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Winnipeg Free Press
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Hero or villain? Documentary can't decide
Centring on the stranger-than-fiction saga of former Winnipegger Steve Vogelsang, this alternately intriguing and exasperating hybrid documentary tracks his trajectory from onetime local TV personality to convicted bank robber. As many Winnipeggers know, Vogelsang found fame and fortune here in the 1990s as a sportscaster for CKY (later CTV). In 2017, he became the talk of the town — in a very different way — when he was charged with committing a string of robberies across western Canada. In one sense, this crime story is as Winnipeggy as honey-dill sauce. In another sense, it's not that Peg-specific at all. Basically, the film uses Vogelsang's bizarre, breaking-bad bio as a pretext to raise questions about what documentaries can and cannot do. American filmmakers Charlie Siskel (Finding Vivian Maier) and first-timer Ben Daughtrey want to examine the nature of truth, the lure of narrative and the complicated relationship between filmmaker and subject. Documentarians such as Joshua Oppenheimer, Alex Gibney and Errol Morris regularly and seriously raise these issues in their works. Unfortunately, The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg never makes good on its premise. This is the lite version of cinematic introspection. To start off, there's that cute, come-hither title, which derives from the results of an Uptown magazine readers' poll. There's the misplaced determination — especially at first — to frame Vogelsang's crime spree as a jaunty, comical caper, even though his actions did real harm to real people. And there's the voiceover narration. Comedian and actor Will Arnett, the Arrested Development alumnus who has Winnipeg family connections, relates Vogelsang's story, which makes sense. But the decision to present Arnett as a slightly snarky talking bison? That's just bad. Putting all this strained, gimmicky stuff to one side, Vogelsang can be a compelling subject. At one point, he says there are people who judge you on the worst thing you've ever done and people who judge you on the best thing you've ever done. As the filmmakers speak with Vogelsang's colleagues, students, family and friends, the doc aims to span that spectrum. One can immediately see why Vogelsang succeeded as a TV personality. He's a natural performer, with an onscreen persona that comes across as affable, relatable and funny, and he was good at connecting with viewers. Back in the day, he had a wardrobe supplied by Harry Rosen. He MC'd local charity dinners and events. He was 'Winnipeg famous.' Steve Vogelsang was a TV sportscaster in the 1990s. Steve Vogelsang was a TV sportscaster in the 1990s. Sensing that his time in front of the camera was coming to an end, Vogelsang became an instructor in broadcast journalism at what was then Red River College (now RRC Polytech). There he performed for his students, many of whom talk of him as an inspiring and supportive teacher. But even at the peak of Vogelsang's good times, there are hints about how things might go wrong. There's his seemingly bottomless need for external attention and validation and his tricky combo of arrogance and insecurity. Add in depression, debt and divorce, plus some plot twists involving family history and personal relationships, and Vogelsang's life takes a sudden, drastic turn. Through archival news footage and extensive talking-head interviews, including with all-round sports guy Peter Young and Free Press reporter Melissa Martin, the film offers different, even conflicting takes on Vogelsang. Then there's Vogelsang's own take, which brings up Daughtrey and Siskel's decision to put the man himself at the centre of the documentary process. As our talking-bison friend suggests, this is a 'true-crime documentary in which the criminal does his own reenactments.' Vogelsang collaborates with the filmmakers to act out his crimes, sometimes driving around in an imaginary invisible car, sometimes dressing up to replicate grainy security videos. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Vogelsang at first tries to downplay what he did. He didn't make that much money. He didn't consider himself violent because he didn't use actual weapons. At one point, he held up a bank with a disguised glue gun. 'I was more a danger to bedazzle someone's jeans than shoot them,' he says, a joke that tries to paper over the fact that even if the 'guns' were fake, the tellers experienced the threat as real. As Vogelsang attempts to come to terms with the trauma he caused, the film becomes a more complex and serious exploration of identity. It also raises some knotty issues about documentary ethics. If, as some interview subjects suggest, Vogelsang's crimes came from a need to get back into the spotlight, could the film itself be a continuation of what one interview subject calls Vogelsang's 'celebretization of himself?' As Martin suggests, 'I think one of the tricky things in this story is to remember that in some way Steve is always going to be trying to control the narrative.' At several points, Vogelsang says he co-operated with the film because he hopes people can learn from his mistakes. But what have we learned by the end of this project? Viewers might be looking for closure, for a satisfying character arc, for a journey of self-knowledge, self-improvement or maybe even redemption. The film seems to resist. By the end, The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg feels like a warning about the limits of documentary storytelling. As the bison ruefully tells us: 'The filmmakers wanted to tell a good story, but they couldn't decide whether Steve was a hero or a villain, sympathetic or insincere, an unfeeling monster or a remorseful, complicated soul.' So, you'll have to decide about Steve Vogelsang for yourself. You'll also have to decide whether this open-ended documentary approach is refreshingly honest or just frustrating. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Business Mayor
