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COMICS ◆ D4 LIFESTYLE ◆ D5 Friday, Sept. 21, 2012
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Beyond the Hall KEVIN MCDONALD BRINGING HIS NERVOUS ENERGY TO RED DEER FOR TWO NIGHTS OF BULL SKIT!
Photo by ADVOCATE news services
Kevin McDonald, 51, says jitteriness has always been part of his personality. BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF The most striking thing about Kevin McDonald, of The Kids in the Hall fame, is his nervous energy. A flustery nervousness fuels his rapid-fire speech during a recent phone interview, much as it did his sketch comedy personas during the influential Canadian TV show that ran from 1988 to 1994. (No, it wasn’t McDonald who played the unsettling Chicken Lady — that was Mark McKinney. But McDonald did play the Chicken Lady’s bizarre friend, the Bearded Lady, as well as a litany of other downtrodden characters, including drippy talk show host Darcy Pennell, The King of Empty Promises, and a guitarist who was the most talented yet least respected member of the extremely bad garage band Armada). It was also a running joke that McDonald, who actually co-founded The Kids in the Hall with Dave Foley, was the least popular member of the TV show, and was on constant probation with the rest of the cast. He would periodically face the cameras looking queasy, confiding that he would be cut if his next sketch wasn’t funny.
KEVIN MCDONALD ON STAGE Who: The Kids in the Hall co-founder, comedian Kevin McDonald, with Bull Skit! crew When: 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28, 29 Where: Scott Block, in downtown Red Deer Tickets: $23 ($18 students/seniors) from the Sunworks store on Ross Street McDonald, who performs in Red Deer with Against the Wall Theatre’s Bull Skit! troupe on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29, admitted that jitteriness was always part of his personality. “My father used to tell me that being a little nervous is good, because nervousness makes you realize that you are alive and you need to be alive to perform.” The self-effacing part is probably what separates a lot of Canadian comedians from their British and American counterparts, added McDonald. “We can act like we’re from England or from the States, but we’re not from either. That makes us imposters. And you get a sense of irony from being imposters. . . . “Canadians know ridiculous.” The 51-year-old comedian has guested on a lot of TV shows (Seinfeld, Arrested Development, MADtv, That 70s Show), has written many scripts, and voiced a lot of animated characters since The Kids in the Hall folded. He’s
about to put himself out there again — this time for Red Deer audiences — and he hopes what he comes up with on the Scott Block stage will be funny enough. “Whether or not it’s funny, it will be fun anyway,” he promised, with a nervous chuckle. McDonald plans to bring on a few other comedians, perform some “oneman sketch comedy” and do sketches with the local Bull Skit! troupe. McDonald was born in Montreal, but grew up in Los Angeles and Toronto. He moved to Winnipeg several years ago, after falling in love with a local dancer, who has two children. He now describes himself as a family man, who’d be reasonably content to settle in Manitoba if not for the work situation. “I’m a little out of the loop in Winnipeg,” admitted McDonald, who most recently wrote and stars in his own web show, Papillon. He’s next planning a move back to
LA, since he wants to write a pilot for a TV series that would give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the zany process of writing for a TV series — kind of a Larry Sanders Show, 30 Rock kind of thing, admitted McDonald. “Hey, I’m not the first one to invent this!” The team-writing process is what McDonald misses most about no longer doing The Kids in The Hall, which along with McKinney and Foley also included Bruce McCulloch and Scott Thompson. “I miss the chemistry and the laughs,” he admitted. “No matter what we do, we all know that the best work that we’ll ever do is with each other. “I mean, as funny as any of us are, we’ll never be as funny as when we were five guys that worked together.” That’s why The Kids in the Hall cast are currently planning another project — but don’t ask McDonald what that is yet. “We’re planning to have a meeting about when we can have a meeting to see about when we can get together. Maybe we can work on something like a tour, or a movie, or a musical version of our movie (Brain Candy), which no one saw. Or Mark has this crazy idea about writing a play. It could be like Spamalot. . . . We’ll see.” lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
Latest Evil a non-stop barrage of gunfire, explosions Resident Evil: Retribution One and a half stars (out of four) Rated: 18A BY LINDA BARNARD SPECIAL TO THE ADVOCATE
WRITER-DIRECTOR PAUL W.S. ANDERSON . . . STUFFS 100 POUNDS OF GORE INTO A FIVE-POUND SACK AND KEEPS JAMMING IN
Milla Jovovich drop-kicks her way into yummy mummy territory in Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth videogame-based zombie apocalypse flick in the franchise. In a rare respite from her trademark skin-tight leathers and nasty bucklewear, Jovovich’s Alice does a turn in suburbia (clearly a Torontoarea suburb, for the latest in the madein-Toronto franchise) as a jeans-clad, blond mom with an adorable little girl. It’s not too long before all hell breaks loose, sending property values plummeting as zombies rampage around the cul-de-sacs devouring brains and baying for blood. How that happens, along with the rest of the muddled plot, doesn’t really matter. We’re not here for compelling story; it’s all about the thrill of the kill, and Resident Evil: Retribution doesn’t disappoint in that department. Any inconsistencies in the narrative are explained by do-overs, changing alliances and character-altering serums pumped into jugular veins. It’s all the same blah-blah carnage as the first four flicks, with 3D effects hurling blood, blades and body parts into the audience amid a non-stop barrage of gunfire and explosions. Once again, steely eyed Alice stands splay-legged and whips huge rifles from a backpack holster to do battle with monsters that look like a plate of calamari gone rogue, drooling zombies
some of whom she seems to know from earlier movies. Meanwhile, a controlling computer called the Red Queen, who looks and acts like a petulant child, and a monster who won’t take no for an answer, make life difficult for the little band of renegades. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson knows that this is a franchise that works, so why tinker? He stuffs 100 pounds of gore into a five-pound sack and keeps jamming it in. Not content to stick with simple impalements and jetting arcs of blood, Anderson ups the ante with X-rays that show bones breaking and hearts being ripped from arteries as the blows land. The special effects are impressive but it’s easy to grow weary of them, making this Resident Evil look like what it is: a movie shot on a sound stage with a violent digital world created around it. Will there be a sequel? The last movie, 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife, grossed more than $280 million at the box office internationally, making it the most successful production in Canadian film history. When we last see Alice before the credits roll, she and what’s left of her gang are standing on the roof of the White House while D.C. explodes, burns and is under attack by winged zombies below them. Resident Evil: Romney, perhaps? Linda Barnard is a syndicated Toronto Star movie critic.
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Alice (Milla Jovovich), left, and her new sidekick Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) end up doing some globetrotting in the latest entry to the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: Retribution. and bad guys employed by nasty megaindustry The Umbrella Corporation. The deadly virus Umbrella cooked up for biological warfare gain — which also turns victims into flesh-eating zombies — is still out there and being tested on international populations in worldwide sales pitches. Alice ends up doing some globetrotting (of a fashion and in high heels, no less) along with new sidekick Ada Wong (Bingbing Li). They stride pur-
posefully down a deserted Yonge Street, the high-high slit in Ada’s red cheongsam revealing a menacing weapon strapped to her impressive thigh. You go, girl! Fight scenes are frequent. Slowmotion digital trickery makes bullets dance and dive while Alice flies through the air, vaulting from one victim to the next, guns blazing, using their bodies like pommel horses. Alice is aided by a few good men,