GEMFest 2025: RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Lumen”: Murderous Intent and the $35 Lamp

A study in cinematographic depression courtesy of Yannick Nolan! It’s raining cats and dogs and the radio warns more is coming. Claude (Carmen Sylvestre), a 70-year-old trans sits in a gloomy apartment on a computer chasing down a lamp offered by Anne on Facebook marketplace. Claude jumps to a conclusion a deal has ben reached and heads off to a shower and primping up for his trip to pick up the lamp but returning to his computer has been told it has been sold to his moral outrage under the impression the transaction had been completed.

A horrific “accident” is threatened and suddenly Anne will deliver the lamp. As she arrives at the door with a companion yet another murder is highly possible and it won’t be pleasant being beaten to death by a baseball bat. But there’s nothing like a pot of tea and freshly baked orange cookies to digest what has just happened and it all ends up in the basement with all of Claude’s other mementos! How potentially grisly

Directed by Stéphanie Bélanger.

Screens 6March2025 at 15:00 hrs at VIFF.

GEMFest 2025 celebrates 20 years of celebrating women in film and gender diverse filmmakers.

Robert K. Stephen 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 88/100.

The Return of the Penniless Pensioner: Chapter Thirteen: Destroying and Rebuilding the State Apparatus: The Destruction of Big America Government Bureaucracy (BAGB): Memories of 1939

The United States has approximately three million employees working in BAGB. Their paycheques are loyalty from an “economic survival” basis hence closely aligned to federal government programmes of the day.

President Oran Crapaud of the United States, seeking to seize power in a more “peaceful way” than his failed Sixtember coup attempt has decided to eliminate all opponents and what better way than attacking the current BAGB.

Considering the suffering and misery caused to American families and communities by BAGB “layoffs” Crapaud selected bulldog “special advisor” Moron Tusk whose Nazi salutes, jumping around like an excited child and waving a chainsaw around like a demented moth rushing towards a lightbulb create a focus of hate for the misery ordered by Crapaud. The focus of hate is on Tusk while Crapaud can project innocence to his base. Tusk is the chump. Tusk is the fall guy. Deservedly his given name of Moron makes total sense. A billionaire turkey.

No one can fault a reorganization and slimming of BAGB but its brutality and wide swath is indicative of a powerplay by Crapaud completely justified in his ideology by the mythical Make America Great Again and The Golden Age. Strike your enemies, as imaginary as they may be, by a Stuka blitzkrieg. Then place MAGA leadership in a slimmed down BAGB. Control baby. Control!

The federal government bureaucracy will be commanded by Crapaud loyalists and peopled by those loyal to Crapaud and his mythical missions! A successful coup would have been easier.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: GEMFest 2025: “Henderson”: Shifting Realities is the Reality

Ally (Lesli Brownlee) from Vancouver has an exciting and winning night at a Las Vegas casino. She wakes up in a suburban hotel not knowing how she got there. She is naked in bed with her clothes scattered about and EEKS a condom on the floor!

She tears out of the hotel walking in a state of confused terror and doom to a gas station realizing her cell phone is dead and she has only a few dollars. She does not know where she is as it is certainly not Las Vegas. As a viewer are we to conclude the worst has happened and Ally is an innocent victim but there is no time for such indulgences on our part as she encounters several people on her trip back into Las Vegas given to her by Nicolas whom she met at the gas station. Nicolas is serving eviction notices.

Ally encounters 5 people post wake-up and all are living their own reality just as singularly is Ally. Arriving at the Las Vegas hotel just in time for her friend’s wedding she shifts her reality to the wedding at hand.

Life is a series of shifting realities where yours is often not even acknowledged by others who are in their own realities.

This Canadian short film was written and directed by Lori Watt.

GEMFest, celebrating its 20th year, champions women in film and gender diverse  filmmakers.

RKS  2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 74/100.

Amy Pickenbobber Launches New “Septic Tank Age of America” Line of Merchandise: Spoof News Services: Guelph, Ontario: 24February2025

At a news conference today first grader Amy Pickenbobber of Guelph, Ontario launched a new retail line of products “Septic Tank Age of America” inspired by her MAGA Patriot Squad abduction in Dunedin, Florida earlier this month. Pickenbobber was “relocated for quarantine purposes” to Guantanamo Bay as a guest of the United States Navy. She was released in a hostage exchange deal shortly thereafter.

Clutching her stuffed Mr. Monkey and wearing her Yankee fighting Laura Secord (formerly a Barbie one) knapsack Pickenbobber explained, “Those MAGA men and their matrons stole me from my parents and took me far away to a place called Guat Bay which was very hot and many bad things were done to so many Spanish speaking people. At night when I went to bedy bye I could hear big bad dogs barking and bright lights kept going back and forth. The only good thing was I could eat all the apple pie and vanilla ice cream I wanted. America was very bad to me and I don’t like this Frump man the MAGA men couldn’t stop whooping about.”

