RKS 2024 Wine: An Argentinian Red Blend from the End of the World

Odds are if you are at the end of the world conditions could be such one cares more about surviving than drinking an excellent wine? I have been to the end of the world in Portugal but not in Argentinian Patagonia.

In a fancy, possibly gimmicky and monstrously heavy bottle, we have a blend of Malbec (40%), Cabernet Sauvignon (40%) and Merlot (20%).

At the end of the world your next stop may be limbo so this may be the last glass of wine you have before the final judgement on you shall be made. How will we judge this wine?

Aroma: Like angels awaiting you (hopefully) the cherry in the wine sings sweetly to your ears. A chorus of black fruit sits behind the angels.

Palate: Not exactly a smoothie on the palate. It has the gospel book of seriousness thumping on it shouting that Argentinian wine is the only true road to salvation! Tannins are present but not overpowering. The Merlot and to a lesser degree the Cabernet Sauvignon like false prophets diminish the lushness of the Argentinian Malbec. A blend can create a unique wine or end up confusing the grapes leading them into perdition as I think the case is here. A bit of Prince of Darkness burns on the palate. On the palate then I think it fair to say it will not lead you into temptation but rather into regret considering its price.

Personality: RKS Wine is getting where a wine witter should not be; on the pulpit Pontus Pilate pontificating. Decide for yourself as we watch him being gnawed by the lions.

Food Match: Since you are at the end of the world what the Hell, enjoy with a Devil’s Food Cake.

Cellarbility: As the wine is showing its age, not quite as old as Methuselah mind you, drink by 2024-year end.

Price: $50 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 79/100. Jamessuckling.com 90.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery: A hellish price to pay for mediocrity. There are many false prophets out there! Love a wine from those obscurely named corporations!

(Bodega del Fin del Mundo 2021 Special Blend, Patagonia, Argentina, BDFM S.A., Patagonia, Argentina, 750 mL, 14.5%).

RKS 2024 Film: Toronto’s 2SLGTBQ+ Inside Out Film Festival: “Local Heroes” Short Programme: Reality and Dreams are a Mess for the Dreamer in “How’d You Sleep”

The Dreamer (Spencer Glassman) is self described as a 29-year-old hot Jewish chick in an unconventional way but not yet famous. Unfortunately, she slept in and missed her latest audition. “What’s wrong with me?” she muses.

The Dreamer has difficulty in sleeping despite her melatonin, hot milk, exercise, porn watching for some sexual release purposes, listening to learn language tapes and watching relaxation videos. All this tossing and turning is painful to watch.

It appears the Dreamer is suffering from some anxiety as in a dream she appears on stage singing opera but messes up her lines to boos of the audience then she appears on stage unintentionally naked and consequently humiliated.

In a dream the Deamer is visited by her gay gym teacher (Travis Silverman) from high school and they exchange kisses then off the Dreamer goes to her 30th birthday party and watches her alter ego drop the cake on the floor. Both reality and dreams are a mess for the Deamer.

The short is a frenzy of painful tossing and turning, low self esteem, fear of failure and anxiety and perhaps an inability to dissect fantasy from reality. A perfect storm for insomnia?

Writer and director Spencer Glassman.

Showing with the other Local Heroes shorts in theatre 30May2024 and virtually 31May2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating: 74/100.

For more information on the Festival see insideout.ca.

RKS 2024 Wine: The Cheapest Quality Bubby in Town?

Most likely a toss up between Prosecco and Cava.

We try a Cornaro Prosecco DOC Treviso.

Prosecco is more often platinum in colour as this Prosecco is.

Aroma: Lime, lemon and marzipan.

Palate:  A cleansing wave of acidity. Almond, peach, banana split and sweet white grapefruit.

Personality: Although I am simply the best on a hot and humid July afternoon in Venice you can enjoy me anywhere in the world. I have an affinity to cool you down in the summer keeping in mind my 11% alcohol. I am moderate but not quite in the convent yet.

Food Match: Creamy White Beans in Herb Oil. See it here https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019385-creamy-white-beans-with-herb-oil

Cellarbility: Drink by 2025-year end.

Price: $19 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 89/100.

(Cornaro Prosecco, DOC Treviso, Cantina Montelliana e Dei Colli, Asolani, Montebelluna, Italy,750 mL, 11%).

RKS 2024 Film: Toronto’s 2SLGTBQ+ Inside Out Film Festival: “Local Heroes” Short Programme and Ruth has a Brand-New Bag!

In the short “Ernesto’s Bag” Ruth (Bea Santos) works at a bridal salon. It has been three years and she has had enough of smiling and mumbling platitudes accompanied by crying mothers, radiant brides and the popping of cheap bubbly lubricating the wardrobe selection process. It is above her. The soon to be brides are mindless twits trapped in the bridal industrial complex. Being above all this triviality Ruth prepares a letter of resignation which baffles her boss as why not an e-mail. Her boss mutters, “What a wierdo!”

