Archive for February, 2014

The critically acclaimed The Trial Of Ken Gass returns with a star studded cast!

stage-gass-0801_largeFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“The mishmash of Kafka’s bureaucratic frustration, Beckett’s oddness, and Del Rio’s sense of humour puts an entertaining spin on the Canadian theatre controversy.” -Mooney on Theatre

Del Rio’s dialogue is lively, and Salgueiro has fun being the aggressor, twisting Gass’s statements into politically correct pretzels of incoherence.” -NOW Magazine

Monday February 24, 2014 (Toronto): By popular demand, HLIBKA ENTERTAINMENT INC. in association with BIG PICTURE CINEMA are bringing back the critically acclaimed comedy THE TRIAL OF KEN GASS from Friday March 21st to Thursday April 3rd.

The remount has a STAR-STUDDED cast including: Stratford veteran David Fox, actor/playwright Matthew Edison, Canadian comedy legend Kenny Robinson, movie reviewer Richard Crouse, Second City mainstage alum Anand Rajaram, Kids in the Hall alum Paul Bellini, performer and personality Ryan G. Hinds, Caitlin Driscoll, indie film darling Robert Nolan, Just for Laughs comedian Sandra Battaglini, and many more.

The Trial of Ken Gass is a play based on the famous dismissal of Canadian theatre legend Ken Gass. In a Kafkaesque series of interrogations, Ken Gass is continually put on trial for crimes he is not aware of.  The absurdist comedy is a metaphor for the power institutions wield over artists and individuals.

The play is being put up by producer / conceptual artist Jonathan Hlibka and will again be directed by acclaimed playwright Bobby Del Rio.  Every show, the spectacular Jess Salgueiro returns to play SARAH BRIGHT opposite DIFFERENT ACTORS PLAYING KEN GASS!!  It is highly encouraged to see multiple performances as each performer will bring their own unique interpretation to the role of Ken Gass.  Lighting and set design will be a collision of minimalistic expressionism and pop art design styled by Jonathan Hlibka.

Opening March 21st: Matthew Edison – 8:00pm

March 22: David Fox – 8:00pm

March 23: Amish Patel 2:30pm matinee,  Kenny Robinson – 8:00pm

March 24: Richard Crouse – 8:00pm

March 25: Caitlin Driscoll – 8:00pm

March 26: Anand Rajaram – 8:00pm

March 27: Ryan G. Hinds – 8:00pm

March 29: Paul Bellini – 8:00pm

March 30: 2:30pm matinee TBA, Robert Nolan – 8:00pm

March 31: Sandra Battaglini – 8:00pm

April 1: Derrick Chua – 8:00pm

April 2: TBA

April 3: TBA

In 2013, at the Sterling Studio Theatre’s first one-act playwriting competition, The Trial of Ken Gass ended up as a top-3 finalist. The original production was at Sterling Studio Theatre in July 2013.  Highlight performances from the first run include: Peter Keleghan (The Newsroom), Diane Flacks, Huse Madhavji (Saving Hope), Pat Thornton and Julian DeZotti.

The play will open Friday, March 21st @ 8pm. It will close on Thursday, April 3rd @ 8pm. All shows will be @ 8pm. The show will run every night from March 21 – April 3 (except Friday March 28th). On Sundays, there will also be matinees @ 2:30pm. All tix are $15, with PWYC Sundays for both shows. Passes for all performances for the run of the show are available for $35. Big Picture Cinema is located at 1035 Gerrard St East. Tickets can be purchased at the door, or online at www.bigpicturecinema.com

RICHARD’S REVIEWS FOR FRI. FEB. 21, 2014 W “Canada AM” HOST MARCI IEN.

Screen Shot 2014-02-21 at 12.13.12 PMCanada AM’s film critic Richard Crouse shares his reviews for ‘Pompeii,’ ‘3 Days to Kill,’ and ‘Tim’s Vermeer.’

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Pompeii movie offers cardboard acting, and plenty of molten cheese.

pompeii1By Richard Crouse and Mark Breslin – Reel Guys Metro Canada

Synopsis: Set in the shadow of the gurgling volcano Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii stars Game of Thrones heartthrob Kit Harington as the muscle-bound Milo. His tribe, including his entire family, was wiped out by the vicious Roman Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) dooming him to a lonely life of servitude under the thumb of Roman masters. Years later as a gladiator in Pompeii’s coliseum he sees a way to exact revenge and save Cassia (Emily Browning), the most beautiful girl in the lush resort town. As warriors Milo and Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) battle Roman soldiers in the coliseum, the volcano erupts, causing havoc. Will Milo get vengeance and save Cassia before a rolling mountain of lava and ash covers the city?

