RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “American Cats: The Good, Bad And The Cuddly”: Calling All Cat Activists and Cat Lovers

True confessions. I am not a cat lover. I am a “dog person”. Once upon a time I was cornered by a Quebecois cat and kept prisoner for a few hours. I suppose that cat sensed my at best “indifferent” attitude toward cats. I might share that story with you one day.

Then I met Boris and Natasha, two ragdoll cats. Don’t share this with indifferent catters but I rather like Boris. Somewhat aloof but approachable and enjoys a good scratch. Natasha on the other hand is very flighty. Truth be told I rather enjoy meeting up with Boris.

The only reason I watched “American Cats” is attributable to Boris and I am glad I watched it. It is a rather light and mildly humorous investigation into the declawing of cats in The United States. In fact it is battle royale between corporate interests and cat lovers.

Declawing is a painful and crippling practice that can take minutes to perform, at a very high veterinarian profit margin, but a life crippling event for cats leading to aggression and undisciplined “bathroom” manners.

I will not say much more than watch and listen to the battle cries of veterinarians, animal behavioralists, rescue shelter operators, politicians, big pharma reps and cat lovers. Rather one sided in favour of the anti-declawers but the declawers get their licks in. And there are plenty of cute and cuddly cats although my friend Boris beats em all in the looks department paws down! All other cats are just mousey looking!

World premiere HOT DOCS showings 28/29April2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 82/100.

RKS 2024 Wine: Château Terre Blanque 2020

A blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from Blaye.

Aroma: It shouts out Merlot not lush and plush but clean and sharp. Full of cheerful cherry with lesser notes of blackberry and blueberry very high toned and alert and not sullied by an excess of oak.

Palate: Broad based tannins. Clean and sharp cherry with hints of blueberry. Moderately long finish.

Personality: I am an honest and simple wine of high quality. KISS i.e. keep it simply simple.

Food Match: Baked deseeded cherry tomatoes with charred asparagus with garlic and onions placed over fettucine topped with toasted walnuts.

Cellarbility: Drink or hold until 2030.

Price: $19 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 91/100. Decanter 91.

(Château Terre Blanque 2020, AC Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux, SCEA Terre Blanque, St Genes de Blaye, 750 mL, 14%).

RKS 2024 Film: “New Life”: The Brutality of Good Intentions or the Evil of “Good”

Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin) all bloodied is running through the woods as if someone is pursuing her piquing your curiosity. Why is she running and why is she bloodied? Who is pursuing her? One of her flashbacks has her locked in some makeshift detention centre. This is getting heavier by the moment.

Then that lady Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger) with the semi automatic pistol. It is not readily ascertainable who she is. Why is she popping all those pills?

What organization is Elsa working for? Whoever is running it has a team of “contacts” tracking Jessica and she is wanted dead or alive.

Watch further and it is a question of disease upon disease and the breadcrumbs thrown us by director John Rossman are truly ghoulish and chillingly violent both reflective of solid writing and special effects makeup.

One queries if the hunters of Jessica are pawns of a governmental-biomedical conspiracy? Surely at one point you’ll have Wuhan memories. A conspiracy in every cupboard.

And just when you can calm down from the apparent conclusion of the film perhaps that is when the ambit of the horror explodes.

An intriguing combination of believable and imaginative horror.

VOD and digital release in Canada on 3May2024.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6phcSPdvT9A

RKS 2024 Film Rating 92/100.

RKS 2024 Film: “Wild Goat Surf”: Joanna Andrade Dreams but Down and Out in Penticton

Rell “Goat” Anderson (Shaylea Martin) is a thirteen-year-old surfer chick obsessed with becoming a great surfer although her summer of 2003 trailer park life in Penticton, British Columbia’s beautiful Okanagan is not progressing well for her. Goat has the look, the garb and attitude of a skateboarder a la Avril Lavigne’s “Skater Boy”. One problem though is that Penticton is 700 kilometers from the ocean. Her Joanna Andrade dreams cannot be realized without surf.

