Beau Dick, who passed away last year at age 61, was an artist and activist born in Kingcome Inlet, a Kwakwaka’wakw village north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. A new documentary, “Maker Of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life Of Beau Dick,” details his life from apprentice artist, learning to carve traditional totem poles from his father and grandfather, to master craftsman who mixed elements of Japanese manga and other styles into beautiful wooden masks that sell at galleries all over the world.
“My experience is that anyone who encounters a piece of Beau’s immediately has an emotional reaction,” says Vancouver gallery owner and “Maker of Monsters” co-producer LaTiesha Fazakas, “because his work is so animated and it feels like you’re encountering a character when you encounter one of his masks.”
The same could be said for the man himself. A soft-spoken narrator, he weaves the story of his growth as an artist and First Nations activist throughout this engaging documentary, building a portrait of a person one friend called magical. “You can see it in him,” she says.
“For the longest time I couldn’t recognize Beau’s work,” says collector Hervé Curat, “and to me that was magic. Too many artists have a fantastic style but they have only one. So many times I have looked at his work and thought, ‘That has to be Beau because nobody else would dare do that.’
His work as an artist and activist—we see his 2013 public copper-cutting ceremony at the BC Legislature to protest the disregard of Indigenous treaty rights—are inseparable but “Maker of Monsters” makes sure to emphasize the man behind the art and social action. The result is a loving look at the legacy of a charismatic presence whose concern for his people’s culture and the environment was genuine and wide ranging. “Who is our family?” he asks near the end of the movie. “All of us.”
Check out the Richard Crouse Show on NewsTalk 1010 for March 24, 2018! This week Richard welcomes award winning comedian and writer Stacey McGunnigle, actor Anthony Lemke and “Punk Rock” actor Ruth Goodwin.
This week on Pop Life music industry icon Scott Borchetta on what pushed him to start his own record company. Then the panel, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, music industry legend Denise Donlon and singer/actor Ana Goldja, chime in on the state of music.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s all-new 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 superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor and best-selling author Chris Colfer, celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower, and many more.
Watch all new shows every Saturday at 8:30 pm on Saturday or 2:30 pm on Sunday on the CTV NessChannel! (channel 1501 on Bell Fibe, 62 on Rogers) AND on CTV midnight on Saturday nights. Also, check your listings for airings on Bravo and Gusto.
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 Wes Anderson’s animated political allegory “Isle of Dog,” Claire Foy as a woman trapped in a mental facility in “Unsane” and “Flower,” starring Zoey Deutch.
Imagine the painstaking process that goes into making stop-motion animated films like Isle of Dogs. Instead of using computer-generated imagery, animators meticulously manipulate little puppets a centimetre or two at a time, shoot a frame or two and repeat the process until the film is done. On average, working at a good clip, a stop-motion animator can complete one or two minutes of film per week.
According to whom you speak, the process is either a labour of love or pure torture.
“People think it’s monotonous and tedious, but I think stop motion creates a dream quality,” said legendary animator Ray Harryhausen. “I never found it tedious or monotonous.”
Others, like The Boxtrolls producer Travis Knight, say “It’s the worst way to make a movie. It makes no sense.”
However you feel about the method, the results are beautiful. At its best, stop motion has a timeless quality and otherworldly charm born from the old-fashioned process that brings it to the screen. It’s handmade with a level of craftsmanship and soul that not even the most skilled programmer working on an advanced computer can imitate.
“There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong,” says Harryhausen, “that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane. In Kong, you knew he wasn’t real, but he looked like a nightmare, you know? He acted real, and the dinosaurs looked real. But there was something about them that had a magic that you don’t quite get yet in CGI.”
Director Wes Anderson says Harryhausen’s work and the stop-motion animated holiday specials of Rankin/Bass Productions inspired Isle of Dogs.
“I really liked these TV Christmas specials in America,” he said. “I always liked the creatures in the Harryhausen-type films, but really these American Christmas specials were probably the thing that really made me want to do it.”
A film still from Isle of Dogs Behind the Scenes (in virtual reality) by Paul Raphael, Felix Lajeunesse and the Isle of Dogs Production Team.
Isle of Dogs, which became the first animated film to ever open the Berlin Film Festival in February, tells the story of the exile of the dogs of Megasaki City to a vast garbage dump, and a 12-year-old boy who sets off to find his lost pet.
