainly qualifies as cute. Again, if the movie didn't keep telling us what a wimp he is, we'd have no reason to believe he actually is.

And, I reiterate, as the story progresses, he actually proves to be as big a knob as all the bullies are.

This, of course, is no surprise, since his immediate family are also knobs. The movie keeps telling us that this is the typical and ideal suburban family and while I admit that most suburban-types are, in reality, knobs, this does not appear to be the film's intention. Yet another reason why the movie fails miserably.

His big brother Rodrick (Devon Bostick) is an eye-liner-wearing wanna-be basement grunge-rocker who imparts advice to Greg about handling the transition to middle school and then insults his little brother by telling him what a wimp he is and playing one cruel practical joke after another on him.

His mother Susan (played by the abominable Rachael Harris, an actress reeking of TV-Q and not much else) is a shrill, professional working Mom who pays far more attention to her youngest child, an obnoxious and somewhat ugly toddler always sitting on the pooper. As well, she is quick to believe her eldest son when he fixes it so that Greg gets into trouble. Why she puts such faith in this lanky, head-banging poseur is beyond me.

Then there's his Dad Frank (embarrassingly over-played by the woefully untalented Steve Zahn) who secretly sides with Greg, but is ultimately so pussy-whipped and ineffectual that he's unable to do much of anything when Mom and Big Brother cut him down. Zahn's overwrought, eye-bulging, please-like-me school of acting inspires in us, the desire to bash his skull to watermelon-pulp with a baseball bat.

Once Greg comes to school we truly begin to realize what a cowardly knob he is. His friends include Rowley (Robert Capron) the amiable, childlike, Mama's Boy fatso with streamers on his pink bike, the drooling, buck-toothed, snot-eating Fregley (Grayson Russell) and a cute, earnest and bright young East Indian boy Chirag Gupta (Karan Brar). Any one or all three of these boys are much bigger wimps than Greg. They also happen to be far more engaging characters - so much so that when Greg tells us in the insufferable to-the-camera narration how ashamed he is of being seen with them, we like them even more and begin to detest the leading character with a passion.

When Greg meets Angie Steadman (Chloe Grace Moretz) a genuinely stunning and intelligent middle school babe who edits the school newspaper, reads Allen Ginsburg and extends an offer to Greg to help her out on the paper, we begin to detest our leading man-boy even more as he rudely rejects her advances. We get no real or believable explanation why he would do this, he just does. And all one can think is - what a knob!

Eventually, we write this loser off completely when he displays total and irredeemable cowardice and lands his best friend in hot water - betraying him further by not owning up to his guilt (and when he does, doing so with a backhanded apology).

By the time Greg owns up to all his mistakes, he's forgiven - but not by us. He's been such a knob that his turn seems sickeningly manipulative. It's also one of the more moronic plot details. And speaking of moronic plot details, the worst involves a piece of mouldy cheese that sits forlornly on the pavement of the school's play area. It carries an urban legend that anyone who touches it becomes - untouchable. During the climax, some bullies force Greg's geeky fat-boy friend to not only touch it, but take a few bites of it. When the rest of their classmates show up, Greg "bravely" grabs the cheese to save lard-boy the ultimate humiliation and himself becomes, the untouchable. The movie tells us he's learned a lesson, but we never really believe it. Besides, up to this point Greg has been such a supreme knob that the audience not only detests him, but so does the school populace. So big deal, he makes a sacrifice to take himself from pariah to bigger pariah.

The movie, while a mere 90 minutes, feels like an eternity. Aside from the character of Gupta, the sweet East Indian boy, the entire world of the picture is so white and affluent that it's impossible to feel much of anything for anyone. Yes, these worlds exist in real life, but they're populated by people so bland and average that if one is to bother making a movie about them, then part of that movie's perspective and/or mandate should be to examine how such a world perpetuates sameness and condemns diversity. Alas, it sticks to the status quo like a fly to fecal matter. And, of course, let's not forget that Greg, the main character, is a knob who ends up hurting people that seem far more likeable and engaging than he is.

By the end, one is simply drained, sickened and offended. This generic colour-free world is placed on a pedestal and our title character's plight is ultimately so inconsequential that the very cleanliness of the world the film creates makes us feel dirty.

Interestingly (and happily enough to me), when I took my then=eight-year-old daughter to see the movie theatrically, she was so bored and disgusted by this picture that she begged me to take her to see another movie immediately after it ended. I took her to see Green Zone which not only thrilled her, but inspired a lengthy discussion afterwards wherein she stated that a lot of the "bad people" hurting the Iraqi people seemed like Greg in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Delightfully, she cited the persnickety slime-ball American bureaucrat played by Greg Kinnear as seeming to be the Greg character from "Wimpy Kid" and what he'd be like when he grew up.

So much for traditional family values if they're anything like those on display in this abomination.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is family cinema of the lowest order. It's on DVD and Blu-Ray. I'm not sure why anyone would want to own it, though.

ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Cool Directors team up for cool babe-hunk-blood-fest!

Why does this provocatively posed BABE have BLOOD on her LIPS?

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE...

All Cheerleaders Die (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson
Starring: Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay kiddies, it's time once again to do the math. Get out your pencils and write down the following equation for success.

BABES + HUNKS + GRATUITOUS CHEERLEADING + LESBO ACTION + BUCKETS OF BLOOD = ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE by one of my all-time favourite sicko filmmakers Lucky McKee (May, The Woman) and his talented cult co-director Chris Sivertson (The Lost, I Know Who Killed Me).

Does it get better than this?

Not especially.

