Yes we have seen countless teen angst films such as “Rebel Without a Cause”, “Breakfast Club”, “Acid Test” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. There may be a fine line between vapid teenploitation films and intelligent teen angst films.
“Drinkwater” falls into the intelligent teen angst genre. So expect some of usual plot lines;
Conflict with parents
High school romance
Bullying
Being in the in-crowd
Bumbling school bureaucrats
Surviving and learning from adversity
Self doubt
Ignored and misunderstood by parents
“Drinkwater” contains the essential elements of teen angst but what sets it apart is the maturity that conflict can generate. Most of the characters learn from their conflicts. The film also explores opposite sex obsession versus a relationship based on a real relationship as opposed to a fantasy.
There is also a boatload of Canadian rock many viewers will be too young to remember or if of the age of 1980’s Canadian rock but not Canadian. Bachman Turner Overdrive, Lover Boy, Trooper and April Wine propel the film with inspiration as opposed to pure nostalgia. Oh if only Carol Pope’s “High School Confidential” had been included!
Shot in beautiful Penticton which is located between Okanagan and Skaha Lakes and gateway to British Columbia Okanagan wine country. There are some beautiful shots of vineyards to boot.
The acting is solid throughout with an unrecognizable Eric McCormack as a self-absorbed insurance fraudster. Daniel Doheny as one of the teens is possessed with great acting potential with un unflappable delivery infused and oozing with charm. His wannabe girlfriend played by Louriza Franco delivers a low-key performance with occasional explosive edges.
As teen angst films go quite frankly in a Canadian way this just may be an answer to “Ferris Buellers Day Off”. It has made a limited Canadian theatrical run but it deserves international exposure.
Samos had been famous in antiquity for its sweet wines made from the Muscat grape. Times change and very few North Americans know about this famous wine. A co-operative holds a monopoly on the production of wine in Samos. Each year there is a wine festival. This year it was held in a parking lot by the water overlooking the port in Vathi. There were both table and sweet wines. The sweet wine was the lowest echelon of sweet wines. The table wines are made from Muscat grapes and are bland and unexciting. For 3 Euros you bought a clay cup and filled it up at your will. It was hardly an exciting show of wines. Now the souvlaki, fries, tigantes and loukomis were stellar. Poor Alexandra was exhausted and falling asleep so as the rock band took the stage off home we went. The proximity to the port perhaps was not such a good idea with a funky smell permeating the air. It has been held in more scenic locations in the past. All of us crashed out for a decent sleep. This jet lag is nasty business.
“Shady Grove” is not a horror film as I see it. It is in the misandrist suspense category. It is one of those films that drops a multitude of hints along its plot line but the hints only make sense after the closing credits roll. Sort of like a puzzle suddenly making sense.
Shaina (Niki McElroy), Mark (Todd Anthony) and their hyperactive friend Elijah (Juhan Jones) rent a cabin in the Catskills wanting to chill out for a day.
Some bad shit is going on around the cabin and in the Grove. Strangely masked animal characters steal a newborn and put it in a crate and nail it shut. Not a good sign. They also kill a teen (male) that was hanging around the cabin with a crossbow shot to his heart. OK so this has grabbed your interest.
Elijah off to get some beer and chips meets Chloe at a convenience store and invites her to a party at the cabin. Chloe shows up with gal pal Taylor and there is something about the two girls that is off kilter.
HINT: Is Shaina a closet lesbian?
HINT: Shania is pregnant. Remember the opening scene!
HINT: When Taylor says she hopes the child that Shania is carrying is a girl. How did Taylor know she was pregnant?
HINT: Taylor says we are all the same here in the town.
HINT: Why doesn’t the sheriff shoot the attacking masked crowd instead shooting in the air warning them.
HINT: Why the sex scene between Mark and Taylor?
You should be able to identify the bad guys here but predicting the ending will prove far more difficult but when you do reach that point these hints make sense.
Aside from an overdone and cheesy escape scene the acting works and Jones adds some spark with his zany self-absorbed sex crazed and obnoxious behavior (HINT).
No you won’t be quaking in your boots with this film but its ending adds a nice spin to a lumbering film.
Years ago sitting with my father in law and my son my father in law seemed not to worry if he ended up in hell upon his demise. He could party nonstop, drink, smoke and dance . A true paradise of course until my son casually mentioned that perhaps it was true but you’ll be burning up in flames! That obvious fact had not registered but suddenly it did. I believe after that he abandoned the idea of a non-stop party. It seems shortly after that he attended church regularly!
If you have seen the latest Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s October 22 Vintages release catalogue you may say WTF has just happened! Prices are obscene. This makes the wines of Chile most compelling from a price and quality perspective. Most Chilean wines appear to be rated by James Suckling a hero it seems to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario so one has to discount his overly generous rating of Chilean wine. He gave the San Pedro 1865 Selected Vineyards Carmenére 2020 a 91 rating.