The marketing manager of Pickenbobber’s new line Meester Partout announced the opening line of merchandise with promises of more to come. Customers can purchase a “Trump Urinal September 6th Special” which is a 100% Canadian crafted and manufactured toilet with the inner bowl containing a Mount Rushmorish image of Donald Trump, Moron Tusk and Vice President Jimbo Nochance. Retail price is $679.99 CANADIAN. A dozen toilet paper rolls with a picture of Donald Trump on each square are provided at no charge. Orders received from citizens of Canada, Greenland and Panama before 1March2025 will receive $200 off. Partout stated, “So many people throughout the globe detest a certain vile orange toad and can do little about this as an average citizen. Vilification is therapeutic and the little guy can piss and poop and feel like he or she matters. We regret we can’t ship to the United States as an 865% tariff makes this apparatus of bodily function just too expensive. As our Prime Minister Trudeau is a leader of the Igloo People we must ask do these poor Americans have flushing toilets or are they to come as part of the Golden Age? In the Golden Age only 41% of Americans had flushing toilets.”

The Return of the Penniless Pensioner: Chapter 12: A Dictator Grooms America: Intellectual and Showboat Inner Party Leaders Needed!

In addition to the crude and brutal physical storm troopers like The Shame Boys and The Oath Breakers who terrorize, burn books, bash heads and participate in highly orchestrated performances to further America’s Golden Age such as the notorious (or glorious to some) 6thtober a more “sophisticated” and identifiable gang is required to manage their specialized bureaucracies and push ahead the myth of the Golden Age. Often, they are captains of industry like Moron Tusk but they can be attack dogs with vendettas against those who dare criticize the tenets of the Golden Age like Cashew Pooptell Director of the FBI. Entertainment personalities such as Zeke Hogshead as Secretary of Defence give some pizzazz and popularity to potentially “boring” governmental matters. There can be flamboyant characters in the “inner circle” like cowboy hatted Cristal “Yee Haw” Numbhead as Secretary of Homeland Paranoia. Government is part entertainment, isn’t it?

Easy to build your “senior management group” but it is more difficult but not impossible to tear down the existing structure like the judiciary, armed forces, legislators, media and clergy.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Big Head Red #11

Big Head Red #11 is a blend of Malbec, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Dornfelder from three different vintages and a combination of fresh and appassimento wines.

Following this vintage for 3 releases now it is a blend one looks forward to.

Aroma: Black fruit galore complimented by raspberry and mocha. A bit reminiscent of a high-end Australian Shiraz if I don’t say so. Solid, meaty and serious.

Palate: Intense, deep with a tight structure and enormous discipline. Mildly tannic. Solid mouthfeel. Absolutely no loose ends. It has been aged in French oak but is so clean and unadulterated I initially thought aged in concrete.

Personality: I proudly proclaim I have a uniqueness to me. At my price and quality you will find me difficult to beat. You are beginning to see Big Head at some very pricey high-end restaurants in Ontario and their wine is rather dear but this wine at this price is an opportunity to luxuriate at a modest price.

Provincial Election Match: Avoid all politico ads when consuming this wine and by golly avoid that Trump, Moron Tusk and his gang of bully crazed wreckers.

Cellarbility: Enjoy up to 2027.

Price: $25 CDN.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 94/100.

(Big Head #11 Red, Big Head Wines, VQA Ontario, 750 mL, 14%).

Vancouver’s 20th Annual GEMFest Film Festival: “Autophagy”: Harmless Claymation or Wicked Commentary?

“Autophagy”, a British production, could be enjoyed as an amusing claymation trip attractive due to its striking animation and threatening soundtrack. But it could be viewed as a wickedly sarcastic view of those terrible COVID days.

Redcap is a quiet coastal town ravaged by an Octopi Epidemic, a waterborne disease that transforms humans, in a gooey and bloody fashion, into octopi.

The crisis has spread beyond Redcap throughout the nation. Panicked traffic jams inch out of Redcap to perceived safety.

An elderly Redcapian couple living in poverty sit on the couch watching the telly. One is afflicted by the disease slowly transforming into an octopus. There are medicines available but only the well off can afford them leaving the masses unprotected and vulnerable as clean water is also too expensive for many. Poverty and good health are not good bedfellows. A national healthcare system that does not include medication isn’t much help to those who need it most.

And those afflicted are treated like lepers. So much for a caring society where the afflicted are shunned. The short starts with a crude street sweeper shoving his face full of food trying to run down a newly converted octopus.

Even if the message in “Autophagy” criticizes the callousness of society, the failure of a medical system to treat all and the inequality of poverty in relation to mortality it is a most amusing ride!

Directed and animated by Edie Lawrence.

Playing 7March2025 at 13:00hrs at VIFF as a Canadian premiere part of the Rise Short Programme.

The 20th anniversary of GEMFest champions women in cinema and gender-diverse filmmakers.

RKS 2025 Film 91/100.

SPOOF Movie Review: “DOGE Days Afternoon”: Moron Tusk Stars in a Confusing Epic of Bravado, Ego and Banality: To the Septic Tank Age

“DOGE Days Afternoon” hits the screens at the French River Film Festival in New Jersey tomorrow.

