153-150

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Stoffer has decided to switch sides as it relates to House votes on the gun registry, which, by this unofficial count, makes it 153 votes against C-391, which, in theory, clinches defeat for the bill.

CBC has the government trying to arrive at a Plan B in the event C-391 does fail.

I Heartily Endorse This TV-Related Post

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 8:48 AM - 0 Comments

Even if Todd VanDerWerff hadn’t mentioned me in his AV Club primer on the 1970s situation comedy, I’d say it was one of the best pieces I’ve read in that very important period in television history — a period that set down durable, still-existing rules for not just one kind of comedy but several, and also had a lot of impact on television drama. (Larry Gelbart once said something to the effect that he saw M*A*S*H as an opportunity to do actual drama on TV, as opposed to shows about mysteries or medical procedures. Shows that are about doctors or cops, but aren’t procedurals, owe more to M*A*S*H or Barney Miller than they do to the same era’s hour-long dramas, even the good ones like Police Story.) But mostly it was about the three big producers of comedy — MTM, Lear and the Miller/Milkis/Boyett/Garry Marshall team at Paramount — and their competing philosophies of how a comedy should be written, what it should be about, what kind of jokes it should have, even how old the writers should be. The philosophies were different enough that when Mary Tyler Moore’s old Dick Van Dyke director Jerry Paris came over from Paramount to direct a couple of episodes of her show, he spent two weeks asking “where are the jokes?” and insisting that the episodes were going to bomb on audience night because there weren’t enough punchlines. He was now part of one school and Moore had helped to found another.

Speaking of Mary Tyler Moore’s show, Earl Pomerantz has a post where he breaks down the structure of an episode he wrote, to show us how it moved quickly despite the limited number of sets. It’s also, of course, an episode that deals with a situation that could just as easily be played for drama, yet doesn’t play it as a “very special episode” — a key part of the MTM style. (Lear shows would go dramatic if the subject matter was serious. Paramount shows, until the MTM people got there, were mostly escapist. And MTM-style shows are the ones that take stories that could be drama, play them as comedy, but try not tot trivialize the stories. Of course there’s overlap between all three styles.) That episode will be released in a few weeks as part of the final season of Mary Tyler Moore — and since All in the Family‘s DVD releases have also been re-started, the DVD situation for this era of TV isn’t quite as bad as it was.

Burning Qurans and Ground Zero mosques: when is it reasonable to take offence?

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Phil Sandlin/AP

For one mad moment, it seemed as if the standoff over the burning Qurans and the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque would both be settled at one go—with a trade. Terry Jones, the deranged Florida pastor threatening to burn 200 Qurans to protest Islam’s responsibility, as he sees it, for the Sept. 11 attacks, announced to a waiting world he would call off the bonfire, in return for a promise by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the slightly saner cleric behind the proposal to build a mosque in downtown Manhattan, near the site of the attacks, to move it further uptown.

It soon emerged that the deal existed only in the pastor’s crowded head. And a good thing, too: such an exchange would not only have rewarded Jones for his threats, but implies a false equivalence between the two events, the one involving the destruction of a religious symbol, the other the construction of one. Yet for all their differences, both raise essentially the same question: when is it reasonable to take offence, and when to give it? A civil society, it is often forgotten, imposes mutual obligations: not to give offence needlessly, certainly, but also not to take offence too easily.

Continue…

The afterparty to end all parties

By Stephanie Findlay - Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 7:29 PM - 0 Comments

So on Thursday night, I set out with two events on my agenda. One was a dinner, the other was an afterparty. It would be my first time covering both types of events. The Roosevelt Room was hosting a dinner for “Hollywood producing mogul,” Harvey Weinstein and the cast of Sarah’s Key. According to the publicists, the dinner was in celebration of Weinstein’s purchase of the film and apparently Kristen Scott Thomas was set to attend. I felt obliged to go, seeing as she’s one of my Dad’s favourite actresses.