The film’s handmade technique is already earning rave reviews. Slate said that Anderson’s stop-motion animations, including 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, “are the warmest, the most emotionally accessible, the most real” of all of Anderson’s films.
That’s the magic of stop motion. From its earliest usage in 1897’s The Humpty Dumpty Circus, to the pioneering work of Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien, to the advanced visions of Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit movies, the exquisite Coraline from Henry Selick, and Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, who mixes stop motion with live actors, all stop-motion films have one thing in common — a humanity that shines through the technology. It isn’t perfect, it’s primal.
Animation, as Pixar’s Brad Bird says, is about creating the illusion of life. Stop motion, with its reliance on the animator’s hands-on skills, presents an imperfect but organic image that can ignite imaginations.
Harryhausen told me it was the stop motion of the original 1933 King Kong that changed his life. “I saw it when I was 13,” he said, “and I haven’t been the same since.”
Max Winkler, director of the coming-of-age movie Flower, corrects me when I mention the film was shot in only 16 days.
“Fifteen-and-a-half days,” he says. “I would have done wonders with that extra half!”
Star Zoey Deutch chimes in. “It is not my job to go, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ My job is to figure out a way to make it work and service the story and the character. All I know is that what is important for a movie that shoots for 15-and-a-half days or for six months is preparation and what you bring to the table before the table is set. That is the most important element.”
Flower is a coming-of-age story in reverse. When we first meet the adolescent main character Erica, played by Deutch, she is already jaded by life. Her father is in jail and she is involved in a very dubious blackmail scheme to earn his bail money.
Over the course of time she regains her innocence, flip flopping the usual teen movie formula.
Winkler, the son of television icon Henry (The Fonz) Winkler, says the success of Flower is a testament to Deutch’s handling of the role.
“It is such a fine line to tread, to have that bravado but at the same time the intense vulnerability to know that she is really just doing this to cover up all this intense fear she has.”
The actress, best known for turns in Before I Fall and Why Him?, finds the qualities that make us feel for Erica. Do we care about Erica the blackmailer? Not particularly. But we can care about why she resorts to blackmail and that’s where Deutch shines.
“I was 20 when we shot this,” says Deutch, “which isn’t so far from 17 so I was able to pull and be inspired from my own experiences. … Erica is very frustrated by the world and she is very frustrating. I remember being frustrated and being frustrating to other people for sure.”
Deutch is winning raves for her work as the rebellious and sassy teen — The Wrap called her performance “truly exceptional” while The Playlist christened her as “charismatic, uber-magnetic” — but don’t ask her about her craft.
“The truth is, and the reason you can probably sense my hesitancy,” she says, “is that I find it really pretentious when actors talk about process. The way I talk about it sounds pretentious so I steer away from it. I would rather be self-deprecating than sound like overly precious about the whole thing.”
Flower is a coming-of-age story — in reverse.
She will say that the authenticity of the character came from research and conversation with her director and fellow cast members.
“I did a lot of reading,” she says, “everything from books about female teenage angst and struggle, like Reviving Ophelia. We were always talking about consent and how Erica always relies on her charms and never allows anyone else any semblance of control over her.”
Winkler and Deutch only spent 15-and-a-half days on set but have forged a mutual appreciation for society. “My greatest feeling about this movie is just how brilliant Zoey is in it,” Winkler says.
“There is something really special in pure entertainment,” says Deutch, “and I think Max made something super entertaining and super interesting and super different.”
Ever wondered what would happen if stop motion master Ray Harryhausen and Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa went to see “Benji” and then decided to make a movie? With the release of “Isle of Dogs” Wes Anderson, director of live action wonders like “Rushmore” and “Moonrise Kingdom” and the stop motion hit “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” offers up an idea of what that might have been like.
Once again working in stop motion, Anderson creates a fictional world, the Japanese city of Megasaki, twenty years from now. An epidemic of dog flu prompts the fear mongering Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) to forewarn that snout fever is about to spread to humans and order all dogs deported to a toxic wasteland called Trash Island.
