RKS OLD GEEZER: Am I an Old Geezer Yet?

A significant birthday looms in a few months one that is recognized as a mark of old age and a right to a state pension in Canada. But then again reach a certain age and each birthday is a significant event as you creak and moan to another, hopefully walking and not “gliding”.

Who are the brains behind the media dance about 60 being the new 39? 60 is sixty my friend. And what about you not getting older but better? The media excels at selling optimism where it is profitable. Token old geezers promoting make up, prostate medications and the joys of non-wheelchair travel? Look carefully about their absence in the media where young fresh faces rule the roost and where grey-haired news anchors are terminated such as Lisa Laflamme at the Canadian Television Network. A double standard.

What galvanized my thought process? I was in Thessaloniki, Greece at the iconic St. Demetrius Church where I lit a candle in remembrance of my mother and father-in-law the latter called me in jest “Themistocles” the great Athenian general and politician who fought in the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. In olden days. If anyone remembers me will it be in olden days? Or are my olden days now?

So it is 04:39 this morning and after a prostate BPH inspired visit to the loo I hear down below in the streets of Thessaloniki several young ladies speaking loudly in an alcohol infused manner. Mind you they were happy and they were not shouting. Yes I can partake in that joy to a degree but at a certain age sleep does not come easily so will admit I had a Mr. Wilson moment where I felt like dropping a water bomb on these frisky and selfish lasses but was interrupted by a man shouting out the window “Studialo Mallacas” best not translated but my  mega elemental Greek enables me to ascertain these are not welcoming words. Yes my sentiments were with this man and that moment I realized I was a “yeros” nor not a gyro but an old geezer. More of a Socrates than a Themistocles moment. Is it time to return to St. Demetrius Church and light a candle in my honour?

In Greece the author is a certified “papu”.

RKS Travel: Thessaloniki’s Best Coffee?

Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, is a rich city culturally and gastronomically. Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Italian and French architecture. The proliferation of coffeeshops is nothing short of stunning. As I look out my back and front window there is a coffee shop called “Coffee Island” and out back a Gregory’s. Then 20 steps away there are three ultra trendy coffee shops clustered together nicely decorated and full of trendy perhaps wanna be seen customers just about round the clock. A spanakopita and a cappuccino at Gregory’s cost me 5.10 Euros which is the same price as a mediocre tepid cappuccino at the trendy wannabe seen coffee shops. Quality in perhaps more humble settings.

And yes I have seen two Starbucks so far. Yikes!

You won’t find many tourists at my local Gregory’s on Mitropoleos Street that has two tables outside with locals slowly savouring their coffee whereas the fancy coffeeshops have comfortable chairs where every patron can look at each other and be looked at by those in the other coffee shops.

Gregory’s has 365 coffee shops in Greece and Cyprus and its reputation has propelled it to open its first location in Germany.

Why this coffee culture in Thessaloniki I am not sure but it exists elsewhere in Greece. Let’s go out for coffee or perhaps a glass of wine means let’s go out and socialize and have a long chat. Greeks do not believe in a hurried cup of coffee. A conclusion is coffee is the fuel of Greece and quality need not be reflected in price. Could it be the 200,000 students at Thessaloniki’s two universities need to keep perky and alert?

It’s your choice the atmosphere you want to enjoy your coffee at but right now and right here I’ll take the quality coffee prepared by expert barista Costa and the friendly welcoming attitude of Sofia at Gregory’s.

Costa and Sofia at “my” Gregory’s location

When in Thessaloniki be prepared for a coffee invasion like you’ve never seen it before.

RKS 2024 Wine in Greece: Nicolas Repanis Agiorgitiko from Nemea

Here in Greece as far as red wine goes in larger urban areas, you’ll find a great deal of Agiorgitiko in supermarket and corner market shelves. You have to discover a large liquor store where for example here at Thessaloniki at a Cash and Carry Store primarily supplying restaurants there must have been close to two hundred Greek wines. A far cry from what Greek wines you can find in Canadian liquor monopoly stores. The cheapest bottled Greek wine I have seen at a well-known supermarket was 2.70 Euros. Prices for wine are equivalent to what you pay in Canada for the same wine.

The wine is organic has been aged in selected French oak barrels for 6 months.

