From the ground up

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 10:05 AM - 23 Comments

Glenn Wheeler argues that any future Liberal-NDP coalition will have to be driven by party rank-and-file.

It’s up to us envelope-lickers and door-knockers to create the political space for an honest dialogue about getting our parties to work together after the next election night. Unlike career hacks, we peons have little to lose, other than the country as we know it…

But for a coalition to be legitimate, the Liberal and NDP leaders have to acknowledge before the election that they are prepared to enter into such an arrangement if no majority emerges. For Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton to be able to make such an admission, their respective grassroots must demand that they do so. That way, coalition will appear to be an answer to public pressure rather than the last resort of losers.

For those about to flout

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 8:45 AM - 99 Comments

The government’s attempt to improvise a new limit on the Westminster system will have its first test this morning when the Prime Minister’s director of communications is scheduled to testify at the ethics committee. Once again, as in the matter of Parliament’s demand to see documents related to Afghan detainees, there is the small matter of the actual laws of this land.

If you should be so curious, the power of Parliament to “send for persons” is explained in chapter 20 of the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice. A committee of Parliament can issue a summons to any individual, ordering their attendance at a specific time and place. Only the Queen, the Governor-General, provincial lieutenant-governors, members of Parliament, members of provincial legislatures and individuals not residing in Canada are, in practice, granted immunity from such a summons.

Those who are rightfully summoned, but fail to appear can be disciplined by the House—Parliament’s powers in this regard explained in chapter 3 of second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice. Chapter 3 includes a subsection entitled “taking individuals into custody and imprisonment,” which reads, rather seriously, as follows. Continue…

Architecture: Buildings that will be and might have been

By Paul Wells - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 11:11 PM - 16 Comments

I was distracted last month when the Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ), which gives visitors to Quebec City a well-assembled but very limited selection of prominent Quebec paintings through the ages, announced Dutch star-chitect Rem Koolhaas as the winner of an international competition to choose the architect who will dramatically expand and reboot the museum. It’s a big project. The international character of the competition was unusual for Quebec. In reading up on the selection of Koolhaas, I stumbled across a resource all architecture geeks will want to know about.

That’s the L.E.A.P at the Université de Montréal, the Laboratoire d’Etude de l’architecture potentielle, or Laboratory for the Study of Potential Architecture. It’s based on a simple, elegant idea: architecture competitions can be a powerful analytical tool for studying trends in building design, because of course they tell you what got built but also what got considered and rejected. With enough cases in the database, researchers can start to measure, not just guess, which esthetic, economic and political considerations go into the choice of a given design in a given era.

It’s L.E.A.P. that allows us to see, not only Koolhaas’s design, but those of the architects he beat. The MNBAQ competition page (in English; sometimes I cut you guys some slack) is here; it shows, not only dozens of plans and drawings for Koolhaas’s design, but similar amounts of detail on the other 14 designs in the competition. The project criteria seem designed to drive any architect crazy: the 1933 museum was already expanded in 1991 to bridge to an 1861 prison a few dozen metres away. These three elements, built decades apart, are set well back from the Grande Allée. The new building isn’t next to the other two. It’ll be right out on the Grande Allée, connected by underground tunnels to the rest, serving as a face and front gate for the whole jumble. Koolhaas’s design is luminous and boxy:

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Mailbaggedness

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 8:35 PM - 50 Comments

Note: The Mailbag will be up sometime this afternoon. In the meantime, I invite you to peruse this column about personal lubricant and Murder, She Wrote.

The long weekend is over. I am sunburned (thanks to golf) and angry (thanks to golf and also Lost). This is the right frame of mind for a maibag.

Questions welcomed below.

MPs schmooze with Carole Pope, Divine Brown, Liam Titcomb

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 7:55 PM - 0 Comments

Several singers hit Ottawa to create awareness for the Canadian Private Copying Collective. A reception was held at the Fairmont Château Laurier. Below, Liberal MP Scott Simms got star struck with singer Carole Pope.

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Pope with NDP MP Charlie Angus.

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Pope with Conservative MP Terence Young.