•    Richard: 2/5
•    Mark: 2/5

Richard: Mark, the spirit of Steve Reeves lives on. If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Reeves’ oeuvre, he was Hercules before Kevin Sorbo, a legend of beefcake historical drama movies. His movies were all about bulging muscles, swinging swords and damsels in revealing togas. Which brings me to the spiritual cousin to the Reeves movies — Pompeii — which adds spewing lava, but not much else to the sword and sandal genre. Physically, Jason Statham sound-a-like Harrington is up to the heroic Reeves role but is slowed down by the thick layer of molten cheese that covers almost every frame of this film.

Mark: Richard, the movie reminded me of Titanic, but not in a good way. It’s 90 minutes of derivative and irrelevant narrative, a love story between an upper class woman and a commoner, followed by a half hour of the special effects you came to see in the first place. Harrington is fine, but it doesn’t matter. The real star is the volcano, and unfortunately, it has the best lines. The gladiator plotline is inferior to other films in the same genre, although I thought the 20 slaves versus 20 centurions scene was handled with great verve.

RC: It does take too long for Mount Vesuvius to blow its top — complete with flying lava meteorites — and when it does, the special effects aren’t quite as spectacular as you might hope from a CGI extravaganza. On top of that is muddy-looking 3D. The film overall is dark as though the whole thing was shot through a cloud of volcanic ash. Having said that, I didn’t think the volcano had all the best lines. I got a kick out of a prison guard loudly waking up the jailed gladiators by shouting, “Wake up, scum!”

MB: Oh. I thought he was shouting that to the audience. And poor Kiefer Sutherland, given a cardboard role in a papier-mâché film. I kept expecting him to look at the volcano and shout, “We’re running out of time!” What I think I would have liked was a drama that showed a cross section of Pompeii life all too tragically snuffed out by the erupting volcano. But maybe that would have been Pomp-ous.

RC: Ha! I felt that when slave trader Graecus said, “You dragged me from a perfectly good brothel for this?” he was speaking directly to me.

MB: Unfortunately the movie didn’t speak to me in any way, shape or form.

 

POMPEII: 2 STARS. “You dragged me from a perfectly good brothel for this?”

Kit-Harington-PompeiiThe spirit of Steve Reeves lives on. If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Reeves’ oeuvre, he was Hercules before Kevin Sorbo, a legend of beefcake historical drama movies. His movies were all about bulging muscles, swinging swords and damsels in revealing togas.

Which brings me to the spiritual cousin to the Reeves movies, Pompeii, which adds spewing lava, but not much else to the sword and sandal genre. Physically Jason Statham sound-a-like Kit Harrington is up to the heroic Reeves role but is slowed down by the thick layer of molten cheese covers almost every frame of this film.

Set in the shadow of the gurgling volcano Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii Game of Thrones heartthrob Harrington is the muscle bound Milo. His tribe, including his entire family, was wiped out by the vicious Roman Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) dooming him to a lonely life of servitude under the thumb of Roman masters.

Years later as a gladiator in Pompeii’s coliseum he sees a way to exact revenge and save Cassia (Emily Browning), the most beautiful girl in the lush resort town. As warriors Milo and Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) battle Roman soldiers in the coliseum the volcano erupts, causing havoc.

Will Milo get vengeance and save Cassia before a rolling mountain of lava and ash covers the city?

Harrington, Sutherland and Browning are the above-the-title stars here, but the real scene-stealer is Mount Vesuvius. Unfortunately it takes way too long for the volcano to to blow its top and when it does the special effects aren’t quite as spectacular as you might hope from a CGI extravaganza. As you might expect there are flying lava meteorites, bubbling lava and crumbling buildings, but it’s mostly just a bombastic CGI fest.

On top of that is muddy looking 3D that would make Steve Reeves squint. The film overall is dark as though the whole thing was shot through a cloud of volcanic ash.

I did get a kick out of a prison guard loudly waking up the jailed gladiators by shouting, “Wake up scum!” but by the time the credits started to roll I felt that slave trader Graecus was speaking directly to me when he said, “You dragged me from a perfectly good brothel for this?”

3 DAYS TO KILL: 3 STARS. “Costner has a world weary, easy charm.”

kevin-costner-amber-heard-3-days-to-kill-movie-poster-02-600x600A late career make over as an action star with a particular set of skills worked for Liam Neeson, so why not for Kevin Costner. In “3 Days to Kill” Costner gets his Neeson on, starring in a Euro-thriller with unusual bad guys, a daughter and lots and lots of gunfire.

Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) has a lot going on. After five years of dangerous undercover work away from his family he has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. He opts to spend his final months making amends with his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) in Paris. His plan is disrupted when a mysterious CIA femme fatale (Amber Heard) turns up with an offer he can’t refuse. In exchange for an experimental drug that could save his life and a lump sum of cash he must go on a wild shooting spree in the City of Light, exterminating a very bad man called The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and his brutal enforcer The Albino (Tómas Lemarquis). Ethan is a family man and contract killer.