Aroma: Strong cassis influence complimented by black cherry, blueberry and dark chocolate.

Palate: Richness of black cherry with some black plum and a bit of charcoal. Peppery longish finish. Minimal tannins. A good sipping wine but better with Krinos jarred Basilico sauce topped with goat cheese. Yes pardon the jarred sauce but I have minimal kitchen facilities on my 10 day stay in Thessaloniki to participate in the 65th Annual Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Personality: Let my rich fruit and balanced character speak for itself. Come visit the red wines of Greece and most cases avoid house wine bought in bulk when you are Greek restaurants.

Cellarbility: Expect some softening over the next two years and it will happily sit around to the end of 2027.

Price: 9 Euros.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 91/100.

(Nicolas Repanis 2022 Agiorgitiko, PDO Nemea, Nicolas Repanis, Nemea, Greece, 750 mL,13%).

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Meat”: Twice Out of Control and Twice Dead

Takis (Aky Ilaskarazisis) raises sheep in a small Greek village. Takis has a longstanding feud with Kyriakou (Dimitris Xanthopoulos) over land ownership.  A situation of two hot heads colliding in a violent verbal spar starting the film with Kyriakou without much community support just being released from three years in prison. Community standards run high in rural Greece in matters of reputation.  

Takis’ son Pavlos (Pavlos Iordanopolous) is a morose bumbler without drive or much intelligence. Young Albanian farm labourer Christos (Kostas Nikouli) is treated like a son by Takis and he is certainly sharper than Pavlos.

On the night prior to Takis’ new butcher shop opening Pavlos and Christos after a night of excessive drinking hear a commotion in the barn and catch Kyriakou poisoning sheep. A violent argument ensues with Pavlos in an alcohol fuelled rage fatally shooting Kyriakou. Christos urges Pavlos to disclose the foul deed to Takis but Pavlos disagrees and they shoddily bury the body in a nearby field. Shoddy because a heavy rain exposes the body.

Knowing the great mutual hatred between Takis and Kyriakou the village gossip pins Takis as the murderer. The police chief Yorgos (Yorgos Simeonidis), recipient of many bribes from Takis pertaining to his business operations, does his best to maintain silence about the event but can only contain so much considering the intensity of village gossip. And Pavlos’ lighter found by Antonis who discovered the corpse is used to blackmail Takis into making a hush money payout.

Pavlos’ parents learn the truth from Pavlos of his out-of-control rage killing of Kryiakos and promises of 20,000 Euros per prison year served by Christos and a transfer of the butcher shop to him upon his release are negotiated with Christos should he admit to the killing. Being Albanian his credibility is weak and his and his mother’s financial needs are great. Will Christos accept the deal? Realistically does he have any choice?

The moral corruption of numerous characters is explored in the film as well as the incessant power of village gossip.

The immediate matter is solved by yet another out of control outburst. A intriguing study of rage, moral corruption, extortion, ethnic prejudice, poverty and clash of characters.

A commanding performance by Aky Ilaskarazisis.

Directed by Dimitris Nakos.

Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/bUdq1ZNnMps

RKS 2024 Film Rating 86/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “She Loved Blossoms More”

“She Loved Blossoms More” is a film difficult to categorise as to genre and the best I can suggest is “psychedelic horror”. Consider it a combination of “The Wizard of Oz”, the blue pill from “The Matrix”, “Back to the Future”, “Mad Max” and the LSD trip in New Orleans in “Easy Rider”.

The plot has three young brothers Hedgehog, Japan and Dummy attempting to bring back their mother through a time machine, their mother’s wardrobe.

After two years of experimentation that results in fried turtles, pigs and a variety of other animals the best success is transporting a chicken to the past which is somewhat successful as the chicken is returned headless but alive with glowing orifice where its head was. Science can be cruel for sure. Perhaps that is one message of the film.

The boys’ drug dealer, Samantha, arrives supplying a variety of snortable psychedelic powder launching a spacey and debaucherous trip as if atmospheric weirdness wasn’t already present through spectacular set design, costuming, special effects and creative camera work. It is a wild hallucinogenic sex explosion and the boys’ scientific experimentation launches into cruelty and savagery when Hedgehog pushes Samantha into the time machine, locks the door and presses the on button. The barbarity of scientific experimentation a message of the film.