I arrived at nine with some friends, and was seated down at one of nine white tablecloth-covered tables in the middle of the restaurant. But while we were on the guest list, it soon became clear that we weren’t on the VIP guest list. The talent was late, as usual, but when Kristen Scott Thomas arrived she was ushered into a room in the back. I didn’t even see her. Sorry Dad. The back room was where the real action was happening but a waiter told us that no, we couldn’t go in. We were assured that the next event—a celebration of Belstaff jackets—would boost the energy level but I wasn’t so sure. There are many things that get me excited, but jackets isn’t one of them. A waiter offered another option: that we stick around to get rich men to buy us drinks. Rumour has it they come in droves as the night goes on. However, gold digging was not on the agenda this evening.

So around eleven, we headed over to the after party for Rio Sex Comedy. In the afternoon, I had emailed my friends warning them, “this may or may not be fun.” Now, this is an embarrassing admission, but until that night I hadn’t actually been to a film’s private after party yet. My strategy had been to attend the big name parties, like the InStyle Party, or the Hello! Party, or the Vitamin Water party. As a TIFF rookie, pre-screening cocktails or post-screening parties didn’t register on my radar. And what a rookie mistake that was.

This party was less of a party and more of a friendly hang out at an open bar and free food with people who happen to be actors. Charlotte Rampling stationed herself at the entrance of the restaurant casually chatting. Bill Pullman made his way through the bar, laughing and shaking hands congenially. And there were scores of other people there from all over the world, some from Brazil, some with English accents. Sure, maybe these people weren’t the likes of Matt Damon or Blake Lively, but to me, they represented a refreshing side of TIFF. A stripped-down version where the focus was on the film and the people, as opposed to the glam and the profit.

I could have gone to another party after. Internationally famous Puerto Rican musician Louie Vega was djing at AME, a restaurant down in the entertainment district in King West. But thumping bass and random people was not how I wanted to end my stint at the festival. So I went home instead, opting to remember TIFF by people coming together and enjoying their work in film.

TIFF triggers Oscar buzz for 'The King's Speech'

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 7:06 PM - 0 Comments

Deobrah Chow, director of 'The High Cost of Living,' winner of best Canadian first feature.

The people have spoken, and they’ve crowned a period drama about British royalty as  the most popular picture at TIFF. The 35th edition of the festival wrapped today with an awards brunch, and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech—starring Colin Firth as George VI and Geoffrey Rush as his Australian speech therapist—won the  oxymoronically named Cadillac People’s Choice Award. Part of the TIFF ritual is to launch Oscar-pedigree films, and the audience prize has become a bellwether of Academy recognition—its past three winners have been Precious, Slumdog Millionaire and Eastern Promises.

Colin Firth in 'The King's Speech'

But even without this coronation, The King’s Speech was already touted as a clear Oscar contender. I didn’t see it, I’m afraid. Faced with a schedule conflict, I opted instead to see Black Swan, a decision I still don’t regret. Missing The King’s Speech was just one  casualty of the festival’s insane opening-weekend  crunch.  In fact, despite running myself ragged seeing films (I logged 54 out of 300), for the first time in 25 years of covering  this festival I managed to miss every damn one of the award-winners.

They include Deborah Chow’s The High Cost of Living, which took the $15,000 prize for Canadian feature debut, and Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which received the $30,000 award for best Canadian feature. Chow thanked the award’s sponsor, Sky Vodka, “for saving me from working at Starbucks next week.” Then Villeneuve trumped that by saying, “I don’t work at Starbucks, but the federal Canadian income tax agency keeps calling me, so I won’t go to jail.” Which echoed a comment he made last January upon receiving the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award at the Toronto Film Critics dinner—when Rogers Vice-Chairman Phil Lind handed him a $10,000 cheque for Polytechnique, Villeneuve said he could now pay his Rogers cable bill. I was secretly hoping for Bruce McDonald to win the TIFF prize for Trigger, because I loved it, but also because the last time I saw him pick up some prize money he promised to buy a giant lump of hash.

As for Chow, she told me later that the Starbucks line was a joke:  she spent five years working on The High Cost of Living, supporting herself with web design and graphic design. The Toronto-born director shot it in her current home town on a $1.8 million budget. And like so many Canadian features this year, it has an American star, Zach Braff. It’s about the unlikely relationship between a drug dealer (Braff) and a woman expecting her first child (Isabelle Blais). Based on the play by Wajdi Mouawad, Villeneuve’s Incendies is  a drama of twin siblings in search of their brother and father after the death of their mother. Villeneuve’s film has been sold for U.S. distribution  to Sony Classics, which also picked up Barney’s Version. That’s great news for Canadian cinema.

Other TIFF awards:

• People’s Choice Documentary Award: Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson.

• People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award: the vampire movie Stake Land, by U.S. filmmaker Jim Mickle.

• Best Canadian Short: Les Fleurs de l’âge, by director Vincent Biron.

• FIPRESCI Special Presentation Award: L’Amour Fou, s documentary about late fashion designer  Yves St. Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé, directed by France’s Pierre Thorreton.

Europe's monarchies: scandal-ridden but such good fun

By Patricia Treble - Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Albert Niboer/DPA/Keystone Press Agency/ Jonas Ekstromer/ Mark Renders/Getty Images

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination, the playwright George Bernard Shaw once said. Well, on the face of it, the illusion is over for Europe’s monarchies, as scandals buffet the continent’s thrones. It’s been a rough patch. Two years ago, Luxembourg’s parliament effectively neutered the powers of its monarch, Grand Duke Henri, by stripping him of his right to block legislation after the deeply Catholic head of state refused to approve a bill that allowed euthanasia and assisted suicide. Then, last October, cash-strapped Belgians were infuriated to discover that their king, Albert II, had avoided paying sales tax on his new luxury yacht, because it is a “military vessel.” And in what the Telegraph called “the row that has turned the monarchy-loving public against the royals,” Crown Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands was raked over the coals by media for his plans to build a luxury villa, part of an exclusive resort, in the desperately poor African nation of Mozambique. He abandoned it only after the prime minister, too, was dragged into the mess. This year’s big contretemps however, came out of what is every monarchist’s dream event: a royal nuptial. On June 19, Crown Princess Victoria wed Daniel Westling in an heir-worthy wedding that culminated in a romantic royal barge ride to the palace in Stockholm, where they were met by a glittering array of royalty from Europe and abroad. The choreographed spectacle, though, was more than matched by the grumbling over the cost of the elaborate event—the government picked up half of the US$2.5-million tab. (The bride’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, paid the rest.) Continue…

David Cameron is getting away with things Thatcher never could

By Michael Petrou - Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA/KEYSTONE PRESS/ IAN DERRY/WWW.ERAMANAGEMENT.COM/ STEFAN BONESS/PANOS

In the spring of 2001, an aspiring politician scheduled a visit at the Witney and District Museum in England’s Oxfordshire County to drum up support among local residents for an election expected later that year. Stanley Jenkins, a curatorial adviser at the museum and a Labour Party supporter, made a brief note in the daybook: “Tory twit coming.”

The twit was David Cameron. He had a long association with the Conservative Party, including as a strategist and adviser at the Treasury and Home Office during the party’s last years in office. But he had failed to win a seat during the most recent election in 1997. He arrived at the Witney museum on a bleak and rainy day when it had few visitors. The party official who was supposed to be escorting Cameron around deserted him, leaving him alone with museum staff and time to kill.

Continue…

National pharmacare, as run by omniscient angels

By Colby Cosh - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 6:36 PM - 0 Comments

Marc-André Gagnon’s appeal for national pharmacare, published this past week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, should be read by citizens of every political orientation. Yes, Prof. Gagnon has a simple, government-driven panacea for the ills of Canadian prescription-drug policy; but government is sometimes the cause of those ills, as his analysis is unprejudiced enough to show. I learned something especially horrifying about Quebec’s healthcare system from his paper [emphasis mine]:

