“In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite distinct classes. One – the lower class – commonplace, stupid, and above all, ridiculous people, who believed that a husband should live with the one woman to whom he was married, that young girls should be virtuous, woman chaste and men virile, self-controlled and strong; that children should be brought up to earn their bread and pay their debts, and other such nonsense. These were the old-fashioned ridiculous people. But there was another class: the real people, the kind to which his set belonged, in which the important thing was to be elegant, handsome, broad-minded, gay and ready to surrender unblushingly to every passion and to laugh at everything else.”
RKS Film: “223 Wick”: A Clunker with Some Saving Graces?
Let’s face it “223 Wick” in its entirety is a clunker. Repetitive flashes of light, eerie voices and a whole host of tiresome horror film effects. Trite plot and mostly wooden acting. Of course in the midst of disaster one must recognize some positive points.
This is not a horror film as the usual dim voices, connection with the underworld and rogue priests fail to horrify. But there is a modicum of suspense figuring out a grand evil plot but even then it might be overdone leading to a lack of credibility by poor writing.
Father John (Alexi Stavrou) is a teacher at St. Vincent’s. seminary. He has visions about what I am not quite sure. But for some reason he is a danger to the parish. So a rather sleazy looking priest in charge Father Murphy (Jack Dimich) and a Charles Manson/Marilyn Manson fellow priest are up to something nasty and attempt to transfer him to another post for mental rehabilitation but he never gets there and ends up at 223 Wick Avenue for some unknown reason.
The nasty is at 223 WICK Avenue where you’ll be subjected to a rather boring bad guy and underlings looking for a priest to sacrifice to a higher power. It is a priest massacre but pure evil is defeated by a supreme act of sacrifice.
Stavrou provides a steady performance and Dimich is a chameleon who is hard to pin but there is something terribly unpriestly about him. Both these actors rescue the film from a total disaster.
Absolutely fails as a horror film but as a suspense/thriller it limps along with some decency. Dawn Lafferty as Katerina Brixton is a weak link as far as acting goes. Yes years ago I was involved in casting films and Lafferty bombs and cripples credibility of an already weak film.
While there are weak links crippling the film there is some fun figuring out exactly who are the evil guys. And the ending? Real estate flip?
A tired and weak film.
RKS Film Rating 65/100.
Directed by Sergio Meyers and was released on digital platforms on September 20th.
You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6PE_hihjs8
RKS Passage of the Day: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin: Two Classes of Women
“Oblonsky smiled. He knew that feeling of Levin’s so well – that for Levin all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except Kitty, and they all had all the human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls: while Kitty was in a class by herself, without the least imperfection and above the rest of humanity.”
RKS Wine: A Mavrud from Bulgaria
A rare Bulgarian wine makes an appearance made from the Mavrud grape. Mavrud doesn’t have a stellar reputation but when properly subject to oak ageing it makes a solid simple wine. This wine was aged in barrels crafted by a cooper at the winery.
Lots of raspberry and cherry on the nose. There is also some smoke and milk chocolate. Nothing special on the palate except a good solidity. Lots of cherry with a slightly tart finish and a bit of Tellicherry pepper. A simple but well-crafted wine. Want lamb, beef, salmon or portobello mushroom burgers this wine is a good choice.
Best consumed now but it just might improve a tad over the next two years.
(Villa Yambol Mavrud 2020, Villa Yambol, Yambol, Bulgaria, $13.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 27056, 750 mL, 13.5%, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).
RKS True Story: Roma Panhandlers and a BMW in Athens
So I am sitting in a neighbourhood square in the Pangrati district of Athens having a late lunch with my wife and some friends. In the course of an hour 3 Roma panhandlers appeared putting on a dramatic and a tiresome act that has been perfected over the decades. It could be Rome, Paris or Madrid. The script is the same and even better when children are part of the scam. So this middle aged fellow comes up with two sad looking children in tow asking you buy a pack of cigarettes. When you say no he points to the children and gives a low moan. Despite his lack of a sale with us he must be doing good business as he drives away in a late model BMW.
