The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Listen to Who’s Talking”:  Yes, Greeks Can Make Romcoms

Looking for something bright, breezy and humorous? Look no further than “Listen to Who’s Talking” a Greek feature film playing at the Greek International Film Festival Tour 1-31October24 in 11 Canadian cities. Buried under the covers or dreamt up by my film weary mind is the concept of mindfulness meditation possibly present in the film.

Fotis is an Athenian life coach whose life is caught up in a boring routine. Work, return home exhausted, eat processed and delivered food, pat the dog and then go to bed, get up, have his kolouria at his coffee shop then head to the office to speak with his clients. Over and over with no girlfriend or friends for that matter.

But there is this voice that speaks to him primarily to rouse him from his dullard existence. The voice can be critical such as “Pizza again. How exciting” or “If you keep eating this crap you’ll develop scurvy.” “Another wasted day.” The voice can be encouraging, “What a babe. Get her telephone number.” “You’ve got to chase her. This is not like applying for a permit at the Ministry.”

After 200 days or ordering koluoria for his breakfast he finally looks up to see a beautiful woman, Chrysanthi, serving him. He is captivated so is she now that he has finally looked at her.  The voice is his life coach advising how to develop his relationship with Chrysanthi. While there is this external voice directing, nagging, and criticizing Fotis, Chrysanthi’s friend Maria is a voice directing her. The voices heard by Fotis and Chrysanthi are comedic even if critical.

There are Fotis’ clients that are oddball one being a priest who slurps down communion wine as to throw it our would be a sin, a bribe taking soccer referee, a volleyball coach obsessed with his female players’ bottoms and a man obsessed with pigeons and mosquitos.

The movie concludes in a classic romcom manner. Good fun.

But this voice Fotis hears? Some external voice?

In mindfulness there is a key factor in mediation practice and that is shutting up the voice in your head that is judging, criticizing and thinking in many different directions. Could this be the voice Fotis hears? I am trained and certified in mindfulness and you think it is easy to shut up that voice. Think again it can take months of training and more than a few can’t master this simplest yet most difficult task.

The film shows in Vancouver and Toronto.

You can see the Greek trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvx_WMsrVAg . The film is in Greek but with English subtitles.

For more information check out https://gifft.ca

RKS 2024 Film Rating 81/100.

The 4th Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Kapetan Mihalis”: Can a Greek Classic Modernist Novel Survive the Big Screen?

The Greek film “Kapetan Mihalis” is based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel “Freedom or Death” chronicling the struggle of Cretans for independence in their Ottoman occupied Crete in the late 19th century. To transform this epic novel onto the screen requires guts! “Tampering” with a national treasure is risky business. However the filmmakers here have succeeded although what film could ever fully bring to life such a novel?

Kapetan Mihalis (Amilios Heilakis) is the protagonist in the film. He is a fierce Cretan advocating the independence of Crete and it’s joining the Greek nation. He is a driven man not without contradictions. One might refer to him as an obsessive madman while not afraid of baiting and humiliating the Turkish occupiers somewhat skilled at maintaining peace until the time is right to drive out the Turks.  

While a hater of Turkish occupiers he is a blood brother of Nuri Bey (Alexos Sissovitz) a prominent Turkish captain. As children they cut their hands and mingled blood making them blood brothers with an exchange of promises not to hurt each other. He is also tempted by Bey’s Circassian concubine Emine.

Yes there is a memorable battle scene where the Turks and Cretans fight. How memorable is it that the abbot and his monks join in the fight to save the monastery under Turkish attack and shocking about the carving out of his face by the Turkish attackers.

In addition to the anti-Turk momentum of the film there are subplots galore concerning incest, the nature of an uprising, jealousy, life under occupation, hatred, dissipation, drunkenness, loyalty, treachery and so forth. One watches here an epic which is not solely focused on “military matters”.

An excellent film that has broad appeal. It was as faithful to “Freedom and Death” as it could be. RKS 2024 Film Rating 93/100.

Directed by Kostas Haralambous. In Greek with English subtitles. Here is the Greek trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xonR_4ioDLk&t=126s

Check the GIFFT website at  https://gifft.ca to determine in what 11 Canadian cities the film will be playing at in the 1-31October2024 GIFFT festival.

RKS Literature: Can Scars of the Mind Ever Heal? (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done by it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, (1934).

