Never Say Never: Film critic Brian D. Johnson gets Bieber fever

By Claire Ward - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:52 PM - 0 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

Go to Brian’s blog: Brian D. Johnson Unscreened

Sarkozy calls multiculturalism a “failure”

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:47 PM - 25 Comments

French President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned multiculturalism as a threat to national identities in a televised ‘town hall’ meeting with French citizens on Thursday. “The truth is that in all our democracies we have been too preoccupied with the identity of those who arrived and not enough with the identity of the country that welcomed them,” said Sarkozy. In doing so, Sarkozy joined his counterparts in Britain and Germany, who have both characterized multiculturalism as a failed experiment. Sarkozy also emphasized France’s secular identity and warned against “aggressive religious proselytizing” during the town hall.

Financial Times

Obama speech now at 3pm

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 3 Comments

Watch live here.

** Latest update, Obama to speak at 3pm. Briefing to follow.

** Update: Now the speech will be in the Grand Foyer, time TBD, briefing TBD.

Previously:

White House says:

The President will deliver a statement on Egypt in the briefing room. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will hold the briefing immediately following the President’s statement.

1:30PM           THE PRESIDENT delivers a statement on Egypt

Briefing Schedule

1:30PM         Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

Will Canadian pipeline enrich Obama's bitter foes?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:38 PM - 6 Comments

Interesting article today from Reuters:

Koch brothers positioned to be big winners if Keystone XL pipeline is approved.

Koch Industries is already responsible for close to 25 percent of the oil sands crude that is imported into the United States, and is well-positioned to benefit from increasing Canadian oil imports.

A Koch Industries operation in Calgary, Alberta, called Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, supplies about 250,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day to a heavy oil refinery in Minnesota, also owned by the Koch brothers.

Flint Hills Resources Canada also operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The New Yorker recently profiled the Koch brothers activities in bankrolling the Tea Party movement and other groups:

The billionaire brothers who are waging war against Obama

Today, Politico reports that the Koch brothers are seeking to raise $88 million to defeat Obama in 2012.

What does the White House think? According to Reuters:

It is unclear whether the president or his advisers are aware of the extent of the Koch brothers involvement in tar sands imports or have tried to quantify the economic benefit they could derive from the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama has not shown his cards on the pipeline permit, even after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a personal appeal for swift approval at a White House meeting last week.

***

You can follow me on Twitter at luizachsavage

This week: Newsmakers

By Nicholas Köhler, Chris Sorensen And Patricia Treble - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:33 PM - 0 Comments

Another blow for multiculti

In the West, multiculturalism has long been viewed as a noble ideal. So why are European leaders suddenly trying to distance themselves from the concept? Echoing sentiments made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British PM David Cameron said last week Britain’s blind faith in multiculturalism had led to a “weakening of our collective identity,” and may have helped to fuel homegrown Islamic extremism. “We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values,” he said. Reaction was swift. Critics charged him with spreading far-right propaganda while others conceded multiculturalism has its flaws, and may not be an end in itself. Either way, it would appear the debate is only beginning.

FAME Pictures/Keystone Press;

What a tangled Web she’ll weave

Arianna Huffington has been anointed the queen of online content after AOL paid US$315 million for the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news sites. The deal will put her in charge of an expanding universe of AOL blogs and other sites including TechCrunch, Engadget, and MapQuest. It’s all part of a plan by chief executive Tim Armstrong to transform a company that was built on providing Americans with dial-up Internet connections and email accounts. Huffington has her work cut out for her. Few media companies have yet to figure out how to operate profitably on the Web. And it’s not the first time AOL has stepped into the content game. Its failed $US350-billion mega-merger with Time-Warner a decade ago is now considered one of the tech boom’s biggest missteps.