It is the tale, and a woeful one at that, about “an off-centre man” a renowned industrialist Horatio Alger, Moron Tusk (Tony Tesla) holding the United States hostage by destroying its governmental apparatus for the pure pleasure of exercising his destructive power with gay abandon. With the blessing of a rogue president, Oran Crapaud (Zane Zempic),he rampages unchecked closing down governmental agencies paralyzing a country masking his destructive delights with rationalizations of efficiency replete with comparisons of the entire governmental bureaucracy as corrupt and fraudulent convincing himself and his tag team of monkey see monkey do Pubican Party lackies of his righteous mission of propelling the United States  into the “Septic Tank Age” where darkness, must and sewage permeates the spirit of the United States.

Tesla, as Tusk, is brilliant conveying credibility and madness in the same breath yet like the amateur bank robber Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon” his soul is wreaked with confusion despite the apparent “aura of correctness”.

The torrid love interest of Tesla, Suzy Larue (Cloudly Daniels) a former hostess at a satanic pizza parlour in Washington D.C., illustrates Tusk thrives on domination. Forgetting Larue’s birthday is exemplary of his depravity.

Reminiscent of the 2023 British film “Zone of Interest”, “DOGE Days Afternoon” feasts on the concept that the destructive force of pure evil is simply a way of life for Tusk without him realizing he is the poster boy of evil. The theme of “DOGE Days Afternoon” is destruction of communities and families in the name of a contrived and fictional ideology masked by the concept of the public good.

The directorial debut here of Ronny Runthauser, a former Fox News custodian, is a confused disaster for the most part. We are puzzled why a plane crash killing dozens of innocent passengers serves as a very bad taste gleeful justification to dismantle the Federal Aviation Agency. Tusk derives power from negativity. Leech on the negativity like a remora to a shark and Tusk is there exploiting it. Runthauser fails to connect the DOGE dots as the reason for creation of a national paralysis is a justification for a seizure of power by you know who. If at first he didn’t succeed try again!

Runthauser has successfully created a study of Tusk, a man who fights “corruption and fraud” being morally corrupt and fraudulent himself although one questions if this is by accident or intentional. 

Whether this film goes further than the French River, New Jersey is anyone’s guess. SPOOF Culture has received word the Grand Council of MAGA is debating whether to boycott the movie, have Runthauser arrested for treason or simply to burn down any theatre screening the film in the spirit of Kristallnacht in a bid to make America Great Again in the Septic Tank Age.

President Donald Trump Suffers Ear Injury Caused by Late Night Chicken Bone Scuffle: Spoof News Services: Washington: 22February2025:

At 2 a.m. Washington time this morning a scuffle broke out in a Presidential garage abutting the White House.

A Republican Guard Patrol, successor to the disbanded Secret Service, and a MAGA Patriot Patrol converged simultaneously upon a suspicious figure hunched over in a menacing manner oohing and awing licking greasy fingers. Both patrols collided with each trying to apprehend the fleeing suspect. In the melee the suspect, clutching a sharp object fell to the ground piercing his ear.

The suspect was none other than President Donald J. Trump. Sources say he snuck out of the White House and accepted an Uber delivery of Kentucky Fried Chicken at the White House gates then had hidden near the garage scoffing the wings and drumsticks when he was apprehended. With President Trump’s pieced ear initially appearing to be a fatal injury as a caution Jimbo Nochance was quickly sworn in as the next President of the United States having to push away Moron Tusk desperately wanting to be the new President.

The President is well and comfortably resting. The chicken bone will be removed later at the Walter Weed Hospital by chief surgeon Dr. Canna Bis.

RKS 2025 Canadian Wine: Mastronardi 2021 Merlot Cabernet Offers an Escape from Niagara Imperialism

If you are looking to buy Canadian wine here in Ontario on a Liquor Commission Board of Ontario Vintages bi-monthly release the bias (if not obsession) is for wines produced in the Niagara region. Tokenism is extended to wines from Prince Edward County and Lake Erie North Shore and as for wines from British Columbia, Quebec and Nova Scotia dream on.

Mastronardi Wines is in the Lake Erie North Shore wine producing region of Ontario.

We try a Mastronardi 2021 Merlot Cabernet and note with a hem and haw the wine is VQA Ontario and not VQA Lake Erie North Shore. Please don’t tell me the wine is made from gapes trucked in from Niagara!

Aroma: One senses a preponderance of Merlot in the blend with a rather lush aroma with loads of black cherry and lesser amounts of blackberry and blueberry.

Palate: Light but broad tannins with a solid jolt of black cherry complimented by blueberry and cassis with a smidge of milk chocolate. Moderately long finish.

Personality: I am proof with skillful use of oak a Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon blend can be appealing. Unlike many Ontario Merlot/Cabernets I won’t disappoint. I am also a fine sipper in addition to a wonderful accompaniment with food.

Food Match: Haddock or Cod Japanese curry.

Cellarbility: Drinking window closes mid 2027.

Price: $19 CDN.

RKS 2025 Canadian Wine Rating: 90/100.

(Mastronardi Estate Winery 2021 Merlot Cabernet, VQA Ontario, Mastronardi Estate Winery, Kingsville, Ontario, 750 mL, 14%).