You've, of course heard the expression, "everything but the kitchen sink", mais non? Well, All Cheerleaders Die might best be described as everything including a shitload of kitchen sinks, congealed with months worth of scum and piled high with un-scrubbed mould-encrusted pots, pans and every imaginable kitchen receptacle and utensil. This foul, hilarious, revoltingly gross and sniggeringly juvenile mélange of Heathers, Bring It On and pretty much every teen horror film ever made and hereto-for known to man (and beast, especially beast) is one of the most offensively entertaining movies of the year. One might even accuse it of being utterly moronic, but its more mentally deficient moments are so clearly intentional that the film works as both satire and pure visceral horror.

Teenage girls are ALWAYS interested in physical fitness!

Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) is a babe who inexplicably hangs with the geek squad at school, but in spite of this, she's, like, uh, well, a babe. Our gal is hell-bent on revenge when she discovers that Terry Stankus (Tom Williamson), the hunky, mean-spirited, misogynist-asshole-dreamboat captain of the high school football team has immediately begun dating Tracy (Brooke Butler), an equally nasty babe who runs the cheerleading squad after Terry's girlfriend and Maddy's babe gal-pal bites the bullet during a freak cheerleading accident.

Are you with me, so far? I hope so. It's not rocket science. After all, who wouldn't be appalled when one's friend, like, dies and her scumbag boyfriend takes up with another ho'? Maddy's plans for revenge, however, will mightily piss off Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), her kinda creepy babe roommate and ex-lesbo-lover who, as it turns out is a Wiccan priestess trying her hand at all manner of occult shenanigans.

For her part, Maddy exacts revenge with the aplomb of a some wily duplicitous Shakespearean minx, getting Terry Stankus (is that not one of the best character names in movie history?) and Tracy to begin questioning their devotion to each other. Adding insult to injury for macho Terry Stankus (I think I need to use this guy's full name all the time), Maddy seduces Tracy quite openly and the movie delivers some first-rate Lesbo-action for our edification.

Things really come to a head when Terry Stankus gets so jealous that he causes a fatal "accident" and it's Wiccan Leena who comes to the rescue by using her occult powers. Soon, we've got babes rising from the dead, becoming supremely horny (well, far more than usual), developing an unquenchable thirst for blood, a hankering for human flesh and a telepathic connection resulting in delightfully embarrassing results at school when even one of the cheerleaders achieves an explosive orgasm.

Needles to say, Terry Stankus needs to watch his really cute ass.

So, let's summarize, kiddies. Here's a handy checklist of delightful exploitative aberrations for you to enjoy: Witchcraft, Rising from the Dead, Vampirism, Necrophilia, Reverse-Necrophilia (don't ask), Cannibalism and Zombies. Add more Lesbo-action, straight boinking, Lesbo-rug-cleaning, flesh-ripping, blood-splashing, viscous-lapping, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, girls kissing boys, girls kissing girls, graveyard hijinks, more orgasms and nerdy guys losing their virginity and wondering why vaginas are so ice cold.

What can I say?

The movie delivers and delivers BIG TIME!!!

As it's Father's Day weekend, teenage girls should especially give the gift their Daddies will enjoy the most. Take them to the movies. Take them to see All Cheerleaders Die. They'll thank you for it. Dad might even buy you a new car if you use the movie as a cautionary tale in your post-screening discussion.

All Cheerleaders Die opens theatrically June 13, 2014 via Video Services Corp. (VSC) at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto. Demand that your local cinema get it NOW!!!

Here is a lovely selection of VSC (Video Services Corp.) titles you can buy directly from the links below, and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

BURT'S BUZZ - Review By Greg Klymkiw - One of Canada's Most Dynamic Filmmakers Shoots the King of Bees.

In addition to having it's World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013, Burt's Buzz, Jody Shapiro's fine documentary portrait of Burt Shavitz, the public face of Burt's Bees health products, was released by FilmBuff theatrically and via iTunes download in the USA on June 6, 2014 and will begin its theatrical launch in Canada on June 13, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox (the year-round home for all of TIFF's activities, including the Toronto International Film Festival). After you read the review, please note that just below it on this page is a preview and link to a major feature length story entitled Jody Shapiro: A Guy For All Seasons in "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema", focusing upon the director of Burt's Buzz, Jody Shapiro, one of Canada's most legendary young filmmakers.

Burt's Buzz (2013) ***1/2
Dir: Jody Shapiro
Starring: Burt Shavitz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jody Shapiro began his career in film as one of the truly genuine creative producers in Canada, or rather, as a producer, he was always easy to look upon as a filmmaker (as opposed to the annoying assumption that a filmmaker and a producer are two different things).

Working with Guy Maddin in the latter stages of the great surrealist's career, Shapiro brought his artistic instincts to bear and was never shy about leaping into the fray with a movie camera and shooting like a madman. That Shapiro went on to be Isabella Rossellini's chief collaborator as a co-director and producer on her utterly insane Green Porno series of shorts speaks volumes about why he might have been the perfect director to document the life of Burt Shavitz.

Any producer attracted to as many eccentric projects and working closely with as many genuine eccentrics as Maddin and Rossellini has proven indeed that Shavitz could not have been luckier than to have someone like Shapiro infuse Burt's Buzz with his keen eye for the joys of, well, eccentricity. Shapiro's feature documentary is a loving portrait of the famed old bearded hippie whose face has adorned the packaging of the Health Store mainstay products "Burt's Bees". Though Shapiro interviews associates, sponsors and family, the film is mostly all Burt all the time - which is great because the camera loves him and he has a nice low key irascibility.

Shapiro delivers all the fascinating biographical details of how this city boy made his way to the backwoods of Maine and eventually became an avid beekeeper. With the assistance of the woman he loved, the company grew to gargantuan proportions. There's a melancholy to the tale also since Burt by his own admission was not happy nor especially cut out for corporate life and he sadly sold his shares in the company and his "brand" for peanuts. Considering Burt's Bees sold to the Clorox Corp. (I kid you not!), the sale was worth over 900 million dollars. Burt's not seen a cent of that and makes his living as a kind of travelling personal appearance spokesman.