A monsters’ ball

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images;

Actress Halle Berry’s breakup with Canadian model Gabriel Aubry didn’t start out as daily tabloid fodder. But, unfortunately for their 2½-year-old daughter Nahla, now at the centre of a bitter custody battle, that’s exactly where it’s ended up. The war of words heated up this week when People published a statement by a Berry representative that called Aubry an unfit father, and said Berry was pulling out of a movie to focus on the custody dispute. Aubry’s people fought back, telling Access Hollywood he was “disappointed in Halle’s decision to falsely malign him publicly and for her own purposes.” Add in allegations of racist rants and inappropriate videotapes and emails, and it all sounds like a familiar Hollywood script.


Continue…

U of O professors accuse Tories of witchhunt

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 20 Comments

Two professors at the University of Ottawa, Errol Mendes and Amir Attaran, are wondering if federal Conservatives are behind access to information requests for their employment, expense, and teaching records. Both Mendes and Attaran have in the past been vocal critics of the Conservative government and have both been accused of being Liberal sympathizers. “I started thinking, my God, this is a McCarthy-like attempt to politically intimidate both of us,” Mendes said of the request for his professional records. Attaran echoed Mendes’ concern, saying “I have a feeling it’s political.” Ontario law means the identity of the party who made the request remains anonymous. Fred DeLorey, a spokesman for the Conservative Party denied any involvement from the government.

Toronto Star

Obama deserves "respect": Oprah

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 12:19 PM - 15 Comments

Oprah is asking some of Barack Obama’s fiercest critics to “show some level of respect” and try to put themselves in the presidents shoes. “I feel that everybody has a learning curve, and I feel that the reason why I was willing to step out for him was because I believed in his integrity and I believed in his heart,” Oprah said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show in Chicago. The television mogul added that, “even if you’re not in support of his policies, there needs to be a certain level of respect.”

Politico

Your cellphone plan is killing Canadian culture!

By Jesse Brown - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:44 AM - 65 Comments

WIND mobile may be done-for in Canada; a Federal Court has ruled that because WIND’s parent company is backed by Egyptian investors, it violates Canada’s laws against foreigners owning our wireless spectrum.

This is bad news, right? After all, when WIND broke in Canada (high-five!) a whole new tier of affordable cell-phone plans popped up.  The entrance of one new player forced a correction in the entire market! Who could hate that?

ACTRA hates that. Stephen Waddell, the National Executive Director of the Canadian actor’s union, calls the anti-WIND ruling “a victory for culture!”

WTF?

Ok, here’s ACTRA’s logic on this- follow it if you can:

If cellphone services operating in Canada can be owned by foreign companies, then cable TV companies might also ask for access to foreign capital. And if these scary foreign interests end up controlling our cable companies, then they may escape the CRTC’s jurisdiction.  Without CRTC control, these stations may avoid having to funnel their profits back into the production of Canadian content, and the forced production of Canadian television may cease.
And that’s why every time you call your mom on a WIND phone plan, Joey Jeremiah cries.

Of course, the existing Can-Con regime is on borrowed time anyhow.  Internet video falls outside of the CRTC’s reach, and with more Canadians watching on their laptops, the days of mandatory, subsidized Canadian TV shows may be numbered.

If that happens, then the only reason anyone would produce a television show in Canada would be if they thought people would watch it.  And we can’t have that, can we?

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 37 Comments

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal proposes a North American community.

Segal outlines several goals the North American Community could accomplish: - Enhanced market size and trading opportunities for Canadian companies, employees and investors with fewer trade barriers. - A continentwide commitment to economic and social development, through which models such as Canada’s equalization program could be applied elsewhere. - Co-operation in environmental, social and military activities that help nations face “threats” and “challenges” that cross borders. - The creation of a North American Assembly, similar to the European Parliament in its early days.

Segal believes the assembly could take the shape of a place where politicians who are already elected in their own nations regularly gather to share “best practices” and work together. The question of whether it should ever become a directly elected body could up be for discussion in the White Paper.

Casts and seal fur at Taste of the Arctic

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 5 Comments

For a second year, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) presented A Taste of the Arctic: A Celebration of Inuit Culture. This time the event was held in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada. Below, Evan Solomon, host of CBC’s Power & Politics (left), signs ITK president Mary Simon’s cast.