RKS Literature: American Royalty (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“They were an American ducal family without a title-the very name written on a hotel register, signed to an introduction, used in a difficult situation, caused a psychological metamorphosis in people, and in return this change had crystallized her own sense of position. She knew these facts from the English, who had known them for over two hundred years.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1934.

RKS 2024 Wine: A Babu Reserva from Portugal’s Tejo Appellation: Another Purchase at Your Own Risk?

I tried the 2018 Babu Reserva and it fared so poorly I used the mercy rule and did not give it a numerical score instead stating, “purchase at your own risk”. I am sure that when RKS Wine speaks with such unflattering remarks a team of blending specialists descended on the winery to fix the situation.

The only way to determine their success is to try a 2021 Babu.

The wine is a blend of Touriga Nacional and Alicante Bouschet. It has been aged in oak barrels for three months.

Aroma: Black cherry, raspberry with some blueberry and a faint hint of milk chocolate.

Palate: Not much fruit has migrated to the palate with but a tad of sour cherry squeaking to the finish line. Tastes like a mass-produced effort. Drinkable but not much more than that.

Personality: I have decent aromatics but am bereft of a quality streak on the palate. I am embarrassed as Touriga Nacional and Alicante Bouschet can make a magical blend but has fallen short here. I really will try to convince the winemakers to change their game plan.

Food Match: That safety valve of dignity expression “a Friday night wine”.

Cellarbility: If you buy no sense in keeping it around.

Price: $16 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 82/100. Wine Enthusiast 90.

(Babu 2021 Reserva, Vinho Regional Tejo, Fuiza & Bright, Portugal, 750 mL, 13.5%).

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Behind the Haystacks”: Reality Trumps the Façade

If you travel through farmland you often see haystacks. They can be domed, square or circular and pleasing to look at, almost artistic. Behind the perfect structure what is hiding?

In “Behind the Haystacks” could it be that the haystack is the public persona and the private person is what hides behind the haystack.

Its time frame is 2015 a time when migrants were storming Greece through Northern Greece and certain islands in the Aegean off the Turkish coast. You’ll hear the radio and the television in several scenes discussing the migrant crisis.

It has been filmed at Lake Dorian with Greece on one side and North Macedonia on the other.

The film begins the way it ends with children running to an outdoor celebration and telling all they have seen two bodies at the edge of Lake Dorian where they were playing.

The film divides itself into three chapters; Stergios the father, Maria the mother and Anastasia the daughter.

Stergios’, (Stathis Stamoulaktos) public persona is a hard-working famer and part time fisherman. But he has in the past cheated on his taxes using manufactured false invoices. He is pinned under a huge debt load.

Maria (Eleni Ouzounido) his wife is a devout church going lady but jealous of those in the church’s volunteer ranks. She lies to the father of the church and to the police to protect her family.

Anastasia (Evgenia Lavda) is a hardworking nurse trainee at a local hospital caught under the thumb of father Stergios and must lie to assert her independence.

In the local patriarchal society Maria jumps to the commands of Stergios and Anastasia is under the vice grip Stergios who on occasion slaps her around.

In the wonderful façade of village life and national existence there are the ugly cross currents of migrants swamping Greece. The majority of the village is suspicious of the migrants as one villager remarks where they come from they are killing each other. Even the village father wants his parishioners not to assist the migrants. Yet on the sly some are assisting the migrants and a few are making very good returns over smuggling migrants over Lake Dorian from North Macedonia into Greece.

There is corruption in the local co-op of grain farmers, migrants are dying trying to cross the lake, lying in the judicial process, setting up an Albanian farmworker for a murder charge let alone a murder being committed.

Perhaps the truest character is Anastasia and her murdered boyfriend Christos and his murder is just but a bit of sordidness behind the haystack.

The director is Asimina Proedrou.

In Greek with English subtitles.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfK_LrAcYpE&t=15s.  

RKS 2024 Film Rating 87/100.

Screens in the The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024. For more information https://gifft.ca

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “Sgt. Fruit Fly”: A Very Greek Take on Teenage Life

You might think this just might be one of those teen movies you would watch in North America. Think again. The themes of bullying, fitting in and adolescent sexuality are covered in “Sgt. Fruit Fly” but with a hard-edged Greek tinge that make the movie truly appealing to the 15 plus teenage crowd and adults. It was shot in Kalyvia and Athens the Kalyvia setting giving it an exotic feel or a very Greek feel if you are familiar with Attica in Greece.