Goat takes what she wants and that includes shoplifting like her mother Jane (Caitlyn Sponheimer) and break and entering. She says and does what she wants. A rather negative influence on buddy Nate a fellow trailer park resident. Sucked down in a negative spiral at the beginning of adolescence rarely leads to positive results. Tack on a deceased “surfer dude” father and a frequently absent mother working two jobs to survive.

Goat can either “wise up” or be pushed down by the massive wave of life. She has a few moments of advice from surfer champions of yesteryear who allegorize surfing lessons with life lessons brilliantly accompanied by churchlike organ music as are certain revelatory moments in her life portrayed in the film.

Goat is not a bad person but perhaps “misguided” and quasi-abandoned by her mother?

Will Goat ever reach the surf and a chance for her dreams or is she destined to eternally bleat about her less than idyllic existence?

An interesting take on maturing and could it be the rathole of obsession or a lifeline to sanity? Enjoy “Beautiful British Columbia” scenery captured admirably in cinematography. Child actors can be horrific but Martin delivers a strong performance as does Sponheimer as her somewhat imperfect but loving mother.

The director is Caitlyn Sponheimer.

The film is in theatres in British Columbia now and in Toronto commencing 10May2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating:  84/100.

RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “Never Look Away”

The Canadian premiere of “Never Look Away” will be at Hot Docs showing on 27/30April2024 and 4May2024.

Margaret Moth was a fearless almost Gothlike camera woman hailing from New Zealand as is director Lucy Lawless with her directorial debut. You may ask when viewing the film if she was addicted to the danger of operating a camera on battle grounds. There are countless examples of her camerawork that portrayed the ragged bloodbath of armed combat some of it so graphic you would never see it on CNN the network Moth operated her camera for. When others were ducking for cover Moth was in plain sight filming. One might say with Moth behind the camera you feel the violence of armed struggle.

What propelled Moth’s passion for danger is never clearly laid out but who knows why she was so driven. Her early years were not pleasant. Given her narcotic consumption and somewhat wild lifestyle perhaps the camera was just another high for her.

Her story is told by family members, boyfriends, war correspondents, network executives, the esteemed Christiane Amanpour and her camera footage. It is a remarkable story difficult to summarize in a film review best deferred to you watching the footage she shot.

Although possessing a “tough nut” personality she had a special bond with children. While in Baghdad filming and kibuttzing with children a high-ranking general charged into the crowd shooing away the children and Moth slapped him saying, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

For those following the recent Gaza conflict Moth years before that was shot in the foot as Israeli IDF shot at a clearly marked media vehicle she was in at close range and then she covered a UN base in Lebanon that was shelled by the IDF killing over 200 people including U.N. soldiers. Somewhat familiar?

Moth was in the midst of many a conflict including Sarajevo, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Iraq, Iran, Rwanda, Zaire, Lebanon, Gaza and Georgia. It was in Sniper Alley in Sarajevo where a Serbian sniper fired a bullet that hit her in the face and her life was in peril. Despite some 25 surgeries, the loss of some of her tongue which impaired her speech and disfigured her face she charged on with her camera. Moth died of cancer in 2010 at 59 years of age.

Moth deserves praise for her camerawork becoming the dangerous “gold standard” for 24-hour news. Was Moth a moth driven to fly right into the fire?

RKS 2024 Film Rating 90/100.

RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “The Bones”: Dino Intrigue!

Watch the documentary “The Bones” and you will never see dinosaurs the way you used to. I have taken my children to see the dinosaurs at The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and now it is the grandchildren. Children are fascinated with dinosaurs but if you take them when they are too young, they may just be terrorized. You just may be fascinated by this documentary.

“The Bones” makes dinosaur bones and fossils fascinating delving into the poaching, smuggling, commercialization and economic necessity for marginal populations to trade in them.

