RKS 2023 Film: “Iron Butterflies”

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a Russian missile killing all 298 persons aboard the Boeing 777. On November 17, 2022 a Dutch court found 3 of the four Russian defendants guilty of 298 counts of murder imposing a life sentence and a fine of 16,000,000 Euros. It is presumed the defendants reside in Russia or in Russian occupied territory in the Ukraine. Forget extradition!

Russian state television plays musical chairs stating initially a Ukrainian military cargo plane was shot down then says the Ukrainians shot it down in error. Evidence clearly points to a Russian missile launched from a Russian BUC missile launching system. The most damning evidence are pieces of butterfly shrapnel (a hallmark of particular Russian missiles) in the flight crew’s bodies. The Russians say there was no BUC missile launching system in occupied Eastern Ukraine once again contradicted by the evidence.

Remember that in war propaganda flows from all the combatants and perhaps there is some Ukrainian propaganda (or bias) in the documentary showing how barbaric the Russians can be for example with photos of Russian paramilitary with fists pumped and guns raised sitting on the wreckage of the plane. What sick animals. The propaganda machine seems heavily at work from the Russian side. Note that in subtitles where Russia is described it is always “russia” not “Russia”. The Ukrainian State Film Agency and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation were involved with the production of the film.

Creative use of Soviet propaganda films, telephone camera clips, animation, dance, black and white cinematography and mime lift the documentary. At the end of the day 298 innocent victims paid the price for either Russian negligence or intent. Take a close listen to the intercepted communications from the Russians about a “birdie” in the sky. Seems to me they knew what they were doing.

Directed by Roman Liubyi.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0oxLf8zcnE

Theatrical release in Canada on August 25th. The theatres screening the film are ;

Cineplex Cinemas Queensway, Etobicoke

Landmark Whitby, Whitby

Landmark Kanata, Ottawa

Cineplex Odeon McGillivray Cinemas, Winnipeg

Scotiabank Theatre Saskatoon, Saskatoon

Cineplex Cinemas Normanview, Regina

Landmark City Centre, Edmonton

Cineplex Odeon International Village, Vancouver

RKS 2023 Film Rating 74/100.

RKS 2023 Film: “Storage Locker”: A Clunker Any Way You Categorize It?

The public relations blurb received concerning “Storage Locker” rather indicated it was a horror movie. In fact it won the award of Best Feature and Best Director at the Hollywood Blood Horror Festival and has been screened at a few horror film festivals.

If you are looking for a “serious” horror film here and enjoying the chills and fright a good horror movie can produce you won’t find it here. It bombs on that premise. Could it then be a spoof as it fails the serious horror film test? Yes there is some humour and frantic and overly stereotypical characters. But if it is a spoof the best I could do was groan. Two overly made-up sisters Apollonia (Bobbie Grace) and Diana (Meredith Fowler) run a collector’s secret society. Storage lockers contain less than goods!

Packer (Avery Mayo) is an avid comic book collector hoping for a big score. Packer gets cozy with Apollonia and Diana and beds both of them after being spurned by his puerile and adolescent fiancé Jenny (Hannah Hufford).

Multiple plots zig zag throughout the film.

Mayo holds the film together with his acting which is not the case with the rest of the cast.

Even the stinky little ghoul that murders fails to frighten. Whether a spoof or an attempt at a serious horror movie the film fails. They say the best part of Las Vegas is leaving it. The best part of this film is that it is over. And it ends most incongruously.

“Storage Locker” will be released on digital platforms on August 22, 2023.

You can see the trailer here https://vimeo.com/846320373?share=copy . It is the only slightly horrific part of the film.

Written and directed by Ray Spivey.

RKS 2023 Film Rating 53/100.

RKS 2023 Film: “PIGLADY”: Can the PIGLADY Bring Home the Bacon? The Great White Pigs!

“PIGLADY” is an American horror film although if you can’t take vicious man-eating pigs seriously there is a comedic element in PIGLADY.

PIGLADY is remotely founded in fact. Susan Monica was a former Navy sailor who served in the Vietnam War as a man and eventually became a she and the owner of a pig farm in rural Oregon. In 2012 and 2013 two handymen on her farm went missing and it sow (pun intended) happened she dismembered them and fed them to her pigs. She was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of 25 years.

My pal W and I were in Tuscany many years ago staying at a villa. W decided to go fishing at a small lake on the property. While tramping through the scrub he raised the ire of a wild boar that chased him squealing in anger! Then currently in North America we have an epidemic of a cross between feral and domestic pigs that can grow to 300 pounds and they have a nasty disposition. Man eating?

Two Cali couples and a couple of their gay friends head up to Oregon for a Christmas retreat right next to PIGLADY. They are enjoying themselves, drinking away, smoking weed and snorting cocaine. The pigs loom menacing in the background. Darkness looms and the PIGLADY strikes aided by her voracious man-eating pigs! Needless to say it isn’t the swine that are heading to the slaughterhouse. A slow build up the 20 minutes of blood and guts and enough squealing to turn you off bacon. The PIGLADY certainly brings home the bacon!

