If you are of a certain vintage you may have seen a fair share of “teen turmoil” genre films. In “Verona” gone are the “Rebel Without a Cause” monikers of teen turmoil such as boys, cars, teen hanky panky and overbearing parental authority. “Verona” as a Segway into modern teen turmoil becomes a bit more complicated and topical.
Camila (Kat Khan) is a teen living in small town of Verona somewhat near Kingston, Ontario about halfway between Toronto and Montreal. Camila has a lot on her plate including a lesbian relationship with McKenzie (Basia Wyszynski) a United Church minister, drugs and a variety of sexual encounters in an attempt to discover her identity. Is she falling for Eric (Eric McDonald) the trans budding chef?
If you have seen a plethora of teen turmoil movies “Verona” falls into that genre and may impress the teen turmoil novice otherwise this dim lit film others nothing more than a dose of modernity to the teen turmoil genre. Why all the cows? Why can’t McKenzie deliver a convincing sermon? What is this wondering about grandpa accomplishing? What does Camila’s father and his sexually abusive father have to do with anything.
Does Camila learn anything from her experimental dalliances? Yes. Her actions have consequences.
Written and directed by Sebastian Back.
Theatrical Canadian release 3November2023 and VOD/Digital on 5December2023.
Larry Constable (Chris Locke) is the sole detective in the tiny Canadian Province of Prince Edward Island known for its lobsters and mussels, beaches and delicious potatoes. Constable is a good natured and trustful soul whose detective skills place him between inept and the village simpleton.
Like Tom Selleck in “Magnum PI” he has a moustache but is rotund and balding. The anti-American prime time detective. It is difficult not to like a man whose most difficult assignment has been to spy on his cousin to determine if he is the thief of a Corning Ware casserole pot.
He has a big assignment after being hired by Luke Thorn a big-time seafood buyer to determine who fisherman Glen Miesner of Sandbar Cove is selling his lobster to. As his sales on the black market are encouraging fellow lobstermen to follow suite Thorn is taking a loss!
Seems like a simple assignment but lacking any idea of the sleuthing abilities of detectives soon the whole town of Sandbar Cove knows why he is there and then the fun starts with the development of a love interest, double dealing, blackmail, nymphomania, murder, hippie chicks and very little to do with black market lobsters.
Entertaining, fun and very Canadian! However not quite a Canadian classic. Motto of the story you must visit Prince Edward Island and feast at a traditional lobster supper. Theatrical release is on 3November2023.
Writer and Director Christopher Kahunahana’s “Waikiki” shatters the myth and fantasy of Waikiki, Hawaii held by many. The opening scene features a massive cruise ship arriving and the closing scene a cruise ship departing. Beautiful Hawaiian scenery weaves in and out of the film.
The opening scene also includes happy Hawaiian hula dancers performing for tourists singing, “Magic of the Sea….Magic of Waikiki”. The gringos soak it up and viewers may groan at its corniness and sap laden lyrics but watching it just before the concluding credit rolls it becomes somewhat of a mockery of both the tourist and the myth of Waikiki.
Kea (Danielle Zalopany) in an abusive relationship with a short tempered and violent boyfriend Branden (Jason Quinn) works three jobs but still can’t afford a rental accommodation. Like Venice tourism has made living space intolerably expensive for locals. Living in a battered van in Paradise is that possible? It sure is as Waikiki hides its grit from tourists but Kea takes us through it and it could in sections be Skid Row Los Angeles.
After hitting a homeless man named Wo (Peter Shinkoda) in her van she drags him off the side of the road. He stinks, barely speaks but Kea, in mythical fashion embarks on a Ulyssean voyage with Wo that incorporates fragments of her tortured childhood and the incredible beauty of the Waikiki surroundings.
Director Kahunahana has made his point exposing the myth of Waikiki. For one of those travelers that avoids and despises the cruise ship mobs the film is simplistic but what frightens me is that many may miss the point of the film. Perhaps they are in a hurry to pig out on the cruise ship’s midnight buffet attended by the obese on their scooters.
Zalopany, Quinn and Shinkoda earn their paycheques in this film.
The film was released in theatres on October 27 and On Demand November 5.
Time to try a Rocky Gully Shiraz from the Frankland River in Western Australia.
Aroma: Dense and verging on overripe black cherry and blackberry with hints of dark chocolate and toasty coconut.
Palate: Jumps over the boundary of ripe to overripe perhaps not surprising due to the 14.5% alcohol. Hey folks please no more of these overbaked and stewed wines. The fruit is lost in the alcohol. If you are trying to emulate Port….enough said. What I can pick out is cherry pie surrounded by excessive power. Perhaps a better term to describe the wine is over extracted. If there is any saving grace after aeration it softens and sweetens a bit on the finish but even then the alcohol bashes its potential personality down. Why not decant for 2 hours in a Hail Mary Eli Manning fashion!
