Welcome to Me, Myself and Whaa?
Movie Review: Welcome to Me
Kristen Wiig pulls off the impossible as a mentally ill lottery winner in Shira Piven's dark satire set in the selfie-obsessed post-Oprah age
Movie review: Tomorrowland
Disney pushes all the happy buttons in a quest to bring a silver lining to our cloudy future in the Vancouver-shot fantasy that stars George Clooney as a brainy curmudgeon
Catching up with what’s new on DVD VOD and Blu-ray in May
Manny Pacquaio takes a beating, Bradley Cooper pulls the trigger, Leviathan makes black splash, Julianne Moore proves Oscar-worthy and Tom Cavanagh goes bird man
By Katherine Monk
Manny (2014)
3.5/5
Starring: Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Jinkee Pacquiao, Mark Wahlberg, Jimmy Kimmel, Dan Hill, Freddie Roach. Directed by Ryan Moore and Leon Gast. Narrated by: Liam Neeson. Running time: 87 minutes.
Though it was produced before Manny Pacquaio’s much yapped-about face-off against Floyd Mayweather and subsequent fan lawsuit alleging the whole thing was a fraud, this documentary directed by Ryan Moore and Leon Gast (of When We Were Kings fame) still has a sense of destiny to it, because in the end, that’s what you need in any fight movie – as well as any fighter. Great warriors believe they are fulfilling some unwritten prophecy, and from the moment Manny stepped into the ring as a scrawny, underage kid (he lied on his boxing forms), he felt God was in his corner. ...
Baseball: And it’s root, root, snooze for the home team
Rod Mickleburgh pays a visit to Seattle's Safeco Field to deliver valuable coaching advice from 30 rows up that, tragically, went unheeded
By Rod Mickleburgh
One of my favourites among the many things Yogi Berra never said is: “There’s one word that describes baseball: you never know.” Like so many Berra-isms (“It gets late early out there.”), it has a wisdom all its own. For it really is one of the great things about baseball: you just never know.
So many sports have a sameness to them, and I don’t mean that as a knock. I’m a huge hockey fan, but basically, the players go up and down the ice trying to score. It’s pretty basic. How many Kevin Bieksa-type stanchion goals are there in a season? Not so with baseball. It’s been played for more than 125 years, and you can still go the ballpark and see something that’s never happened before. Last year, at Safeco Field, I saw the left fielder throw out a runner at first (explanation available on request). On the ...
Time has come today, and Apple Watch can have tomorrow
Charley Gordon remembers the good old days when timepieces needed winding and tattooed skin was the exclusive reserve of sailors
By Charley Gordon
How to greet the news that the Apple Watch doesn't quite work when fastened onto tattooed skin? Satirical comment is too easy, isn't it, the news equivalent of a batting practice fastball. Here it comes, not too fast, right over the middle of the plate. You can see the seams. How can you not take a swing at it?
But where to start? Point out that the watch is unnecessary. Point out that the tattoo is unnecessary, the two cancelling each other out. Hey, the useless thing I put on my arm is making the useless thing I bought for my wrist useless!
Then there is the rant about First World Problems, always a crowd favourite.
Or move, ever more comfortably, into old fuddyduddyism. In my day, you had to wind your watch and it never talked to you, because it had better manners. As for tattoos, you had to be a sailor.
Each of these is a ...
Pop Culture Decoder: Bad Blood
Misty Harris unpacks Taylor Swift's latest celebrity-filled video, which belly-flopped onto YouTube earlier this week
By Misty Harris
Confession: I was counting down to the debut of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood video the way normal people count down to Christmas, or Kardashians to their next selfie. Say what you want about Swift’s love life, which has played out like a cautionary tale against dating songwriters, the girl has chops when it comes to producing killer music videos.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when Bad Blood finally landed and turned out to be all style, no substance (if you put your nose to your computer monitor, you can actually smell the aroma of “meh”). Though all the elements were in place for another hit – slick set design, more than a dozen star cameos, and a budget equal to the GDP of some small countries – the end result was more mess than masterpiece.
Let’s decode, shall we?
Too many celebri...
Box Office Analysis: Female demographic gets big push
Early spring is typically a season dominated by testosterone-laced action tentpoles, but with Pitch Perfect 2 blowing the tires off Mad Max: Fury Road, the boys of summer may get benched by funny girls
By Katherine Monk
Mad Max may have defeated a villainous clan of wasteland warlords in order to survive a two-hour hell ride, but he couldn’t beat the ladies of Pitch Perfect 2 in the box office demolition derby called opening weekend, raising some doubt as to who rules the box-office in the era of digital, videogames, bit-torrent downloading and studio movie ennui.
As this weekend’s tally proved: Women are starting to outspend men at the wicket.
Mad Max revved up a respectable $44 million in receipts, but Elizabeth Banks’s gleeful girl movie about snarky singing competitors hollered to the tune of $70 million, proving the long-vaunted 14-year-old boy demographic does not rule
the box-office after all. According to the Motion Picture Association of America’s ...
Pop Culture Decoder: The Catch
Misty Harris uses her forensic skills and pop culture instincts to dissect the new trailer for Shonda Rhimes’ new show featuring Mireille Enos as a feisty fraud investigator
By Misty Harris
In the bloody wake of McDreamy, whose death left a hole in our hearts and in the men’s haircare market, a nation comes together to ask: Can we learn to love Shonda Rhimes again? If the trailer for her upcoming drama The Catch is any indication, the answer is yes. Big yes. Yes on a Post-It yes.
Here’s what ABC is telling us about Shondaland’s latest: “This thriller centres on the strong, successful Alice Martin (Mireille Enos). She’s a fraud investigator who’s about to be the victim of fraud by her fiancé. Between her cases, she is determined to find him before it ruins her career.”
Ok, kind of a dull description; I’ve had bathroom breaks that were more compelling. But the slick trailer suggests there’s more to this show than White Olivia Pope™ risking (gasp!) ...
