I must be very careful with my drinking at my birthday party, if I drank too much, I might spill the beans to everybody: That life awaits after death is infinitely more tiresome than this one.”
Kurt Vonnegut, “Slapstick”, 1976.
RKS 2024 Wine: A Sicilian Grillo-Chardonnay
Think Grillo then think Sicilian power. With Sicilian Chardonnays cool climate Chardonnays are left behind. It is a 50/50 blend.
Aroma: Concentrated notes of pear, apple, mango, pineapple, peaches, quince, honey and a slight briny note.
Palate: Full bodied medium dry wine with a long finish. Slight floral tinge with heavier notes of pear, applesauce, creamsicle with a creamy personality.
Personality: Unlike many of my Italian white brothers I have some real substance. I am very reticent to show much acidity. We get lots of sun here in Sicily so there is nothing flinty about me.
Food Match: Filet of sole in a curry, ginger, garlic, onion and coconut sauce. Traditional North American holiday turkey.
Price: $19 (CDN).
Cellarbility: Drink by 2025-year end.
RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 92/100. Wine Align 88. Natalie MacLean 90. Luca Maroni 92.
(Don Tomasi 2022 Grillo-Chardonnay, D.O.C. Sicilia, Don Tomasi, San Ciprello, Italy, 750 mL, 13%).
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Rest”: Charlie is the Demon More Than the Rum!
In ‘Rest”, a short, Iris has a court appearance for a DUI charge and having alcohol on one’s breath or looking raunchy could have disastrous effects. And she simply can’t get right a few lines she will say before the judge that she hasn’t had a drink in three months. She fumbles with the line so many times it is painful. Her pronunciation and grammatical errors could easily be interpreted as intoxication.
The evening before the court appearance she sets her alarm hoping to get that good night’s sleep so she’s looking fresh in court.
That voice in her head, identifying himself as Charlie, gnaws, needles and manipulates her saying just have a quick drink and you’ll be off to sleep and ready for tomorrow’s court appearance. It is a lying and dangerous voice. The alcohol comes out on the counter. Iris has visions of her still not being able to master her few lines she will say before the judge. She has a battle raging in her head and the soft persuasive voice of Charlie inveigling her. This is one hell of a battle royale. As Iris drifts off the alarm sounds heralding a very important day. Has she kept herself drink free after three months?
Director is Micha Stathis.
“Rest” is part of the programming for the 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running from 1-31October2024 in 11 Canadian cities both in theatre and in some cases on-line. For programming and scheduling see https://gifft.ca
RKS Literature: Being Helpless and Vile Children Benefits the Staff at the Mansion
“They could be heroically Christian in their own eyes only if Eliza and I remained helpless and vile. If we became openly wise and self reliant, they would become our drab and inferior assistants. If we became capable of going out in the world, they might lose their apartments, their colour televisions, their illusions of being sorts of doctors and nurses, and their high paying jobs.
So from the very first, and without quite knowing what they were doing, I am sure, they begged us a thousand times a day to go on being helpless and vile.
There was only one small advancement they wished us to make up the ladder of human achievements. They hoped with all their hearts that we would become toilet-trained.”
Kurt Vonnegut, “Slapstick”, 1991.
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Ex-files, Pals and Pocket Dials”
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) runs in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024 both in theatre and online.
There are two possible reactions you might have when watching “Ex-files, Pals and Pocket Dials”.
It is so wrapped up with Gen Y dating protocol and vocabulary it may quickly lose non-Gen Y viewers. On the other hand it may be a discovery voyage to non Gen Y viewers to see what goes on in the mind of a Gen Y’s. Narrowly one might cast the film as “specialized” examination into the dating characteristics of Gen Y but it is more expansive than that attempting in a broader sense to reveal what Gen Y thinks about life.
Nikki (Emalie Forsyth) is coming off a 7-year relationship and finally takes the step via an app of setting up an initial coffee date with Julian (Paul Chiuslo). It goes well and Julian and his pal Terrance and Nikki and her pal Trina become involved in discussions of what the dating rules of Gen Y are and what Gen Y wants from life. As for Julian and Terrance saying dating is “all about getting the girl” this may ring true with many Boomers too! So has anything changed over the years other than technology?
There are a few terms you may be exposed to you do not fully understand in the highly digital media world of Gen Y such as ghosting, gaslighting, getting played, swagger, blocking and pocket dials. What relevance are their theories of dating and social relationships?
Not a Gen Y perhaps you might want to call this film an amusing “educational video”.