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It's "Gotta" Dance, Paula, Not "Got To"

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 5:07 PM - 1 Comment

You have probably already heard that Paula Abdul will be bringing her unique brand of uniqueness back to TV by judging a dance contest show, called “Got To Dance.” The show, like the English show it’s based on, automatically loses points for not calling itself “Gotta Dance,” but it’s just a working title for the U.S. version. (I can see at least why the producers of the English version decided it was better than “Just Dance.” No one likes a show where the title gives you an order.) So maybe before it starts, they’ll realize that we all want to hear Gene Kelly’s voice in our heads singing the title.

A possible preview clip of the show and Paula’s likely co-judge, Rip Tide:

The new consensus

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 24 Comments

Last week, Michael Ignatieff said the auditor general and the Board of Internal Economy should discuss their differences over an audit of MP expenses. Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s Office said likewise. And just now, Jack Layton’s office sent out the following.

The issue of MPs expenses and the Auditor General has dominated much of the media attention of the past few days.

MPs expenses are currently indepedantly audited and are publicly available online, as per all rules and regulations currently in place.  New Democrats are fully confident that the process works, but we also understand that members of the media and of the public in general would like more information.

We believe that the Board of Internal Economy should consider further discussion on this issue. New Democrats are certainly never been opposed to having the BOIE continue the dialogue with the Auditor General to improve accountability and efficient use of public money.

Turning the other cheek in Gaza

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 1:51 PM - 25 Comments

Izzeldin Abuelaish

Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor and infertility expert, lives in Toronto with his five children. He used to live in Gaza with his eight children, but on Jan. 16, 2009, the day he and his family decided to take up the offer of a medical professorship in Canada, an Israeli rocket struck his home, killing three of his daughters and a niece. The tragedy wasn’t uncommon in Gaza that January—approximately 1,300 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, died in the 23-day assault—but Abuelaish’s response was.

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LOST gets more space

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 24, 2010 at 1:39 AM - 28 Comments

So having seen the finale, and not wanting to talk too much about what did and didn’t happen (as I write, it’s not over on the West Coast, and many people will watch it later than that), it leaves me with two questions:

1) Do I think this ending will be satisfying to enough people to prevent the show from creating a massive backlash?

2) Did the ending speak to me in particular?

I think question # 1 is the more interesting of the two questions. Obviously I can’t answer it definitively, short of taking a scientific poll of Lost watchers. And many people are, understandably, annoyed with the ending. I do think, though, that the ending seemed like it would provide enough closure to do what a big finale needs to do most of all: provide people with the sense that it’s over. And while hard-core fans will duke it out over the ending (unscientifically, it seems about 60% yea and 40% nay right about now). most people aren’t hard-core fans, and while the ending didn’t provide “answers,” it provided an ending, or rather two endings, both with a sense of finality.

As it happens, the episode uses a gimmick that has been used in one form or another in many previous works; a Continue…

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 6:45 PM - 1 Comment

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

Everything You Need To Know About LOST

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 3:34 PM - 5 Comments

In preparation for the big Lost finale — which will be the most important event in the history of the universe, answer all our questions, and prove that St. Elsewhere was real after all — Ken Levine has a guide to the characters and plot of the show. And now you’re completely caught up.

Because of the combination of big-network hype and online interest — Lost is one of the few shows that combines massive mainstream appeal with niche appeal — this comes off to me as the most relentlessly-hyped series finale since Friends. There may have been others in the interim that got the same level of promotion, but those are the two that really seemed inescapable. Interestingly, it may well turn out that a plane was more central to the Friends finale than the Lost finale, unless this is all leading up to a flash-sideways scene where someone screams “did she get off the plane!?” at an answering machine.

Update: One other thing to watch out for in the finale will be what we might call signposts — references to earlier seasons, characters, and modes of storytelling. Shows in their final seasons have a way of getting nostalgic for the time when the ratings were at their peak, hence the many Lost flash-sideways that serve to bring back what some of its viewers might consider its Good Old Days. And finales in particular, because they bring in many people who drifted away from the show a while back, tend to put in stuff that the ex-viewers can grab on to and use to orient themselves. The most extreme example is the Seinfeld finale, because that was written by a guy (Larry David) who hadn’t been with the show for two years, and who therefore brought back tons of earlier characters but referred to absolutely nothing that had happened in the preceding two seasons.

Lost won’t go that far. But since the creators are aware that their viewership tonight will be higher than usual, I would not be at all surprised if the ending has a bit of the feel of a reunion movie, picking up the pieces from earlier seasons — in addition to this past season — and carrying through to an ending. Or maybe not; but it will probably wind up being less confusing to non-frequent viewers than you might expect (but then, I think coming late into a serialized show isn’t as traumatizing an experience as we might think; if it were, soap operas would never get new viewers).

A Thai ghost story wins the Palme d'Or

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 3:22 PM - 2 Comments

A scene from Palme D'Or winner 'Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives'

It was a victory of dream over reality.  At the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival, a jury led by Tim Burton awarded the Palme d’Or to the most surreal of the 19 features in compeition: Lung Boonmee Raluek (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives). Directed by Thai filmmaker  Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady), it’s Thailand first film to win the top prize in the 63-year history of what amounts to the Olympics of world cinema. The runner-up Grand Jury Prize went to Des Hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men), directed by French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois, based on the true story of the 1996 murder of seven Christian monks  in Algeria by Islamic extremists. The unofficial prize for the competition entry that received the most critical acclaim yet was competely snubbed by the jury goes to Mike Leigh’s Another Year, a masterpiece of domestic realism.

I didn’t see it coming, but in retrospect it makes sense that Burton would annoint a film about magic, populated by phantoms, forest creatures and spirits. In accepting the Palme D’Or the Thai director inverted Oscar protocol: instead of thanking God, he thanked “all the spirits and all the ghosts in Thailand–they made it possible for me to be here.” (In fact, as I noted in a previous blog, the director’s visa was trapped in the red zone of Thailand’s civil war. I’m not sure which ghost released it, but at one point Cannes executive Thierry Fremault asked one fo the producers if he’d like him to phone President Sarkozy. ) And at the dinner where the producer regaled us with that anecdote, he seemed strangely confidant that his film would, in fact, win the Palme. It certainly will need all the help  it can get to find an audience in North America. The Thai movie unfolds as a slow-paced, animist hallucination–challenging art house fare of the first order. What did I think of it? Well, it’s the kind of film I would love to like. But while I was impressed by its rigour, ambition and beauty, it left me unengaged. Just not my cup of Thai.

Burton’s jury, meanwhile, split the Best Actor award between  Javier Bardem for Biutiful directed by Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU and Elio GERMANO in La Nostra Vita (Our Life), directed by Daniele LUCHETTI. Which is mystery to me and an insult to Bardem. Although not everyone was a fan of Biutiful, it’s a virtuosic display of talent. Like a lot of critics, I thought Our Life was dreadfully mediocre, and Germano’s acting simply wasn’t in the same league as Bardem’s towering performance. But the highlight of Bardem’s acceptance speech, and of the night, was his passionate valentine to Penélope. Calling her “my friend, my love,” Javier finally made it official as Cruz watched beaming from the audience, controlling her tears.

The prize for Best Actress went to Cannes royal Juliette Binoche–her photograph adorns the festival’s official poster this year. Binoche won it for her performance in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy , which was indeed quite the feat. As she told me in an interview a couople of days ago, she felt she was driving the whole film. And no wonder. Her  Iranian director didn’t speak English (the language of the script) and her co-star in this walking-talking two-hander had never acted before. Like several others at the Cannes podium, Binoche produced a card bearing the name of Kiarostami compatriate filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is in the ninth day of a hunger strike in an Iranian prison.

Among the other awards, the best director prize went to Mathieu AMALRIC for TOURNÉE (On Tour), who directed his own starring role as a French impresario who takes an American burlesque troupe on raod in  France. Giving his cast credit for co-directing it, he brought five of these Felliniesque women onstage to share the honour. The second runner-up Jury Prize went to the first movie from Chad ever to play in Cannes,  Un Homme qui crie (A Screaming Man) directed by Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN.