.

Former GG Michaëlle Jean (left) and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

Continue…

Mubarak resigns

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 17 Comments

After eighteen days of mass anti-government protests, violence and civil chaos, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s beleaguered dictator, is giving up his post as president. Vice-President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak’s departure via state television. “In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very difficult circumstances Egypt is going through,” said Suleman, “President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the office of president of the republic and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.” Mubarak left Cairo on Friday for the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Shaikh, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera. Egypt’s army has said it will end the country’s state of emergency law, which came into effect 30 years ago in 1981, when Mubarak inherited power following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

Al Jazeera English

The greenest car of all?

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 23 Comments

Photographs BY Colin O’Connor

At a recent automotive conference in Detroit, Nissan Americas chairman Carlos Tavares hoisted a large car muffler over his head and then accused Nissan’s competitors of misleading people when it comes to electrically powered vehicles. “If you’re calling your car electric and it has one of these,” he said, waving the auto part. “You’re only muddling the message.”

Though sales of electric or hybrid electric vehicles represent a tiny fraction of the overall market, automakers aren’t pulling any punches when it comes to talking up their newest creations. The nascent segment, which automakers have pumped many billions of dollars in research and development into, is fast becoming one of the most competitive. But the rush to go green has created an unintended consequence: consumer confusion. Each automaker has come up with its own take on the electrified car of tomorrow, a category that also includes hybrids and plug-in hybrids—both of which incorporate a gasoline engine. And nobody wants to get stuck with a four-wheeled equivalent of a Betamax in the garage.

For its part, Nissan is betting the future won’t involve gas stations at all. Its compact Leaf electric car, the result of US$6 billion in research and development that began in 1992, is touted as the first-ever mass-produced electric vehicle, and is priced to compete with cars powered by conventional engines (it costs about US$32,000 in the United States before government incentives, which can bring the sticker price down to around US$20,000). “That’s why we went to Detroit with a muffler,” Tavares said during a recent interview with Maclean’s in Toronto. “We wanted to explain to people visually that when you have a zero-emissions car, you don’t have a tailpipe—because there is no gas.”

Continue…

Opening Weekend: Bardem, Bieber, Sandler and Channing

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:37 AM - 2 Comments

Javier Bardem in 'Biutiful'

Boys will be boys. And what a crazy bunch are on offer this weekend. Adam Sandler, Hollywood’s perennial middle-aged child, takes his singular mix of narcissism and self-loathing to new heights in Just Go With It, a formula romcom composed of funny gags, toxic stereotypes and an unearned romance, with Sandler cast as a skirt-chasing plastic surgeon who persuades his assistant (Jennifer Aniston) and her two kids to masquerade as his fake family. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never documents the amazing phenomenon of Canadian teen heartthrob Justin Bieber, a savvy innocent who—at 16—seems positively mature in matters of the heart compared to Sandler. And a gormless Tatum Channing stars as a Roman soldier in The Eagle, a richly crafted Roman epic with a dumb-ass script that glorifies Rome’s imperialists as the good guys and portrays the aboriginal Britons as dirty savages.

But if you live in Toronto or Ottawa, the hot ticket is Biutiful, which begins its Canadian roll-out in those two cities this weekend. If you’re looking for subtlety, you won’t find it the films of Mexican filmmaker director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel). And his latest is no exception. But you won’t find a more powerful performance by an actor this year than the one given by Javier Bardem, who won Best Actor in Cannes and an Oscar nomination for his bravura turn in Biutiful. On the page, the narrative might seem over-ripe, but the cinematography, editing and acting are so breathtaking, this visceral melodrama comes across as pure verité. Bardem stars as a former drug dealer in Barcelona who brokers black-market jobs for illegal Asian immigrants while struggling to contain his bi-polar prostitute girlfriend and come to terms with his own terminal illness. He’s also a clairvoyant who talks to dead people. As usual, Iñárritu overloads the plot and the pathos, which may aggravate the sensibilities of more refined cinephiles, but Bardem’s emotional depth and the raw frisson of the filmmaking make Biutiful a must-see. And for Quebec’s Denis Villeneuve, director of the Oscar-nominated Incendies, this heavyweight contender is the one to beat in the Best Foreign Language Film category. For a more detailed look at Javier Bardem, go to my recent piece in the magazine: The Incredible Hunk.  Now for the wide-release fare . . .

Just go With It

Ever since Judd Apatow cast Adam Sandler as a selfish, mean-spirited comedy star in Funny People—a nervy performance that came across as a devastating self-portrait—it seems there’s no going back. (Like seeing Jerry Lewis more-or-less playing himself in The King of Comedy.) I now find it impossible to buy Sandler as a lovable jerk. In Just Go With It, he’s just a jerk.

Sandler stars as Danny, an obscenely successful plastic surgeon who is single, but discovers that wearing a wedding ring helps him bed young women for meaningless flings. When Danny actually falls for one of his conquests, a 23-year-old babe named Palmer—played by Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue cover girl Brooklyn Decker—he has to spin an elaborate web of lies about the fake wife he’s on the verge of divorcing. Danny then persuades his long-suffering assistant, Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) to pretend to be his wife. Pretty soon Danny is cutting pricey deals with Katherine’s two kids to pretend to be his children, and the whole gang ends up taking a vacation in Hawaii with his fake ex-wife’s fake new boyfriend (Nicholas Swardson). There, Katherine meets up with her high school nemesis, played by a slumming Nicole Kidman, which requires yet another charade. And what is Nicole Kidman doing in an Adam Sandler movie? We’re just getting over seeing Natalie Portman play Ashton Kutcher’s playmate in No Strings Attached (another romcom with a cliché for title).

Directed by Sandler’s longtime cohort, Dennis Dugan, Just Go With It is actually a loose remake/desecration of Cactus Flower, which won an Oscar for Goldie Hawn. The shenanigans produce a few laughs. But this cynical farce is a rummage sale of gross stereotypes, from gay sailors to a negligent Hispanic nanny. It’s also a transparent vanity project for Aniston, who struts her gym-toned bod in a bikini competition with this SI Swimsuit model who’s half her age. The whole post-Brad campaign to prove Aniston’s hotness is getting very tired.

As for the story, it holds no surprises. It doesn’t deviate from the inevitable outcome that Danny will eventually dump the pretty young thing for the MILF helpmate sitting under his nose. And as Sandler’s soul undergoes the requisite cosmetic redemption—transforming him from heartless cad to devoted suitor and loving stepdad—we don’t buy it for a second.

Adam Sandler should just give up making romantic comedies, even though they make scads of money. He should start making an honest living—playing villains in Bond movies. He could stroke a white Persian cat, do squeaky voices and give full reign to his evil inner child. Continue…

CBC Renews Lots of Stuff

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:34 AM - 18 Comments

The CBC has just issued a press release on renewals for the 2011-12 season.

Many shows have been renewed, apart from the shoo-ins (shoos-in?) like The Rick Mercer Report; pickups for shows that might have been “on the bubble” include the new InSecurity, the Energizer Bunny-like Little Mosque on the Prairie, and Being Erica, which may well have been saved by its popularity in the U.S.

One show I don’t see on this list is 18 To Life. In fact I think that’s the only scripted show from the current schedule that isn’t on this list of renewed shows. Too bad for it. Its brief (and, absurdly, controversial) run in the U.S. doesn’t seem to have boosted it the way American attention boosted Erica.

Update: Diane Wild points out in comments that Men With Brooms also appears to have been canceled.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from said press release:

February 11, 2011 — CBC Television today confirmed a number of returning shows for the 2011-12 season. Among the returning fan favourites are BATTLE OF THE BLADES and DRAGONS’ DEN, which both regularly drew more than 1.5 million viewers this season, the Down East detective hit REPUBLIC OF DOYLE, Season 9 of THE RICK MERCER REPORT and Season 51 of THE NATURE OF THINGS WITH DAVID SUZUKI.

