So long, recession. We’ll miss you.

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 4 Comments

According to statistical indicators, economic analysis and the fact that millions of actual people paid actual money to see G.I. Joe, the recession is over. Quick, honey, glue the Visa card back together—we’re going shopping!

We’ve all had our ways of coping during this crisis. I for one have responded to hardship by comparing my situation to those who have lost their jobs or those who still have their jobs but have to work with Whoopi Goldberg.

It’s a useful exercise. For instance, no matter how hard you’ve been hit, you’re probably still better off than Travis Henry, the former football player who claims he can’t support the nine children he has fathered by nine different women. (Apparently, his cash reserves were drained by costs associated with legal matters and Mother’s Day.) Henry’s plight is so unappealing that I almost wonder if being imprisoned for cocaine trafficking would be a preferable pickle. Hang on, let’s ask him, since Henry was recently imprisoned for cocaine trafficking. Continue…

Why the Emmys hate ‘Mad Men’

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

The people who run the Emmy Awards have learned an important lesson: if you’re going to do something for crass commercial reasons, don’t admit it. The U.S. Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced recently that when the annual TV-industry awards are presented on Sept. 20, several major prizes would be pre-taped; only clips of the acceptance speeches would be shown on the live broadcast. In itself, this strategy might have produced only some angry grumbles. But Emmy producer Don Mischer made the mistake of telling the Television Critics’ Association why these moments were pulled from the main show: they honour “shows that mainstream viewers did not know and were not interested in.” There were so many angry responses, and so much bad publicity, that the Academy had to reverse itself and agree to show all the awards on the live broadcast as usual. But at least the people who run the Academy have made their preferences known: since industry professionals vote to nominate unpopular shows, the Emmys will try ignore them and focus on something else.

The awards that would have been removed from prime time were all dominated by little-watched cable shows that Mischer called “niche shows.” The prizes for TV movies and miniseries are dominated by HBO productions, like last year’s big winner John Adams, so these awards have been “time-shifted.” The broadcast also planned to cut the award for best writing in a drama, a category dominated by AMC’s Mad Men, but keep the full presentation of the prize for comedy writing, presumably because the likely winner is NBC’s 30 Rock. The time that would normally be used for the writers of Mad Men or the producers of Generation Kill would have been used for clips of popular but non-nominated network shows like American Idol. Like the Oscars, which expanded the Best Picture category to 10 films in hopes of getting some actual hits nominated, the Emmys are desperate to get some mainstream entertainment into the mix. Continue…

What made Budd Schulberg run

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 65 Comments

In 1939, a 24-year-old Budd Schulberg was writing a film called Winter Carnival, set at his alma mater, Dartmouth College. The producer Walter Wanger informed him that the screenplay needed work, and they were bringing in Scott Fitzgerald to improve it.

“I thought it was a joke,” recalled Schulberg, “like saying, ‘Leo Tolstoy.’ And I said, ‘Scott Fitzgerald—isn’t he dead?’ ”

Not formally. But he was doing his best. And a legendary bender of a weekend in New Hampshire while “researching” the film ended Fitzgerald’s participation and, to all intents and purposes, his career. Continue…

What’s ‘New’ anyway?

By The Editors - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 2 Comments

New Brunswick is hardly new. It’s been around for more than 200 years. The same could be said for Newfoundland, New Westminster, New York City and Nova Scotia for that matter. So how come no one ever talks about updating these names? It’s something the New Democratic Party might want to consider this weekend.

Having had the same old name since 1961, Canada’s third national party is considering a redo at its upcoming policy convention. One proposal would see the party drop “New” from its title. Supporters of the idea, such as NDP MP Brian Masse, figure it’s time to face reality. “Is it another 50 years that we stay ‘new?’ he asked. “Another 100?” Continue…

The quest to build a dinosaur

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 52 Comments

Jack Horner has a vision. A world-famous paleontologist who gives “an awful lot of lectures,” Horner pictures himself strolling out on stage before a crowd, just as he’s done countless times before. Instead of carrying the standard sheaf of notes or dusty slides, though, he has with him the ultimate prop: a real live dinosaur on a leash. “It’s small, but bigger than a chicken,” he writes in his new book, How to Build a Dinosaur. “Let’s say the size of a turkey, one day maybe even the size of an emu.” The emu-size dinosaur, he adds, “might have a muzzle or a couple of handlers.”

If it sounds straight out of Jurassic Park, it’s no coincidence: Horner served as scientific advisor on all three films, and is said to be an inspiration for the rugged protagonist, Alan Grant. Unlike in the movie, though, Horner thinks he can bring back a dinosaur without using its DNA—a crucial difference, because in real life, dino DNA hasn’t been recovered. Horner has a different plan. By making a few genetic tweaks to its modern-day ancestor, the bird, he wants to hatch a dinosaur straight from a chicken egg. Continue…

A new hope for Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 4 Comments

In the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, journalists scattered across northern Afghanistan would periodically gather in a mud-walled compound in the small and sand-blown village of Khwaja Bahauddin to attend press conferences hosted by a well-dressed ophthalmologist with thin hair brushed straight back from his forehead and a close-trimmed black beard.

His English was flawless and devoid of slang or colloquialisms. Years earlier, during the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad, he had been taught English by agents in Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service. He was patient with the questions thrown at him, but his back seemed to stiffen when asked how much the Americans and British were sharing intelligence they had gathered on the Taliban with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, of which he was a member.

“We don’t need any advice,” he replied. “We know our enemies. The international allies have been striking the Taliban for two weeks. We have been fighting them for years.” Continue…

Oh, EKOS. It's like you're not even trying anymore: 32.8/30.2/17.3/11.0/8.7

By kadyomalley - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 9:38 AM - 44 Comments

Really, is this all we get?

Conservatives: 32.8 (+0.1)

Liberals: 30.2 (-0.8)

NDP: 17.3 (+0.8)

Bloc Quebecois 8.7 (-1)

Green: 11.0 (+0.9)

Ineligible/undecided: 15.8 (+0.4)

No bonus poll, no pithy analysis — not even regional breakdowns? What have we done to deserve this?

How are we supposed to know if it’s just a coincidence that the NDP numbers jumped by exactly the same amount that the Liberals slumped? What about that tenth of a percent that the Conservatives picked up — was it at the expense of the Bloc Quebecois, with the rest going to the Green Party? And where did that additional 0.4% of undecideds come from?  At least the daily tracking graph shows that the NDP experienced an enviable little post-convention bounce — they were practically tied with the Liberals earlier this week! But is it permanent, or just a passing fad? And how can Stephen Harper — or Michael Ignatieff, or Jack Layton, for that matter — transform numbers like these into a functional minority, let alone a majority?

UPDATE: Okay, so it’s official: As per the EKOS-o-gram that just popped up in the ITQ inbox, due to “holiday schedules,” no analysis will be provided this week. It does, however, include the regional breakdowns, which suggest the Conservatives have all but caught up with the Liberals in Ontario, and the NDP is riding high in both British Columbia and Atlantic Canada:

I’ll update with a link to the full PDF as soon as it goes up on the EKOS site.

STILL MORE UPDATEY GOODNESS:

Because you all know how much ITQ enjoys a little math first thing in the morning — especially with decimal points! — she figured out the changes in the regional numbers between this week and last. Figured them out in her head, y’all. Now that’s devotion to duty:

Continue…

The true meaning of work? It’s money.

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

For all the talk about downturns being an opportunity for society to pull together, the current recession has been marked by an ugly round of class warfare. On the one hand, the middle class is ready to lynch the insanely well-paid financial-sector workers who brought the economy to its knees and are already back to looting the till. At the same time, there is little sympathy for those who actually work for a living, with a lot of anger directed at striking blue-collar workers who are deemed unworthy of their demands for wages and benefits.

What’s weirdest about this class war, though, is how the heroes of the knowledge economy, the members of the so-called creative class, have turned on themselves. In one of those odd moments of cultural synchronicity, everywhere you look these days someone is pledging their newly discovered appreciation for the virtues of skilled manual labour. In contrast with the inert “creative” work that involves moving columns of numbers around or turning one set of squiggly lines on a page into another set of squiggly lines on a page, activities that involve making and manipulating actual stuff are finding new fans. Continue…

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of August 18th, 2009)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Pierre Trudeau as a comics writer?

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 3 Comments

The oh-so-’60s tale of Michel Choquette and The Someday Funnies—the monumental comics collection that never happened (yet)—is one of the fabled hangovers of the 20th century’s most culturally tumultuous decade. For seven years in the 1970s Choquette, an exceedingly well-connected young Quebecer—Pierre Trudeau was a family friend—roamed the world on publishers’ advances and his own dime, gathering material for nothing less than a history of the previous decade in graphics form.

By the time he packed it in at Christmas 1977, with the last publishing possibility up in smoke, Choquette had material—the majority of it written and drawn by the same artist, but some a collaborative effort—from 200 people, most of them comics icons like Jack Kirby, but also including such figures as Federico Fellini, Frank Zappa and Pierre Berton. Exhausted, $300,000 in debt and with almost none of the contributors yet paid the $100 on offer, Choquette went home to Montreal, leaving the artwork in London and New York. Small wonder that Bob Levin, a San Francisco lawyer and comics aficionado who spent two years working with Choquette for a story (with samples of the art) in the August edition of The Comics Journal, calls The Someday Funnies, “the loudest of all never-were’s.” Continue…

Fresh fruit, veg and paranoia

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 10 Comments

In late July 2008, Antonio Souto, a B.C. fresh produce broker, drove out to Charnapal “Paul” Sandhu’s orchard in Osoyoos, B.C., just north of the U.S. border, “with a view,” as he puts it in an affidavit filed at the Court of Queen’s Bench in Calgary, “to purchasing an order of nectarines.” In terms that can sound almost Biblical, Souto continues: “I saw that the nectarines on the trees at Mr. Sandhu’s orchard were ripe and so purchased from Mr. Sandhu 119 18-lb. cases.” Affirms Sandhu in his own affidavit: “I did personally pick, sort, and pack these nectarines.” Upon buying the fruit, Souto goes on, “I went directly to Calgary. I then sold a number of these subject nectarines to Ms. Sharla Dube.”

Nectarines, a species of fuzzless peach, aren’t the standard stuff of litigation. But such were the tensions at the Calgary Farmers’ Market last fall that Dube, owner of the Cherry Pit fruit stand, filed suit against Calgary Farmers’ Market NGC Inc., the market’s general manager, the six members of the market’s board of directors, and two of her competitors (fruit and veg stalls owned by two of those very directors). Continue…

Trouble in Kenya, take two

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:55 AM - 42 Comments

Canadian Press picks up a CBC report tonight of another Canadian stranded in Kenya, this one unable to return for three years. The story of his situation has actually been around for at least several months—the Citizen’s Kate Heartfield having written about Abdihakim Mohamed in February. Heartfield followed up with a piece this June, concluding as follows.

Like Abdelrazik, Mohamed is a citizen and has a right to enter Canada. It’s in the Charter. But Abdihakim Mohamed has not yet become a cause célèbre. Maybe he never will. Maybe the stories we do hear — about the Abdelraziks, the Arars — are just a few among many.

It shouldn’t have to take a media firestorm and an expensive court case or inquiry for the government to respect the basic rights of citizens abroad. This government has shirked its duty in foreign affairs, forcing the courts to rule on cases that should have been handled, competently and honestly, by the Foreign Affairs Department.

'For the first time ever, the Green party of Canada has written a campaign plan that is fully detailed'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 8:35 PM - 34 Comments

And on the off chance that’s enough for you to take Elizabeth May seriously now, there’s more.

To upgrade her standing as a federal candidate May has been addressing other non-environmental issues by filing releases on her website, commenting on issues like Wafer-gate — when a New Brunswick newspaper alleged the prime minister slid a communion wafer into his pocket during a memorial service for a former governor general, in June.

Harper maintained that he ate the wafer, and the newspaper that ran the story has since retracted it and apologized, but not before May weighed in on the issue. While it might have been a matter of little interest to Green voters focused on environmental issues, Carr said it’s important that the party shows they aren’t a one-song band.

“Comments have to be made, and Elizabeth is great … she follows and tracks all the issues, and what’s really important is that people understand that the Green party is not a one-issue party, that we actually have comments and solutions to the full range of issues.”

A Child Unlike Other Girls

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 6:46 PM - 7 Comments

I’m not surprised that Shout! Factory has acquired the rights to Small Wonder (though I’d like to see them get to releasing season 2 and 3 for some of the shows they already licensed). It does surprise me a little to learn that it is “among the top thirty most-wanted series that are unreleased on DVD” according to TV Shows On DVD voting. I watched the show occasionally and, though I was a kid with undiscriminating tastes, I didn’t think it was anything special. Though like all of you, I can’t get the theme song out of my head, not because it was good but because it was the most anachronistic song ever: it sounded like it was written in the ’50s.

I recall I had two problems with it: one, I hated the dad, thinking of him as a complete wuss, pushed around by his boss, unable and unwilling to reveal his invention to the world, because he was afraid of success or something. And two, I hated Vicki the Robot. I mean, if I wanted a fantasy character on a syndicated sitcom, I’d watch Evie on Out of This World because she had magical alien powers and used them to have fun. (And I’ll bet you that Shout! Factory is trying to get the rights to that show, too, though I don’t know if Burt Reynolds will let go of it.) But who would ever want to be Vicki, an emotionless, monotonic metal person? Apparently, lots of people identified with a super-strong funny-talking tin can, because they voted for her to come to DVD. But I’m going to say that in a battle of syndicated sitcom ’80s fantasy characters, Vicki would get beat down not only by Evie, but also Ethel the Angel from Down to Earth.

However, any of them could and should destroy every single horrible person on She’s the Sheriff.

Spraying paint,legally

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 6:28 PM - 2 Comments

This is a photo essay I put together on a legal graffiti wall around the corner from the Maclean’s Quebec office. I walk by it often, and it is something to behold, partly for the quality of the art and the fact that it changes nearly everyday. Special thanks to Maclean’s Jonathan McKinnell, who did a great job making it pretty and stuff.

Canadian Drama Panorama

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 5:36 PM - 4 Comments

Today’s most interesting TV article (via McGrath) is Jason Anderson’s piece on the state of Canadian television drama.

The article looks at the question of whether Flashpoint and other U.S.-style (and U.S.-funded) co-productions are our future, or just a writers’-strike-inspired fluke, but it also goes into the history of Anglo-Canadian TV drama shows, broadcasting, and, most intriguing to me, regulation. As the article notes, today there is a lot more CanCon on networks like CTV than there once used to be, and that’s a result of the CRTC playing hardball and forcing them to open up the airwaves to Canadian shows. (I don’t want to go into the argument over how much regulation is too much; what isn’t in much dispute is that absent strong regulation, there would be almost no Canadian programming on CTV or Global, because that’s the way things stood before regulations got tighter.) In 1999, regulations were loosened to allow cheaper programming to qualify as CanCon, and the number of Canadian drama series instantly plummeted, but cable picked up a bit of the slack because “the CRTC and the Canadian Television (now Media) Fund compelled the specialty, pay, and cable networks to spend more on domestic production.”

The fact that Canadian scripted TV needs government support to survive doesn’t bother me ideologically. Most TV around the world needs government support (show business even gets plenty of less-visible subsidies in the States). And as the article notes toward the end, our regulatory/funding regime isn’t as strong as it is in other countries that have better TV:

“It’s an eternally complex business,” says Miller. “To me, the most basic point of all is that there is no stable, multi-year funding. That’s what the CBC has requested for the past 60 or 70 years, and it’s never gotten it, and that’s unique in public broadcasting around the world.” According to a 2006 study, the BBC — which Peter Grant rightly calls “the envy of all public broadcasters around the world” — receives approximately $124 per citizen for its services; the CBC gets $33.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons why the BBC has better TV drama than we do, not all of them related to money (after all, the BBC used to have its greatest successes with really cheaply-produced, videotaped dramas that they literally taped over after they aired).

The article also includes some hand-wringing over what constitutes “Canadian-ness” in a show: Flashpoint creator Mark Ellis argues that it has “Canadian Values,” while TV authority Professor Mary Jane Miller worrying that procedural shows aren’t Canadian enough because they solve too many problems with guns. You’ll notice that the creators of really first-rate dramas mentioned in the article — Intelligence and Slings and Arrows – don’t seem to worry overly about proving that their shows are truly Canadian; it’s hard enough for a creator to make a show that is truly his or hers. (I’m not specifically targeting or even thinking of Flashpoint by saying this, but if a show is trying to express Canadian values, that could be a sign that it’s not really expressing its creator’s values, which are much more interesting to see reflected in a TV series.)

And, to return to the historical issue, I find it striking that the basic formula for a procedural’s opening scene, as accurately described in the opening paragraph of the article, is virtually the same formula that such shows have used for more than 50 years. There are two things that have changed: one, the scene is now before the opening credits instead of after it, and two, characters from the main cast are more likely to appear in the opening scene (whereas 25 years ago, this scene would have been totally focused on the guest characters, like those little opening vignettes on The A-Team where the villains menace the Special Guest Victims while the regular cast members take day off). But the rule that a show needs to start with a scene of violence or tension and hook the viewer instantly, and only then start to explain exactly what’s going on, is still pretty much intact. Crime shows have changed less than any other kind of show except sitcoms.