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 gives me hope for the series' future
Table of Contents Table of Contents True to the past Keeping up with the present Looking to the future For aging millennials like myself, this coming July 11 is just as important a holiday as Independence Day. That's when developer Iron Galaxy will release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 . The remake package will bring two skating classics back into the mainstream, faithfully recreating the series' critically acclaimed third installment and radically reimagining its fourth. It'll even come with full cross-platform support, including Nintendo Switch 2, and allow users to share their create-a-parks across any platform. It's bound to bring up a lot of nostalgia for thirty-somethings who still know every word to CKY's 96 Quite Bitter Beings . But the remake package isn't just about looking back at the past; they're just as much about the skate culture's present and future. At a preview event, I went hands on with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 . While collecting secret tapes and skating around Alcatraz brought me back to my parent's living room, I still felt like I was playing something that belongs in 2025. Whether it was the great modern music cuts or one of the package's excellent new parks, it never felt like Iron Galaxy was simply coasting on millennial nostalgia. Instead, this very much feels like an audition for a brand new Tony Hawk game, one that's in-tune with what skateboarding is today rather than what it was in the 2000s. It represents the past, present, and future of skate culture in one package. Picking up right where 2020's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 left off (minus its original developer), the new package unifies the series' third and fourth installments into one consistent package. That's a bit complicated to properly pull off, as the originals are very different games. While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 followed its predecessors' lead, the fourth was an entirely different creative swing that introduced more story and open-ended exploration. Iron Galaxy rebuilt the latter to structurally match the former, with two-minute runs full of challenges to complete. In an interview, Design Manager Mike Rossi tells me that the decision simply came down to trying to create a unified collection that takes what's great from 4 and melds it into 3 . There's a balancing act here between staying faithful to these games while reinventing them, and that spectrum is represented at a few levels. I see the first side of it right away when I dive into Foundry, one of THPS3 's most iconic levels. The new version is almost exactly how I remember it, tossing me into a rectangular room full of catwalks to grind on and molten fire traps to avoid. The only difference? It gets one heck of a makeover. Foundry is a perfect showpiece for the technological overhaul here, as flames spew out of pipes as I grind past them and I can see light reflections in the metal surfaces. It's much more spectacular than anything I've seen in the series before, but it still feels entirely in the spirit of the original level with no ramp or collectible out of place. Activision Other levels from 3 similarly benefit from the glow up. Suburbia feels like more of a real town, with a greater density of detail and interactables like a skitchable ice cream truck that rounds the cul-de-sac. Rio is the same graffiti-filled park where I need to compete in heats, but it's bathed in warmer light that better fits the South American setting. Canada initially feels like an entirely new level, but I mostly chalk that up to whiter snow and more detailed trees that bring a formerly sparse park to life. Every time I felt like the levels were entirely redesigned, I'd look up the originals and realize that Iron Galaxy was sticking much closer to the script that I thought. That's a testament to its ability to make something old feel modern. It's also immediately apparent that Iron Galaxy didn't try to fix what wasn't broken when it comes to controls. I was able to start skating on pure instinct as soon as I picked up the controller, pulling off manuals and kickflips from muscle memory. It feels remarkably smooth and perhaps even speedier than ever thanks to quicker recovery times after falling (which I did quite a bit). I can tell that the movement matters a lot to the development team when speaking to Mike Rossi, who credits the original games' movement as being part of its timeless appeal. 'A big thing is how the character actually feels and plays,' Rossi tells Digital Trends. 