There are many comedic moments as there were in the film “Jaws”. Is “PIGLADY” the big summer hit that will terrify audiences to give up their bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches?

“PIGLADY” opens on digital platforms on August 22, 2023.

You can see the trailer here https://vimeo.com/847024926

RKS 2023 Film 67/100.

RKS 2023 Wine: Cornfield After Cornfield: Then Quai du Vin Estate Winery in St. Thomas

While taking a bit of R&R in Port Stanley, Ontario I discover Quai du Vin Estate Winery in St. Thomas, Ontario quite near to the tiny town of Sparta. Yes there is signage to direct you there but don’t expect any concentration of wineries on Fruit Ridge Line. Instead you’ll see cornfields galore and damn tasty and sweet corn it is! So those grapes at Quai du Vin must be lonely. An attractive tasting room. But at present no food served. But big plans are afoot with new ownership and a new name coming. More about that later.

We try a Marechal Foch a grape few wineries in Ontario decide to grow and bottle. Perhaps Malivoire Winery in the Niagara does it best with their Old Vines Foch?

Aroma: There is loads of blackberry and blueberry with some raisin pie and smoke.

Palate: A soft wine with some distinctive purple grape Marechal Foch characteristics. Serbian cherry nectar, purple plum and a gentle acidity. Moderately long finish.

Personality: You may think Marechal Foch and the terms grapey or foxy may be used. In my case I am loaded with fruit and yes there is a bit of “grapeiness” to me but that’s Marechal Foch!

Food Match: Just try this with the Corny Goat pizza at Elgin Harvest wood burning oven pizzeria in St. Thomas. The Corny Goat is topped with goat cheese crema, sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, red onion, roasted mushrooms, basil and mozzarella with bacon at $23. Actually all of their pizzas would suit this wine. It would also match if not bless a Thanksgiving turkey.

Cellarbility: Drink by the end of 2024.

Price: $16 CDN. Most likely you’ll have to order from the winery.

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 91/100.

(Quai du Vin 2019 Marechal Foch, VQA Ontario, Quai du Vin Estate Winery, St. Thomas, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.2%).

RKS 2023 Wine: No Need to be Spooked by Bordeaux! The Branson Burger!

Yes, wines from Bordeaux can be enormously expensive beyond the purse strings of those who have to count their pesos. And they can be enormously complicated with classification, left bank, right bank, first growths and on and on. But there are many small producers offering wines at yes “bargain prices”. The EU is drowning in wine this year with EU per capita consumption down. Are we consumers benefitting from this oversupply? Theoretically as we live in a capitalist system in North America and most of the EU the law of supply and demand dictates we should be seeing lower prices. Dream on!

So for $ 25 (CDN) we can pretend to be wine snobs and quaff a Château Pierre de Montignac 2020. For what it is worth it is from the Médoc which is a Left Bank wine i.e. the left bank of the Gironde River. Visit the Château and they have 5 modern but somewhat tiny rooms and also a motorcoach area.

The wine is a blend of 50% Merlot, 45% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot.

Aroma: Black currant, black cherry with a dusting of cocoa.

Palate: I can’t say I agree with the label describing this a “powerful” wine. It makes its presence known for sure with moderate tannins. Sour cherry, spice and dates to be enjoyed with a long finish with a bit of prune and milk chocolate.

Personality: I am perhaps from a vineyard off the motorhome area and there is no 5-star restaurant on site but I punch way over my weight. Quite frankly I am a damn good Bordeaux. Perhaps not as good as a first growth but they clock in close to $1,000 and me at $25! I welcome penniless pensioners and screw off social media barons and those who rocket around in space in their little toys. Geez in the nearest town to the winery you can find a Richard Branson Burger in a special black truffle sauce which I can assure you goes well with a Grand Vin de Chateau Latour! Zut Alors!

Food Match: Of course, you will serve slightly chilled. Stuffed field red peppers Greek style or RKS 2023 Wine Burgers (secret recipe). Branson wanted my recipe and offered me a ride in his space toy but I declined!

Price: $25.

RKS 2023 Wine Review Rating: 91/100. Jamessuckling.com 90.

(Château Pierre de Montignac 2020, Cru Bourgeois Supérieur, Médoc Earl de Montignac, Médoc, France, 750 mL, 13%).

RKS Literature: A Swindler of a Man on the Run (Dickens)

“Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart: a constant apprehension of being overtaken or met – for he was groundlessly afraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going – oppressed him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quire real but his own torment.”

Charles Dickens, “Dombey and Son”

RKS Literature: A Hollow Woman in a Hollow World (Charles Dickens)

‘I am a woman.’ she said confronting him steadfastly, ‘who from her very childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends have looked on and approved; and every tie between us has been hardened in my breast. There is not one of them for whom I care, as I would care for a pet dog. I stand alone in the world, remembering well what a hollow world it has been to me, and what a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know my fame with it is worthless to me.’

Charles Dickens, “Dombey and Son”

RKS 2023 Film: “Jules”: Of Ageism and Aliens

Who doesn’t like a good film about aliens arriving on earth and interacting with humans? “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”? “ET”?  or Donald Trump running for President?