Unlike Neeson’s “Taken,” which reveled in its trashiness, “3 Days to Kill” isn’t cheeseball enough to provide the same kind of down-and-dirty fun. Director McG has pitched the movie as an uneasy mix of sentimentality and ultra violence. When Ethan isn’t ramming people with his car or grilling their hands in a sandwich press, he bonding with his daughter, trying to make up for lost time. He teaches her dance, ride a bike and even cuts a torture session short so he can have a meeting with her school principal.

There are some outlandish plot points—for instance, looking for advice about his daughter he goes to the home of a man he has just finished torturing to ask advice from the man’s teenaged girls—and the tone is jokey but unfortunately only about half the gags actually hit home.

Costner has a world weary, easy charm here that helps sell the humor and he appears comfortable with the action but “3 Days to Kill” is a little too generic overall to score with audiences who embraced Neeson’s leap into the action fray.

TIM’S VERMEER: 4 STARS. “playfully presented and fascinating.”

tims-vermeer-3Science and art collide in Tim’s Vermeer. The documentary focuses on Texas-based inventor Tim Jenison’s years-long research project to discover how 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer created photo-realistic paintings 150 years before the invention of photography. Directed by Teller (of magic duo Penn and Teller) the film suggests Vermeer may have employed a camera obscura equipped with mirrors to enhance his abilty to capture light and shade. The technical nuts and bolts of Jenison’s theory are playfully presented and fascinating but the real appeal here is the personal story of the eccentric inventor’s obsession and determination.

Pompeii in the movies: A brief history of sword, sandal, and volcanoes.

pompeiiBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

It’s said the people of Pompeii regarded the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. with “a response more of curiosity than of alarm.” The volcano had burped and belched as many as 50 times over the years, so most of the city’s 20,000 citizens didn’t pay attention when Vesuvius started to gurgle.

Perhaps they were too busy visiting one of the city’s many brothels — like a proto-Las Vegas, this was the richest city of ancient times, ripe with amenities and vice — or enjoying their lunches of broad beans, olives, dormice (plumped up by chefs in terracotta jars) or even garum, made from the first blood of a still-gasping mackerel, to detect the cloud of deadly volcanic ash headed their way.

By the end of the day the dust “poured across the land,” claiming 2,000 lives. Buried beneath, “a darkness… like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.” The remains of Pompeii and its people were preserved, left untouched for two millennia.

Today the ancient city of Pompeii is one of the most popular attractions in Italy, drawing almost three million tourists annually. But if you can’t make it to the Italian region of Campania, a new movie aims to recreate the experience for you.

Pompeii stars Kit Harington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Browning and Kiefer Sutherland in a love story about a slave-turned-gladiator (Harington) who must rescue his beloved, Cassia (Browning), before a rolling mountain of lava and ash dooms her to the ages.

The big action adventure take on the story directed by Resident Evil helmer Paul W.S. Anderson has an ancestor in The Last Days of Pompeii, a 1913 silent sword-and-sandal movie based on the Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel of the same name. That book has been remade eight times.

The most famous version came in 1959. The big budget CinemaScope production was to have been directed by Mario Bonnard, but when he fell ill on the first day of shooting, screenwriter Sergio Leone (who would go on to make classics like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) stepped in. It’s big on pageantry, just as the advertising taglines would suggest. It’s a “Fiery Summit of Spectacle,” the posters screamed, promising an inside look at, “the City that Lived in Sin and Died in Flame!”

Certainly it’s more puffed-up than Up Pompeii, a 1971 Frankie Howerd comedy that featured a speech by emperor Ludicrus Sextus during Vesuvius’ eruption.

“I say, Lurcio, how did my speech go?” he asks his servant as the city crumbles.

“Master, you brought the house down!”

Richard hosting the Drake Hotel’s Oscar Party on March 2, 2014!

1301_oscar_party_listing_1.jpg.220x340_q95_crop_1.jpg.220x340_q95_cropFor the 8th year in a row Richard will host a glamorous Oscar party at the Drake Hotel in Toronto on March 2, 2014!

From www.thedrakehotel.ca:

We’re celebrating everyone’s favourite award show in true Drake style. Put on your best threads + play our Oscar pool while snacking on free popcorn from the Drake kitchen. Did we mention the evening is hosted by cinema king Richard Crouse? Meet us here + challenge your friends in a match of cinematic trivia. There’s great prizes to be won + even a special bubbly menu to choose from, while cheering on your picks from the silver screen.

  • Venue: Lounge
  • Type: Film
  • Cover: FREE
  • Time: March 2, 2014, 6 p.m.

 

The Voices Trailer

Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima.