College days

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 32 Comments

Reviews of Michael Ignatieff’s university tour are in from the Winnipeg Free Press, Concordia Journal, McGill Daily, Varsity, Hamilton Spectator, Toronto Star, National Post, Montreal Gazette, Metro Halifax, Halifax Chronicle-Herald and Maclean’s OnCampus. Susan Delacourt reported from stops at Nova Scotia Community College and Dalhousie. At least one attendee so far has come away quite unpersuaded.

While Liberals were pleased with the event, one attendee was unimpressed. Burlington Conservative MP Mike Wallace came for the last 30 minutes and dismissed Ignatieff’s answers to students’ questions, saying he could say anything he wants because he does not have the responsibility of being prime minister.

Unity Makes Strength

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 1:14 PM - 51 Comments

A note from the Prime Minister’s Office.

“To show solidarity with the people of Haiti, in a small yet special way, starting tonight, the Parliament buildings will be illuminated in Haitian colours.”

Photo gallery: Haiti sorts through the chaos

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

High flying

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM - 1 Comment

It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to bring cocaine into the small restricted hangar that houses NASA’s Discovery shuttle. But someone appears to have done just that. NASA says it has launched an investigation following the discovery of a small bag of cocaine at a Florida spaceport that is accessible to only about 200 NASA employees. The drug was spotted by a worker outside the bathroom. Says Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana: “We are conducting an investigation and working with center security and law enforcement officials to get to the bottom of it.” Meanwhile, employee drug tests are underway. In 2007, NASA launched an investigation after receiving tips that two astronauts were drunk just before embarking on spaceflights. No evidence of drunkenness was found.

MSNBC

Even paranoid people are right once in a while

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 12:21 PM - 8 Comments

They’re watching you! A new report from the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN) shows that the use of surveillance cameras in Canada is skyrocketing. In Ottawa, taxis have been equipped with taxi cams. In Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, cameras now litter the subway system. And, in preparation for the 2010 games, cameras are being spread throughout the streets of Vancouver. The SCAN reports suggests the latest trend may pose new “privacy and ethical concerns.” But the study authors admit that most Canadians don’t seem too hot and bothered. Nearly 75 per cent of Canadians believe camera surveillance helps reduce crime. Says SCAN: “public opinion is generally very favourable to their installation.”

Ottawa Citizen

Despite hassles, having kids may be good for your heart

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 12:13 PM - 2 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, having kids might actually lower your blood pressure. Despite the often hair-raising trials and tribulations of raising a little one, researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah say parenthood has a positive effect on the heart akin to cutting out salt or taking up exercise. The study, published in the Annals of Behavioural Medicine, measured the blood pressure of 200 adults (70 per cent of whom were parents), and found that those with kids had systolic blood pressure 4.5 points lower and diastolic blood pressure three points lower than non-parents. The effect is greater on mothers, whose systolic blood pressure was on average 12 points lower and the diastolic seven points lower than their childless counterparts. As Julianne Holt-Lunstad, the psychologist who led the research explains, “While caring for children may include daily hassles, deriving a sense of meaning and purpose from life’s stress has been shown to be associated with better health outcomes.”

The Telegraph

Canadian link to Mumbai Massacre

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 0 Comments

A Canadian man has been charged with helping plan the Mumbai Massacre, a three-day rampage by Islamist militants that killed over 160 people in the Indian metropolis. Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago-based immigration consultant with First World Immigration Services, was charged Thursday with three counts of lending material support to terrorist conspiracies for allegedly relaying messages, money and documents between the attack’s organizers. Rana, who received his Canadian citizenship in 2001 but has been living and working in Illinois for the past decade, is accused of facilitating David Coleman Headley’s travels to India to plan the assault by helping him pose as a fellow immigration consultant. Both Rana and Headley were arrested in Illinois last fall for allegedly hatching a plan to attack a Danish newspaper whose cartoons lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.

The Globe and Mail

"Living Books" coming to London, Ont.

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 11:58 AM - 1 Comment

On March 20, the Human Library program in London will give library visitors the chance to speak informally with “people on loan.” The “loaned” people are volunteers who are prepared to speak openly about their troubled lives in a bid to dispel myths and stereotypes about street youth and those with a troubled past. “It’s a really simple concept that mimics what we do with books,” said Ellen Hobin, an administrator for volunteer services at the London Central Library, on the program, which was originally started in Denmark. “I don’t want to change somebody’s mind. I just want to add to it,” said Andrew Clark, a living book volunteer who ran away from home at 16, dropped out of school, and lived on the street.