The stars of the show, so as to speak (dinosaurs excluded) are paleontologists in Canada, The United States, France, Mongolia and Morrocco explaining their work with dinosaurs and just how important it is that they be protected from poachers and smugglers. One explains in rather sobering fashion that no species lasts forever and that includes us so if we understand the process of their extinction, we may very well find clues to avoid our own extinction.

Roy Chapman Andrews (the big game hunter type) of the American Museum of Natural History in New York funded by Rockefeller and Morgan arrived in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert in 1922 and again in 1923 packing off goodness knows how many fossils and bones and shipping them off to New York. Although Andrews was a man of high credentials was he a thief? If he wasn’t the thieves and looters followed in his footsteps pillaging The Sahara Desert, The Gobi Desert and sites in Canada and the United States creating a dino exploitation pyramid with small time locals, small dealers, wholesale dealers and importers in the destination countries. You’ll see all of them in the documentary and auctioneers as well revelling in multimillion dollar auctions of T-Rex’s. As one dealer notes everything in the world is for sale.

When a dinosaur skeleton can sell in auction for millions to investment funds, wealthy collectors and museums many are looking to profit and the documentary features those who share their thoughts as how to stem the trade and the answers are varied. If marginal populations need to feed their families by selling bones and laws are weak or nonexistent the solution is not easy nor answers apparent.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p29RrEUOu9U

Directed by Jeremy Exido.

“The Bones” screens on 3May2024 at HOT DOCS.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 91/100.

RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “Daughter of Genghis”: A Lesson for Daughters and Sons of Trump

We follow the life of single Mongolian mother Gerel Byamba over the period of seven years.

Extreme nationalists in Mongolia vilified Chinese control of the economy, the degradation of women and the threat of Chinese corruption of the “pure Mongolian genes” through Chinese controlled brothels and intermarriage with Mongolian women. Gerel Byamba’s husband died in a Chinese controlled mine. In short it is perceived by many Mongolians the “Chinese SOB’s” are destroying everything in Mongolia like they have done in Tibet.

Initially Gerel seethes with hatred of the Chinese along with Mongolian neo-Nazis with Gerel taking great offence that certain Mongolian nationalists have appropriated the swastika and dressing like SS officers and soldiers. Gerel emphasizes the swastika is Mongolia’s symbol of power and not a Nazi created symbol. However, the goal of ultra nationalism of preserving Mongolian genetic purity has unpleasant historical connotations.

Gerel joins the White Swastikas and dissatisfied with their misuse of the swastika forms the Bright Swastika Women’s National Movement. Over the space of a few years that movement withered along with a good portion of the ultra nationalist movement with one die hard ultra nationalist saying members of ultra nationalist movements in Mongolia have been “bribed” by government jobs.

Facing the collapse of the ultra nationalist movement Gerel ponders a job offer from a Chinese construction company “managing” a railway construction project in the Gobi Desert! Desperate for money she accepts the offer of a two-year contract working as a safety officer. She leaves her young telephone addicted son with distant relatives visiting him occasionally.

After her “Chinese contract” she then accepts a job teaching safety officer skills with a regular income and begins to live a more conventional life with her son. Her hatred of the Chinese has been mitigated by a stress related twitch and a realization that her earlier streak of hatred only caused people to fear her. She shifts her focus on how to help people as opposed to terrorize them as she often did in her earlier brothel raids. Gerel refuses to answer the question if she is now friends with the Chinese.

If the goal of the filmmakers was a deep dive into Mongolian ultra nationalism it fails. It also neglects to explain the role and position of the Mongolian government towards ultra nationalism. What it does do well is to profile how ethnic hatred can galvanize groups of people under threat of cultural and economic dominance but more than hatred is required to develop a coherent nationalist movement. A message to Trumpists?

Directors are Kristoffer Juel Poulson and Chrisian Als.

Screens at HOT DOCS 29April4May2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 64/100.