In Quebec, prescription size was 37.4% smaller than the Canadian average. This is because the province’s public drug insurance program requires that prescriptions be renewed each month, unless the patient has special permission (for example, for a trip abroad). The Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec [Quebec Health Insurance Plan] (RAMQ) requires that pharmacists fill orders of no more than a month, albeit repeats on prescriptions are allowed. Patients who have a chronic condition and take medication such as antihypertensives (for high blood pressure) or statins (for high cholesterol) on an ongoing basis must therefore have their prescriptions filled monthly, simply for administrative purposes. It would be easy to give these patients three- or six-month prescriptions, as is usually done in other provinces, without it affecting the quality of care. There are no studies in the medical literature showing any kind of therapeutic advantage to a monthly renewal of prescriptions for people with a chronic condition.

…The only reason for this state of affairs is that Quebec, as part of its Pharmacare program, wanted to make deductibles more “equitable” by establishing them on a monthly basis so that the costs would be spread more evenly over the year. Since deductibles are monthly, prescriptions must be monthly as well, increasing the number of prescriptions and associated fees. The workload for pharmacists is artificially increasing at a time when Quebec has a serious shortage of hospital pharmacists (Daoust-Boisvert 2009).

I take blood pressure medication, so if I ever move to Quebec I’ll be able to join the Pharmacare program and get my drugs for a modest upfront deductible—but at about sextuple the cost to that province in dispensing fees and paperwork, and sextuple the cost to myself in visits to the drugstore. (Imagine the carbon footprint!) If I were to value my own time realistically, the nuisance would cut deeply into the savings to me, and it might well represent an outright loss to many workers.

What equally infuriating inefficiencies could we expect a national pharmacare program designed by politicians to incorporate? Why, none at all; the only conditions are that Prof. Gagnon must design the program, the design must be adopted with absolutely no political modifications, he must be smart enough to have foreseen and prevented all possible hazards from Quebec-style perverse incentives and trough-wallowing, and he must rule the program forever with an iron fist and never retire, die, or grow inattentive. Given all of those assurances, I will be happy to endorse his scheme unreservedly.

'Time becomes very precious after that'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 4:06 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal MP Albina Guarnieri, currently the longest serving woman in the House, has been diagnosed with MS and will be stepping aside whenever the next election is called.

Full statement from Michael Ignatieff after the jump. Continue…

Men with beards: Joaquin Phoenix, Vincent Gallo and 'Armadillo'

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 2:04 PM - 0 Comments

A Danish solidier in Afghanistan in 'Armadillo'

So it turns out that I’m Still Here, Casey Affleck’s documentary about Joaquin Phoenix, is fake. That’s what Affleck has been telling interviewers. He says his documentary was staged, and that Joaquin’s two-year bout of self-annihilation was a sustained piece of method acting. Conspiracy theorists might wonder if Affleck’s revelation of the hoax is another hoax, a cover-up. But I think we can take Affleck at his word. Also, there are tip-offs in the film itself—notably in the fiction-style credits, which cite Hawaii as a location, even though the final scenes allegedly occur in Panama. But it makes you wonder. As mockumentaries are being passed off as real documentaries, along with the proliferation of fake news, dramatizations and staged reality TV, people may start to have trouble believing the real thing when they see it.

Armadillo is the real thing. This astonishing documentary from Denmark is one of two powerful films that I saw yesterday about the war in Afghanistan. The other was Essential Killing, an unadulterated drama from Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski starring Vincent Gallo as a Taliban fighter who is captured, flown to a European country, then escapes. More on that later.

Armadillo was the first documentary ever programmed by the Critics Week section of the Cannes Film Festival, and won the section’s top prize. You can see why. There’s never been anything like it. Armadillo captures soldiers in the act violating the rules of engagement—and changes the rules of engagement for the combat documentary. A film crew led by director Janus Metz spends six months embedded with a contingent of Danish soldiers as they engage in combat with the Taliban. Metz shoots  his film like a dramatic feature, a composition of characters in a landscape. He follows these young men from the moment they bid goodbye to their families in Denmark to their baptism of fire in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan. They are new recruits, eager for a taste of combat. Much of the film unfolds as a waiting game. The Taliban are out there, an invisible presence less than a kilometre away, but maddeningly elusive. The soldiers try to befriend the local farmers, who are impeccably polite and gracious, but won’t divulge information for fear of getting their throats cut by the Taliban. Also, they don’t appreciate seeing their cows blown up and their fields destroyed by anti-Taliban forces. All the men have black beards; any of them could be the enemy.

With just sporadic bursts of combat, tension builds until a squad of volunteers are dispatched to ambush the Taliban. The soldiers blacken their faces. It’s the Big Game. The camera follows them into the thick of the firefight, just steps away from the Taliban fighters, who are holed up in a ditch. There is total chaos and confusion amid of bullets. Some of the Danish soldiers are wounded. Five Taliban are killed in a grenade attack. . . but not exactly. When the Danish soldiers come home, as jubilant as a victorious football team, they relive the action and talk about how the Taliban men were still moving when they finished them off with volleys of machine gun fire. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that this is a violation of the rules of war, until the news leaks out and there’s outrage back home. Even then, the soldiers see nothing wrong with what they’ve done. They talk frankly about the incident in front of the camera, which by now seems to be accepted as a loyal ally. The soldiers are not presented as villains, but as likable, ordinary young men. The film is about how they become hooked on the adrenaline of combat. It shows us—sadly, horrifcally—how war works.

Vincent Gallo in 'Essential Killing'

Essential Killing begins in Afghanistan, with the U.S. capture of a nameless Taliban fighter (Vincent Gallo) in a desert canyon after he kills a couple of U.S. soldiers who were busy getting stoned. But this is not a war movie. It’s an escapist adventure on every level. Gallo’s character is captured, interrogated, then flown in shackles and orange overalls to an unnamed European country, where a fluke accident allows him to escape. The rest of the movie unfolds like a cross between The Fugitive and a wilderness survival tale. It takes place in cold and snowy realm that’s worlds removed from Afghanistan. Its hero is the quintessential brother from another planet. But he’s resourceful, and because he’s the hero we root for his survival, the politics notwithstanding. Gallo’s role is almost entirely silent. There are grunts and groans, but he doesn’t have a single word of dialogue. I found Essential Killing to be a welcome oasis from the mad traffic of TIFF, all the celebrity interviews and buzzed movies. Directed by Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski, it’s a gem of pure narrative filmmaking: a wordless vision of character struggling for his life in a beautifully austere landscape that’s as foreign to him as the moon. Yet unlike so much ghettoized art-house fare, there’s nothing challenging or difficult or about this film . It reminds us that art and entertainment on rare occasions can blissfully coexist.

A scene from 'Essential Killing'

Polling stations open in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

Afghanistan’s parliamentary election started today just hours after at least four rocket attacks hit Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, though no casualties have been reported. At least 22 people have been killed in election-related violence attributed to the Taliban; on Friday, the head of a voting centre in the south was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb. The Taliban have also blocked two voting stations in Nangarhar’s Surkh Rud district, according to CBC News. Roughly 2,500 candidates are running for 249 parliamentary seats in just the second parliamentary vote since the Taliban were ousted. President Hamid Karzai has urged citizens to come out and vote today, despite a warning from the Taliban that people should stay home and away from the polls.

CBC News

Lindsay Lohan tests positive for cocaine

By macleans.ca - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Despite promises to friends that she’s “getting her life together,” 24-year-old actress Lindsay Lohan failed a court-mandated drug test last week. Sources close to the actress told TMZ that she tested positive for cocaine. “Regrettably, I did in fact fail my most recent drug test and if I am asked, I am prepared to appear before judge Fox next week as a result,” Lohan tweeted late Friday night. “Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn’t go away over night. I am working hard to overcome it and am taking positive steps forward every day. I am testing every single day and doing what I must do to prevent any mishaps in the future. ”

MTV

TMZ

‘Boardwalk Empire’ takes on ‘Mad Men’

By Jaime Weinman - Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

HBO

HBO has lost some of its prestige lately: none of its continuing series won major Emmys last month. So Boardwalk Empire, the Prohibition-era crime drama premiering this Sunday on HBO Canada, isn’t just a new series with big names (like star Steve Buscemi and pilot director Martin Scorsese). It’s HBO’s chance to beat the period drama it turned down, Mad Men; when that show won its third consecutive Emmy for best drama series, San Francisco Chronicle critic Tim Goodman wrote that “maybe next year HBO can get up there for Boardwalk Empire.” Creator Terence Winter describes the show as “a history of Atlantic City from when it was a mosquito-infested swamp until today”—it may prove that the only way to outdo Mad Men is to go back 40 years earlier.