Shapiro bounces between the solace of Burt on his farm and the genuine adulation he receives during live appearances. This is a simple, but effective juxtaposition and was the wisest way to present contrast, conflict and the two sides of the current coin that is Burt Shavitz.

Given the ubiquity of the Burt's Bees brand, you'd think we were dealing with a typical hippie-turned-corporate-sellout, but Shavitz is anything but that. He's a man of nature who's happiest on his farm in Maine and it's within the context of this that Shapiro trains his camera. Though there's probably a film to be made about a natural health company being owned by one of the most heinous producers of environmentally unfriendly consumer goods - this is NOT that film.

It's a sweet, funny and loving portrait of a man, his dog and his farm and how he needs to drag himself out to trade shows and malls to do a horse and pony act for the privilege of living a life of solitude amongst the hills and the trees.

And, of course, his bees.

He might not be a multi-millonaire, but you know, it could be worse.

Burt's Buzz was released by FilmBuff theatrically and via iTunes download in the USA on June 6, 2014 and begins its theatrical launch in Canada on June 13, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox (the year-round home for all of TIFF's activities, including the Toronto International Film Festival). AND NOW, HERE'S ALL THE INFO YOU NEED ON HOW TO ACCESS MY FEATURE LENGTH STORY ON JODY SHAPIRO, THE DIRECTOR OF BURT'S BUZZ:

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS by Greg Klymkiw

can be read in Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema

by accessing UK's coolest online film magazine HERE

JOURNEY

with Jody Shapiro
into the very heart, soul and mind of Burt Shavitz

DISCOVER

the special bond twixt two men
from two generations

who share one object of affection

LIVE

the humble beginnings of a nice Jewish Boy

in the neighbourhood of Mel Lastman's North York

EXPERIENCE

Shapiro's post-secondary adventures at York University
and his STRICT tutelage under Niv Fichman

ENJOY

an ALL-EXCLUSIVE Guy Maddin pitch
for a highly-charged erotic scene involving
Jody Shapiro

BASK

in the glory that
IS
JODY SHAPIRO
as STEVE GRAVESTOCK,
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI
and GAY MADDIN
extol the Great Man's
considerable virtues

DELVE

into Shapiro's most intimate personal fantasy
involving culinary arts and wildlife

SHARE

a rare fantasy with two men among men

ALL THIS AND MORE WHEN YOU READ:

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS

BY GREG KLYMKIW at ELECTRIC SHEEP

JODY SHAPIRO GETS A SMOOCH
FROM FORMER GF
LOUELLA NEGIN.

SILENT RETREAT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dreadful Script and Uncertain Tone Sinks Thriller, But Still Worth Seeing For Great Robert Nolan Performance, Solid Direction, Editing and Especially Fine Cinematography. A movie you wish was better than it is. It still manages to be better than WolfCop - by a bit, anyway.

Silent Retreat (2013) **1/2
Dir. Tricia Lee
Starring: Chelsea Jenish, Robert Nolan, Sofia Banzhaf

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are simply so many things wrong about this movie which, makes it especially frustrating to assess since the few elements that are right about it, are so very, very right on! Alas, those positive elements are almost buried by the film's problems - its two most woeful elements being a dreadful screenplay by Corey Brown (from a story by Brown and director Tricia Lee) and the movie's uncertain tone (which in fairness is rooted completely in the aforementioned poor writing).

On the surface, the high concept of the piece isn't bad. A mysterious juvenile detention camp for wayward teenage girls is located deep in the woods (one road in, one road out). It takes only five inmates at any one time and the rules are very simple - NO TALKING. None. Nada. Zip! Girls who are especially problematic are expelled, though in reality, they're dragged into the woods, chained to a tree and sacrificed to a monster that lives there. Hey, in theory, I've got no problem with this at all.

In practise, however, it's a completely different story. The first two-thirds of the film plays - both in story and direction like a very lame and tame young-teen-oriented thriller. This might have been acceptable if the pace and overall solitude didn't give an audience time to start asking questions (either to themselves, or most annoyingly, out loud to whomever they're watching it with). Some of the questions are eventually answered, but they come much too late in the proceedings since we've already been yanked out of the drama way too many times wondering about elements that could have been dispensed with so much earlier on.

A number of the revelations are withheld from both the audience and the characters and this is a huge mistake. In fact, the "mystery" isn't all that very interesting anyway. We know there's something really wrong with this juvie camp for girls right from the get-go. The entire movie would have worked so much better without this muddle and allowed its director to concentrate on really creeping us out and scaring the bejesus out of us right from the get-go.

And ugh, speaking of right from the get-go, there was absolutely no reason to begin the movie showing a juvie teen girl who we never meet again, chained to a tree in the woods as we hear the approaching growls of some mighty hungry-sounding creature. And ugh, there really was no reason to even begin from the beginning as Janey (Chelsea Jenish), our heroine, is brought into the camp. So much running time is boringly wasted on cliched storytelling when deep down, there's a tale - a reasonably original take on one, anyway - that's desperate for some sort of simple (as opposed to simplistic), clean and at the same time, sophisticated approach.

For example, there's a pretty okay bit of writing that's very nicely played by a wonderful character actor whom I have - to my knowledge - never seen in anything before. The character is that of the Doctor (Robert Nolan), the commandant of the camp and he lays out the ground rules for Janey. At least a third of his speech could have appeared off-camera as we were delivered some of the visuals in the opening before we join the conversation in progress. This, by the way, is where some very basic expositional information could have been slipped in for our benefit so we didn't have to be wrenched out of the drama at later junctures wondering about it.