RKS 2024 Film: “Occupied City”: Amsterdam Yesterday and Today: A Bloody Chapter in its History

Director and writer Steve McQueen has crafted a solid and very long historical documentary based on wife Bianca Stigter’s “Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945”.

In the Second World War German forces occupied Amsterdam and slowly but methodically drew the noose around the necks of its Jewish population. Some 60,000-80,000 of Amsterdam’s Jews were deported with a mere 5,000 returning.

The deportations were not immediate but increased in intensity in 1942. Jews, political opponents of the Dutch puppet government, communists and Roma amongst others were harassed, beaten, murdered, executed and humiliated and the film excels in setting forth countless examples of repression and genocide primarily by filming in over 130 locations in Amsterdam each with a dispassionate if not hypnotic narration (by Melanie Hyams) about the fate of the residents of many of those locations. Through the stories the brutal mechanics of the working of a genocide are painfully revealed. For example, there were bounty hunters for Jews. Sex between Jews and “Aryans” was punishable by death.

There is no archival footage here just building after building in COVID era Amsterdam. Life goes on in the midst of the chilling narration and COVID protests. It is factual based narration showing no emotion. The stories recounted contain all the emotion in a “neutral way” of the viewer. The present-day backdrop causes one to reflect that normal life of pre-occupied Amsterdam was quickly extinguished as it could be tomorrow. Liberty, freedom and democracy are often tenuous. Would the climate change/anti-racist/COVID demonstrations have been permitted in occupied Amsterdam!

On the topic of COVID interpret the repression of anti-lockdown protests, no mask shaming, incessant governmentally announced “health measures”, mandated virtual events such as funerals and weddings, curfews, vaccine bullying, police drones, water cannons and dogs used against protesters. Forget the nature of societal protest and focus on the mechanisms of repression. Iron control of the fascists replaced by attempted iron control by governments for “public health reasons”. I’ll let you interpret the COVID tinged part of the film but I suspect it is in this documentary for a reason.

Be forewarned almost 4 ½ hours in length with a 15-minute intermission. If you are not a history buff then you can be an Amsterdam tourist exploring the city.

Theatrical release start in Canada on 26April2024 in Toronto.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4157523737/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1

RKS 2024 Film Rating 90/100.

RKS 2024 Wine: A Field Blend from Russian River: Groggy and Sluggish?

My experience with field blend is a Portuguese one. Once upon a time grapes were grapes and wine was wine. Different grapes could be planted willy nilly in the vineyard. Harvest them and you got a bit of this and that grape. Another type of field blend is where two or more different grape varieties are growing in separate parcels in the same field but then upon harvest are crushed, macerated and fermented together. Perhaps one can say the wine is blended in the field as opposed to being blended in the winery.

In this case we have a biodynamic “Field Blend” from Frey Vineyards at the headwaters of the Russian River in Mendocino County. The label and the Frey website do not indicate what grapes were in the field blend. My guess is Syrah (peppery), Zinfandel (spice) and Cabernet Sauvignon (blueberry)?

Aroma: Black cherry and blueberry predominate. A bit of a low rider or can I say aromatics point to a sluggish and slow wine. Nothing clear and precise.

Palate: Blunt and thick tasting. Cherry, blueberry, licorice and a bit of a spice and pepper to it. Sleepy tannins with some gentle acidity. Short finish. This wine detests room temperature and needs a bit of a chill to wake it up.

Personality: Sleeping Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Food Match: Most pasta sauces made with field tomatoes and their acidity would love this wine.

Cellarbility: No more sleep time needed for this groggy wine.

Price: $30 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 87/100.Wine Align 86.

( Frey Biodynamic 2021 Field Blend, Mendocino, Frey Vineyards Ltd, Redwood Valley, California, 750 mL, 13.7%).

RKS Literature: The Solution to America’s Drug Problem (William S. Burroughs)

“If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk problem we start with the bottom of the pyramid: Addict in the Street and stop tilting quixotically for the “higher-ups” so called. All of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.”

William S. Burroughs, “Naked Lunch”, 1959.