The stagecraft of the awards presentation–unlike the rest of this elegant festival–is always charmingly awkward, a spectacle of missed cues and bumbling exits. Bilingual host Kristin Scott Thomas, a Cannes regular, presided over the ceremony. And one of the funnier moments occurred as Atom Egoyan, chair of the Cinefondation short film jury, waited to announce the prize with co-presenter Michelle Rodriguez. As Rodriguez rattled on semi-coherently about this and that, beginning with a reminder that she was the helicopter pilot in Avatar–”You probably caught a glimpse of me in this 240-minute short film set in Pandora”–Egoyan looked on with an increasingly perplexed expression on his face, before finally getting his chance to launch into French and announce the winners.

For the complete list of Cannes winners, go to: 2010 Cannes Awards.

If only we could do away with Parliament entirely

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 2:42 PM - 161 Comments

The government is once more displeased with this democracy it must function within.

The Conservative cabinet has decided to ban its political staffers from appearing as witnesses before committees, setting up a new standoff between the government and opposition MPs just days after resolving the dispute over Afghan detainee documents … “Ministers are the ones who are accountable and answer to Parliament,” said Mr. Soudas, adding that a “government-wide” policy on the issue will be laid out on Tuesday.

As Kady O’Malley notes, this can only mean the Prime Minister will be showing up Tuesday to testify at the ethics committee in Mr. Soudas’ place. And once there, he might be asked when precisely between May 2004 and today did he decide it was not necessary for Parliament to hear from all requested witnesses, and whether senior ministers such as Jason Kenney and Peter MacKay agree with him now.

Glourious basterds and martyred monks

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 12:54 PM - 0 Comments

A monk (Michael Lonsdale) tends to an wounded terrorist in 'Of Gods and Men'

Toward the end of the Cannes festival, which will announce its awards in a hour or so, an indisputable theme began to dominate: international terrorism. I just caught up with Des Hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men), by French director Xavier Beavois, which has emerged as a strong contender for the Palme d’Or, although no single film has really broken ahead of the pack this year. Of Gods and Men is loosely based on events leading up to 1996 Tibhirine massacre, in which seven Cicstercian monks were held hostage then beheaded by Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria’s Atlas Mountains. This sensitive drama, filmed imbued with a reverential calm,  takes us into the quiet beauty Monastery World, where the daily rituals of singing hymns, tending gardens and giving medical aid to the villagers is distrupted by the mounting threat from terrorists, who have started cutting throats of infidels in the village. The middle-aged and elderly monks are, well, as adorable as the Seven Dwarves.

A scene from 'Outside the Law'

France’s colonial  history in Algeria, which remains an open wound, reared its ugly head again in Hors de la loi (Outside the Law), but from a radically different viewpoint. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, this fictional drama follows the fate of three Algerian brothers who emigrate to France after the Second World War–as the war ended, 15,000 to 45,000 Algerians (depending on your source) were  massacred by French troops at independence rallies. The movie opens with a horrifying sequence of the massacre, then turns into a kind of terrorist gangster movie as the three brothers become involved in an armed protest movement in France. They are the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Algerian revolution. One is a blunt intrument with a good heart, another a cold Leninist mastermind, and the third is a club owner and pimp in Pigalle who is trying to live the dream.  Unlike the monastic Of Gods and Men, the movie unfolds as a virtual action picture, with the terrorists serving as its flawed but glorious Godfather heroes.  No wonder it was controversial. The evening of its premiere on Friday, the Croissete was lined with paddy wagons as hundreds of riot police prepared for right-wing demonstrations. There were only scattered protests, but the security was extra tight at the Palais that night.

The terrorist theme, meanwhile, has surfaced in two more films in competition: Douglas Liman’s Fair Game, an American movie starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, which tells the story of the Valerie Plame/Joseph Wilson WMD scandal, and Route Irish by leftie Brit filmmaker Ken Loach, a tale of dirty tricks within the ranks of military contractors in Iraq. But by all accounts the best movie about terrorism in this considerable field of revolutionary drama is Carlos, from French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, which played out of competition. It’s a five-hour saga about Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos, whose terrorist career blossomed in the 1970s and 1980s, taking  him from pro-Palestinian activism to the Red Army, and finally into refuge under Sudan’s Islamic dictatorship. To my regret, I never found the five hours to watch Carlos. But it will no doubt be coming to the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall.