Food Match: Brontosaurus burger Bam Bam!
Personality: Too big for my own britches.
Cellarbility: If you are going to bother consuming do so by the end of 2025.
“Trafficking Voices” is a Canadian documentary in which the voices of victims, parents of victims, police, trafficking specialists in law and finance lend their commentary to the sale, trading and exploitation of young vulnerable women some as young as 14. 93% of human trafficking victims are Canadian.
The ultimate message is that trafficking of flesh is but a business activity dealing in “just a commodity”. A odd conclusion you muse? Might as well just be on the Business News Network or proposed by capitalist wannabes on “Shark Tank”. But that ultimate message is laced with exploitation, violence, greed and a total disregard for humanity. Each abduction can generate $200,000- $350,000 “per girl” for a “Romeo Pimp” or “Guerilla Pimp”. No wonder one victim said she felt like livestock. These pimps are so low as to force the girls to take out student loans and place the funds in a bank account they control.
Some girls escape but some return to their trafficker.
“Trafficked Voices” premieres on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Passionate Eye” and on CBC Gem on 8November.
Those who suffer from Type 1 diabetes require multiple daily insulin injections failing which diabetic ketoacidosis sets in and death ensues. Quite simple isn’t it? A vial of insulin currently sells for $10 in Italy, $12 in Canada and $14 in Japan. In the United States when the film was produced $300. Three Pharma’s control most of the U.S. market in a happy oligopoly quite like gas for automobiles except without gasoline for your car you can’t drive. Without insulin a Type 1 diabetic dies.
Nicole Smith-Holt and her husband James
Thirty-seven million Americans suffer from diabetes with 7 million being insulin dependent.
Why the high prices? Huge profits in a market that is swelling with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Through interviews with parents whose children died due to an inability to afford insulin once the age of 26 is attained at which time the children can’t be beneficiaries under the parent’s health insurance , with physicians, community health activists, Canadian pharmacists and sufferers of Type 1 diabetes, both adults and children, you will witness the horrific grief lock-stepped to the unaffordability of insulin for Type 1 diabetes.
Canadians Best and Banting at the University of Toronto ,15 minutes from my home, discovered insulin in 1921 and sold the patent for $1 stating that insulin does not belong to us, it belongs to the world. What would have Banting and Best thought about “medical refugees” bussing it up north to Canada to buy insulin and other medications because of their expense in the United States?
We can applaud warriors for insulin price affordability such as Nicole Holt-Smith and her husband James after their son Alec Smith suffering from Type 1 diabetes was found dead on his bedroom floor from diabetic ketoacidosis shortly after losing coverage under his mother’s health insurance and was forced to ration his insulin supply. Nicole and her husband fought like lions to have the State of Minnesota pass the Alec Smith Insulin Affordability Act (“Act”) in 2020 which based on inability to afford insulin passed the cost back to Pharma’s manufacturing it. The Act has been influencing other states in face of fierce Big Pharma lobbying to defeat the passage of such progressive legislation. And in January 2023 people covered by Medicaire had their co-pay costs for insulin limited to $35 benefitting over 3 million Americans.
So if you have an employer sponsored health benefit plan all is well? Not really as that depends on the deductible paid and the amount of the copay.
Bravo to the Smiths in the insulin affordability battle. Strange (for me as a Canadian) though in the struggle the anger and effort was levelled towards Big Pharma pricing with nary a suggestion of socialized medicine or a rigorous pharmacare programme. Nicole Holt-Smith helps me to comprehend this by saying, “I have always thought that our country would benefit from a form of socialized health care, I absolutely believe that we as a country should have the ability to negotiate drug prices. I see that these systems work in other countries and believe that they would work here as well, the problem is our government doesn’t see it as a system that would work. Unfortunately until we have our legislators believing that health care is a human right we won’t see a health care system in the US that is not a for profit system”. So many Americans I know, usually covered by generous employer health benefit plans, have dissed our socialized Canadian medical system as communist and socialist. Fighting Big Pharma to lower prices may be better replaced by a universal health care and pharmacare regime. ”Pay or Die” sets forth a scenario of stay in bed with the devil as opposed to knocking Big Pharma out of the bed. Apparently a freefall in medical care has done little to spark any serious governmental moves to emulate the Canadian approach of universal health care. Is pricing control simply a stopgap measure as opposed to an overhaul of the American system?
Directed by Scott Alexander Ruderman and Rachel Dyer. Opens theatrically in New York City on 1November2023 and then a U.S. national rollout after the Los Angeles opening on 10November2023 then on 14November2023 (World Diabetes Day) will commence streaming on Paramount.
RKS 2023 Film Rating 93/100.