I do so wish more young filmmakers who want to tackle genre material thought more about giving US all the information we need or want and withholding it from the protagonists so that we're never in the dark, but are, instead even more on the edges of our collective seats as the "ignorant" heroes are sucked into a spider's web that we already know is there. Like Hitchcock so often said (in a variety of ways), if a bomb is planted on a bus, it's not the explosion that will be the horrendous thing to draw out the suspense, but it's US knowing the bomb is there and where it is and following our protagonists into this horrendous situation. In any event, the screenplay for this film had so many elements like this, that unnecessarily turning them into mysteries did little to keep our interest in the story and characters' trajectories, but rather forced us into ALWAYS being in the same position of ignorance with said characters.

Another woeful element is the promise of a movie that could have really delivered big time on the perversity front. We've got a private juvie joint in the middle of nowhere that takes in a select number of "bad" girls - all of them, of course are, thankfully, babes and its run by this creepy old dude and his inbred sons who assert weird dominance therapy including hypnotism and mysterious trips into a cabin. And, of course, I have no idea the ages of the actresses in this film, but let's be frank, if they were or are all "of age", there are clearly exploitative genre tropes that are begging to be employed. In fact, employing them might have worked wonders in terms of beefing up the strange Stepford Wives indoctrination going on.

There was also a great opportunity to put a crazy, sexy spin on all the great juvie pictures of the 50s and the women in prison pictures of the 70s. Again, I reiterate - we've got five babes in a completely whacked-out juvie joint and most importantly: There are showers, there are beds and even a creepy comment from the doctor warning against sexual improprieties. Puh-leeeeeeese, don't put this potential for exploitation in our minds and NOT deliver on it.

One of the biggest disappointments is when we discover that the girls are being subjected to a barrage of propaganda on film. This too is a great idea, but the images themselves are so dullsville (and dispensed with so quickly) that instead of getting something similar (in terms of power and impact) to the images of violence Alex is forced to endure in A Clockwork Orange, or better yet, in the perverse propagandistic "test" given to prospective political assassins in Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View, we get lame, thoroughly unconvincing images. I'm not suggesting the filmmaker needed to copy these scenes, but instead, needed to find a way of selecting and presenting the images so tied more directly in with the weird group hypnosis scenes and then, on a visceral level, for them to knock us on our collective butts. This was clearly the intent, however, as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions - which also seems to be something one can use to describe so much of the film and its failings.

This goes on and on - PG-rated incidents, rife with confusion and then we eventually get slammed with the final third of the film that's anything but PG or PG-13 or even R. The climactic scenes of the film are so deliciously over-the-top, really well directed and edited (by Mike Reisacher) that the filmmaker's intent to provide something very quiet and ominous in the first two-thirds could have worked so beautifully - IF, the writing had been up to the fine idea and most importantly, if the utter, sickening, creepy perversity of the situation had been amped up.

The other dreadful element is the musical score by Aaron Gilhuis - a godawful, by-the-numbers series of plodding riffs that are always leading the action rather than providing a supporting bedrock or thematic foundation to the proceedings. In fact, so much of the score could have been dispensed with entirely. Given the fact that we're in the middle of the wilderness would have lent itself to creating a rich soundscape to capture, replicate and even enhance the malevolence of the natural world as juxtaposed with the overt malevolence of the three creepy guys running this madhouse.

The biggest script problem, however, is the monster itself. We wisely don't get to see it until the final third, but I still have no idea what it is, why it's there, where it comes from and why there's only one? At first, I assumed there might have been a bigfoot angle or maybe a bunch of genetic inbred mutants suffering the effects of a nuclear power plant meltdown or something. (Northern Ontario, where the film appears to be shot in and set, is full of hidden environmental crap like that.) But what we get is something that resembles the creatures in The Descent (now THAT is a great contemporary horror film) and their existence made sense within the context of caves deep beneath the earth's surface. Here, we get one such creature - not too badly designed either - but we really have no idea what it is. It's never enough that it's a monster and it's just conveniently there. It's a cheat of the most egregious kind.

So, what's on the plus side? Well, a genuinely kick-ass final third (even though the creature elements make absolutely no sense) and three tremendous leading performances. The camera adores both of the female leads in the picture and Robert Nolan is an absolute revelation. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why isn't he cast in every genre picture in this country? And better yet, if he was, he'd build up so much great work that we might even start seeing him in American indie and/or studio pictures. Nolan has a phenomenal look, intensity to burn and an almost puckish sense of sicko humour roiling just beneath his flesh. Alas, none of this is exploited completely here, but I'm grateful to have been introduced to him and hope to see him flex his thespian muscles in other movies. This guy is an A-1 psycho villain. That said, he's got such clearly natural chops that he needs to be cast in as many pictures as possible. (He also bears a striking enough resemblance to Leonardo Di Caprio that he'd be a natural to play the kid's Dad or Uncle or older brother.) Canada always blows it with their leading ladies and men and the country especially blows it with all the fine character actors. I'm delighted that the makers of Silent Retreat didn't follow in the footsteps of so many other Canadian filmmakers and populated it with solid actors that - and this is ALL important - the camera LOVES.

Speaking of visuals, I was also impressed with the cinematography by Christian Bielz - especially the night exteriors. As someone who lives much of his time in the middle of absolute nowhere, I was impressed with the look and lighting of these scenes. For what seems like decades now, Canadian movies always used this horrid blue gel over the lights for night exteriors - so much so, that I nastily and dismissively referred to it as "Canadian Blue". Here, though, we get that wonderful sense of pitch black, but with both dollops and swaths of a kind of gentle white light which is actually what the eye sees in deep bush. Even when it's overcast and/or the sky isn't lit up with a bright moon, the stars are so intensely bright that they do indeed cast a very cool glow over everything. And, uh, it's not blue.

Alack and alas, what is blue, though, is how I feel when I see a low budget genre film that is bursting with potential, but never goes the distance. I hope at some point, director Tricia Lee gets to work with a great script, but that also, she uses her instincts for horror to shock and scare us - not with what we DON'T know, but what we do know.