On the nose a tight wine with blackberry, blueberry, milk chocolate and a gentle tad of allspice. On the palate moderate tannins with elements of Christmas cake, pepper and spice.
Enough fruit to make this a decent sipper. Drink now or hold until the end of 2024. This would be a good match for so many foods but as we are in the death throes of local produce eggplants are a plenty so why not Eggplant Parmesan? My produce contact at Lady York in Toronto says from here on in expect peppers, Swiss Chard and Dandelion. With fires in California and a hurricane in Florida who knows what awaits us in Canada. I made loads of jam, pesto and tomato sauce.
(San Pedro 1865 Selected Vineyards Carmenére 2020, Valle de Maule, San Pedro S.A.Molina, Chile, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 249201, 750 mL, 14%, RKS Wine Rating 89/100).
August 15 is a big day on the Greek Orthodox calendar. Everything is shut tight except what directly serves the tourists like mini marts and restaurants. I watched a bit of coverage on Greek TV and just like the old days the priests, politicians and military seem glued to each other. Still in 2006 the pillars of Greek society! On August 16th a high-ranking Greek Orthodox priest arrived in Vathi to enlighten the flock. The main street was full of political, military and religious officials. In Canada there is not the cosiness of the military, state and church you see here in Greece.
“Nelly and Nadine” is a Belgian/Swiss/Swedish documentary and is one of 13 films on the short list for the best film for the 2022 European Film Awards that will be announced in Reykjavik on December 10th.
The documentary begins with the narrator commenting on a film reel shot on April 28, 1945, in Malmo Sweden filming a boatload of 2,000 women survivors arriving from German concentration camps. The narrator explains he has spent years tracking down the stories of the survivors on the film reel. He is on a voyage of discovery.
One of the women on the film reel is Nadine a Chinese woman who was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain. We are not told why she was imprisoned by the Germans. Nelly was a well-known French singer arrested in 1943 by the Germans in Paris.
Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie Bianchi lives a quiet agricultural life in Belgium. Sylvie has a large collection of letters, journals and super 8 films documenting the incarceration of Nelly in a series of worsening German concentration camps the last stop being Mauthausen in 1945 Austria a stone quarry where prisoners had to climb down and up 186 stairs of death after debilitating forced labour and very little food.
Understandably Sylvie simply can’t complete the review of her grandmother’s legacy. She is so traumatized she can’t complete the task. She finally decides it is time and what she discovers liberates her tortured soul so finally she is at peace and with understanding of her secretive grandmother.
By confronting reality she accepts it and understands who her grandmother was. Her grandmother was Nelly Mousset-Vos a renowned singer and also a member of the Resistance. And she and Nadine were lovers! They fell in love in a camp and were separated when Nelly was transported in a harrowing 1945 journey to Mauthausen packed in a cattle car where 17 women died in a five-day journey.
We listen to some of her memoirs describing despair and the horrid conditions she managed to survive and it was her love for Nadine that propelled her last reserves of energy at Mauthausen where falling down in exhaustion meant a bullet in the head. Many of us are familiar with these German barbarities but to hear it firsthand is painful and very personal.
So we move beyond the war and Nadine and Nelly wishing to escape Europe move to Venezuela to establish a life. Sylvie as a child had no idea Nadine and Nelly were lesbians but it becomes apparent to her, particularly through the Super 8 films that Nelly and Nadine were lesbians.
Sylvie’s journey of discovery is one that viewers can share and there is no need to repeat it. But perhaps more important is that by accepting the facts of Nelly’s and Nadine’s relationship and fully understanding what they went through liberates Sylvie from her fear and apprehension so that she finally accepts and embraces her grandmother to the extent she finally smiles and appreciates Nelly and Nadine. Accepting reality as opposed to ignoring it was the best way of honouring the fortitude and bravery of Nelly. The narrator that started the film was on a voyage of self discovery as Sylvie was.
Steve is the original lonely guy of Samos. Alexandra and I encountered Steve at the establishment we were having coffee at. Steve has retired from Germany and moved to Samos. Steve is in his mid seventies and every day he takes the bus from Pythagorio to Vathi and sits at the same table in the same seat and talks with as many people as possible. Steve admits he is a lonely guy as his two children have not spoken to him in 4 years. They received a loan to start a business in New York from Steve but the business failed so Steve thinks his two children are too embarrassed to talk to him so to avoid loneliness he sits and drinks coffee all day and chats up passersby’s . We left him and said see you later. We chatted with him regularly. Alexandra ran into Steve one day without me and he said, “Where s the old man?”. Was he referring to me!
