Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 31, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● C3 FIRST things first: There’s a key storytelling twist in Companion, writ- er-director Drew Hancock’s wickedly clever little horror thriller, which needs to be addressed in order to dis- cuss the film in any meaningful way. It comes not at the end of the movie but near the beginning, so it’s not so much a spoiler as it is a level-set. (The juicy reveal is also given away in the movie’s trailers, so you very well may already know what’s coming.) Now that everyone’s on the same page — go see it and come back here after! — Companion confronts today’s realities of technology and AI with a darkly comic eye and a sly curl in its lip. It’s as tech-minded as an episode of Black Mirror, but one of its tricks is the way it subverts its perspective to turn the audience against the humans and put them on the side of the androids. Yes, androids. That’s the first of several swerves and it comes early in the story, after plucky Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and slightly sheepish Josh (Jack Quaid) have met at a grocery store and fallen deeply in love. They’re off to one of Josh’s friends’ secluded homes for a weekend getaway, and Iris is nervous that Josh’s friends don’t like her and are unfairly cold toward her. Upon arrival, Iris’ fears are loosely confirmed when Kat (Megan Suri) opens up and tells her she makes her feel “replaceable.” Why replaceable, of all descriptions? That’s when the audience learns what Josh and his friends already know: Iris is a robot. Well, a sexbot, if we’re being frank, and we are, because Hancock definitely is. That little bit of information recon- textualizes what has happened up to this point in Companion, and it chang- es everything that comes after. But it’s not the only twist or surprise up Hancock’s sleeve, as he packs a wallop in his devilish feature film debut. There’s a murder, and a scheme, and a few more surprises that are too good to give away. Hancock’s playful script and tight execution play with AI concerns and our modern impulse to ignore the user agreements, but flips them in such a way that we’re the bad guys. It’s like T2 for sexbots, if the sexbots were the ones doing the storytelling. Thatcher (Heretic, TV’s Yellowjack- ets) plays an engaging hero, whose humanity is more than a switch that gets flipped. She’s a doting romantic who becomes a fierce survivalist when she needs to, and Thatcher is a tough, smart, relatable lead in what feels like a star-making role. And Quaid (yes, he’s the son of Den- nis Quaid and Meg Ryan), is appropri- ately smarmy as the story unfolds. He transforms from shy and sweet to men- acing and controlling, his weakness and fragility always front and centre. Companion weaponizes his frail ego and turns it into a damnation of mod- ern masculinity: In a world where our partners are customizable, what other aspects of ourselves are we losing? As friends in the group, Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillén make appealing sidekicks — Gage, with his Ken doll- like blankness, is especially effective — and Rupert Friend is just over-the- top enough as a wealthy sleazebag with a tacky Russian accent. Companion is a sharp, sleek thriller with a hip modern edge to match its retro-chic esthetic. Its twist gets you in the door, but it’s only the beginning of the way it gleefully, deliciously spins viewers in circles, and leaves them thinking about the coldness of our modern world. — The Detroit News FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2025 Wicked AI thriller a smart, bloody delight Artificial AND intelligent ADAM GRAHAM MOVIE REVIEW COMPANION Starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid ● Grant Park, Polo Park, St. Vital ● 97 minutes, 14A ★★★½ out of five WARNER BROS. PICTURES Sophie Thatcher (left) plays Iris, a sexbot and companion to Jack Quaid’s Josh, in Companion. OTHER VOICES Companion is darkly funny and has some great jump scares, but it’s also a medi- tation on how some men have a default switch that makes it far too easy for them to be manipulative and abusive. — Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times Makes the perfect anti-Valentine’s Day movie for those wanting some blood in their bad romances. — Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News The whole thing is freaky and funny as hell. — William Bibbiani, TheWrap The humour and tone could have go so wrong, but they didn’t. Kudos to Hancock for making the film crackle along wittily, drawing in even those of us prone to shudder at movies with a fast-rising body count. — Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press Canadian content facing $1-billion budget slash, report says A report says Canadian scripted shows, children’s programs and docu- mentaries are projected to see a nearly $200-million drop in financing from the country’s private broadcasters over the next five years. Conducted by consulting firm Nordicity for the Directors Guild of Canada, the analysis warns that could result in Canadian production budgets getting slashed by more than a billion dollars. The report examined how private broadcasters allocate funds to “pro- grams of national interest” (PNI), which includes Canadian dramas, comedies and documentaries, under current CRTC policies. Under these rules, broadcasters must dedicate a percentage of their annual revenue to such programming. However, if broadcast revenues con- tinue to decline as market projections show, the report estimates expendi- tures will drop to $167 million by 2028, a 23 per cent decline from $216 million spent in 2023. The cumulative differ- ence over those five years amounts to about $200 million. A Corus Entertainment spokesper- son said all genres of Canadian televi- sion programming have seen drops in funding due to overall declines in rev- enue caused by “unregulated foreign competition.” “The notion that certain categories, like PNI, should be treated as more im- portant than all others, including local news, is self-serving and not reflective of the viewer tastes and Canadian cultural policy,” they said. But Dave Forget, the guild’s national executive director, says cutting back on PNI can have far-reaching econom- ic consequences. He says that each dol- lar broadcasters invest in production can generate up to six times its value through global licensing, tax credits and additional financial support. A $200-million reduction in domestic financing, he warns, could ultimately gut Canada’s TV and film industry by more than a billion dollars. The report notes the CRTC is now weighing proposals to reduce or elim- inate funding for PNI altogether. Last year, the federal regulator granted Corus’ request to reduce its required spending on scripted dramas, come- dies and children’s programs to five per cent of revenues, trimming its contribution by about $35 million. In another 2024 decision, the CRTC mandated that foreign streaming platforms allocate five per cent of their Canadian revenues to a fund supporting Canadian content. Several streamers — including Netflix, Disney and Paramount — have challenged the order in the Federal Court of Appeal. More regulatory changes could be on the horizon as the CRTC moves forward with its plan to modernize the framework and implement the Online Streaming Act, designed to “ensure the sustainability and growth of Canada’s broadcasting system.” But some creators are worried. The guild points to a notice for a key CRTC hearing in March suggesting that the addition of global streamers to the Canadian marketplace means that the “current approach to PNI is no longer needed.” The guild says that’s not the case. It’s urging the CRTC to set spending requirements on Canadian content at 8.5 per cent of the previous year’s rev- enue, with the requirement extending to include online streaming platforms. If such changes are made, the report says total English-language private sector investment in PNI could reach an estimated $500 million by 2028. “It will always be easier for broad- casters to buy American dramas, in- stead of taking the risk to tell original Canadian stories, but our stories are the most important projects to make and protect,” Forget said in a state- ment. “The current commission has an op- portunity to head off a disastrous blow to our industry and culture, and build a modern, robust system that guarantees audiences a vibrant, diverse range of original Canadian programming for decades to come.” Several Canadian directors and ac- tors have made statements in response to the Nordicity report, released Thursday, including filmmaker Atom Egoyan, who said the CRTC needs to take this opportunity “to safeguard and strengthen (the) legacy of Canadi- an storytelling, and not let it wither.” Toronto actress Katie Boland said she’s worried about the future of Cana- dian film and TV workers. “My friends and I need and want jobs. We are starting families and contributing to society in an uncertain time for our industry and we all want to believe in our futures,” she said. “We need Canadian content to be made.” — The Canadian Press ALEX NINO GHECIU ARTS ● LIFE I ENTERTAINMENT After a devastating loss, ‘Ghost Twin is one of the things I felt I could hold on to’ Sometimes the show really must go on K AREN Asmundson never wanted to be a solo artist. For the entirety of her creative career in Winnipeg, first with groups like Celine’s Real Killer (“They called us Portuguese industrial punk lounge,” she says with a laugh) then with the art-rock duo Querkus and finally Ghost Twin, Asmundson has been a collaborator, contributing to music that reflected the disorder and disjointed- ness inherent to life on Earth. In name and in creative approach, Ghost Twin was a union between two kindred spirits whose separate weird- nesses began to merge in November 2001, when Jaimz Asmundson and Kar- en Dunham met at the extinct punk club Wellington’s on goth night. “Jaimz had more eyeliner on than I did,” says Karen, whose hair at the time was blue. For the next 22 years, the couple worked together on creative projects, first on Jaimz’ films, like Goths on the Bus (“an absolute masterpiece of Winnipeg filmmaking,” according to Universal Language director Matthew Rankin) and later in the musical realm. After Querkus broke up, and after he learned about Jawa, a live video-ed- iting technique, Jaimz proposed they start a band: he’d manage the software and she would provide musical polish. “I was intrigued, but I had just had this tumultuous band drama,” recalls Karen. “Maybe I don’t want to intro- duce that energy into my marriage. I wasn’t sure, but he convinced me, and it ended up being something that we did. Another layer of our relationship.” Ghost Twin released a pair of cult-fa- vourite albums through the boutique Art of Fact label. Their performances blended Jaimz’ technical wizardry with Karen’s spectral songcraft, and their music videos were just as frac- tured, fluid and unpredictable, marry- ing haunting soundscapes with visual collages of life beyond the mortal coil. “Think of the reanimated corpse of composer George Frideric Handel performing in a dimly lit German goth club in the ’80s,” one alt-weekly mused. Per Stylus magazine, Ghost Twin “makes you feel your skeleton.” “It’s so great finding someone as weird as you are,” Karen Asmundson said in 2015, ahead of a Ghost Twin Halloween concert for Hell Night at Ozzy’s. But losing someone as weird as you are is an indescribably strange feeling. ● ● ● “The day Jaimz died was the first day I’ve ever lived alone my entire life,” Karen Asmundson said last week at a Pembina Highway cafe. It was 384 days since her husband, a beloved artist and the programmer at the Dave Barber Cinematheque, died suddenly at the age of 42, with an aor- tic aneurysm striking on New Year’s Day 2024. “That was really hard to get used to — being alone in my house, like, ‘This is my life now. I live here by myself.’ I had to medicate myself a lot just to sleep at all. I was a mess,” she says. “I did the basic things I needed to do to look after myself. Social life. Maybe go to yoga class, I made a lot of soup. All the things to make you not feel like jumping off a bridge.” She took eight months of sick time she’d accrued as a city forestry tech- nician. She started writing about her grief, sharing updates to Facebook. “If I overshared this crazy woman in mad grief — Here! You take it — it meant I didn’t have to remember it anymore,” she says. The response was supportive. “People kept telling me I should write a book.” In April, she and Jaimz’ father, Gra- ham, took the late filmmaker’s ashes to be scattered in Montreal, where Jaimz was born, during a solar eclipse, but the journey wasn’t without its cosmic hiccups. “Airport security always zeroed in on Jaimz because he had so many electronics,” recalls Karen. “Then this time, they wanted to swab the bag of ashes. I was like, ‘Jaimz, buddy, they’re out to get you one last time.’” When she returned, Karen dealt with her husband’s archive of personal proj- ects, continuing many of them in his stead, including DashJam, an in-the- hopper interview series with local mu- sicians who play synthesizers hooked up to a vehicle’s dashboard as they give a personalized tour of Winnipeg. “Jaimz was a fantastical ideas man, and he was pretty good at finishing things, but was a lot better at starting them,” she says, smiling. “He had a lot of stuff on the go, and it’s either I’m going to finish them or nobody else will. That’s the reality.” She was only doing things that felt good, which meant making music wasn’t in the immediate future. But midway through 2024, Karen started to feel a shift. “There was a point that enough of the clouds lifted that I was able to see a future that had me in it, doing stuff,” she says. “There was no choice. Either I had to suffer or figure out who I was now. It was this process of figuring out who I am and what I can and want to do,” she adds. “I’d ask the void, ‘Jaimz, what do you want?’ And the answer I always got back was, “Do what you want. I’m dead, so just figure it out.’” “Well,” she thought. “I love Ghost Twin. I love performing. I’ve worked hard for this and I feel like I’m capable of doing it. And why should I give it up?” So last summer, Asmundson enlist- ed “honorary Ghost Twin member” Michael Falk (Les Jupes, Touching) to help her finish production on an unre- leased Ghost Twin EP of covers from the extended David Lynch universe, including a personalized version of Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart by Julee Cruise, featured in both Twin Peaks and in the late filmmaker’s Industrial Symphony No. 1, a collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti. Ahead of the EP’s scheduled release in April, Asmundson convened a new lineup for Ghost Twin — herself, Pat Short, Alison Hain and a cardboard cutout of Jaimz that friends created for his funeral — which will debut Saturday night at the Handsome Daughter. “I wasn’t sure what I could carry with me from my previous life, but as it turns out, Ghost Twin is one of the things I felt I could hold onto,” As- mundson wrote recently on the band’s Facebook page. “I wasn’t willing to let that go, and I know Jaimz wouldn’t have wanted me to. Ghost Twin was one of his many, many gifts to me.” ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com BEN WALDMAN About that cardboard cutout ‘WHEN I was planning Jaimz’ funeral I thought a lot about things he had told me in passing about wishes he had for his last rites. I remember him saying, “Just dump my body in a ditch somewhere. Who cares?” That wasn’t going to cut it. “Then I remembered how much we both loved Weekend at Bernie’s and liked the idea of rigging up the body with strings to party at the wake. That wasn’t going to happen either, but I was talking about these ideas with friends David Knipe, Mike Maryniuk and Gwen Trutnau, and it got them thinking. “Mike knew a place to have ‘standees’ made, and we collectively agreed that would be a fun and irreverent way to celebrate Jaimz. Mike arranged for the standee to be made. He also picked it up from the printshop and transported it to the funeral. Mike had been having trouble with one of his car doors being stuck shut. He managed to get the standee in the car anyways, saying, “Come on, bud, you’ve got places to be.” When he got to the funeral, he tried the stuck door and it seemed to have been magically fixed. Jaimz had had a small obsession during his later years with car mechanics so we decided that he fixed it from the astral plane somehow. “The standee was a fixture of the funer- al. People took their photos with it and stuck notes to it of messages they wanted to share with Jaimz.” — Karen Asmundson CONCERT PREVIEW GHOST TWIN With Mutable Body and Kindest Cuts ● Handsome Daughter, 61 Sherbrook St. ● Saturday, 9 p.m. ● Tickets: $15 plus fees at wfp.to/ghosttwin KAREN ASMUNDSON PHOTO The new Ghost Twin features (from left) Karen Asmundson, Alison Hain and Pat Short (with a cardboard cutout of the late Jaimz Asmundson). ;