Not that Boardwalk Empire is a Mad Men clone. With Buscemi playing Nucky Thompson, a man who helps the bootleg alcohol industry flourish as long as he gets a cut, the show has all the crime and violence the more sedate Mad Men never offers. But Winter is a colleague of Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner (they both wrote for The Sopranos), and they both love using TV to recreate a whole era of U.S. history. Winter told Maclean’s that “the success of Mad Men makes me happy because I know there’s an audience” for a drama that “assumes a level of knowledge about history,” and he’s trying to live up to Weiner’s example in “making it as true to the period as I can possibly do it.”

Continue…

Ben Affleck hits ‘The Town’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM - 0 Comments

Rebecca Hall and Ben Affleck in 'The Town'

The director/movie star is an exalted pedigree. It requires a talk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time talent that always seems a bit miraculous and requires an old-school Hollywood chutzpa that seems to be a thing of the past. After all, Kevin Costner is off touring with a band and Warren Beatty is raising kids. That leaves three legendary actor-directors who are still hard at, and all of them showed up to unveil new films at TIFF: Woody Allen (You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger), Robert Redford (The Conspirator), and Clint Eastwood (The Hereafter). But none of them appeared on screen. And none of their films really set the festival on fire. Allen’s comedy was perfectly enjoyable and replete with delicious performances, but it didn’t add up to much; this was Woody on cruise control. Redford’s resonant courtroom drama about the military abuse of justice in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was fascinating but stodgy. And I never did get to see The Hereafter because Warner Bros. did such an immaculate job of burying it—violating TIFF protocol by allowing it to be shown just once, at the premiere, with no press screening and no repeat screening.

But one emerging double threat who confirmed his talent in a big way was Ben Affleck, who’s both the star and director of The Town, a gripping heist movie. Based on Chuck Hogan’s novel The Prince of Thieves, this is the second feature Affleck has directed, after making a promising debut with Gone Baby Gone (2007). It’s another complicated crime thriller set in Boston. But the story, which has a locomotive momentum, is much less circuitous.  And Affleck considerably expands his palette, showing a flair for staging gritty action sequences, including a chase scene that uses the narrow streets of Boston the way the The French Connection used New York. The car chase has become such a cliche that it takes some originality to get me excited by vehicles smashing into each another. But this one is an exception.

The film also balances the fireworks with some rich character drama. Doug MacRay (Affleck) belongs to a hardened crew of bank robbers who pull off elaborate, heavily armed bank jobs in Hallowe’en masks. During the robbery that opens the story, they take the bank manager (Rebecca Hall) hostage. Then, after releasing her, they worry she may incriminate them as a witness, so MacRay stalks her, and strikes up a relationship that, against his better judgment, turns intimate. As we wait for her to discover that he was one of her abductors,  MacRay starts think that he should quit robbing banks while he still can, and run off with the girl of his dreams. But he’s under pressure from a hard-core confederate name Jem, who is played by Jeremy Renner with the same cowboy machismo he displayed in The Hurt Locker.

Complicating the plot on the personal front is a family scenario that involves McRay’s  father (Chris Cooper), a ghost-like figure serving hard time, and a drug-addicted single mom play by Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) who is Jem’s sister and MacRay’s ex. Meanwhile an FBI squad led by John Hamm (Mad Men) is closing in, and the crew’s sadistic boss, a florist played by Pete Postethwaite, is threatening to prune MacRay’s manhood with his gardening shears if he so much as thinks about early retireent. That’s a a lot of, uh, balls in the air. But to Affleck’s credit, he keeps the action running smoothly, and the suspense ratcheting up, all the way to climactic heist in Fenway Park. He also elicits  excellent performances from his ensemble, notably Lively and Hall, who both more than hold their own in this cops-and-robbers clubhouse.