Well after work with her pal sipping cocktails in enormous plastic glasses Alice (Jenny Raven) announces she is marrying Tim who Ruth equates with a Golden Retriever. Ernesto the nonchalant chef at the restaurant El Gato Negro beside the bridal salon is a man of few words but seeing Ruth is upset with some issue offers her a bag of mushrooms, not Creminis, Oysters or Shitakes if you know what I mean. Ruth accidentally dumps the entire bag of champignons in her smoothie.

Alice arrives for a fitting and the shrooms take Ruth on a little “trip” to the extent that Alice looks like the creature from “Alien”. Is Ruth willing to accept the near inevitability of marriage? After all if James Brown has a brand new bag can Ruth’s bag of shrooms bring her a brand new outlook on marriage?

Directed by Isabelle Deluce and Giulia De Vita.

RKS 2024 Film: 86/100.

For more information about the Local Heroes Short Programme showing in theatre 30May2024 and virtually 31May2024 (Canada only) check out insideout.ca.

RKS 2024 Film: Inside Out 2LGBTQ+ Film Festival: “All Shall Be Well”

Angie Wang (Patra Au) and Pat Wu have been in a lesbian relationship for some thirty years. They live together in a spacious upscale Hong Kong condo. They do what many couples do, eating together, shopping together and entertaining. Both are in their sixties and retired although Pat has dreams of opening a Senior Fashion Line and is taking a course on online commerce to further her dream. Angie and Pat at one time owned a textile factory.

After a dinner party at their condo with Pat’s family, Pat dies in her sleep. Pat never finalized her will so her death is intestate hence her family under Hong Kong law is legally entitled to all her property including the condo. In addition to not having a will Angela’s name was never placed on title.

Angela is prevented implementing Pat’s wishes her ashes be scattered in the ocean as the family “fortune teller” Master Yu says it would be bad luck for Pat’s descendants suggesting a niche in a columbarium would be more appropriate and a niche is what she gets. At the internment ceremony Mr. Yu asks Angela to step to the back behind the family as “friends” should be behind family. Perhaps if someone had the courage to explain the nature of Pat and Angela’s relationship Angela might have been afforded the dignity and recognition she deserved. Even Angela’s parents refuse to acknowledge their daughter’s lesbian status despite being told of it by Angela.

Pat’s draft will clearly gave Angela the condo but a draft will is but a draft. So the struggle continues with Angela being supported by a bevy of her lesbian friends.

Unfair you may say. You might also say very poor and selfish planning by both Angela and Pat bringing this preventable and unpleasant situation about.

One moral of the story is if in a gay common law relationship and you seek to protect the survivor upon your death know the legal rights of the survivor. Many jurisdictions give a survivor, gay or not, rights to property accumulated during the relationship. Even better have mutual wills executed!

Ray Yeung is the director.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SLP5J7X8I&t=7s

The film shows 26May2024 in Toronto.

For more information about the festival see insideout.ca

RKS 2024 Film Rating: 69/100.

RKS 2024 Film: “Join the Club”: Politics/Cannabis/AID’s Cali Style All with Retrospect Stupidity: Canada’s Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival

If you reside in a legal recreational or medicinal cannabis consumption area perhaps you should take a moment to contemplate how “all those dope stores” you hear in frequent negative snippets of conversation may have ended up on the corner. It has been a mighty struggle to legalize both medicinal and recreational cannabis. Many have suffered and died in the struggle to legalize medicinal cannabis which until 1937 was legal in the United States where it was widely used in home remedies in patent format that totalled over a hundred. Then in 1937 The Marijuana Tax Act in the United States criminalized marijuana possession and Big Pharma thrived which has “invented” synthetic cannabis to peddle.

Dennis Peron (1945-2018) is one man that propelled Californians to approve Proposition 215 legalizing medical cannabis in the state of California.

Peron served two years in Vietnam and as a Bronx Italian gay not content with the troops using booze as a forgetful drug smoked cannabis for the first time in his life changing its trajectory. Bringing three pounds of cannabis back from Vietnam to his new home San Francisco the rest was history.

An openly gay man in San Francisco Peron established a small pot shop after his return from Nam. Then escalated to a more commercial Cannabis Buyers Club (CBC) in San Francisco selling cannabis with enormous success. All that was required was a physician’s note describing your illness. CBC was an entertainment venue, a party site and a pharmacy. Sort of like a Studio 54 for medicinal cannabis users.

It was the death of his partner who relied extensively on cannabis to combat and assuage the effects of AIDS and the harsh drugs initially administered to control it. Peron pushed forward through prosecution and political wranglings over the years to be an advocate for the use of medicinal cannabis although an investigating undercover detective swears in an affidavit he saw CBC buyers with pounds of cannabis.

Despite Nixon, Regan and Bush as American presidents declaring a war on drugs California approved Proposition 215 legalizing medicinal cannabis on 5November1996.

Peron’s battle is a fascinating mix of politics (many different ways), homophobia and by today’s retrospective analysis sheer, stupidity and cruelty in the era of the “Gay Plague”.