Director is Michael Zamanis.
RKS 2024 Film Rating 72/100.
As for scheduling details see https://gifft.ca
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Gastarbeiter: Sidero-Chalvia”: Will the Estranged Bird Fly Home?
Antonis (Alexandros Nikolaidis) works as a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) at a metalwerks in the German industrial Ruhr area. The short begins in a bar in 1974 where Antonis is drinking with colleague Rainer (Moritz Zeiske) as the television news addresses the fall of the Greek military dictatorship. Antonis was jailed and beaten in Thessaloniki for supporting a Greek political dissident. He escaped to Germany along with many other political refugees.
Rainer is an incompetent alcoholic and a dangerous liability in the workplace. In fact one evening while working overtime with Antonis, Rainer blunders about damaging a machine almost causing a fire. But afterwards Rainer and Antonis shower up and meet a hooker in the rec room of the metalwerks and the symbolism kicks in big time and invites your interpretation. I will not give you my view of it all but historically so many immigrants whether Mexican, Greek, Turkish and many more initially take the position that they will stay in the host country for a short period of time and return home with bulging pockets but that rarely happens. Antonis had promised his wife when he escaped to Germany that he would return to her arms when the junta falls.
Given the symbolism in the final minutes of the short will Antonis return to Thessaloniki now that the junta has fallen? As the song goes at the conclusion of the film, “My estranged bird abroad. My sweet swallow. The foreign land enjoys your presence and I have your sorrows.”
The director of the film is Marco Papadopoulos.
This short plays at The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running in 11 Canadian cities from 1-31October2024. For details about the festival and when and where this short is playing check out https://gift.ca .
RKS Literature: A Girl of 19 vs. a Woman of 29 (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“Whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished on subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her apéritifs wisely, or, content, she enjoys the caviar of potential power. Happily, she does not seem, in either case, to anticipate the subsequent years when her insight will often be blurred by panic, by the fear of stopping or the fear of going on. But on the landings of nineteen or twenty-nine she is pretty sure there are no bears in the hall.”
“Attrractive women of nineteen and twenty-nine are all alike in their breezy confidence; on the contrary, the exigent womb of the twenties does not pull the outside world centripetally around itself. The former are ages of insolence, comparable the one to a young cadet, the other to a fighter strutting after combat.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Journey into Cyprus: East to West”
“Journey into Cyprus: East to West” is a documentary about a 15-day cross Cyprus hike by Yalcin Adal, a Turkish Cypriot, and Stavros Tszortis, a Greek Cypriot both currently living in Melbourne, Australia.
As a result of a 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, possibly a result of Greek political maneuvering and a failed assassination attempt on Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus by the Greek military junta, Cyprus was divided into a Turkish and Greek sector separated by a buffer zone and enforced by a U.N. peacekeeping mission. The division, of course was artificial as Turkish and Greek communities lived side by side until the divide. It is estimated that 6-9,000 Cypriots were killed and are missing as a result of the 1974 conflict.
But 50 years later Stavros and Yalcin set out to walk through Turkish and Greek sectors in an east to west 15-day trek of some 400 kilometres in a move to push start reconciliation between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities. Through their encounters with politicians, journalists, Greek and Turkish pro unitarians. family members and relatives of missing persons it is clear that the Turkish and Greek camps are not entrenched in mutual hatred. Fifty years has passed and many believe it is time to set the clock back and live in harmony uneasy as it might be.
Both Stavros and Yalcin realize their trek is not going to galvanize an international movement for the re-unification of Cyprus hoping that their trek is symbolic of Cypriot unification. Their trek was simply a small step but if their willingness could be adopted by all Cypriots the best is yet to come to Cyprus. As one placard read, “Stop Holding Our Future Hostage to the Past”.
In a mixture of English, Turkish and Greek (in which case there will be subtitles).
The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running 1-31October2024 plays in eleven Canadian cities both in theatre and on-line. For scheduling information check out https://gifft.ca
Directed by Stavros and Yalcin.
RKS Literature: Feeling the Jealousy of Youth (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“The only physical disparity between Nicole at present and the Nicole of five years before was simply that she was no longer a young girl. But she was enough ridden by the current youth worship, the moving pictures with their myriad faces of girl-children, blandly represented as carrying on the work and wisdom of the world, to feel a jealously of youth.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.
RKS Literature: England and its Orgies (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“An Englishman spoke to him from across the aisle but he found something antipathetic in the English lately. England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them he is only trying to get back his self respect in order to usurp his former power.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1933.
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