Silent Retreat opens theatrically at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto on June 13, 2014 in addition to venues in these fine burghs: Ottawa, Peterborough, Lethbridge, Regina and Glenboro.

LA DOLCE VITA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - FREE SCREENINGS FREE at The Royal Cinema of Fellini's Masterpiece.

IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN (OR EVEN IF YOU HAVE) YOU MUST GO TO SEE LA DOLCE VITA for FREE at The Royal Cinema in Toronto as part of the TASTE OF LITTLE ITALY Festival in (where else?) Toronto's "Little Italy" on College Street. For showtimes please visit The Royal website HERE.

So Cool - COOLER than cool!!!

La Dolce Vita (1960) *****
dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Yvonne Furneaux, Anouk Aimee, Anita Ekberg, Alain Cuny, Walter Santesso, Magali Noel, Annibale Ninchi, Nico, Valeria Ciangottini, Alain Dijon, Lex Barker.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It has been said that in death we all end up alone. If we are alone in life, bereft of love, is existence itself then, not a living death? For me, this is the central theme of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s great classic of cinema – a film that never ceases to thrill, tantalize and finally, force its audience to look deep into a mirror and search for answers to questions about themselves. This is what makes for great movies that live beyond the ephemeral qualities far too many filmmakers and audiences prefer to settle for - especially in the current Dark Ages of cinema we find ourselves in. It’s the reason why the picture continues to live forever.

What makes La Dolce Vita especially great is that Fellini – as he was so often able to achieve – got to have his cake and eat it too. He created art that entertained AND challenged audiences the world over. Most of all, La Dolce Vita IS cool – cooler than cool, to be frank.

The title, translated from Italian into English means "The Good Life", or more appropriately, “The Sweet Life”. The movie plunges us headlong into a spectacular, decadent world of sex, sin and indulgence of the highest order. Against the backdrop of a swinging post-war Rome, the picture works its considerable magic beyond those surface details and Fellini delivers yet another magnificent entertainment that explores the eternal divide between men and women.

Illustrating this divide to me in the most salient manner possible was seeing it with my little girl. My poor daughter; she’s only 13-years-old and her Daddy has been showing her more Fellini movies than any fresh-post-tweener has probably ever seen anytime and anywhere on God's good, great and green Earth. About halfway through La Dolce Vita – after an umpteenth sequence where Marcello Mastroianni indulges himself in the charms of yet another woman whilst his faithful girlfriend waits home alone by the phone, my daughter (who recently watched I Vitelloni, that great Fellini male layabout picture and Fellini Casanova with its Glad Garbage Bag ocean and endless mechanical copulation) turned to me with the sweetest straight face I will always remember and she said, “Dad, when I get older, remind me never to date Italian men.”

I reminded her it wasn’t only Italian men who behaved this way. (I sure hope to God she NEVER dates a Ukrainian or ANY Eastern European for that matter.) I noted, "After all, don't you remember recently seeing Barry Levinson’s Diner?"

“Okay,” she added, “remind me not to date American men either.”

A perfect companion piece to La Dolce Vita is Paolo Sorrentino's Oscar-winning contemporary masterpiece The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza). Happily and halfway through the latter, I'm rather proud to brag that my daughter was able to note the considerable similarities twixt the Sorrentino and the Fellini. Within this context, if you've seen neither, I will allow you to be ashamed of yourself.

For those from Mars and/or anyone who has NOT seen La Dolce Vita, the picture tells the episodic tale of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist in Rome who covers the society and entertainment beat of a major tabloid newspaper. He spends most of his days and (especially) nights, hanging out in clubs, restaurants, cafes, piazzas and parties covering the lives of the rich and famous with his trusty photographer sidekick Paparazzo (Walter Santesso). (The word paparazzi, now utilized to describe annoying news and celebrity photographers, came from the name of this character.) Downright ignoring and/or paying lip service to his beautiful, sexy long-suffering live-in girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) whilst dallying with an endless parade of gorgeous women he’s writing about, Marcello is as much a celebrity as those he covers. Though he lacks the wealth his subjects are endowed with, he certainly wields considerable power.

It would seem that Marcello is living the sweet life to its fullest – at least on the surface. Of course, it's the surface details of La Dolce Vita - both in cinematic style and content - that made Fellini's picture one of the biggest Italian films at the box office worldwide.

The utterly enchanting and to-die-for curves of Anita Ekberg.

Of course, though, what audience would NOT be susceptible to the stunning form of one of the picture's ravishing stars, Anita Ekberg? As Sylvia, the Swedish screen sensation visiting Rome to make a movie, Ekberg squeezes her to-die-for curves into a series of fashionable outfits. Ekberg is style personified. From her spectacular entrance from within a private jet, posing willingly for hordes of slavering reporters to her gossamer movements round a huge luxury suite as she throws out delicious quips during a press conference and then, to her lithe, gazelle-like bounding up the endless St. Peter’s staircase until she and Marcello, who follows her avidly to the balcony, enjoy a quiet, magical, romantic interlude, perched in a holy nest towering above the Vatican.

ANITA
Style in the FLESH.

It is the Ekberg sequences that everyone most remembers – possibly because they appear so early in the film and serve as the most sumptuously sexy introduction to Marcello’s world. Granted, prior to Ekberg’s entrance we’re treated to the famous opening sequence of Jesus Christ in statue form being airlifted into Rome on a helicopter as Marcello and Paparazzo follow closely behind in their own whirlybird, snapping photos and hovering briefly over a bevy of bikini-clad beauties to try and get their phone numbers. Following closely behind, we’re indulged with the ravishing beauty of Anouk Aimee as Maddalena, the bored heiress who whisks Marcello away from a nightclub, drives him through the streets of Rome in her swanky Cadillac, picks up a street whore, hires her to provide a dank, sleazy, water-flooded basement suite – a sordid love-nest, if you will, for a night of lovemaking with Marcello whilst the whore waits outside for the rest of the night - arguing with her pimp about how much room rent to charge the kinky couple.