Stanley Smith (Jamie Mayers) lives with Canadian mother Rosemary (Mara Marini), sister Elenora and dog Vincent in Kalyvia a small town. Stanley is ruthlessly bullied by the Dumbskis a trio of teens with an absent father and a less than attentive mother.

Poor Stanley rides a pink bike named Fruit Fly and with his army issued helmet he is named Sgt. Fruit Fly by the Dumbskis.

Stanley is rather taken in by the oversexed Nikoletta but it is the Goth Girl that has true non exploitative feelings for Stanley. Nikoletta has the moves, the body but is a user that promises to be Stanley’s girlfriend when he buys a fast car and turns over ownership of it to her.

Rosemary plays a Roma character telling fortunes, reading a crystal ball and making potions including a courage potion for Stanley as he is brutally pummeled by the Dumbskis.

Stanley works at a bowling alley club owned by the very strange Danny (Makis Papadimitriou) who abuses him. Papadimitriou showed his acting mettle in “Suntan” and in his role here shows he can pull off a comedic role. Nikoletta sleazes her way into a bartending job at the bowling alley. She is a bit of a “slut” as Rosemary refers to her as “just like her mother”.

The Dumbski’s decrepit father George has his children, yes his children, stage a robbery of Danny’s bowling alley and the horror-fairy tale begins. All is happy. Stanley is a hero and discovers his true love is with the Goth Girl.

What sets this film apart from North American “equivalents” is the vicious brutality of the Dumbskis and the fact that young teens are staging an armed heist. Leslie Dumbski (Niki Skiadaresi) is not a misguided teen but a vicious thug she conveys so convincingly. And Nikoletta (Stefania Champilomati) is indeed a teen reeking of shallow and exploitative sexuality and she does a superb and not overdone job of that. Kudos to Jamie Mayers for keeping the film centred and for that matter somewhat wholesome. The film is no Cinderella story but it is certainly no “Dusk Until Dawn”.

A refreshing teen movie but my thought it is suitable for 15 years of age and up. This is not sterile teen movie. It has an edge. Written and directed by Tommy King. Ahead of its time for the North American market.

Part of the 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) showing in theatres and on line 1-31Ocober2024 in 11 Canadian Cities.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmkuNm_oGa4

I give this film a 90/100.

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada): “The Last Taxi Driver”: The Thin Red Line Between Obsession and Mental Illness

The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) presents “The Last Taxi Driver”. Admit it you are already thinking of the classic Scorsese 1976 Film “Taxi Driver”. Thomas (Kostas Koronaios) is an Athenian taxi driver who replaces the violence of Travis Bickle with a quieter and creepier form of violence. He is a stalker. Is he obsessed or mentally ill or is there even a thin red line between the two?

Thomas the taxi driver

Thomas is a former book editor, translator and even poet perhaps a more intellectual past than his present. He is in his fifties with his wife Maria and son Tassos living in an apparently happy home.

Thomas has the night shift. A passenger complains to Thomas he is still providing for his three children and they are bleeding him dry. Thomas agrees. The passenger argues with Thomas about the 13 Euro fare claiming he has been an accountant for many years and has calculated the correct fare. He pays Thomas 10 Euros and leaves the taxi promptly blowing his brains out. Thomas rifles his briefcase and finds neatly wrapped wads of Euros. He puts the blood-spattered spectacles of the passenger in his pocket. He drives off not reporting the suicide to the police.

Thomas tells no one and returning to the scene of the suicide at a memorial for his passenger meets Eleni (Klelia Andrilatou) with a mysterious connection to the deceased. Thomas gives Eleni a lift and there is some vigorous “sexual activity” in the taxi. Eleni treats the episode as simply a reaction to the death of Thomas’ passenger. Thomas interprets it as something more.

Thomas becomes somewhat strange, locking himself in a closet  at home to write, drinking heavily and arguing with his wife Maria. Was it the suicide causing his transformation?

The film from this point on is replete with long winded philosophizing by Thomas about life and love. The monologues are a cross between astute observations and gibberish and Thomas surges into increasingly bizarre behaviour perhaps searching for the intellectual life he left behind. The mild-mannered taxi driver transforms into a quiet aggressive creep. The viewer is expecting something drastic will happen particularly in the bizarre ending where at Eleni’s apartment he, with the skill of the proverbial weasel,  gets on the good side of Andreas, Eleni’s boyfriend and exposes the corruption of Eleni and Andreas and his own mental illness as he claims to be Eleni’s accountant wearing the glasses of the deceased accountant passenger.