Samantha returns somewhat like the chicken, but her head has been split in two and she has three eyes and a glowing gap in her head.

The bizarre and creative visualization is a cinematographic a masterpiece and the plot suffers from cooked psychedelics and falters in coherence.

I can’t say I have ever watched such a film as it combines a number of themes of the films described above. Where it fails is a logical development of plot. It is a feast of visualization, special effects and costumes sort of a “Grand Bouffe” of cinema on the verge of gorging itself.

Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/I143IrvQHKs

Directed by Yannis Veslemes.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 90/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Killerwood”

“Killerwood” is yet another Greek film showcasing at The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It is the third festival film I have watched about a film making a film a seemingly favourite modern Greek film genre.

On one level it is intriguing because it focuses on the production of a film including many of its aspects in a semi-comedic fashion. If you are a novice to the technicalities of film production you will encounter here the role of a director, producer, costume designer, set designer, film crew and of course the actors. Not intentionally educational mind you but done in an amusing way and a mandatory 101 course for students of film production.

Then there is the plot. An aspiring young director enamoured with slasher films directs a film about a serial killer who has murdered 17 people in and around Athens using a variety of methods. The character Elena is to play the role of a journalism student investigating the murders under the premise they may be those of a serial killer. She is living with Yiannis an aspiring young filmmaker. Viewers watch the preproduction and rehearsals encountering several brilliantly performed characters including a massively gregarious and overstressed trans costume designer, a producer tired of begging for money to produce the film, a blind theatre actor who agrees to play the part of a psychoanalyst and of course a temperamental director who is hospitalized for a suicide attempt jump off a roof as the lead actress may be joining a Lanthimos production and leaving his production. A multitude of zippy one liners punctuate the film.

During the production mysterious events transpire. Anonymous deliveries of bloody knives, packages of guts and spleens, taunting telephone calls and texts and unexplained deliveries of flowers. At this point where does the production of a movie start being replaced by chilling reality narrated by spooky telephone calls. One anonymous text states its sender is making his own movie while watching production of the movie.  A brilliant blending of fiction and reality both confusing and delightful. And the cast and crew is being watched but is this extraneous import of “reality” merely part of the production of the movie?

Director Christos Massalas has crafted a brilliant film somewhat like an Agatha Christie whodunit melded with any nature of psychokiller films.

Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/BRSxZHlNj6g

RKS 2024 Film Rating 93/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th International Thessaloniki Film Festival: “Hunt”

“Hunt” is as about as dark and despondent as imaginable. Shot in late autumn in sombre hues and occasional in and out focus camerawork it weighs the viewer down with depressive weight and there is nowhere to go but down.

Yiannis (Giannis Belis) is a hunter of fowl and he smokes as if in a suicidal quest. The film opens with him hunting in the woods and then attending his mother’s funeral in a small Greek hillside village. He returns to his flat in an urban area of Greece to his metal work job. In a sombre dilapidated work setting he welds, smokes and coughs.

His next-door neighbor, Elias is a night watchman with a dog that continually howls and whines and despite the complaints lodged by Yiannis to Elias continues to abuse his dog. Yiannis exhibits compassion toward the forlorn canine by feeding it through an opening in a balcony adjacent to Elias’ and stroking its head and paws and speaking gently to it augmenting the rage of Elias resulting in a threat to “fuck up” Yiannis if he continues.

Yiannis expresses guilt to the owner of the metal works he had not visited his mother frequently enough and it is eating him up. Then a problem is raised by Kyriakos, Yiannis’ notary about his inheritance that will cost thousands of Euros to rectify. He makes an error in preparing an order for a major customer. His coughing worsens yet the cigarettes never stop. And he has a crush on the bakery lady, makes a piece of jewellery for her but hasn’t the courage to express his affection by giving it to her. A lonely old man perhaps knowingly dying.

He has recurring dreams of a man trudging in the heat across salt flats and flashes of his mother in the coffin. He suspects Kryiakos, his notary is swindling him. And one day while hunting with a bird in his sights he fails to pull the trigger. One afternoon during his meal the dog continues his whining, and Yiannis pounds on the door and is hurled abuse by Elias.

Matters have gone as far as patience and a shattered mental health can endure. The dog finds a loving home with the son of his boss. Cruelty to an animal has ended. Moral justice is served.