'To me, games that always are touted as timeless, they have really solid, tight controls when you're playing. Mario 64 is a great example of that. You can pick that up and it still feels awesome. I think that's the same with Tony Hawk. With that, paired with the levels and how they were designed, those kind of go together. Your base foundation of how your character feels and how the world interacts with that were very well done, so as a result it becomes timeless in a sense.' I got a feel for that the deeper I got into my demo, as I found more ways to fluidly chain together my combos. Iron Galaxy has created more opportunities for that with subtle tweaks. Wall planting is a great way to extend my score when I'm about to crash, as is skitching on the back of a car, a THPS4 feature that's been added to 3 . Old levels like Suburbia give players opportunities to incorporate the latter and also feature some subtle environment tweaks to give players more rails to hop to from a skitch. Those changes are tastefully implemented, keeping the feel and spirit of THPS3 intact. Though it's very faithful in a lot of respects, there's a lot about the package that feels totally new too. THPS4 may as well be a new game, imagining what would have happened if the original developers never experimented with the original trilogy's beloved structure. The skateparks I played (College, San Francisco, and Alcatraz) all felt just right in that two-minute arcade structure, even though they were designed for more of a free skate experience with NPCs that handed out missions. I collected lost packages, photobombed tourists, and skitched off the back of a professor's stolen car all within the time limit. For those who want an experience that's a little closer to the original game, the package does let players adjust the timer in levels. It can be set for up to an hour, which should help dial the pace back to the original game's. It is an odd change though, as we're not exactly getting a proper THPS4 remake here. It feels more like a level pack for THPS3 . It almost makes me wonder if this entire remake series would have made more sense as one live service offering that added new parks from the series' past, skaters, and gear over time. Read More PlayStation Plus offers Alan Wake, Black Ops: Cold War in July Activision While that change might ruffle some purists' feathers, other new additions feel incredibly natural. The soundtrack is, predictably, a highlight here, as all of the newly included songs pair perfectly with the original list. Tracks like Wavves' King of the Beach and Fontaines D.C.'s Boys in the Better Land keep the vibe feeling up to date with what today's skaters, and those who came up between the originals and their remake, are listening to. It's when I find my head bobbing along to Run the Jewels that I really see beyond my personal nostalgia and see THPS 3 + 4 as something that's trying to bridge the gap between generations of skate culture. That was especially important to Tony Hawk himself. Rossi tells me that the Hawk Man was extremely involved in the development process, personally testing builds on a monthly basis. He had significant input that went beyond adding new songs to the playlist. Rossi tells me that Hawk's job was to make sure the whole thing didn't feel outdated. 'A big thing for him is to make sure the trick names are accurate and the tricks are representative,' Rossi says. 'It's important for him that it's properly representative of how the current culture is referring to things. So, if a trick name has changed, or how they're referring to a trick in the current vocabulary of skate culture … or we have icons in the menus representing certain tricks. He'd be like 'This icon looks more like this other trick.' And then he'd send some reference images of what that trick looks more like and he'd be like 'I think this pose captures it better.' He's clearly very passionate about it!' My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. Making sure that modern skate culture wasn't left out was equally important to Iron Galaxy. Rossi and I speak at length about the differences between the 2000s skating scene and now. He points to how inclusive and community-driven skating is, something that naturally found itself reflected in the remake's larger roster of skaters (including eight new ones) and genre-spanning music. Rather than trying to recreate someone's idea of the 'good old days,' Iron Galaxy held a mirror out its window and created a skating game that reflected what it sees today. 'For me personally, skating feels like another place where people can go and have a community,' Rossi says. 'My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. It originally was much more punk and rougher, whereas I feel like now it still has that tough exterior, but at the same time you'll still get a lot of support. I always feel very awkward when I'm at a skatepark. I can't do very much, so I'm always working on my basics. But I can still have a chat with someone who's doing way cooler stuff, and I don't feel judged or dismissed.' The best moments of my demo weren't spent reliving classic levels but rather skating in an entirely new one. THPS 3 + 4 peppers in brand new skate parks into a Tony Hawk game for the first time in over a decade. This was Iron Galaxy's chance to prove that the series isn't entirely tied to the past – and it nails that assignment. I spent a considerable amount of time exploring Waterpark, a brand-new