Now the awards beckon. Rather than going to the stiff black-tie ceremony, critics traditionally to watch a live video feed in an adjoining theatre, where they consummate the festival experience by howling catcalls at the screen. I’ll make my time-stamped predictions now, to be proved right or wrong very shortly. I expect the Palme D’Or to go to go to Of Gods and Men. I think Tim Burton’s jury will award Best Actor to Biutiful‘s  Javier Bardem for his virtuoso performance as as drug-dealing illegal-immigrant landlord who has terminal cancer–Mexican director Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU (Babel) throws everything at the screen in this visceral melodrama. The response to it was so polarized I’d be surprised if it wins the Palme D’Or. But I’ve heard it on good authority that Burton liked it. So you never know.  As for Best Actress I predict, and hope, that it will go to Junghee Yun for her extraordinary performance as a Korean grandmother in Poetry. Now it’s time to watch the awards. Outside I can hear the screams from the mob gathered in the street as the stars make their way up the red carpet . . .  stay tuned.

Crazy Cannes

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 10:01 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Mainz / AP

Surrounded by acres of pines and jasmine, overlooking a rocky headland of the Mediterranean, the Hotel du Cap is one of the world’s most luxurious hotels. But until a few years ago it didn’t take credit cards. The Cap, which served as a Vichy headquarters during the Nazi occupation, came to favour the kind of clients who travel with wads of cash. Half an hour up the coast from Cannes, it’s where stars and moguls like to stay when they come to the festival, far from madding crowd. Journalists used to be banned. Once I showed up there for a rendezvous with actor Donald Sutherland and found him waiting anxiously in the parking lot, petrified that I’d tell the front desk I was there to do an interview.

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We can’t do much about the Bloc

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 9:21 AM - 97 Comments

RYAN REMIORZ / CP

It is a common fallacy to suppose that what is must be: that human events unfold as they do not by accident or chance, but impelled by logical necessity, even inevitability.
We should beware, then, the tendency to attach some rational explanation to the continued existence of the Bloc Québécois, 20 years after its origins in the tumultuous final weeks of the Meech Lake accord, as if it were the natural product of some latent historical dynamic, or even served some useful purpose. Some things just are.

Or if there is a reason for the Bloc’s existence, it has more to do with the errors of its opponents than with the intentions of its founders, still less with Quebec’s—inevitable!—rendezvous with its separatist destiny. The Bloc has made no more contribution to that particular enterprise in the 20 years since it first set up shop than it has to the better governance of Canada. It has for most of its history been a declining political force, and would have been spent long ago but for periodic injections of adrenalin by the federalist parties.

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Fergie accused of offering access to Prince Andrew for cash

By macleans.ca - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 8:57 AM - 4 Comments

In an undercover sting, UK paper News of the World has recorded of a video of Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, in which she seemingly accepts 40,000 pounds in cash and makes a deal for another 500,000 pound wire transfer, in return for her promise to open doors to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew. The paper claims Andrew, UK Special Representative for Trade and Investment, does not know about the claims Fergie is making in his name. In the video, Fergie meets with what she apparently thinks is a rich businessman and offers up, “Look after me and he’ll look after you. . . you’ll get it back tenfold. I can open any door you want.” The paper says she agreed to a private meeting with their reporter, who was posing as an international tycoon, without once checking his credentials.

News of the World

Security tightened at NATO airfield in Kandahar

By macleans.ca - Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 8:19 AM - 6 Comments

After ground attacks Saturday night against NATO’s largest military base in Southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force is stepping up security on the airfield base. Although no one was killed in the four-hour attack, civilians and soldiers were injured as insurgents attempted to break through the northern perimeter. The insurgents have increased their efforts, this being the third major assault on a NATO base in six days, and ground attacks such as this have been very rare.

Toronto Sun

And finally

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 6:41 PM - 46 Comments

Here is a picture of teen pop idol Taylor Swift seeming interested in a coffee table book about Canada she is being given by the Prime Minister.