London Free Press

Serge Marcil still missing

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Contrary to reports that he had been found, it now appears the former Liberal MP is still unaccounted for.

My man's gone now

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 11:17 AM - 9 Comments

Ed Thigpen, who died the other day in Copenhagen at 79, was the last surviving member of Oscar Peterson’s great jazz trio, after bassist Ray Brown and Peterson himself. He used to visit Montreal frequently 20 years ago and I could go sit 10 feet from his drum kit and watch him bring all his formidable study, reflection and attentiveness to every beat. You couldn’t watch Thigpen and continue to believe jazz drumming was, or should be, essentially a chaotic and reactive activity. He was an orchestrator, one of the finest his instrument knew, and between sets he was a gentleman eager to discuss this music with strangers. There are plenty of Thigpen clips on Youtube, but you can start here:

I Never Want These Late Night Wars To End

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 11:04 AM - 15 Comments

In a time of mostly depressing news, it feels good to have a fascinating but essentially trivial story playing out before us on our TV screens every night, complete with jokes and music. The news in Late Shift 2: Freddy’s Revenge is coming so fast that it’s hard to keep up with it all (in a pre-YouTube/streaming era, it would be impossible; nobody watched Leno’s show last night, so without the internet, we’d never have seen the instant-classic Kimmel moment). But here’s some more stuff from last night:

- The Kimmel thing deserves its fame as a brilliantly awkward moment, as well as the first (probably last) moment when the complacency of Leno’s show was shaken up. All the shows have gotten more interesting because of this fight, with the exception of Leno’s, because Leno has mostly stuck to a few very careful, bland jokes that deliberately fudge the issue of what happened. (Most people with actual lives don’t follow this closely, so it makes sense for Leno to let his audience think that he’s been “fired” and is a great big victim. What made Kimmel’s bit so devastating was that it was the first time anyone on Leno’s show has acknowledged the way the outside world sees the situation. Some have compared it to Stephen Colbert telling the White House press corps that the rest of the world sees them as mere stenographers; it’s a really trivial version of that, but yeah. It’s bringing an alternate viewpoint into a hermetically sealed world.

I feel like at least one of Kimmel’s jokes was scripted or planned in advance; the “NBC ordered your show off the air” bit fits in with what Leno has been saying, and Leno fed him a straight line for that. Some of the others, though, the ones about him shiving Conan (portraying Leno as a victimizer rather than a victim), Leno clearly did not expect. And the sad thing, as others have pointed out, is that he has no comebacks. Leno is an experienced, talented standup comedian, and all successful comedians know how to deal with heckling, which was essentially what Kimmel was doing here. Either Leno has been in his bubble for so long that his comedy reflexes are shot, or he has such a wall of separation between his TV work and his standup that he doesn’t know how to deal with this situation on network TV.

- Dick Ebersol, longtime NBC executive and better Saturday Night Live producer than post-1985 Lorne Michaels, struck back hard at Conan O’Brien, blaming the whole fiasco on O’Brien’s “astounding failure” and his unwillingness to take notes about adapting his act to the 11:30 slot. He calls other comedians “chicken-hearted and gutless” for blaming this on Leno, and bluntly said that in giving the show to Conan, “We bet on the wrong guy.” Ebersol is a friend of Jeff Zucker’s, and his comments have been widely seen as a proxy for Zucker. (Which would make him the “Hud-Zucker Proxy.” Yes, that is a bad pun and obscure reference rolled into one, thank you.) Blaming O’Brien for a situation that began with Leno’s failure at 10:00 is a little nuts, as is his statement that Conan had failed after seven months when Leno spent his first year and a half getting beat by Letterman. (Sorry, as pointed out in comments, I had the chronology wrong there. Letterman started his CBS show a year after Leno took over The Tonight Show. Here’s an ironic-in-retrospect article about speculation that NBC would replace the low-rated Leno with Letterman.) But it demonstrates the resentment that NBC executives are probably feeling, perhaps even a little nervousness about the possibility that this could damage Leno if the “blame Jay” movement ever catches on.

- Mike Hale traces this whole situation to the real culprit: the foolish 2004 decision to force Leno out and promise the show to O’Brien in 2009. That is where the whole mess really began. It also probably explains Leno’s sense of victimization; he was forced to leave his show to accommodate his less popular younger colleague. The network had to beg him to stay because, to their surprise, he continued to get great ratings at 11:35. So from his point of view, he probably owes nothing to NBC (which had no faith in him five years ago) or O’Brien (who asked for, and got, his job). I’m not defending the victim act, if only because it makes for really dull television, but all the bad decisions that have come in the last two years are traceable to that one big bad decision in 2004.