level that drops me into a run-down amusement park. It's full of giant slides I can grind down, a goofy pirate ship attraction, and cutouts of a beaver mascot that I need to smash through. Missions have me grinding on pipes to break valves and looking for a way to get into a shuttered arcade. It's an excellent playground with more secrets and pathways than I can find in two short minutes. Activision What's remarkable about it is how much it feels like an authentic Tony Hawk level rather than a cheap imitation. It's not just that it's filled with tapes and 'SKATE' letters to collect, but that it's so sharply designed. I begin each run atop a row of slides that I can hop between to extend my grind. Iron Galaxy seemingly knew exactly how I'd try to hop off of that structure, too. On one run, I jump off to my left, landing on another rail that deposits me perfectly down to one on the ground below. It almost feels like a good Sonic the Hedgehog level, giving me plenty of ways to carve a path around the park in an uninterrupted trick string if I'm skilled enough. It has the same exact spirit of the old parks and that's by design. 'One of the directives I gave the level design team was that this needs to feel like this was left on the cutting room floor,' Rossi says. 'Like we found the collision and markup on a hard drive from 4 and revitalized it. With Waterpark and any of the new stuff we added, we wanted to make sure it felt like something that was always there. One of our engineers came up to me one day and said 'I've been playing a lot of Waterpark, it's really fun! I looked online to figure out how to complete a goal and I couldn't find anything. And I was like dude, you have just made my day!' Sure, there's still room for remakes if Activision decides to reheat Underground , American Wasteland , or the dreaded THPS5 . But Waterpark leaves me eager for an entirely new mainline Tony Hawk game, because Iron Galaxy understands both the series and today's skate culture at large. I'd take another dozen levels like Waterpark, an even wider range of modern skaters, and a soundtrack that finally puts Pup in a Tony Hawk game. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 feels like one more temperature check to see if the world is really ready for a new installment. I certainly am based on what I've played here, and I hope this new generation of skaters gets an original game to call their own soon. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 launches on July 11 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
Digital Trends
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 gives me hope for the series' future
Table of Contents Table of Contents True to the past Keeping up with the present Looking to the future For aging millennials like myself, this coming July 11 is just as important a holiday as Independence Day. That's when developer Iron Galaxy will release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4. The remake package will bring two skating classics back into the mainstream, faithfully recreating the series' critically acclaimed third installment and radically reimagining its fourth. It'll even come with full cross-platform support, including Nintendo Switch 2, and allow users to share their create-a-parks across any platform. It's bound to bring up a lot of nostalgia for thirty-somethings who still know every word to CKY's 96 Quite Bitter Beings. But the remake package isn't just about looking back at the past; they're just as much about the skate culture's present and future. At a preview event, I went hands on with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4. While collecting secret tapes and skating around Alcatraz brought me back to my parent's living room, I still felt like I was playing something that belongs in 2025. Whether it was the great modern music cuts or one of the package's excellent new parks, it never felt like Iron Galaxy was simply coasting on millennial nostalgia. Instead, this very much feels like an audition for a brand new Tony Hawk game, one that's in-tune with what skateboarding is today rather than what it was in the 2000s. It represents the past, present, and future of skate culture in one package. Recommended Videos True to the past Picking up right where 2020's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 left off (minus its original developer), the new package unifies the series' third and fourth installments into one consistent package. That's a bit complicated to properly pull off, as the originals are very different games. While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 followed its predecessors' lead, the fourth was an entirely different creative swing that introduced more story and open-ended exploration. Iron Galaxy rebuilt the latter to structurally match the former, with two-minute runs full of challenges to complete. In an interview, Design Manager Mike Rossi tells me that the decision simply came down to trying to create a unified collection that takes what's great from 4 and melds it into 3. There's a balancing act here between staying faithful to these games while reinventing them, and that spectrum is represented at a few levels. I see the first side of it right away when I dive into Foundry, one of THPS3's most iconic levels. The new version is almost exactly how I remember it, tossing me into a rectangular room full of catwalks to