The next logical step it would seem is to complete the identity by pulling a gun and blowing his brains out whilst Andreas and Eleni are in a wild sex escapade with Thomas watching through the keyhole. I wait for the pop of the gun pointed to Thomas’ head.

One of those classic intellectually challenging Euro films you might say but is the intellectualism of Thomas mere gibberish of a mentally ill stalker?

Klelia Andrilatou puts on a strong performance as the mysterious woman. Kostas Koronaios excels quietly and forcefully transforming into a man you’d rather not encounter.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Ktgs4D3bQ&t=6s. The film is in Greek with English subtitles.

Directed by Stergios Paschos his first feature film.

RKS 2024 Film Rating: 86/100.

For details as to showing of the film at The 4th Annual Greek International Film Festival Tour (Canada) running from 1-31October2024 go to https://gifft.ca

RKS 2024 Film: “The Secret Art of Human Flight”: Psychiatry and Reality vs. Dreams and Fantasy

Ben Grady (Grant Rosenmeyer) has lost his 31-year-old wife Sarah. He had left the house to pick up some mac n cheese and upon returning 30 minutes later she was dead. Ben is in deep grief. He sits like a zombie wrapped in a blanket including in front of his house for three successive days.

A suspicious police detective questions Ben and through selective interpretation has suspicions Ben murdered Sarah for insurance money. She has her eyes peeled on Ben.

While browsing the internet a YouTube video catches his eye. It is of a man jumping off the cliff in what looks like a suicide attempt but once he jumps over the cliff he shoots up in the air in flight!

Ben investigates further and on the dark web watches a video of a long-haired mystical elderly man, Mealworm (Paul Raci), who professes to be able to teach humans how to fly for a payment of $5,400. Ben pays the amount and a manual “The Secret Art of Human Flight” arrives full of typos like some Nigerian scam e-mail. Warning!

Mealworm arrives shortly after to train Ben how to fly. Five chapters of the manual are taught by Mealworm; “The Foreign Home”, “Preparing the Body”, “Preparing the Mind”, “Conquering Irrational Fear” and “The Secret Art of Human Flight”.

Ben endures all manner of mystical and cooky acts such as sleeping on the roof, clearing his house of all furniture (except that in his writing room), shaving part of his body hair, washing his clothes by hand and drying them in the sun and taking a mystical spiritual adventure i.e. a magic mushroom trip.

Friends and relatives become concerned about Ben’s behaviour. The suspicious detective does a search on the plates of Mealworm’s Winnebago named Sally. Very interesting information is obtained. Ben suffers an incident while undergoing a Conquering Irrational Fear and is admitted to a psychiatric institution.

What occurs next may very well put an enormous smile on your face because your heart has a little illogical component called “belief in fantasy” or you may frown and let “logic” and psychiatry” form your conclusion. In either situation your voyage through the film will be entertaining. It may also cause you to think not only the horrors of grief but its power to motivate and change the human spirit for the better.

Directed by H.P. Mendoza and very cleverly written by Jesse Orenshein.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqcACF46sk

RKS 2024 Film Rating 94/100.

As of 23August2024 Available on Demand.

RKS 2024 Wine: The Pavlovian Dog Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Many hearing “Malbec” salivate and bark up the Argentinian tree forgetting or not knowing that Malbec can be found in France. In fact it is one of the permitted grapes for red Bordeaux and has quite a reputation in the Cahors appellation for quality and ageability.

Let’s give Prieuré de Cénac Malbec from the Cahors appellation a try.

Aroma: A dark black cherry coloured wine. Lush and plush quite like many Argentinian Malbecs. Dense black cherry, blueberry and smoke.

Palate: Blackberry predominates with Washinton black cherry. Creeping tannins or tricky if you wish because initially the wine appears soft but wait 3 or 4 seconds and tannins set in not ferocious but firm. High toned acidity well integrated into the wine. Moderately long finish with some juiciness. I was expecting more fruit on the palate.

Personality: On the nose you might easily mistake me for Argentinian but I have a bit more backbone in terms of acidity and tannins with less plushness.

Food Match:  Pasta topped with a sauce of field tomato, garlic, onion and a generous glug red wine and fresh basil, oregano, rosemary and chives.

Cellarbility: Consume by 2028-year end.

Price: $20 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 88/100. Wine Align 87. Roger Voss Wine Enthusiast 93.

(Prieuré de Cénac 2020 Malbec, AC Cahors, Chateau Saint Didier Parnac, Parnac, France, 750 mL,14%.).