Martin Cohan

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 5:34 PM - 1 Comment

Marty Cohan, who is best known for co-creating Who’s the Boss? died Wednesday. He had an extremely long career in Hollywood, starting as an assistant director and then got some writing assignments at the then-new MTM productions, where he was assisting Jay Sandrich on some episodes of Mary Tyler Moore. He wrote a bunch of Mary episodes, freelanced for other shows including All In the Family and The Partridge Family, and acted as producer on the second season of The Bob Newhart Show. (“Producer” at that time meant more than it does now; the writer who got the title of “producer” was often in charge of supervising the writing, while the “executive producer” was more an overall job.)  After leaving MTM he created a Love Boat-style show called Flying High, wrote and produced for Diff’rent Strokes, and was credited as a co-creator of Silver Spoons though the final version was re-developed by others. His most famous credit, as I say, is creating Who’s the Boss? with fellow MTM graduate Blake Hunter. The show is, as I have said many times before, a quintessential example of a show that looks like a bad comedy until you look closer and notice how good, solid and strong the writing and characters are. That’s why the scripts have been successfully adapted verbatim in other countries.

Zero means zero

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 5:01 PM - 78 Comments

Maxime Bernier muses on government spending and taxation in a speech to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s say that the federal government is big enough as it is and that expenses are not going to grow anymore. And I’m not saying zero growth adjusted for inflation and population or GDP increase. Just zero growth. The overall budget is frozen. From now on, any government decision has to be taken within this budgetary constraint. Every new government program, or increase in an existing program, has to be balanced by a decrease somewhere else.

We will no longer have debates about how much more generous the government can be with this or that group, as if the money belonged to the government instead of taxpayers. The focus of the debate will shift to a determination of priorities: what are the most important tasks for government to achieve with the money we have? Is this government function really important and should we have more of it? Then where should we do less or what should we stop doing and leave in the hands of the free market, voluntary organisations and individual citizens? The silent majority’s interests are always being protected.

Disney Channel News, In Which The Name "Jonas" Is Rarely Mentioned

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 4:59 PM - 9 Comments

The way to understand the Disney Channel is that it is a network haunted by the ghosts of Walt Disney on the one hand and Tom Miller and Bob Boyett on the other. The latter two are not dead, but you know what I mean. The network is basically making lower-budget versions of the shows M-B made, with many of the same people behind the scenes.

Their most recent show, Good Luck Charlie, which the Family Channel started showing recently, was created very specifically as an attempt to make a show that serves the same audience as a TGIF comedy of the past. Though the acting is broad and the plots are farcical, as on all Disney shows, it’s a fairly down-to-earth concept, centering on a middle-class family where both the parents work and therefore everyone has to pitch in and help take care of the title character (a baby girl). The idea is to make a show that can have a little bit of crossover appeal to adults, mostly by toning down the wish-fulfilment fantasy aspect of their other shows and giving the parents some actual storylines. The show also has some signs of influence from the show that allowed Nickelodeon to beat Disney at its own game, iCarly. The main character makes a video diary every week, sort of a low-tech version of Carly’s web show. And the fact that iCarly crushes Disney’s similar but more fantasy-oriented show Sonny With a Chance might be part of the thinking behind launching a more down-to-earth show. In terms of viewership, the show has been doing about as well as Disney’s more successful shows – The Suite Life and so on.

The other bit of Disney-related news that demonstrates their Miller-Boyett kinship (via Zack Smith) is that their new show, a two-girl buddy comedy focusing on a dance show (I’m actually not sure what current trend this is based on, though I guess part of the idea is to create dancing stars, not just singing stars) will be created by Chris Thompson, the weather-beaten veteran who started in the Miller-Milkis-Boyett factory on shows like Laverne and Shirley, and went on to create Bosom Buddies for the Miller-Boyett firm. (He also created Action, though Bosom Buddies remains his best work.) Thompson comes off as a mass of seething anger every time I’ve seen him interviewed — I have no idea if he’s like this in real life — so the idea of him working on a happy Disney show is kind of funny, but as he himself pointed out to Variety, he can probably do this kind of show pretty easily:

“I wanted to do a female buddy comedy for a new generation,” Thompson said. “It’s my wheelhouse. I did ‘Laverne and Shirley,’ I did ‘Bosom Buddies.’ I know how to do a buddy comedy, and I wanted to go back there.