RKS Literature: “Gotcha” by Robert Fulford
“In the same way literature offers us the opportunity to escape the two most pressing forms of bondage in our normal existence: time and ego. Emotionally and intellectually , literature dissolves the rules of time and beckons us toward Periclean Athens, Czarist Russia, Elizabethan England, and a thousand other moments of the past. By lengthening our sense of time, it saves us from the maddening urgencies of our present”.
RKS Literature: from Peter Carey’s Short Story “A Letter to Our Son”
“The obstetrician’s statement was not of course categorical and not everyone who has cancer dies, but Alison was, at that instant confronting the fear that we fear most. When the doctor said those words, it was like a dream or nightmare. I heard them said. And when we hugged each other-when the doctor had gone-we pressed our bodies together as we had done before, and if there were tears on our cheeks, there had been tears on our cheeks before. I kissed your mother’s eyes. Her hair was wet with tears. I smoothed her hair on her forehead. My own eyes were swimming. She said, “All right, how are we going to get through all of this? “
Peter Carey “A Letter to our Son”
RKS Literature Passage of the Day: Isabel Allende’s Short Story “Two Words”
“The day Belisa Crepusculario found out that words fly about loose, with no master, and that anyone with a little cunning can catch them and start a trade. She reflected on her own situation, and realized that, other than becoming a prostitute in a rich man’s kitchen, there were few jobs that she could do. Selling words seemed to her to be a decent alternative. From that moment she worked at that profession and never took on another. At first she offered her wares without suspecting that words could be written in other places than newspapers. When she became aware of this, she worked out the infinite projections of her business, paid a priest 20 pesos to teach her to read and write, and with the three pesos left over from her savings bought herself a dictionary. She perused it from A to Z and then threw it into the sea, because she had no intention of swindling her clients with prepackaged words.”
Isabel Allende “Two Words”
RKS Film: “Young Plato”: A Catalyst for My Past and Maybe For Yours Too?
OK so a few minutes ago you saw a documentary on sharks. Wow! But you are solely an observer, aren’t you? If you were a researcher or a diver assisting in marine biology research you might have a far different view of the shark documentary to John Q. Public. Be patient… working into the theme!
OK we have a dynamo primary school principal Kevin McArevey who we will call Kevin. Kevin is the principal of Holy Cross Primary School for Boys in Northern Belfast.
Yes, I have been in 1970’s Belfast and a week prior to my arrival was a particularly bloody one. When hitching into Belfast at the Northern Ireland border I witnessed, in Newry, an explosion in which a bomb hid in the raincoat of an IRA operative exploded prematurely leaving a grisly mess. Crowds of screaming protestors rushed by me (safely in a car) as rubber bullets whizzed by. And my driver giving me a hearty welcome to Northern Ireland and me responding to his question about what I will say if they ask me about my religion and I say I am a Jew in which case he says both Catholics and Protestants will kill you. Life is complicated in Northern Ireland. Arrive in Belfast but the only accommodation is The Royal Belfast and I get taken up to the room by a bellboy who excuses himself and does search of my knapsack, dinner down the street at a simple diner but scoffing down a burger and shake the plate glass window shatters sending glass all over me, then to post office the next day, British patrol vehicles, a body search at the post office but they fail to find my knife, gotta get the hell out of this hell.
Belfast is a stark and depressing place full of walls separating Catholics and Protestants. They politely refer to them as “interfaces”.
So the great conflict in Northern Ireland may have settled somewhat but hostility which still remains always simmering. So Kevin introduces philosophy to the young lads and as he explains it to them simply they lap it up. They discuss anger, internet bullying, violence, anxiety, time travel and for me a priceless mindfulness moment as he asks the boys to close their eyes and think about nothing. In a simplistic format that is the key to mindfulness which is you are alone with nothing except your breath. Sounds flaky…..just try it. The goal is to teach the students to rationalize and think for themselves.