- Finally, the culture-war subtext of Late Shift 2: Mission To Moscow is increasingly becoming text. This Letterman video last night explicitly casts the whole thing in culture-war terms. Again, the fun of Late Shift 2: City Under Siege is that it’s a fun, harmless version of the cultural and generational conflicts that are deadly serious in other areas.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.4471483&w=560&h=340&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

Update: Nathan Rabin has a good essay in the Wall Street Journal about why Leno, once a respected comic’s comic, is now almost universally hated by his fellow comedians. (Though of course they’ll want to continue going on his show once this is all over. Letterman has their respect, but The Tonight Show, even now, is probably better for their careers.) I personally find it interesting that Jerry Seinfeld was one of the few comedians to defend Leno and NBC; he did that mostly because he’s got a reality show coming up on the network, but there are a lot of Leno/Seinfeld parallels. As standup comics, they had a number of similarities, and they both have a strange combination of regular-guy observational style with a cold, almost contemptuous side. And both have a tendency to go for lowest-common denominator jokes when left to their own devices. You could say that Leno today is Seinfeld if he had never worked with Larry David.

Hey look: jihadist, jihadist, pants on fire

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:59 AM - 9 Comments

From the print edition, my column about the latest permutations of global terrorism, custom-written, I believe, to upset just about everyone.

It takes effort to miss the trend here

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:45 AM - 66 Comments

“Consider this hypothetical,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in The Atlantic three years ago. “It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm . . . If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close.”

Yeah, not so much. In December 2009, a young Nigerian Muslim saw the new face of America, Barack Hussein Obama, on his television and kept sewing high explosive into his underwear. On Christmas Day, the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, wore his stuffed shorts onto Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam, tried to detonate them over Detroit, and the rest is hysteria.

So it turns out that the mere sight of a black President with Muslims among his ancestors won’t stop a terrorist cold in his tracks. There was something almost sweet about the idea: maybe murderous hatred of the United States could be tipped back into something more benign, simply by showing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney the door. It would be excellent if it were true, but it isn’t. And that wasn’t the only myth that blew up when Abdulmutallab’s pants did.

Continue…

The dirty little secret behind attack ads

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:43 AM - 144 Comments

Even the words are creepy. “Cover-up. A description far more familiar to other countries. Until now.” But as we all know, it’s the sounds and imagery that make an attack ad. “When questions arose [ominous, metallic hum; barbed wire graphic] about what he and his government knew about torture in Afghanistan [clanging noise; more barbed wire], Stephen Harper shut down Parliament. Why doesn’t he want to face Parliament? [Militaristic snare drum; bell tolls.] What does Stephen Harper know that he doesn’t want other Canadians to know?”

I give up. His age? The combination to his gym locker? We’re never told. But we’re plainly invited to assume the worst. All is insinuation, right down to the sneer in the announcer’s voice.

Continue…

Rashomonitoba

By Colby Cosh - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:41 AM - 1 Comment

The Manitoba government has completed its independent review of abusive practices at the Cathedral Valley Group Home (1971-83) near Grandview. Barry Tuckett’s report is an impressive work of historical inquiry, but it is, perhaps inherently, somewhat unsatisfying. The government, clearly eager to quell the entreaties of former residents at the work farm for troubled and delinquent children, immediately endorsed the report; its family services minister also issued an apology “to those harmed by their residency.” Continue…

Confict-of-interest absurdity cries out for change to the law

By John Geddes - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:44 AM - 43 Comments

There’s room for honest disagreement about whether the government’s recent advertising blitz touting the benefits of its economic plan was really designed to promote the Conservative Party of Canada.

So it was never a slam-dunk that Mary Dawson, the federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, was going to rule that the ads violated the law forbidding government spending to further private interests. Dawson was asked to examine the matter by Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay in a complaint filed last October.

But even to those who think these particular ads didn’t cross the line into taxpayer-funded partisanship, Dawson’s reason for dropping the matter this week should be cause for alarm. She said the law in question does nothing to stop public office holders from using their positions to the advantage of their political parties.

Continue…

Winter Vacation Pricing

By Nina Slawek, Takeoffeh.com - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:43 AM - 2 Comments

Canadians have been so spoiled by low prices on sun vacations that we could be in for a big shock when the marketplace returns to sustainable pricing.

