Horns of a dilemma
Movies: A trumpet player's take on two new brassy biopics
Searching for a proper trumpet movie proves problematic when Hollywood insists on blowing all the false notes in a bid to cook up drama and romantic heroes
by Charles Gordon
Trumpet players hardly every get to have movies made about them — unlike, say, ninjas. As luck would have it, there are two big ones out at the same time, Born to Be Blue, a fictionalized version of Chet Baker’s life, and Miles Ahead, a drama about Miles Davis.
As a trumpet player, woefully amateur but serious about it, I have to say that the real star of Born to Be Blue is not Ethan Hawke, the Hollywood star, who plays Chet, but Kevin Turcotte, the Toronto trumpet player, who plays the music of Chet on the soundtrack. More on that later.
In the jokes that are made about musicians (drummers who slow down, guitarists who play out of tune, unemployable trombonists) the stereotype of the trumpet players is the arrogant show-off. The trumpet ...
Movie review: Miles Ahead of its time
Don Cheadle's jumpy, jazzy biography of Miles Davis takes a lot of liberties with the facts, but it reminds you that jazz itself takes a lot of liberties with the notes
Nadia Litz and Jai West dig deep in The People Garden
People: Interview - Nadia Litz and Jai West on The People Garden
The former actor and first-time feature director says she wanted to create a female character in her 20s who could ride a wave of emotional ambiguity to escape the warm, fuzzy, vulnerable and typically banal female box
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER, BC – Ambiguity isn’t a topic that generally lends itself to passion, yet a recent sit-down with director-writer Nadia Litz and actor Jai West reveals a mental desire to resist closure that’s near obsessive.
“Oh man. Ambiguity is the whole thing…” says Litz. “It’s everything. It’s the theme of the film: that there is no black and white conclusion to anything. It’s what relationships are. It’s what life is. It’s what death is.”
When Litz talks about “the whole thing,” she’s talking about The People Garden, her debut feature starring West, Pamela Anderson and Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel Hemingway, niece of the late Margaux). ...
A Hologram for the King an empty projection
Movie review: A Hologram for the King
Tom Hanks's latest feels like a collection of the beloved actor's greatest hits all rolled into one big lump of fish-out-of-water comedy that flops around on deck for the duration
Minestrone makes it homey
Food: Recipe - Minestrone
It starts slowly with a pot of simmering white beans, but minestrone grows into a bowl that feeds the soul
By Louise Crosby
You could say the measure of wealth is not how many cars you have in your driveway, or how many holidays you take each year, but whether you have a batch of home-made soup in your refrigerator at the beginning of the week. Right now I’m thinking of minestrone, that thick, substantial Italian vegetable soup that will keep you going in good health for several days. We should all be so lucky.
Minestrone is something you make when you have plenty of time and want to enjoy the process. It starts out slow and quiet with a pot of simmering white beans. As they are turning soft and creamy, you take a soup pot and start to build your vegetable base, sautéing onions, garlic, carrot and celery in plenty of olive oil and bacon drippings, should you go for bacon, then adding more layers of flavour with zucchini, green beans and potatoes, ...
Hello, My Name is Doris – the Exploress
Movie Review: Hello, My Name is Doris
Sally Field finds fertile terrain as an eccentric hoarder in Hello, My Name is Doris, a feel-good romantic comedy aimed at menopausal women that's appealing to all
Movie review: Too Late is too much
The always-interesting John Hawkes plays a private eye in a neo-noir detective story that evokes the spirit of Quentin Tarantino and a dozen other filmmakers