Watch the film if you are prepared for a dark journey.

The director is Christos Pitharas.

Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/s0x32PLVMT4

RKS 2024 Film Rating 92/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Annual Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “The Sock”

Kyros is a struggling filmmaker injured by a collapsing wall during some bizarre if not inane dance movement performance. His leg is fractured and two ligaments are torn.  On crutches he has become temporarily disabled.

Kyros proposes producing a film about his temporary disability and how that effects the relationships around him. It will also feature his permanently disabled cousin afflicted with multiple sclerosis.

Should Kyros sue the gallery owner where the accident occurred and the performer that pulled the wall causing it to tumble on Kyros? Initially Kyros takes the high and mighty view all performers are in a community and morality and solidarity should take precedence over legality. Kryos learns slowly that performers may be more interested in promoting their own interests in preference to the furtherance of this mythical community.

Friends are not really the friends Kyros anticipated they would be and some take advantage of his selflessness.

Aside from morality investigated in the film there is the physicality of the disabled being ignored and sidelined.

There are comedic moments particularly the ebb and flow of operatic music. A spectacular but absurd messianic and 2001 Space Odyssey ending.

Definitely one of those artistic films not destined for the mainstream but go ahead and revel in the symbolism as after all it is a movie about a movie about a movie.

This Cypriot movie is directed by Kyros Papavassilou and you can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/kEmjAGayPzY

RKS 2024 Film Rating 86/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Annual Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Café 404”

“Café 404” is for you if like a group of decent people who discover a bag of loot and four dead bodies in a restaurant on the skids who then fight over the loot the dead bodies left behind and fight even more when 5 kilos of cocaine are also found. As one of the apparently decent people, Nico (Antonis Tsiotsopoulos) says, “Where there are drugs involved there will always be someone looking for them.” How true that is here.

Several layers of bad guys appear and you’ve seen these burly thugs before but the mob boss is brilliantly played by Vassilis Koukalani who is smooth as cyanide laced butter. A ruthless gentleman type and as I say almost worth the price of admission.

Aside from Koukalani the rest of the cast is unimpressive and yes the script is lacking in originality. Viewer boredom may be augmented to misery with an annoying closing song.

A forgettable unimaginative effort.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/embed/G6i8SugvE30

Directed by Alexandros Tsilifonis.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 56/100.

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Brando with a Glass Eye”

45 minutes of conventional film making is followed by diffuse and scattered imagery desperately clinging to a wandering plot. Call it boring at that point or be generous and artsy or experimental which loses much of the audience. An audience does not necessarily want to be spoon fed but may wander lost in imagery and theatrical sophistry.

Luca (Yiannis Niarros) is an aspiring actor informed by a prestigious New York acting school he has been granted an audition for a method acting scholarship. He lives with his brother Aleko (Kostas Nikoulis) in an Athenian flat and both are grieving for the murder of their mother by their father.

Luca requires funds for travelling to his New York audition and Aleko dreams of opening a wine bar. They plan a heist of a sex club which goes awry as in the process of grabbing the bag of cash innocent bystander Ilias (Alexandros Chrysanthopoulos) is injured by a stray bullet. There is no cash in the bag.

Much of the soundtrack at this point is classic noir setting us up for a crime thriller which never develops. There is also in an almost propagandistic manner the Big Brotherian shrill if not semi-hysterical visual and audio clips of acting coach Stela Adler fuelling Luca’s erratic actions.

In a Crime and Punishment Raskolnikovian moment Luca visits Ilias in the hospital but is not recognized as both brothers were wearing masks during the heist. Luca and Ilia strike up a friendship that transcends class boundaries as Ilias is an idle member of the bourgeoisie whereas Luca is a garage mechanic.

Luca begins a series of role plays. As he simply can’t resist plying his method acting trade he plays various roles throughout the remainder of the film. What is reality and what is acting for Luca and for the viewer too? Deluded and psychotic Luca makes an excellent companion for the decadent Ilias as they spiral into increasingly eccentric and dangerous behaviour.

What barely cements the film is the brilliant performance of Yiannis Niarros with an ability and a presence that will transcend him into more commercial mainstream roles if of course that is the direction he wants to head into. John Wick’s long lost brother!

Directed by Antonis Tsonis.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 76/100.