According to Lawrence Elliot, Group Vice President, Business and Corporate Affairs at Sunwing Vacations, rates for winter holidays this year are unprecedented. “I haven’t seen prices like these in about a decade. It’s absolutely incredible.” The question is; how long can this situation last? If you have been postponing your annual sun pilgrimage, read on.

In order to predict how pricing will net out over the next year or two, it’s important to understand why it’s so cheap right now. Much of it has to do with the U.S. market drying up. Hotels in Mexico and the Caribbean have seen occupancy declines of 25% to 50%, largely due to the absence of Americans and Europeans. Since the hotels need to fill at least 75% of their rooms to run efficiently, they are stimulating volume by passing deep discounts on to Canadian operators - which in turn are being passed on to consumers.

According to Elliott, “A room which normally retails for $125 per person, per night, is being offered at around $70.” Not only is this great news for Canadians, but the fact there are fewer tourists means restaurants, attractions and markets are less crowded.

But there’s a downside to bargain basement pricing. Hotels were barely covering costs last summer when occupancy was extremely low, and many all-inclusives were forced to cut back on amenities like a la carte restaurants. But according to Nancy Jackson, a Commercial Director for tour operators Nolitours and Transat Holidays, hotels are making a concerted effort to deliver on all of their promises over the peak winter period. “Hotels cannot afford to jeopardize their brand or reputation by reducing services and amenities when occupancy is low.”

Jackson says the Canadian consumer has been the big winner the last two seasons — “buying 5 star hotels for 2 and 3 star prices.” But in the longer term, Jackson says the tourist infrastructure may suffer, so it is in everyone’s interest for pricing to stabilize.

Steve Butchart, Vice President Sunquest Commercial, agrees with Jackson’s analysis, saying: “If this cycle continues, the quality will suffer.” But he also points out what may be a larger problem: “The downward pressure on pricing is creating false expectations for consumers.” In other words, it’s easy for consumers to grow accustomed to ever-lower prices, much harder when they quickly head in the other direction.

For instance, Signature Vacations’ recent ‘Deal of the Decade’ campaign is the direct result of negotiations with hotels for an allotment of rooms at deep rate cuts. Andrew Dawson, Signature’s EVP Commercial, says that once the rooms are snapped up and hotels begin to fill their quota, the rates go back up. “The hoteliers are being very pro-active in stimulating occupancy, but they won’t extend the same deals any longer. After February, they need to retain margins right up until Easter. Many are already sold out.”

Industry insiders stress that as soon as the U.S. economy begins to recover, we will see a domino effect on beach vacation prices. Using the example described above, revoking a discount of $55 per person, per night, will result in an increase of $800 per couple for a one week holiday.

As Sunwing’s Elliott says “Canadians are in for some serious sticker shock.”

By: Nina Slawek

Photo Credits: susispice.files.wordpress.com, PeskyMonkey

Spend It Where It's Needed

By Takeoffeh.com - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 2 Comments

Many people choose their travel destinations through a complicated equation featuring two key variables – where they would like to go and where they can afford to go. Travel search engine Cheapflights.ca is suggesting another approach – choosing destinations based on how much they need your money.

In a publication titled ‘Travelnomics Economic Stimulus Guide: A Report on the Destinations That Need Your Money the Most,’ Cheapflights used data compiled by Forbes and CNN to identify places that have been hard hit by the recession and face ongoing economic challenges. There are two separate lists, one for global tourism hotspots and another specifically for U.S. destinations.

With places like Ireland and Singapore on the list, it’s clearly not about the poorest places on earth, rather ones that have had a tough time in recession. The global list features four places you could pretty easily knock off in one trip – Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and the Ukraine. Jamaica is on there too, despite the fact that its tourism industry has weathered the recession quite well. It’s not clear why Canada didn’t make the grade, despite the fact that American visitors are scarcer than hockey players’ teeth these days.

While the positioning is that these destinations will benefit most from your tourism dollars, the corollary is that travel to many of these places has become much less expensive due to their economic and currency struggles. A case in point is Iceland, where a pre-recession pint of beer cost a startling 7 Euros, and now averages just 2 Euros. The U.S. list features Las Vegas, though it’s hard for many to feel pity when the house finally loses for a change. Oregon, Arizona, Rhode Island and California are among other U.S. destinations in need of a little cash stimulus.