Hopefully after this effort, Ben Affleck won’t have to star in a dumb romantic comedy ever again.

The paramount importance of public sentiment

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 5:38 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister vows to continue not resting until the long gun registry is abolished.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the federal long-gun registry will someday be scrapped, regardless of what happens to a Tory backbencher’s bill on the issue when Parliament returns next week … ”Opposition to it has not diminished; it has only increased,” he said.

He again denounced the registry, which was introduced by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien in 1995, as a “large-scale operation that targeted the wrong people” — including hunters, farmers, outdoorsmen and women, as well as police officers “who understand the reality of these communities.” ”These people will never accept this registry because they know it is ineffective and wasteful, and the party I lead will not rest until the day it is abolished,” Harper said to applause.

By Harris-Decima’s findings, public opinion has indeed been shifting, but in the exact opposite direction.

Unpaid child and spousal support at all-time high

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 4:35 PM - 0 Comments

Unpaid child and spousal support hit a new high of $2.7 billion across Canada—up from $2.5 billion in November 2009, Statistics Canada reports. As of March 31, 2010, there were nearly 408,000 cases, most involving children, registered in maintenance enforcement programs, which process cases to ensure support is paid. (The study did not include Manitoba and Nunavut which don’t report such data.) In any given month, the survey said, just under one-third of cases were not in full compliance with payment. In March 2010, the majority of cases involving regular support payments had an average due between $1 and $400. Just over five per cent of cases owed more than $1,000.

Canada.com

Information needs to be free

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 4:14 PM - 0 Comments

The magazine’s Rethink issue—Warning: sideways design may blow your mind—includes this story on the open data and open government movements. The ideas discussed there may or may not change everything.

For now, while everyone else is getting excited about the Twitter and the blogs (and maybe someday a new TV network featuring that guy who’s already on radio and that other guy who likes to shout about stuff), punditsguide.ca, threehundredeight.com, openparliament.ca, howdtheyvote.ca, disclosed.ca and governmentexpenses.ca could be the six most important (and, in a way, exciting) contributions to the political process, and the coverage and scrutiny of same, to appear in recent years.

And beyond those projects is what’s going on, or could be going on, within and around government. Continue…

Created by Leonard Freeman

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

I’ve only seen the pilot of the new Hawaii 5-0 (or CSI Hawaii as everyone has been calling it for some time now) so I can’t presume to guess how strong or weak the show will wind up being. But I can say two good things about the main title. One, they actually listened to complaints about the arrangement of the theme song in the first version of the title, and created a new, brass-heavy arrangement that is appropriate for the music. And the other thing that’s nice is that the creator of the original series, the late Leonard Freeman, is prominently credited in the opening, just as prominently as the developers of the new version. That might be done out of respect, and it might be done out of contractual requirements, but it’s still a good thing either way.

The show might still wind up being hard to watch after the theme song ends, but that’s true of many episodes of the original, too. It’s at least good that they got the theme song right.

[vodpod id=Video.4462866&w=640&h=385&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]

I do feel like this is one of those themes that really needs more than 30 seconds to make its full effect. Some don’t need more than that, but the original theme gets a lot of its impact from its structure: A-B-A-C followed by the coda. To get it down to 30 seconds, you have to chop out the A and C sections and go directly to the coda, which lessens the power of the famous tune because we never get to hear it come back (with a different arrangement). But that’s just the way things are.

By the way, that complaint isn’t limited to today’s shows: Bonanza‘s theme song is justly famous but I thought the main title version on the show was way too short — again, usually only about 30 seconds — to really sell the tune the way it deserved to be sold, and had to monkey around with the song’s structure to fit it into that space.