Drowning in simple-mindedness

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 46 Comments

In a typical year, somewhere around 450 Canadians will die by drowning. As it happened, in the first week of August this year, eight Canadians drowned—about the number one would expect in any given week, except that, on this particular week, all the victims met their end in Ontario. Or more precisely, within the catchment area of the Toronto Star.

In an instant, an entirely probable series of tragic accidents was transformed into an epidemic, with a single cause and a universal remedy. “Drownings prompt calls to reform boating laws,” the paper’s front page headline blared. “A shocking spate of drownings on Ontario’s lakes and rivers,” the story reported, “has officials demanding all boaters be required to wear life jackets.” Continue…

Just visiting: Afghanistan edition

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:19 PM - 14 Comments

Afghanistan appears to have made great strides in its pursuit of Western democracy.

Ghani came back to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban having co-written a book called Fixing Failed States and having co-founded an institute to study them. His reputation as an academic, technocrat, and reformer is close to sterling, but his international appeal plays to a narrative Afghans are programmed to reject. In a country that has been a stepping stone for empires and a chessboard for foreign interests, politicians with external ties are to be watched closely. On the streets of Kabul, I have variously heard Ghani dismissed as “not Afghan”; “a foreigner”; and, most charitably, “an intellectual, yes, but not presidential.”

… Unlike other exiled politicians who have returned to their native lands and been greeted by welcoming crowds, Ghani wasn’t forced out of Afghanistan, so he doesn’t have the hero’s privilege of a public that either obligingly forgets the reason he left or celebrates it. Ghani’s campaign must constantly prove that his loyalties lie with Afghanistan—Afghans expect him to leave if things really heat up. Ghani represents everything Afghanistan needs, but he’s also precisely what its people can’t stomach. A vote for Ghani is a concession of pride.

… it plays to Karzai’s strengths. His Afghan-ness is harder to question, and that’s critical to an electorate whose most frequent expression of nationalism is collective resentment for other countries’ meddling. Karzai has convinced most of the Afghans I’ve talked to that he has rebuked the West when they’ve overstepped their boundaries, but Ghani has no record to prove that he has or will.

Taste of Jack Layton

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:04 PM - 7 Comments

NDP leader Jack Layton had a popular and busy booth at the Taste of the Danforth in Toronto. The festival takes place in the city’s Greek Town, which is in Layton’s riding.

Continue…

At least 95 killed in attacks on Baghdad

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 1 Comment

Two truck bombs have killed at least 95 people and injured 600 more at the Foreign and Finance Ministries in central Baghdad. Wednesday’s bombings represent the most deadly attack on Iraqi soil since the country took over domestic security responsibilities from U.S. forces and are seen as a challenge to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki attempts to portray the country as stable. Al-Maliki had recently ordered the removal of blast walls around the capital but has since called for a re-evaluation of his country’s security plans. The attacks appear to have been coordinated, with the Finance Ministry bombing coming just three minutes after a similar truck bomb was detonated at the Foreign Ministry. At least 60 people were killed at the Foreign Ministry and at least 35 at the Finance Ministry. So far, no one has taken responsibility for the attacks.

The New York Times

Tax-evaders take note

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 3:59 PM - 1 Comment

On Wednesday, the US Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service finalized an agreement with Swiss bank UBS in which the bank will give up the names and account details of more than 4,450 wealthy Americans suspected of tax evasion. The settlement is a big step forward for federal prosecutors and tax investigators who believe UBS sells tax evasion services to tens of thousands of rich Americans. In the coming weeks, UBS will notify the clients whose names are to be disclosed. To avoid prosecution and steeper fines, the clients still have time to reveal themselves before a voluntary disclosure program ends in late September.

The New York Times

A legal wall

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 2:37 PM - 2 Comments

Where Montreal’s graffiti artists go to show off their skills. Martin Patriquin investigates the city’s unique art experiment.

Tickle Trunk diplomacy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 2:30 PM - 49 Comments

As our forefathers foretold, the North shall be controlled by he who stages the manliest of photo opportunities.

So shall it be Mr. Putin without his top?

Or Captain Harper preparing for takeoff?

(More of the Prime Minister on Arctic parade is available here.)

The Summer Blockbusters Quiz

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 2:28 PM - 3 Comments

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE QUIZ