Let A Celebrity Chef Introduce You To The Flavours Of South Africa
You may have run into Chef Rob Rainford through his Food Network Canada show Licence To Grill. There, the affable culinary artist invites a group of friends over to his backyard and proceeds to dazzle them with barbecued delights. This year, through an association with Marlin Travel and Collette Vacations, Chef Rainford is inviting Canadians to join him on a tour of South Africa titled Spectacular South Africa: Culture & Nature In Harmony.

The two-week trip departs Toronto on November 10, escorted by a Marlin Travel representative and hosted by Rainford. Participants will fly into Johannesburg to begin the tour and out of Capetown at the end. During the trip, Rainford will host a group culinary event and exclusive cooking demos.

As well as the culinary aspects of the tour, participants will also enjoy many of South Africa’s highlights. Experiences will include visiting Soweto, birthplace of Nelson Mandela, with the opportunity to dine with locals at a shebeen (tavern). Open-air safari game drives will let travellers seek out the “Big Five”. Some of the world’s most spectacular scenery will be revealed through a drive on the lush Garden Route between the mountains and the balmy Indian Ocean. There are also four leisurely nights in Cape Town, one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

The price for the trip is $6,999 per person plus $210 in taxes and fees. That includes all transportation, accommodations, sightseeing and many meals.

Photo Credits: travelblog.org, marlin-travel.ca

First Canadians arrive home from Haiti

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:31 AM - 0 Comments

Canadian survivors of the earthquake in Haiti began arriving home this morning. Three aircrafts flew into Montreal, carrying about 200 people, many of whom were children. Some of the evacuees were injured and medical staff were on hand in the airport. Family members and politicians greeted them the survivors, who had harrowing stories to tell and concern for the people they were leaving behind. There are about 6,000 Canadians living in Haiti, and Ottawa puts the number still missing at 1,415. Four Canadians are confirmed dead—a nurse from Ontario, a couple from Montreal and a Nova Scotia RCMP officer who was on an UN peacekeeping mission.

CBC

CTV

National Post

My life as a viral-media 'celebrity'

By Jenny Manzer - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 154 Comments

When the young man in the pickup stopped to offer me a ride, I was still in shock. I was carrying my 20-month-old down an arterial street in Victoria during Friday rush-hour traffic last fall. My daughter’s sturdy legs and a laundry bag from her daycare bumped against me as I walked. A tear had plowed down my cheek. I gratefully declined the offer. “We got kicked off the bus,” I burst out. The man looked surprised, then nervous. Only louts get thrown off buses, right? Little did I know the pariah I’d soon become when my story hit the Internet.

We’d been heading home from my daughter Briar’s daycare—a 10-minute ride on B.C. Transit. My usually cheerful daughter was stormy that day, and, after the bus left the terminal, began shouting, “No, no, no,” like a toddler metronome. My bag of tricks—book, snack, sippy cup—did not work. Five minutes into the route, the driver intervened. “It has to stop,” he said, or we had to leave the bus. “You have to learn to control her,” he told me, and pulled over. My daughter shushed. I carried her to the front, and told the driver I had no stroller (my husband had dropped her off by bike). I asked if we could get off at an actual stop. Other passengers began shouting: “She’s quiet now! Let her stay!” The chorus continued after we were out on the curb, and the driver mumbled we could get back on. “I can’t 100 per cent guarantee she won’t cry again,” I told him. I started walking.

When I returned home, still stunned, I filed a complaint with B.C. Transit. I was promised an investigation, and that the driver would be monitored. Two weeks passed. When I received a form letter and four bus tickets by mail, it rekindled my humiliation. I just wanted a sincere apology. I emailed our newspaper, and on Sept. 26 the Victoria Times Colonist ran an article: “Crying toddler kicked off bus.”

Continue…

Detroit Auto Show: Electric dreams

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 7 Comments

There was a whiff of optimism, albeit of the cautious variety, mixed with the usual scents of rubber, new car and acres of indoor carpet at the Detroit auto show this year. After a brutal 12 months that saw sales plummet across North America and two of the former “Big Three” Detroit carmakers file for bankruptcy, auto executives were understandably eager to put the past behind them and get back to the business of selling cars, trucks and SUVs amid growing evidence of an economic turnaround.

While the show lacked the glitz and glamour of even just a few years ago—no trucks were dropped from the Cobo Center’s ceiling or cattle-herded through downtown Detroit—the cloud that had hung over last year’s displays lifted to reveal an industry that, if not completely transformed, believes that it’s finally found the right mix of smaller and greener cars to survive in the new and more cutthroat automotive landscape.