Getting more meandering here, and enjoying it if you watch this documentary you certainly must think what your primary school experience was like? Kevin offers his students a caring, empathetic, respectful yet all within the boundaries of discipline where care is taken to explain to offenders instead of simply striking out and punishing. Did your school “officials” ever listen to you? Most likely if you are in the boomer cadre they administered “corporal punishment” often the strap and in my case being smashed in the rump with a cut-off goalie stick. Many a tear of pain and humiliation. Now that’s education!
Kevin and his team are not school administrators but guardians of the development of children into respectful adults. You violate the rules you may be “thrown in the jug” and in the worst case handed a suspension but you are given a detailed explanation of why and the option to discuss. Better than being bashed on the ass without any chance to defend yourself.
Kevin loves his Elvis which seems a bit out of place in Belfast but as the documentary illustrates there is hope for the next generation with guidance by Kevin and his staff.
“Young Plato” opens in New York on September 30th. It has played in major documentary festivals throughout the globe so if you have not seen it is coming your way!
You may see the trailer here https://vimeo.com/710806747
The Directors are Neasa Ní Chianáín and Declan McGrath.
RKS Film Rating 93/100.
“Virus # 26 Director’s Cut : Chapter 20 Lessons Learnt from the COVIDs: Sick Seniors Get Slammed in Long Term Care”
COVID found many victims amongst elderly long-term care “residents” so many so it virtually culled these “residents”. The worst hit were in privately run senior’s residences and long-term care facilities. The profit motive and proper senior’s care were not a good fit. As more of these facilities were inspected a whole raft of shocking stories emerged. Residents abused. Residents excessively drugged. Rotten and mouldy food. Poor cleanliness. Residents not bathed. Residents in soiled clothes for days. Rampant bed sores. And in many countries this had been the norm for years. I admired the Swedish system of integrating seniors into the community by improving at care home. Unfortunately in North America long term care homes were more prisons than compassionate and caring institutions. Just look at the forcible confinement of long-term care residents and prohibition of family visits in the name of “protective isolation”. Inmates in prisons had more rights!
Workers at these facilities were so poorly paid they had to take multiple jobs setting them up to become super spreaders in an environment where the COVIDs were an invitation to the pearly gates.
These horrific conditions were the subject of countless exposés for over 40 years and political promises to reform the management of these facilities abounded but talk was cheap and action was too expensive. So many wonderful seniors needlessly died and the result other than grief for many families and disgust of the general population was a commission of inquiry about long term care in Ontario after the COVIDs. I sat on this commission because of my voluntary work at these facilities. So we developed a set of recommendations most of which were common sense and not costly fixes but our Ontario government clapped and applauded but forgot. Bankrupt governments have so little to offer medical and social reform causing so many of us simply to cry and ask God to forgive us and mourn the loss of so many valuable souls.
Seniors have so much wisdom and experience to offer us but ageism and a tight budget and in some cases the profit motive shunted aside a rich vein of our cultural life. There were some that said the high mortality rate for seniors was a merciful act of Darwinism. Yes I think there was some truth to that as so many of these seniors, particularly those with debilitating illnesses, were suffering terribly and kept alive through modern pharmacology living a meagre and horrific existence but if you have worked with seniors like I have beneath that suffering and illness is a person fighting to survive and to politely ignore their death as “the fittest survive” doesn’t cut mustard. I think sometimes it was not the COVIDs that killed them but negligent management and regulation of long-term care and senior’s facilities. If there was any good to come out of this bad it was that bereaved and outraged families litigated against the privately operated facilities and basically shut them down globally with governments taking over their management so that in effect they became hospitals. Of course we know how well governments manage hospitals!
Photo: Robert Tuomi
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 