Up at the absurd hour of 04:00 for a shower in a groggy fog. No breakfast and hopped in a taxi to the airport delayed by bridge construction sending the meter on its happy way with the result a staggering 80 Euro taxi fare to Schiphol. Happy my booking on Martinair to Samos was successful. Not speaking Dutch didn’t prevent a successful booking. Martinair is a Dutch charter airline. I suppose we were the only Non-Dutch on the flight. Just my luck as a nasty terrorist looking type subject to a thorough body search to the enjoyment of my family. A spectacle for sure. What incredible shopping at this airport with electronics, food, records and books to name a few items. The departure area resembled a shopping centre more than the usual airport duty free. A smooth three-and-a-half-hour flight with a boxed breakfast. Arrived at the Samos Airport and grabbed a taxi into Vathi to Fotini’s parent’s house. It is great to have returned to Greece but I think all of us are craving a good night’s sleep.
I received yet another Skype call from the Penniless Pensioner currently residing in Tirana Albania at 4 a.m. Toronto time. The poor fellow was distraught as Lola Freiberg aka the Tirana Tigress had been arrested by the Albanian Interior Ministry police and was in the notorious Tirana Prison for Hardened Criminals. What the charges were he did not know but he had been made a deal by the Albanian Ministry of the Interior to release her. Highly dangerous if not a fatal assignment so he wanted to talk to me as a friend and consigliere.
So I hop on a Turkish Air flight to Istanbul and connect on Air Albania and 20 hours after leaving Toronto I limp into the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Tirana and meet PP in a private conference room he has rented. Some burly men in tight fitting suits were leaving the room when I arrived and was given a big hug by PP. He explained those burly men were checking the room was not bugged. We have some watery Albanian beer and beef tongue flavoured potato chips and get down to business.
He tells me Lola the Tirana Tigress has been arrested and is in custody but he has not been advised what the charges are. He says the Albanians are not quite familiar with the “rule of law”. Representatives of the Albanian Ministry of the Interior have made him the following deal. Lola will be released if PP does the following. A large delegation of Iranians is arriving for a visit to the Albanian Freedom University in Tirana for an academic roundtable. They are then going to the Blue Sarada Hotel in Vlora on the Adriatic Coast for a series of meetings on tourism. In the Iranian delegation there are 7 high ranking officials including military officers. These 7 will lead a coup d’état in Iran ousting the theocracy. Many “leading countries” are willing to support and recognize the new regime. My assignment is to deliver to General Abapoof a terminal which when pressed will transfer 89 million USD to an Isle of Man Trussler Bank account which will be used to fund the coup. In return the new regime will have “friendly government” technicians rewire and reprogram 400 drones left in the 2400 sold to the Russians so that after the Russians fire these purchased drones targeting Ukraine they will within 3 hours be redirected to where they were fired from so many will land in military bases in Russia. Twenty will be redirected to the Kremlin. Many will also be directed to Russian army barracks, power plants and water treatment plants. The message is to give back to Russia some of what they gave to Ukraine. This will result in the “elimination” of Mr. President unless he is deep in his bunker! No drones will be directed to hospitals, kindergartens, seniors’ residences and train stations or civilian airports unlike in the Russian Ukrainian genocidal playbook.
If the Russians have any inkling of what is going on PP says he will be dead but certain” Western intelligence sources” say PP is not on the Russian or Iranian intelligence radar. PP is known for his covert financial transactions although as for his working for Bernie Madoff well he denies any wrongdoing. Once the funds are transferred Lola will be free like a bird.
After our chat PP seemed to be his old self. The man was on fire for Lola and would do anything to get his “sweet pea” back. So before heading back so I could hit the sack we decided to chill a bit and have some of that Pinot Noir I brought with me as he had requested.
PP was adventuresome and had tried all varieties of Albanian wine and had his favourites but there was nothing like a good Pinot Noir to ease the many substandard Albanian wines he had been subjected to. I will try and describe his opinion as suffering from jet lag and twisted limbs causing me some pain and a badly swollen ankle I did not have the coherence to make any serious commentary, So I try and quote his opinion on a Christopher Michael 2019 Pinot Noir from Oregon;
“Some of this Albanian wine is rough and abrasive and smells like dirty socks and wet cement. The commies here ruined the wine industry so they had to start rebuilding it. It will take some time. This Pinot Noir has a finesse and delicacy that perhaps in a decade or two the Albanians can try and emulate. It smells like wine! Well actually there is some raspberry, strawberry jam and fresh picked Albanian country cherries as its bouquet. It tastes like real sophisticated juice! Elegant, refined and sensual but it has traction and grip in a delicate way unlike so much Albanian plonk. It has a touch of chocolate on the finish. Acids and tannins are restrained. It would suit some Tave Kosi a popular lamb dish. I would give this wine a 92 but I am so starved for good Pinot Noir perhaps my rating is unreliable.”
PP drops a bombshell telling me his snookums’ Lola is pregnant! PP is going to be a father!
(Christopher Michael Northwest Winemakers 2019 Pinot Noir, Christopher Michael Wines, Tualatin, Oregon, $ 20.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 25111, 750 mL, 13%, Penniless Pensioner Wine Ranking 92/100).
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