Continue…

NFL Picks: Divisional Playoff Weekend

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 5:06 AM - 8 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week 4-0 Season 130-124-6

Scott Reid Last week 1-3 Season 129-125-6

•••

Arizona (plus 7) at New Orleans, Saturday, 4:30 p.m. ET

Feschuk: Hard to say who had a better weekend – Kurt Warner or me. On Old Man Warner’s side of the ledger, he went 29-for-33 against the Packers, tossed more touchdowns than incompletions and still got home in time to watch Murder, She Wrote. I, on the other hand, went a perfect 4-0 in my picks – winning widespread admiration from men* and gazes of intense sexual longing from women**. If New Orleans plays like it did for much of the year, I think they handle the Cardinals. But here’s the thing: Arizona actually ran the ball a ton last weekend (and very successfully) while over the past few weeks the Saints’ run defence has revealed itself to be more fractured than NBC late night. Assuming Kurt Warner is willing to stay up past his bedtime to see this thing out, Arizona has a shot at the upset. Pick: Arizona.

* Not true. ** The lady at Subway kinda winked (possibly a tic).

Reid: Last week – on my way to a blistering 1-3 record – I boldly stated, “If Green Bay loses this game, I’ll put anything you say on my face for at least 10 seconds.” So when Michael Adams stripped Rodgers and Karlos (what’s with the ‘K’?) Dansby walked the ball in to win the game in OT, I knew something truly awful was in my future. But even I couldn’t imagine Continue…

NBC will put Leno back where he started, in place of O'Brien

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 12 Comments

TMZ.com, which broke the story that NBC wanted to replace Conan O’Brien with Jay Leno, reports that Leno has struck a deal to go back to hosting the show. Leno’s contract for his failed 10 p.m. show said he was “guaranteed” the 10 o’clock hour, meaning NBC had to give him a new contract to re-locate him to the show he gave up hosting in 2009. Tonight will go on hiatus after Conan O’Brien’s final show on January 22; when it returns, it will feature Leno again, and NBC will have a bunch of reality shows and Law and Order shows at 10 o’clock. So after a lot of money, rancour and strange scheduling moves, NBC is right back where they started two years ago.

TMZ

Opening Weekend: 'The Lovely Bones,' 'High Life,' White Ribbon

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 4:29 PM - 2 Comments

Saoirse Ronan stars as a slain teen in 'The Lovely Bones'

This weekend offers a trio of movies for every taste—an overripe blockbuster (Lovely Bones), a gritty Canadian gem (High Life), and an austere German masterwork (The White Ribbon). Of the three, Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last May, stands out as the most important and accomplished work. It has swept the critics awards in the foreign-language film category, and is emerging as a leading Oscar contender.  High Life, by Winnipeg writer-director Gary Yates, is inconsequential, but it’s a blast. Witty, well-acted and full of surprises, its a Canadian answer to the Coen brothers, with a Tarantino kick. And The Lovely Bones, a keenly anticipated drama from Peter Jackson, is a colossal disappointment.

The Lovely Bones

Following up his triumph with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand director Peter Jackson—who I’ll always remember as the Hobbit-like creature who conducted LORT interviews in his bare feet in a Manhattan hotel room—scales more mature dramatic terrain with this adaptation of the Alice Sebold novel.  While it’s a less ambitious project than mobilizing the massed armies of Middle Earth for Armageddon, The Lovely Bones still presents a steep challenge, and despite a couple of strong performances, the film painfully underscores Jackson’s limits as a filmmaker. Set in the 1970s, the story is a murder mystery in which the audience knows the identity of the killer from the outset. The victim, 14-year-old Susie Salmon, tries to influence events from the grave, or more precisely, from the threshold of heaven, as her family remains haunted by the unsolved crime, unable to bury the past.

Saoirse Ronan, who was so effective as the young heroine of Atonement, is best thing about the movie: she has compelling radiance as as the murdered girl. And Stanley Tucci, who is unrecognizable in the role of her killer, George Harvey, is sufficiently creepy as the psychopath next door with a fetish for building doll houses. But the movie never finds a consistent tone. Jackson hurls himself into creating computer-graphic vistas of paradise, as we follow Susie through wedding-cake layers of the afterlife, as if the director himself would much rather spend his time chasing digital rainbows of pure fantasy than grapple with the finicky nuances of human psychology. The narrative back on earth—involving the bereaved Salmon family and her father’s dogged, half-crazed search  for the killer—is pedestrian, clunky and contrived. Continue…