P.S. Pay or Die…that expression reeks of blackmail!
Blackfoot Nation Films has created a new Indigenous Canadian Horror-Comedy Anthology series “Tales from the Rez” which breathes life into popular Blackfoot urban legends. Each episode is introduced by crusty Uncle Randolf (Charles Duck Chief) an Elder with one foot in the living world and the other in the spirit world. Each episode blends humour and spine-chilling suspense to offer a twist on age-old tales. The initial season takes place in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot confederacy also known as Southern Alberta, Treaty 7. The series started streaming on APTNlumi on 20October2023.
In “Something in the Water” Uncle Randolf really outdoes himself sitting in a bubble bath in an old washtub smoking his cig, picking his ear and complaining he has no privacy to wash his ass. Yes it matches well with the name of the episode as the man is certainly something in the water!
Savannah the teen is off with her friends to party at the river. Her younger sister TT says to Savannah before she departs that their grandmother had said the river has a spirit and we should respect it. Partying with weed and beer and throwing a beer can in the river, peeing in the river are disrespectful of the spirits and they are angry. Will an offering of tobacco have an effect?
Aside from the outlandish Uncle Randolf there is only horror in “Something in the Water” but creativity and the unusual abound.
Yes another one of those Japanese animated films with those huge wide eyes! Long gone are those days when animation meant “made for children”. This film is not suitable for children. In “Suzume” there is a fantastic story about mostly threatening creatures from another world but as well themes of love, death, teen rebellion and female empowerment.
Suzume is a 17-year-old living in Kyushu in Southern Japan with her aunt Tamaki as her mother died when she was four years old. On her way to school one morning she meets a young man Souta looking for ruins. Souta is a Closer meaning he prevents evil spirits from entering earth through a door and causing havoc and death. The portal is most often located in ruins. Some evil can be contained by ensuring the door leading from the Ever After remains closed while more devastating evil can only be stopped by a Keystone.
Suzume embarks on an adventure with Souta throughout Japan closing doors and preventing mass destruction and death. Cute cats with big eyes are interwoven into the story. An engrossing story you will look forward to participating in but as the movie progresses you may add to it a strong story of female empowerment. Suzume is fearless, intelligent and assertive.
Now and then I can’t resist contemplating those nasty sandworms in Dune and Beetlejuice. In this case there are enormous killer snakes! Dubbed from Japanese to English and my goodness the voices of the characters (including the cats) is absolutely perfect. Even the cheesy Nippon pop may cause you to crack a smile.
I can’t recall ever being invited to a German wine tasting in Toronto. German tourism has invited me to their annual media event where Riesling was served and once they even splurged and gave attendees a bottle to take home. I have asked about a media trip but never any response. Is this a matter of smug German confidence? No one can rival the fearless promotion of Italian wines and authentic food for the media and the trade. Where are the Germans in the Toronto wine game? Behind the Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Greeks, Chileans and even the State of New York etc.! On press trips to more generous EU wine destinations often there is a connecting flight in München or Frankfurt. Perhaps once I stay in those cities and see German wine country!
When I see a Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) I’ll jump on it so with a Shepherd 2018 Pinot Noir from the warmest German wine region the Pfalz.
Aroma: Indicative of a heavier weighted Pinot Noir. Raspberry jam, cherry liqueur and some earthiness and some older oak perhaps Hungarian?
Palate: The heaviness continues on the palate with raspberry jam (homemade!) albeit rather thin and not full force. Dry minerality and a short finish. Decant for an hour prior to serving. It will improve by gaining more depth!
Food Match: Crispy pig knuckles (Schweinshake) a tasty dish I had when last in Würzburg.
Personality: I resent being in the back of the bus in Toronto! They love me in Mainz but they barely know me in Toronto!
Cellarbility: Try giving it a year or a maximum of two.
Blackfoot Nation Films has created a new indigenous Canadian Horror-Comedy Anthology series “Tales from the Rez” which breathes life into popular Blackfoot urban legends. Each episode is introduced by crusty Uncle Randolph (Charles Duck Chief) an Elder with one foot in the living world and the other in the spirit world. Each episode blends humour and spine-chilling suspense to offer a twist on age-old tales. The initial season takes place in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot confederacy also known as Southern Alberta, Treaty 7. The series started streaming on APTNlumi on 20October2023.
In “Grave Consequences” two weed loving young ladies exhaust their their cannabis stash and start thinking of raising some money to replace their vanished stock.
Not heeding all mores of decency the episode takes on a Poltergeistian twist. Messing with graves can have nasty consequences, perhaps even grave consequences. This creepy episode explores the link between dreams, tradition and morality. Heed the warnings of a distant Pow Wow girls!
More horror than humour in “Grave Consequences” but creativity and the unusual abound fenced in with some old fashion morality.
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