Back to Good Luck Charlie, though: when I recently talked to the two teen stars of the show, Bridgit Mendler (as the spunky teen girl everyone’s supposed to identify with, and who gets to sing the theme song) and Jason Dolley (as the idiot brother), they both cited Full House as a model, even though the plot of the show isn’t anything like Full House. The idea — let’s get the family watching together — is the same, though. Continue…

Order has been restored: Thai PM

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 3:13 PM - 1 Comment

After a two-month confrontation between the Thai government and ‘Red Shirt’ government protesters, leaving at least 84 dead, it appears that the worst of the violence in Bangkok has been quelled. In an emotional televised address on Friday, Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva claimed that order in his country has been restored. “We will continue to move swiftly to restore normalcy and we recognize that as we move ahead there are huge challenges,” he said. “Let me reassure you that the government will meet those challenges.” The prime minister did not mention whether he will call an election, although earlier this month he offered to hold elections on Nov. 14, which Red Shirt leaders seemed to support before fresh demands collapsed a possible deal. Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij suggested that elections could still be held at that time, and said Friday: “Our term ends in 2012. It is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that the government will choose to stay for the full term.”

Associated Press

Pride Around The World

By Takeoffeh.com - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 3:10 PM - 1 Comment

How Do You Spell Pride? P-A-R-T-Y!
If you’re looking for a good party this summer, you’ll find one at the many gay pride festivals held around the world. As well as their centrepiece parades, many of these events feature concerts, street fairs, comedy shows, film festivals and more.

Online travel dealmaker Cheapflights.ca has put together a list of top pride fests in Canada and international locations. You don’t have to go far – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver all host world-class parties, but if you’ve got a little wanderlust, you can jet off to Sao Paulo, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and San Francisco and see how it’s done there. A few highlights of this year’s festivities:

Vancouver - The Vancouver Pride celebrations are the largest in Western Canada, attracting more than half a million last year. This year’s festivities will focus on what it means to be free. Pride season begins June 26 with East Side Pride and culminates with the Pride Parade on August 1.

Montreal - The Montreal Pride Celebrations run from August 12-15 and promise an extravaganza of arts and entertainment peaking with the August 15 parade with the theme “Our Superheroes.”

Toronto - Pride Toronto is celebrating its 30th anniversary between June 25 and July 4 with a busy schedule of arts and entertainment. Queer icon Cyndi Lauper will headline at a free concert in Queen’s Park on July 3.

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Officially the world’s largest gay pride celebration, the Sao Paulo Brazil Gay Pride Parade attracted an incredible 3.1 million visitors in 2009, and expects to top 4 million this year. Celebrations run from June 3-7 with the headline parade set for June 6.

San Francisco, US - San Francisco’s Gay Pride Festival is the largest pride celebration stateside, and this year it’s marking its 40th birthday with the theme – ‘40 and Fabulous.’ On June 26 and 27, 19 stages and venues, 300 exhibitors, more than 200 parade contingents, and throngs of party-goers will descend on Market Street.

London, England - Like San Francisco, Gay Pride in London is marking 40 years on the front line of gay pride with its Festival Fortnight, June 19 – July 3. Highlights include film, art, theatre, comedy, walking bar tours and a barnstorming parade that will snake along some of London’s most historic streets.

St. Pierre & Miquelon: Europe Minus The Jet Lag
An anomaly in the Atlantic, the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon are a 45-minute flight from St. John’s, Newfoundland, but a continent apart in most ways.

Thanks to a quirk of history, the tiny islands and their 5,000 citizens remain firmly a part of the French Republic.  Local currency is the Euro, TV shows are beamed in from France and the cuisine has a strong French base.

Atlantic Canada travel specialist Maxxim Vacations says it knows these fascinating islands well, and offers 2- or 3-night packages as an add-on to a trip to the Rock. If you’re going to go that far east in Canada, why not dip over to a pocket of France?

The St. Pierre and Miquelon package includes 2 or 3 nights B&B accommodation with continental breakfast, one three-course French cuisine dinner with wine, a guided tour of the town of St. Pierre and admission to the local museum. Prices start at $499 including airfare from St. John’s.

Those seeking to combine a visit to St. Pierre and Miquelon with a stay in Newfoundland might be interested in the week-long A Tale of Two Islands itinerary which also includes 3 nights accommodation in St. John’s, one night each in Harbour Grace and Burin or Marystown, a whale-watching boat tour, and a rental car.

Photo Credits: sfpride.org, st.pierre-et-miquelon.com