grind on and molten fire traps to avoid. The only difference? It gets one heck of a makeover. Foundry is a perfect showpiece for the technological overhaul here, as flames spew out of pipes as I grind past them and I can see light reflections in the metal surfaces. It's much more spectacular than anything I've seen in the series before, but it still feels entirely in the spirit of the original level with no ramp or collectible out of place. Other levels from 3 similarly benefit from the glow up. Suburbia feels like more of a real town, with a greater density of detail and interactables like a skitchable ice cream truck that rounds the cul-de-sac. Rio is the same graffiti-filled park where I need to compete in heats, but it's bathed in warmer light that better fits the South American setting. Canada initially feels like an entirely new level, but I mostly chalk that up to whiter snow and more detailed trees that bring a formerly sparse park to life. Every time I felt like the levels were entirely redesigned, I'd look up the originals and realize that Iron Galaxy was sticking much closer to the script that I thought. That's a testament to its ability to make something old feel modern. It's also immediately apparent that Iron Galaxy didn't try to fix what wasn't broken when it comes to controls. I was able to start skating on pure instinct as soon as I picked up the controller, pulling off manuals and kickflips from muscle memory. It feels remarkably smooth and perhaps even speedier than ever thanks to quicker recovery times after falling (which I did quite a bit). I can tell that the movement matters a lot to the development team when speaking to Mike Rossi, who credits the original games' movement as being part of its timeless appeal. 'A big thing is how the character actually feels and plays,' Rossi tells Digital Trends. 'To me, games that always are touted as timeless, they have really solid, tight controls when you're playing. Mario 64 is a great example of that. You can pick that up and it still feels awesome. I think that's the same with Tony Hawk. With that, paired with the levels and how they were designed, those kind of go together. Your base foundation of how your character feels and how the world interacts with that were very well done, so as a result it becomes timeless in a sense.' I got a feel for that the deeper I got into my demo, as I found more ways to fluidly chain together my combos. Iron Galaxy has created more opportunities for that with subtle tweaks. Wall planting is a great way to extend my score when I'm about to crash, as is skitching on the back of a car, a THPS4 feature that's been added to 3. Old levels like Suburbia give players opportunities to incorporate the latter and also feature some subtle environment tweaks to give players more rails to hop to from a skitch. Those changes are tastefully implemented, keeping the feel and spirit of THPS3 intact. Keeping up with the present Though it's very faithful in a lot of respects, there's a lot about the package that feels totally new too. THPS4 may as well be a new game, imagining what would have happened if the original developers never experimented with the original trilogy's beloved structure. The skateparks I played (College, San Francisco, and Alcatraz) all felt just right in that two-minute arcade structure, even though they were designed for more of a free skate experience with NPCs that handed out missions. I collected lost packages, photobombed tourists, and skitched off the back of a professor's stolen car all within the time limit. For those who want an experience that's a little closer to the original game, the package does let players adjust the timer in levels. It can be set for up to an hour, which should help dial the pace back to the original game's. It is an odd change though, as we're not exactly getting a proper THPS4 remake here. It feels more like a level pack for THPS3. It almost makes me wonder if this entire remake series would have made more sense as one live service offering that added new parks from the series' past, skaters, and gear over time. While that change might ruffle some purists' feathers, other new additions feel incredibly natural. The soundtrack is, predictably, a highlight here, as all of the newly included songs pair perfectly with the original list. Tracks like Wavves' King of the Beach and Fontaines D.C.'s Boys in the Better Land keep the vibe feeling up to date with what today's skaters, and those who came up between the originals and their remake, are listening to. It's when I find my head bobbing along to Run the Jewels that I really see beyond my personal nostalgia and see THPS 3 + 4 as something that's trying to bridge the gap between generations of skate culture. That was especially important to Tony Hawk himself. Rossi tells me that the Hawk Man was extremely involved in the development process, personally testing builds on a monthly basis. He had significant input that went beyond adding new songs to the playlist. Rossi tells me that Hawk's job was to make sure the whole thing didn't feel outdated. 'A big thing for him is to make sure the trick names are accurate and the tricks are representative,' Rossi says. 