Julieta is a thing of beauty
Movie review: Julieta
Pedro Almodóvar's 20th feature film finds female beauty deep within the creases of profound loss as we watch two women bear the burden of being Julieta
Hit your mental reset button with a sweet green smoothie
Recipe: Reset Button Green Smoothie
A spritely emerald green, this smoothie is packed with kale and spinach, but sweetened naturally with pear, banana and pineapple, so as good as it is for you, it doesn’t taste like medicine.
By Louise Crosby
(January 16, 2017) If you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad that all that holiday business is behind us and we can get on with ordinary life. Downtime is good, bingeing on movies is fun, but there comes a time when you need activity and structure to your day. It lifts your spirits. And if you roared in to January with a new resolve to be healthier and more physically fit, then this smoothie is for you. It’s from Angela Liddon’s second book, Oh She Glows Everyday. (Her first, The Oh She Glows Cookbook, was wildly successful.) A spritely emerald green, this drink is packed with kale and spinach, but sweetened naturally with pear, banana and pineapple, so as good as it is for you, it doesn’t taste like medicine. Liddon, ...
Hidden Figures blasts into racist past
Movie Review: Hidden Figures
Theodore Melfi's quest for the stars has all the rights cogs and gears as it features Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer as Janelle Monáe mathemeticians playing a big role in the early days of NASA, but even with Kevin Costner's booster rocket, the voyage feels mechanical
La La Land is where love and art tangle
Movie review: La La Land
This musical love letter to the movie business, jazz and romance is an intoxicating throwback to the days of dancing among the stars and singing your heart out in the hopes of making it
Bringing up Babies: Top Ten movies of 2016
Movies: Top Ten 2016
Some say Donald Trump won the Presidency playing to childish insecurity and name-calling, but the annual box-office derby also proved a public appetite for adolescent entertainments. Film Critic Katherine Monk breaks down the top-ten money earners, and offers her own take on the year's best.
By Katherine Monk (Published Jan. 2, 2017) The political arena wasn’t the only place where childhood behaviours prevailed in 2016. Movie theatres also played to our apparent desire for less-sophisticated, over-simplified entertainments. It was the year the Mouse House roared: The Walt Disney Company was responsible for five of the year’s top ten earners worldwide, for a record haul of $4.829 billion - just a little under half the cumulative worldwide gross of $11.3 billion. Disney raced to the pinnacle of a relatively static box-office heap with titles that included the top-earning Captain America: Civil War ($1.153B), Finding Dory ($1.027B), Zootopia ($1.023B), The ...
Little Lion has a big roar
Movie review: Lion
Dev Patel and Sunny Pawar bring the true story of Saroo Brierley's quest for home to the big screen with empathy and intimate emotional truth
Cohen, Prince, Bowie and now… Comparelli
Tribute: R.I.P. Peter Comparelli
A fellow scribe remembers the good old days when journalists spoke truth to power, a per diem could get you drunk and a guy named Peter Comparelli backstopped the labour beat
By Rod Mickleburgh
It has been a terrible year. Bowie and Prince taken far too early. Leonard Cohen leaving us to mourn and light candles against the dark. Long-time friends battling serious health issues. Fake news, the decline of newspapers and the mainstream media, more necessary than ever to hold governments and politicians to account. An antiquated electoral system, an FBI “announcement coup” against Hillary Clinton and Russian hackers delivering a sniveling, bullying, thin-skinned, shallow-thinking prima-donna with the attention span of a child to the White House, while the most adult of U.S. presidents takes his dignified leave. Terrorism in Europe. Aleppo. And now, to cap off this annus horribilis came news of the passing of Peter Comparelli, as lovely a person as ...
Christmas found in Stollen recipe
Recipe: Snidal’s Christmas Stollen
Most store-bought gifts will end up as landfill, so why not fill the tummies of loved-ones with delicious homemade goodies such as German Stollen instead?
By Louise Crosby
(December 14, 2016) - Since my family stopped exchanging gifts at Christmas, food has taken on more importance. This is that one time of the year when you can rationalize buying those fancy Spanish sardines in olive oil, some of that aged-to-perfection, sliced-paper-thin jamón ibérico, that sublime, creamy raw goat cheese from France. Expensive yes, but hey, it’s Christmas. Of course, it’s also a time for baking. This year I’m making Mexican Wedding Cakes, Chocolate Hazelnut Crinkle Cookies, Coconut Stars, and Pecan Sandies. (Notice that all those cookies contain nuts!) I’m also making this stollen, a recipe that comes from Leslie Snidal, my friend in Nova Scotia who makes it every Christmas, as her mother did. It is baked earlier in December, wrapped up well ...
John Madden hits home with Miss Sloan
Interview: John Madden on Miss Sloane
The director of Shakespeare in Love says casting Jessica Chastain as a shrewd, morally ambiguous D.C. lobbyist was the best way to expose the ugliness of modern politics
By Katherine Monk
WHISTLER, BC – John Madden doesn’t want to get bogged down by the F-word: Feminism has so much ancillary luggage, too many awkward hard edges to cram into the narrative anchovy tin called a feature film. Yet, Miss Sloane, the latest film from the Academy Award-nominated director of Shakespeare in Love points a laser beam at the modern female experience. A D.C.-set (Toronto-shot) thriller starring Jessica Chastain as the title character, Miss Sloane offers a close-up view of the lobbyist’s reality. Watching from a slightly distanced perspective, the viewer picks up the trail of professional lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane just as she embarks on a career move that will change her life forever. Madden was reluctant to give away too many details about his ...