If they really wanted to get rid of the long gun registry

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

An interesting exchange from John Baird’s news conference yesterday.

Reporter: Mr. Baird, if scrapping the gun registry is so important and if the Prime Minister feels so strongly about it, as the Conservatives do, then why not just bury it in a money bill and make it a confidence motion?

Baird: I don’t anticipate that you’ll see that this fall.

A heart that's full up like a landfill

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

In the future, as we move toward a new era of austerity and small government, the federal administration will occupy itself with only three things: defence of the nation, the protection of citizens through the enforcing of laws, and the handling of media requests.

“MR [media relations] works with the respective regional communications manager, the spokesman and, if required, the sector communications manager, to develop the response which is then sent for appropriate approval by MR [media relations],” says a summary of the new “media relation process” at Natural Resources Canada that went into effect this spring. “Required approvals can include, but are not limited to: appropriate sector director general, director general communications branch — PAPMS [public affairs and portfolio management sector], director of communications — minister’s office, PCO [Privy Council Office].”

The summary stresses in bold type that: “Approval from the minister’s director of communications must always be sought — no exceptions.”

And, on that note, a music video. Continue…

Woman threw acid on her own face: police

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 12:57 PM - 0 Comments

Nearly three weeks after Bethany Storro told police in Portland, Oregon that a black woman had thrown a cup of acid in her face outside a Starbucks, police are saying she has admitted to throwing it on herself. During a police investigation, “several discrepancies began to emerge regarding the alleged attack,” police chief Clifford Cook told CBC. In a news conference on Sept. 2, surrounded by her parents and with her face wrapped in bandages, Storro told of being attacked and drew sympathy worldwide, with a fundraiser planned and donation sites established. But police began to wonder why burn patterns didn’t match her account, and why she’d been wearing sunglasses (which she said was a coincidence that saved her vision) after 7:00pm on the day of the attack.

CBC News

Steve Nash on Terry Fox

By Tom Henheffer - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 12:49 PM - 0 Comments

Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope is so ingrained in Canadian culture that it’s hard to believe there could be any aspect of the story left to tell. But don’t dismiss Into the Wind, the new documentary on Fox by Phoenix Sun’s point guard Steve Nash and his filmmaker cousin Ezra Holland.  The documentary, set to air on television as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 program, goes far beyond what most Canadians know about the icon. Through archival footage, new interviews with  Fox’s friends and family members, and complete access to his daily journals, the film goes deeper and explores the fights, anger and the personal struggles he had to overcome, bringing life to the bronze statue, humanizing the legend and proving the man was even more of a hero by showing him as the ordinary and sometimes frail person he was. It sounds cliche, but it’s hard to watch the film without welling up a little. Nash and Holland sat down with Maclean’s to discuss their personal hero, making the movie, and why they feel the story needs to be told today.

Taliban behind election-related kidnappings

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

Taliban members in Afghanistan have claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 30 people involved in the country’s election campaign, including campaign workers, election officials and even a candidate. Afghan officials have confirmed the kidnapping reports, but sought to assure voters on Friday that “they will be secure.” A local Taliban commander in Badghis says his troops plan to put the eight election officials and 10 campaigners that were kidnapped in the province on trial for their “crimes” before a Taliban court. Insurgents have repeatedly threatened to disrupt the local elections, prompting authorities to ban cars from populated areas beginning Friday and until after the polls close on Saturday. Four candidates and 20 of their supporters have reportedly been killed since the campaign began earlier this summer.

New York Times

London police arrest six men over alleged plan to attack Pope

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 12:33 PM - 0 Comments

Police in London have arrested six men in connection with an alleged plot against Pope Benedict XVI. Officials haven’t released much in the way of details, only that the men are between the ages of 26 and 50, and were arrested under the terrorism act. The visit has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since it was announced, with the record of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, as well as the Vatican’s policies on contraception and homosexuality, emerging as flashpoints. “We have complete trust in the police,” Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said about the arrests. “The police are taking the necessary measures. The situation is not particularly dangerous. The Pope is happy about this trip and is calm.”

CTV News

BBC News