'It's important for him that it's properly representative of how the current culture is referring to things. So, if a trick name has changed, or how they're referring to a trick in the current vocabulary of skate culture … or we have icons in the menus representing certain tricks. He'd be like 'This icon looks more like this other trick.' And then he'd send some reference images of what that trick looks more like and he'd be like 'I think this pose captures it better.' He's clearly very passionate about it!' My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. Making sure that modern skate culture wasn't left out was equally important to Iron Galaxy. Rossi and I speak at length about the differences between the 2000s skating scene and now. He points to how inclusive and community-driven skating is, something that naturally found itself reflected in the remake's larger roster of skaters (including eight new ones) and genre-spanning music. Rather than trying to recreate someone's idea of the 'good old days,' Iron Galaxy held a mirror out its window and created a skating game that reflected what it sees today. 'For me personally, skating feels like another place where people can go and have a community,' Rossi says. 'My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. It originally was much more punk and rougher, whereas I feel like now it still has that tough exterior, but at the same time you'll still get a lot of support. I always feel very awkward when I'm at a skatepark. I can't do very much, so I'm always working on my basics. But I can still have a chat with someone who's doing way cooler stuff, and I don't feel judged or dismissed.' Looking to the future The best moments of my demo weren't spent reliving classic levels but rather skating in an entirely new one. THPS 3 + 4 peppers in brand new skate parks into a Tony Hawk game for the first time in over a decade. This was Iron Galaxy's chance to prove that the series isn't entirely tied to the past – and it nails that assignment. I spent a considerable amount of time exploring Waterpark, a brand-new level that drops me into a run-down amusement park. It's full of giant slides I can grind down, a goofy pirate ship attraction, and cutouts of a beaver mascot that I need to smash through. Missions have me grinding on pipes to break valves and looking for a way to get into a shuttered arcade. It's an excellent playground with more secrets and pathways than I can find in two short minutes. What's remarkable about it is how much it feels like an authentic Tony Hawk level rather than a cheap imitation. It's not just that it's filled with tapes and 'SKATE' letters to collect, but that it's so sharply designed. I begin each run atop a row of slides that I can hop between to extend my grind. Iron Galaxy seemingly knew exactly how I'd try to hop off of that structure, too. On one run, I jump off to my left, landing on another rail that deposits me perfectly down to one on the ground below. It almost feels like a good Sonic the Hedgehog level, giving me plenty of ways to carve a path around the park in an uninterrupted trick string if I'm skilled enough. It has the same exact spirit of the old parks and that's by design. 'One of the directives I gave the level design team was that this needs to feel like this was left on the cutting room floor,' Rossi says. 'Like we found the collision and markup on a hard drive from 4 and revitalized it. With Waterpark and any of the new stuff we added, we wanted to make sure it felt like something that was always there. One of our engineers came up to me one day and said 'I've been playing a lot of Waterpark, it's really fun! I looked online to figure out how to complete a goal and I couldn't find anything. And I was like dude, you have just made my day!' Sure, there's still room for remakes if Activision decides to reheat Underground, American Wasteland, or the dreaded THPS5. But Waterpark leaves me eager for an entirely new mainline Tony Hawk game, because Iron Galaxy understands both the series and today's skate culture at large. I'd take another dozen levels like Waterpark, an even wider range of modern skaters, and a soundtrack that finally puts Pup in a Tony Hawk game. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 feels like one more temperature check to see if the world is really ready for a new installment. I certainly am based on what I've played here, and I hope this new generation of skaters gets an original game to call their own soon. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 launches on July 11 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
CBC
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg documents a broadcaster-turned-bank robber. That doesn't make it interesting
Social Sharing Stop me if you've heard this one. A Canadian sports broadcaster walks into a bank. He's cradling a bleeding hand, wearing a bomb and smiling a crooked smile. "Hi," he says. "I'm TV's Steve Vogelsang. Hand over everything in the till." OK, maybe he didn't use those exact words. But according to The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg, Vogelsang's real-life robberies did, more or less, follow those beats. And the documentary — premiering Friday on Prime and made with Vogelsang's co-operation — markets itself as following that bizarre spree; a descent from CKY Winnipeg's supposedly fan-favourite 1990s onscreen jokester, to a 2010s convicted felon with six bank robberies spanning two provinces. Astoundingly, we learn much of this from Vogelsang himself — a few years after his six-and-a-half year prison sentence, and seemingly