Dog-zero is Spots (voiced by Liev Schreiber), the beloved pet of the mayor’s orphaned ward 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin). When he is deported the boy makes the dangerous journey across the river in a prop plane to look for his dog. With the help of newfound mongrel pals, including the good-natured Rex (Edward Norton), former baseball mascot Boss (Bill Murray), King (Bob Balaban), the gossipy Duke (Jeff Goldblum), Chief (Bryan Cranston) and Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson), Atari takes on the corrupt government.
“Isle of Dogs” is a fairy tale with a bite. Anderson, one of the most distinctive directors working today (or any day for that matter), brings a child-like wonder and unfettered imagination to bring this boy-and-his-dog story to vivid life. Gorgeous, soulful stop motion animation and Anderson’s trademarked banter combined with a timely story of deportation and exile makes for an unforgettable film.
The usual complaints about Anderson’s work, that it’s too detailed, too eccentric, will be levelled at this movie but I’d argue it is his obsessiveness that brings the creative magic. Subplots and flashbacks take the viewer on a wild journey but Anderson’s attention to every element, visual and narrative, guarantees the rambunctious story never loses itself in its own elaborate style.
There jokes throughout—even the title is a playful take on “I love dogs”—but just as important are the messages of tolerance. You will not see another film like “Isle of Dogs” this year. So effortlessly cinematic and inventive, it’s best in show.
Steven Soderbergh’s new movie asks a simple question, Is Sawyer Valentini’s greatest fear real or a delusion? Starring Claire Foy and Jay Pharoah, it takes the legendary director back to basics. Shot entirely with an iPhone camera, it only cost $1.2 million to make.
Foy plays Valentini, a businesswoman with an unhappy life. After a bad one-night stand leads to a panic attack she consults a head-shrinker at a facility called Highland Creek Behavioural Health Facility. In their meeting she divulges something that has been plaguing her, a former stalker. Even though she moved 450 miles away he still haunts her mind. “Rationally I know this is my imagination, but I’m alone in a big city and I never feel safe,” she says, “not for one minute.” Tricked into committing herself—“ There’s some more forms you need to fill out, it’s just routine.”—she is thrust into a house of horrors, surrounded by troubled patients—like the belligerent Violet (Juno Temple)—many, like her, who are there against their will. Her pleas for release fall on deaf ears. Worse, her stalker David (Joshua Leonard) works in the psychiatric ward as an orderly. Or does he? “This man, he’s followed me all the way here from Boston. I’m calling the cops and I want him arrested!”
“Unsane” is a nightmare that stems from not reading the fine print. “They got meds,” says fellow inmate Nate (a terrific Jay Pharoah). “You got insurance. You talk, they find a way to get you committed and you stay as long as your insurance will pay. When they stop paying, you’re cured!” Sawyer’s situation is a political comment on insurance scams and locking up people for profit. It’s a #MeToo thriller—no one believes her stories of stalking—but really, at its heart, “Unsane” is a Gothic b-movie that owes a debt to “The Snakepit” and “Shock Corridor” with some “Gaslight” thrown in for good measure. It’s an examination of women’s voices not being heard of a crumbling medical infrastructure but mostly it’s about Sawyer’s world falling apart and her frustration at not being able to do diddly-squat to put it back together.
Foy is in almost every frame, bringing a frail yet steely presence to the role. She is more than a damsel in distress. By turns charming, cunning, ruthless and jittery, she’s a character designed to keep us guessing. Does she belong in the facility or not? “The Queen” star navigates Sawyer’s personality shifts, zigging and zagging, keeping the audience tantalizingly in the dark as to the truth of her mental state.
“Unsane” has a few clunky moments that detract from the overall feeling of paranoia Soderbergh builds throughout. Beautifully composed and edited “Unsane” still looks like it was shot on an iPhone. Often blown out or bathed in inky blacks it’s an aesthetic we’ve become used to from Instagram and social media videos and it brings and naturalism to the surreal story.
“Unsane” may be low tech but it’s not amateurish. Soderberg expertly builds tension to the point where Sawyer’s frustration is palpable.
Beau Dick, who passed away last year at age 61, was an artist and activist born in Kingcome Inlet, a Kwakwaka’wakw village north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. A new documentary, “Maker Of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life Of Beau Dick,” details his life from apprentice artist, learning to carve traditional totem poles from his father and grandfather, to master craftsman who mixed elements of Japanese manga and other styles into beautiful wooden masks that sell at galleries all over the world.