ANITA
Style in the FLESH.

To cap off the shenanigans we're further tantalized by Marcello’s gorgeous, heart-broken Earth Mother girlfriend Emma, writhing about from a dangerous overdose whereupon our duplicitous hero races her madly to the hospital professing his love to her all the way into the recovery room until he steps out to telephone Maddalena. These stunning episodes not only provide insight into Marcello’s stylish rakishness, but also careen us to and fro within a veritable roller coaster ride of pure, unadulterated hedonism. There’s no two ways about it, Marcello’s a cad, but we love him. And seemingly, so does everyone.

By the time we get to the aforementioned Anita Ekberg sequences, it’s as if Fellini had structured the movie to luxuriate us in ever-more potent fixes of pure speed-ball-like abandon:

Jesus flying above Rome; screw it, not enough.

Gorgeous heiress banging our hero in a whore’s sleazy digs; nope, still not enough.

Lonely sex kitten girlfriend pumped on drugs and near death; uh, yeah, we still need more.

What act could possibly follow any of this?

Anita Ekberg, of course.

ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA. ANITA.

Fellini ups the ante on overindulgence to such a degree, that as an audience, we’re as hyped up as Marcello and those who populate this world. As if this wasn’t enough, Fellini manages to get Ekberg to out-Ekberg Ekberg with MORE Ekberg. From airport to press conference to the Everest of Rome above the Vatican, he plunges us from the clouds of Heaven deep into the bowels of a party within the ancient walls of the Caracalla Baths. Here Marcello gets to dance arms around waist, cheek-to-cheek and chest to breast with La Ekberg until all Hell breaks magnificently loose with the arrival of the flamboyant Mephistophelean actor Frankie Stout (Alain Dijon). Marcello is banished to a table with Ekberg’s sloshed, thickheaded beefcake boyfriend Robert (played hilariously by the genuine B-movie idol Lex Barker, RKO’s Tarzan and star of numerous Euro-trash action pictures) while Frankie and Ekberg heat up the floor with a cha-cha to end all cha-chas.

Fellini continues topping himself. The next sequence of Ekberg-mania is cinema that has seldom been matched. Can there be anything more sumptuous and breathtaking in Rome, nay – the world – than the Fountain of Trevi? Indeed YES, the Fountain of Trevi with Anita Ekberg in it. I can assure you this beats any wet T-shirt contest you're likely to see (including the legendary bouts of water-soaked 100% cotton sticking like fly-paper against the shapely torsos of the brazen beauties competing in the late, lamented events at one of the world's finest, now-gone-forever Gentlemen's Club at the St. Charles Hotel, referred to respectfully as "The Chuckles", in Winnipeg, Manitoba).

As Fellini has incrementally hoisted us to dizzying heights, we are only one-third of the way through La Dolce Vita. Where can the Maestro possibly take us from here? We go where all tales of indulgence must go – down WITH redemption or down with NO redemption. Fellini forces us to hope (at times AGAINST hope) that Marcello will see the light or, at the very least, blow it big time and gain from his loss.

What we come back to is what I feel the central theme of our picture is – that if living life to the fullest is at the expense of love and to therefore live life alone, then how can life itself not ultimately be a living death? For me, one of the fascinating ways in which Fellini tells Marcello’s story is by allowing us to fill the central character’s shoes and experience the seeming joy and style of this “sweet life”. For much of the film’s running time, we’re along for the ride – not just willingly, but as vicarious participants.

The magic Fellini conjures is subtle indeed. The whole business of getting the cake and eating it too plays a huge part in the proceedings. So often, great stories can work by indulging us in aberrant behaviour – glamorizing it to such a degree that we’re initially unable to see precisely what the protagonist’s real dilemma is. Not seeing the dilemma in the early going allows us to have some fun with the very thing that threatens to be the central character's potential downfall. For Marcello, it eventually becomes – slowly and carefully – very obvious. He is surrounded by activity, enveloped by other people, the centre of attention of those he is reporting on, yet he is, in a sense, an island unto himself. Marcello is, in spite of those around him, truly alone.

His real challenge is to break free of the shackles of excess in order to love. Alas, to love another and, in turn, accept their love, he must learn to love himself. On the mere surface, Marcello is all about self-gratification, but as the story progresses and Fellini places him at the centre of yet more sumptuous and indulgent sweet-life set pieces, we see a man struggling with the demons – not only of excess, but those ever-elusive opportunities to gratify the soul.

Even the roller coaster ride of Marcello’s relationship with Emma, the one constant person in his life willing to die for love of him, is a story element that keeps us with his journey. When he is annoyed and/or even disgusted with her, so too are we – and yet, we have the ability – one that Fellini bestows upon us by alternately keeping us in Marcello’s perspective and at arm’s length from it to see just how unconscionable and even wrongheaded he’s being. Most importantly, we begin to feel for Emma and understand her love and frustration. We see how brilliant and charming Marcello is also and a part of us craves for him to find peace.

Finally, what is especially poignant and tragic is that Marcello can only admit to both Emma and himself that he does love her when he is alone (or as in one great scene - seemingly alone) with her. Strangely, these are the few times in the movie when Marcello is truly NOT alone. When Marcello is together with Emma in the presence of others, it's a different story altogether. When he brings her along to cover a Madonna-sighting which turns into a wild carnival of Catholic hysteria, he withdraws from Emma and she finds herself caught up in the craze of this "miracle". The miracle is, however, false. The two young children who have been put up to claiming they can see the Madonna by their fortune-seeking family, run to and fro - hundreds of the faithful following madly in their footsteps - even Emma, who begs God for Marcello to be with her exclusively and forever.

When Marcello seeks solace in his old friend Steiner (Alain Cuny) a man who has filled his own life with art, literature, culture and most importantly, a sense of home and family, Marcello sees a potential way of escape. Alas, further set pieces involving Steiner dash Marcello’s hopes.

During a vicious argument that eventually ensues between Marcello and Emma, Fellini once again proves that – in spite of his excesses as a stylist – he is ultimately a filmmaker endowed with considerable humanity. Though the bile rises and invective is hurled violently from both parties, we are placed squarely in front of humanity at its most raw and vulnerable.

The final sequences in this film are laden with excess, but they’re certainly no fun anymore. Nor is Marcello. After a pathetic failed attempt at instigating an orgy amongst an especially ragtag group of drunks (climaxing with Marcello riding on a woman's back horsey-style), the party goers (included here is a cameo from the iconic rock legend Nico) stumble out in the early morning onto the beach. Caught in the nets of some fishermen is a dead sea creature - a strange cross between a stingray and coelacanth, its eyes still open and staring blankly into the heavens. It's the first of two images Marcello encounters on the beach which he bores his own gaze into.

This one is dead - surrounded by many, but finally, ultimately and unequivocally alone.

He then encounters, from a considerable distance across the sand and water, the angelic figure of Paola (Valeria Ciangottini), a pure, youthful young lady he met much earlier in the film - one of the few times when beauty and innocence seemed to touch him far deeper than surface fleshly desires. They look at each other - as if they can see into each others' eyes. The stunningly beautiful young woman, with her enigmatic smile, tries in vain to communicate with Marcello, but the wind drowns out her words and Marcello, his eyes at first bright, turn blank like the dead leviathan. He gives up, turns and joins his coterie of losers. There is, however, hope in Paola's eyes - perhaps even the hope of a new generation.

Finally, though, Fellini offers no redemption for Marcello. All that remains is the inevitability of a living death in a sweet life lived without love. The sweet life, such as it is, proves sour, indeed.

"La Dolce Vita" plays for FREE at The Royal Cinema in Toronto as part of the TASTE OF LITTLE ITALY festival in (where else?) Toronto's "Little Italy" on College Street. For showtimes please visit The Royal website HERE.

GREASE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Iconic 70s Homage to the 50s from Hit Play an Exercise in Futility.

Do you detect the aroma of our love?

Grease (1978) dir. Randall Kleiser **
Starring: John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Didi Conn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I hate this movie. I have always hated this movie. I will always hate this movie. In fact, the only reason I feel compelled to give it a two-star rating is that virtually everyone else in the world seems to think it’s worthy of slavish devotion. (I’m tempted to say “hopeless devotion”, but refuse, ultimately, to succumb for fear of morphing into Gene Shalit or worse, Peter Travers.)

So why, you might ask, is this innocuous tuft of powder puff worthy of my hatred? First and foremost, it paints a bone-headedly sun-dappled portrait of 50s America – a period so rich in contradiction and darkness just below the thin surface of light, that I find it impossible to stomach the pure nostalgic fakery. Call it curmudgeonly, but even upon its first release, I responded to the picture with the same kind of jaded contempt that (at the time) made me cringe when I first saw Star Wars a year earlier. In retrospect and with the benefit of several helpings since that time, including the new Blu-Ray release, Grease, like Star Wars, sits there in cinema history – a perfect Easter Island-like moai of how, by whom, where, when and why movies started to go seriously awry and led to a decade (the 80s) that was replete with some of the most mind-numbingly empty movies of all time. Even ace film critic Pauline Kael abandoned the lively sexually-charged titles of her book collections of reviews and collectively titled her pieces during the early 80s as “State of the Art” – reflecting the soul-bereft technical proficiency and machine-tooled quality of the work during that period.

In tandem with the aforementioned, the second most important piece of ammunition for my derision is the simple fact that Grease is not especially well made. It’s definitely machine-tooled, but not in any aesthetically pleasing way.

While many of the songs are not without the melodic qualities that popular music needs, the delivery of said pieces vocally and visually is either insipidly competent at best and at worst, downright dull. Olivia Newton-John, while suitably Sandra-Dee-like in her performance as the blonde goody-two-shoes who falls for the greasy bad-boy played by John Travolta, delivers all her vocals with the same lifeless range that vaulted her to the top of the A.M. charts during one of the most tunefully-challenged periods of mainstream music. Travolta’s singing is marginally better in that he attempts to infuse his clumsy warbling with something resembling pizzazz. The supporting cast is in better voice – notably Stockard Channing who delivers (in spite of her obvious over-age and flabby thighs), a musical performance that has EXACTLY what a musical needs in terms of vocal delivery – she has a great voice and lots of character.

Worse yet are the dance numbers. Newton-John simply can’t dance and Travolta, who can, never really gets a chance to cut loose as in Saturday Night Fever and, in later years, Pulp Fiction. This is not necessarily ALWAYS the fault of the performers. Patricia Birch’s choreography is pretty run of the mill, but worse yet, Kleiser simply has no idea where to put his camera during these scenes. I normally have no problem with proscenium-styled theatrical choreography where the camera lets the performers do most of the work, however with Grease, many of the shots are really uninspiring and/or just plain slapdash and while the idiotic over-cutting that pastes them sloppily together is not quite as awful as in most contemporary musicals, it does signal the shape of things to come such as cutting to the beat and/or constantly punching in for unnecessary close-ups. (An excellent example of proscenium styled choreography that’s handled deliciously can be experienced in the Blu-ray release of Joshua Logan’s gorgeous and stunning South Pacific.)