more than game to re-enact the various crimes he orchestrated at banks between Alberta and Saskatchewan. WATCH | The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg trailer: But as he narrates how he built the fake bomb in a nearby motel room and even why he once went for a facial immediately after a stickup, the question, of course, becomes "Why?" Why would a successful, well-liked and seemingly normal journalist suddenly — to steal a Vince Gilligan-ism — break bad? In keeping with that AMC show, part of the reason may be that he was never all that normal. The by-then divorced, twice-retired (from journalism and then teaching) enigma at the centre of our story is perhaps not all that difficult to unravel. He's prickly; he's self-assured to a fault and impulsive. He received a no-contact order for a student he dated; he once told his ex-wife — while they were still married — he would forever remain the smartest person she'd ever met. But that's about where the twists and turns end. We get an intriguing opening, detailing Vogelsang's often cinematic robbery plans, and we hear from more than a few people who actually knew him. There are his students, ex-wife and the cops and prosecutors tasked with catching him. There's even the slick narration of Will Arnett, perpetually dwelling on the strangeness of both the case, and Vogelsang's participation in the documentary. Though, perhaps somewhat confusingly, Arnett is cast as a bison, telling the story in a tongue-in-cheek voiceover that frequently cuts to images of the animal as if it's the one telling the story. It's a frustratingly artificial conceit, seemingly chosen to both tie in to the general tone of the documentary and, as Vogelsang explains in a pointedly unexamined remark, because the misunderstood brutes are his "spirit animal." In short, neither our star or story are, as Shrek would say, like an onion: The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg is critically short when it comes to layers. There's even a depressing lack of novelty. Like how band Flight of the Conchords often jokingly described themselves as New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-gangsta-rap-funk-folk comedy duo, Vogelsang is a runner-up even in the incredibly niche genre he's created for himself. When it comes to the most famous Canadian late '80s/early '90s ex-performer-turned-bank-robber, subsequently starring in a streamer-released documentary about their time in prison and subsequent rehabilitation, Vogelsang is, at best, number two. The winner would probably be actor Deleriyes (Joey) Cramer (Flight of the Navigator). But where his documentary, Life After the Navigator, effectively mines his pathos and self-reflection, The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg is seemingly more interested in the story's elevator pitch than its substance. Lack of depth This is particularly disappointing given who's behind the project. Co-director Charlie Siskel (who worked with first-timer Ben Daughtrey) is perhaps best known for the Oscar-nominated documentary Finding Vivian Maier, about the curiously dark life of a prolific and previously unknown street photographer. And like his followup doc American Anarchist — about the somewhat regretful author of bomb-making manual The Anarchist Cookbook — his work succeeded by the depth he found in his subjects. Maier first appeared to be a normal nanny, then an outsider artist, and then a deeply unwell victim of unmanaged mental health issues. American Anarchists 's William Powell was first a countercultural iconoclast, then a reluctant apologist — alternatively lamenting his book's association with violent crimes, and sparring with Siskel as he pushes him to declare his own guilt. But deprived of the incredible complexity of Maier, and perhaps wary of criticism he received for the combative tone of American Anarchist, any interest The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg might offer expires about 20 minutes in. Why did Vogelsang rob those banks? Because he needed money. Isn't there a deeper, more intriguing motivation? To be honest, not really. This was years after his journalism career — during which he was a hyper-local sort of celebrity, cannibalized by an industry shrinking fast enough you'd be harder pressed to find people therein without financial problems than with them. This is why the premise of the documentary — that Vogelsang is somehow an absurdly odd "type" of bank robber — soon falls flat. He was an aging, out-of-work man whose talents lay in a dying field. Any assumption about what the typical criminal looks like, and Vogelsang's apparent distance from it, springs from potentially harmful stereotypes. After those aspects are dealt with, The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg becomes a long apology video — a tenuous excuse to exist, especially given Prime already told one niche, offbeat Canadiana crime story with its recent maple-syrup heist miniseries, The Sticky. And even still, whether Vogelsang has earned any redemption is irrelevant. The true feelings in his soul are beyond the scope of a documentary, let alone a review. But aside from a late and tenuous revelation around an old family friend's possibly negative influence on Vogelsang, there are few depths to plumb. And without them, the majority of this documentary amounts to a platform for Vogelsang to make the case that he's sorry.
