by Christina Waters | Nov 11, 2013 | Home |
Third generation winemaker Andre Beauregard has hit his stride with a new 2012 bottling called Monarch. A blend of grenache, syrah, and cabernet sauvignon, the appealing medium-body red wine weighs in at an easy access 13.9% alcohol, and a very appealing $14.99 pricetag.
Perfectly made to partner with food, Monarch offers up an abundance of raspberry and spice, on a firm yet pliant backbone of light tannins. If you’re looking for holiday table wine, your search might just be over. Even better the second day—yes it IS true that letting wines breathe is key to unlocking fuller flavors and nuances—Monarch is the latest wine to bear the feisty red and gold West Cliff Wines label. Available at Shoppers, of course.
by Christina Waters | Nov 10, 2013 | Home |
How might it look and feel to have lost all personal freedom? To be completely at the mercy, and whim, of another human being? This question forms the cinematic subject of 12 Years a Slave. The answer is not pretty. It’s not even bearable. British art film director Steve McQueen takes it on nonetheless.
And to be sure the film succeeds in offering up horrific scenes of how it—slavery in the American south circa 1850— very likely was. Hollywood’s down-home stereotypes of the happy dark folk and the benevolent massah are blown to smithereens. The film fails however, despite its insistently right-minded efforts. The repeated scenes of brutality inflicted upon the helpless slaves ultimately deaden the very consciences they are intended to arouse (recall your response to the scenes of Christ at the hands of the Romans in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ).
12 Years a Slave rests almost entirely on the sturdy shoulders and despairing face of Chiwetel Ejiofor, an actor of clear gifts and appealing presence who simply isn’t (more…)