An unanswered question is where did all the money go from CBC cannabis sales? Law enforcement never managed to find it. You may be tempted to ask was Peron a clever entrpeneur or a compassonate crusader or a bit of both?

Directed by Kip Andersen and Chris OConnell.

Showing in theatre in Toronto 25May2024.

For further detail on the Film Festival see insideout.ca

RKS 2024 Film Rating: 89/100.

RKS 2024 Wine: Featherstone 2023 Rosé from Niagara Peninsula

Always excellent. Drinkable all year round straight up or with food. Time to try their 2023 vintage.

A blend of Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir.

Aroma: Fully ripe raspberry, strawberry and Thames River Farms sugar babe watermelon. This rosé is what you might call fruit expressive!

Palate: Smooth with some raspiness on the back palate. Raspberry, cotton candy grapes and dragon fruit. Short finish with a little hot.

Personality: I fall in line with many Ontario rosés in the sense that I am world quality.

Food Match: Lightly creamed smoked salmon sauce over bucatini. Sublime with roast ham.

Cellarbility: Will hold nicely to 2025-year end.

Price: $17 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 93/100.

(Featherstone 2023 Rosé, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Featherstone Estate Winery, Vineland, Ontario, 750 mL, 13%).

RKS 2024 Film: “Tish”: Memories of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”

Watching the documentary “Tish” about British photographer Tish Murtha the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” are most appropriate. “A working-class hero is something to be.”  Although the late Tish Murtha now has a permanent exhibition of her photos at the Tate Museum in London she never reached the status of a working class hero instead dying in poverty of a brain aneurysm on 13March2017 one day before her 57th birthday.

Tish grew up in Elswick, Newcastle a dying industrial centre full of derelict buildings and high unemployment. Not only was Elswick dying a slow death the entire working class of Britain was dying despite the pious moralism and hackneyed work schemes of Thatcher and Tony Blair’s New Deal.

Tish’s daughter Ella takes us a journey of discovery about her late mother through interviews with curators, photographers, friends, teachers, family members and her handwritten captions on the back of her printed photos. Tish was a fiery and highly determined documentary photographer at a time when commercial photographers ruled the roost. She focused not on “posh history” but on the working class which was before her eyes and was the reality that she lived in.

Her story is sad if not tragic as she was penalized by her focus on working people and issues related to their class whether it be the red-light district of Soho, working class marching bands, the closure of the Vicker’s ship building yards, pub life and working-class degradation. The story is a fascinating one but the rich texture of pictures, particularly those of children say more than a photograph’s intrinsic beauty. Tish had a goal in taking her photographs which was to make a statement in the hope that it would improve the life of the British working class.

Ella Murtha has published three volumes of Tish Murtha’s photographs.

The documentary is directed by Paul Sng.

You may watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/933326555.

Limited theatrical release in Ontario commencing 17May2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 94/100.

RKS 2024 Film: “Limbo”: Outer Planetary Experience

The Australian film “Limbo” is an outer planetary experience.

Filmed in black and white in opal mining territory of the Australian outback. The terrain, mining “holes”, abandoned equipment and vehicles and caves with howls of dingos and cries of birds in the distance create an otherworldly setting for “Limbo”.

Heavily tattooed murder detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) is not your ordinary detective. In the opening scene and in some subsequent ones Hurley drives to his destination listening to evangelical Christian tapes. He arrives at Hotel Limbo, cooks up his dope and shoots it collapsing on the bed. One child in a scene says to Hurley he looks more like a drug dealer than a cop.

The plot in “Limbo” is the usual murder detective stuff namely finding the murderer. Hurley is working on a cold case concerning the disappearance and possible murder of a young aboriginal child Charlotte who twenty years ago in Limbo disappeared. Suspects were interviewed by police and some railroaded and bullied too. Hurley patches clue after clue in his quest to find the murderer investigating grief stricken forever altered family members, suspects and townsfolk. All well done and written. It is obvious the police are both racist and incompetent. Charlotte is a “black” seemingly a common name for Australian aboriginals so why would the police take the matter seriously.

Most riveting about the film is its dabbling in noir cinema. Shot in black and white in extra-terrestrial like scenery with careful angles and lighting could this be a question of spectacular cinematography stealing the show?

Why the term “Limbo” ? As Hurley enters the church in Limbo he hears a recording explaining what limbo means in Christianity. Pay close attention to this recording and contemplate if Hurley is not only on a criminal investigation but a Messianic one as well.

Written and directed by Ivan Sen.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1632487193/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1

VOD/Digital release 21May2024.

RKS Literature: A Twit Pontificates on Aristocratic Blood (Charles Dickens)

‘Oh you know, deuce take it’ said this gentleman, looking round the board with an imbecile smile,’ we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and may be a little wrong, you know, and get themselves, and other people into a variety of fixes-and all that-but deuce take it, it’s delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ‘em! Myself I’d rather at any time be knocked down by a man who got Blood in him, than I’d be picked up by a man that hadn’t!’

Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield”, 1850.