We have a great one here with seniors in the lead roles and with ageism in our society what I think just might be the movie of the summer perhaps will quickly fade off the big screen and into VOD land. Shame if that happens!

Milton (Ben Kingsley) lives in a small Western rural Pennsylvanian town and he is gradually showing some early signs of serious mental decline putting cans of food in the medicine cabinet instead of the kitchen cupboard and the like. He shows up at town hall meetings time and time again saying his piece but it is always the same. Groundhog Day dementia? His daughter insists on some neurological testing with a recommendation being made after the test he should consider assisted living.

One night an alien craft crashes into his garden destroying his bird bath and prized azaleas. A banged-up alien emerges and Milton welcomes him into his house. The alien, a non speaker, loves apples and enjoys human companionship. Milton tells a few locals about the alien but as he is an old man with a weakening mind not much attention is paid to him. A couple of his friends of equal age Sandy (Harriet Harris) and Joyce (Jane Curtin) are let in on the secret and all three realize the existence of the alien must be a secret or the U.S. government will have Jules, as they name him, on the table for scientific dissection. The National Security Agency is a serious threat to aliens and to civil liberties of humans and aliens alike.

All the three humans are lonely due to family rifts and facts of life. Jules hears their sad stories which I suppose are more understandable to the viewer than to Jules.

Jules is peaceful but has certain powers that protect his three friends as you’ll see with the exploding head of a very bad thief! Jules repairs his spacecraft with very odd if not catty supplies and takes off with the three seniors just as the National Security Agency agents move in. Milton is given the choice to fly home to Jules’ planet and as he can’t bear the thought of his daughter Denise watching his mental decline will he accept the offer from Jules making a sequel a la Billy Pilgrim of “Slaughterhouse 5” fame?

Entertaining, didactic in a gentle way and loads of fun. Will the moviegoers of this planet give these old geezers and an alien the pleasure in being in the movie of the summer?

The film is directed by Marc Turtletaub and has a theatrical release in Canada on August 18th.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nrYm9Shbcs

RKS 2023 Film Rating 93/100.

RKS 2023 Wine: Another Try of Pinot Noir from Ontario

Hoping not to be stoned to death by Ontario Pinot Noir fundamentalists as far as Canadian Pinot Noir goes it takes a back seat to British Columbia, particularly the Okanagan. But refusing to shut doors we venture on to a Magnotta 2017 Limited Edition Pinot Noir from Niagara.

Aroma: Not one of those light, elegant and sensual Pinot Noirs. More of a heavy and brooding type. Instead of readily apparent strawberry and raspberry we have some heavy-set black cherry with a tinge or two of milk chocolate.

Palate: First impressions are that the aroma of the wine does not really do justice to the wine. Although it is not a light and elegant Pinot Noir it has its own personality. Smooth with notes of black currant, cactus pear and some black cherry. Moderately long finish with a bit of heat.

Personality: Ok if you are looking for a stereotypical Pinot Noir you are handcuffed by a lack of creativity. Expand your mind or at least let me try to have you think differently and positively about an Ontario Pinot Noir. Who says a Pinot Noir must be this or that? Damn wine writers…..

Food Match: This is no salmon wine! Chicken Cacciatore or Beef Bourguignon. Vegheads think about a Mushroom Bourguignon.

Cellarbility: I sense a wine that can benefit from ageing to loosen it up a bit. At its price point it might be justified to age it over the next three years so it can be consumed prior to 2026-year end.

Price: $18.95 CDN.

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 88/100.

(Magnotta 2017 Limited Edition Pinot Noir, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Magnotta Wines, Ontario, 750 mL, 13%)

Pet Ownership: That Nasty Contractual Clause You Don’t Want to Read

Yes, as a lawyer I am familiar with contractual provisions. There are many clauses one encounters in a commercial contract: limitation of liability, indemnification, no liability for special and consequential damages and literally hundreds more. In fact, when we picked our West Highland Terrier Dylan from the breeder some 15 years ago there was a lengthy contract covering a variety of terms including the right to return a “defective” dog. But there was no clause in that pet contract dealing with “consequences” of your pet not outliving you.

Well, no pet contract has such a stated clause. It is what lawyers refer to as an “implied term”. We all wish our pets to die peacefully in their sleep but if all wishes came true pigs would fly. You may very well have to deal with a terminal illness or simply debilitation due to advanced age. Advanced age may depend on the breed. For example, a Great Dane has a life expectancy between 5 to 8 years but a West Highland Terrier between 13 and 16 years.

How you deal with terminal illness of a pet may vary but it may involve making “that decision” which may be one of the most painful and grief inflicting decisions you make in your life.

Many of the pet owners I have encountered give thought to the clause and it frightens some of them. Some simply prefer to ignore it “until the time comes”.

However unpleasant “that decision” as a pet owner bear in mind many conscientious owners willingly accept this term as part of the cycle of life. All humans and pets die. Humans can avoid taxes but never death unless of course Walt Disney successfully thaws out sometime in the future. 

Next…….when to execute “that decision”.