At the end of the day, I have no problem with fluff if it’s first-rate, but Grease – after several viewings over the years – seems (at least to my eyes) lacking the kind of style and oomph one normally equates with great movie musicals. There’s also something vaguely detestable about the “Happy Days” quality to the nostalgia. George Lucas went back to 1962 with the brilliant American Graffiti, but the movie captures a time of change so that the fun and frolics have a true bittersweet quality to them. Grease captures not much of anything, save for some poorly shot, cut and choreographed musicals numbers purporting to capture a period that doesn’t seem to exist in any world save for the one belched up by Kleiser and his factory workers.

The Blu-Ray release of Grease is also a bit of a disappointment, too. Part of the problem is the source material since the movie is not especially well shot, but there also seems to be something not quite right about the transfer. After my considerable disappointment with the look of this Blu-Ray release, I compared the virtually identical DVD version. Surprisingly, the Blu-Ray disc doesn’t look much better than the up-rez that occurs when I play the DVD on the Blu-Ray player itself.

The extra features are the usual grab bag of fan-aimed nonsense. The “documentary” elements of the extras are not much more than publicity-styled puff pieces, the deleted scenes are only of use to die-hard fans and the sing-a-long feature feels oddly out of synch. (My little girl, who loves the movie and the music, switched off the sing-a-long feature and did her thing without it because the karaoke effect was just confusing.)

The real surprise and best thing about the Blu-Ray release is the excellent commentary track by Kleiser and Birch. For a bad movie, a dreadful director and an unexciting choreographer, they actually sound like intelligent people and some of the insights into the production are informative and entertaining – not enough, alas, to change my mind about the picture itself, though. Ah, the hell with it. Call me a wet blanket and enjoy!

Grease is available via Paramount Home Entertainment on Blu-Ray & DVD in a package titled “The Rockin’ Rydell Edition”.

EDGE OF TOMORROW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - "Groundhog Day" with Tom Cruise fighting deadly aliens.

TOM CRUISE in GROUNDHOG DAY w/aliens at, I kid you not, Verdun.

The Post-Preggers Emily Blunt,
having shed her porcine cellulite
is blessedly & newly lithe under
the cover of Heavy Metal.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) **
Dir. Doug Liman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's very little to say about Edge of Tomorrow. The picture is pretty much a remake of Groundhog Day and Starship Troopers without the belly laughs of the former and sans the glorious satirical jabs of the latter. With a few Jackson Pollock dribblings of Pacific Rim here and a healthy dollop (or three) of Saving Private Ryan-like D-Day carnage there, our movie wears a myriad of derivative elements ever-so proudly on its sleeve. Splashed indelicately with the propagandistic spirit of Leni Riefenstahl, one of its saving graces is the absence of faceless hordes of Allah-worshipping villains. They're substituted with gooey liquorice-coloured gummy aliens (no doubt as representative of Islam as big bugs might have represented commies in the Hollywood output of the Cold War) and in spite of an international military effort, it takes an American, 'natch, to win the war - and I'm not kidding here, on the historical site of the already blood-soaked WWI fields of the battle of Verdun.

The cherries jubilee over this huge bowl of a Baskin-Robbins hit parade all mushed together is experiencing the whole mess with Tom Cruise in his buff 50+ glory and the newly-lithe post-preggers-Miss-Piggy Emily Blunt joining forces agin the alien invaders in order to save mankind. (Sorry for the spoiler. I'm sure you'd have had absolutely no idea that the winning couple would save the Earth.)

Cruise plays the armed forces public face of propaganda, but as such, the handsome major with the winning Tom Cruise smile has never seen action beyond basic training. When the armies of the world unite, the new General is none other than a very grumpy Brendan Gleeson who orders Cruise to the front lines. The master of P.R. spin won't have any of it, though, and threatens the dour, pudgy Irish commander with a shit storm of bad publicity. The inscrutable Gleeson lets Cruise think he can coast through the rest of the war, then unexpectedly orders our boy under arrest. Stripped of his officer's rank. Cruise is tossed in with the regular grunts and placed under the strict command of the gung-ho buzz-cut pate of Bill Paxton.

Within no time, Cruise is dumped upon a raging battlefield wherein he's summarily attacked and killed by one of the alien gummy spiders, but not before blasting the crap out of his creepy killer. This ties Cruise telepathically and inextricably to the insect army as he's now infected with the blood of the marauders which allows them, and now him, to predict various outcomes. Cruise, you see, doesn't really die. Instead, being killed allows our hero to spin back in time to repeat the events of the day until he tediously, incrementally makes progress - including his becoming an über-soldier with the assistance of master bug killer Blunt.

As there's never any doubt as to the outcome, all that remains is for us to sit back and watch how Cruise gets it right through innumerable stabs at the proceedings. This is mildly engaging for about 30 minutes of screen time.

The soldiers battling the aliens are equipped with Robocop-style exo-skeletons of steel armour and a variety of weapons. The suits are as boringly designed as the aliens, but insult is added to the injury of the soldiers' armour as the design of the battle gear elicits occasional unintentional laughs. Doug Liman's direction is, thankfully, more solid than the usual boneheads assigned to craft these noisy cinematic roller coaster rides. Alas, the movie overstays its welcome and we're barraged with yet another empty-headed state-of-the-art brain-cel sucker.

There is one nice bit of recurring humour in the picture. When things get a bit too hairy and a new kickstart is needed, Emily Blunt, maintaining a Buster-Keaton-ish countenance, simply raises her handgun, points it at Cruise's head and blasts it off.

This is almost as satisfying as the film's final image of Cruise après victory as he flashes that multi-billion-dollar smile at Blunt. Now that the fighting is over, the boinking can begin.

Edge of Tomorrow is in mega-wide-release all over the world via Warner Bros. It's available in 3-D and 3-D IMAX choices, but I saw it in good, old-fashioned 2-D and doubt the added cost of those horrendously flawed options will make much of a difference.