“CBC Television is coming off a great season of delivering the shows audiences love, and we’re going to build on that momentum in 2011-12,” said Christine Wilson, Interim General Manager CBC Television. “CBC’s prime-time schedule will continue to be the undisputed home of great home-grown programming.”

The following favourites have been renewed and will return to the programming schedule:

22 Minutes
Battle of the Blades
Being Erica
Best Recipes Ever
Doc Zone
Dragons’ Den
the fifth estate
George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight
Heartland
InSecurity
Little Mosque on the Prairie
Marketplace
The Nature of Things
Republic of Doyle
The Rick Mercer Report
The Ron James Show
Steven & Chris

Meanwhile, new programming pickups for the 2011-12 season include Mr. D, starring Gerry D and produced by Topsail Entertainment; Michael Tuesdays and Thursdays,  featuring the writing and acting talents of Bob Martin and produced by Rhombus Media; the co-production Camelot, from Take 5 Productions; Kevin O’Leary in Dealer to Leader, developed by Wide-Eyed Entertainment in conjunction with CBC; and Cover Me Canada, produced  by 11 Entertainment.

There you ‘ave it, then.

Blame the Muslim Brotherhood

By Michael Petrou - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:16 AM - 34 Comments

Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

Throughout Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s many years in office, his most consistent argument for continued rule has been the warning that, should he leave, Egypt will fall into chaos at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is an Islamist political movement that was founded more than 80 years ago in Egypt and whose branches are now among the most powerful opposition groups in several Arab countries. It is formally banned but unofficially tolerated in Egypt. Muslim Brotherhood candidates (running as independents due to the movement’s illegality) won 88 seats in the 2005 Egyptian parliamentary elections, about 20 per cent of the total.

“Mubarak is a classic Egyptian secularist who hates religious extremism and interference in politics,” reports an American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. “The Muslim Brothers represent the worst, as they challenge not only Mubarak’s power, but his view of Egyptian interests.” Another leaked American cable reports Mubarak condemning the Muslim Brotherhood as “dangerous” and duplicitous.

It was no surprise, then, that when a popular uprising calling for Mubarak to resign engulfed Cairo and other Egyptian cities, the president blamed the Muslim Brotherhood—despite the fact that the movement had little visible presence during the early days of mass demonstrations. Blaming the Brotherhood is a refrain Mubarak has repeated for decades. And it’s one that resonates in America, where successive presidents sympathized with his stand against Islamic fundamentalism and rewarded the stability he has imposed with more aid money than any other country but Israel receives.

Continue…

Why Egypt worries Israel

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 71 Comments

Photograph by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

By Monday Ephraim Sneh had heard quite enough talk about democracy in Egypt.
“I am not interested in democracy in this region,” the former Israeli deputy minister of defence told a conference room full of dignitaries at the annual security conference in Herzliya, a Mediterranean Sea resort north of Tel Aviv. “Personally I prefer to have stability.”

Sentiments like Sneh’s are easy to find in Israel these days, although the wiry 66-year-old expressed them more bluntly than most. Just look around, he said. Everywhere Israel’s neighbours get the vote, things get worse. Take Gaza, or as Sneh called it, “Hamastan,” after the ruling Hamas party’s 2006 election victory. “Based on a democratic, free election, we are facing now some of the worst terrorists.”

Or consider Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-backed candidate became prime minister in January. “Lebanon is democracy, so-called,” he said. “Lebanon is a constitution without a state. But it’s very democratic. You have an elected president, you have an elected prime minister, you have a speaker of Parliament, you have all these institutions. But the country is losing itself. We call it Hezbollahstan.”

Continue…

Justin Bieber-upon-Avon

By Ryan Porter - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 9:48 AM - 0 Comments

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Don’t call Angie Adair the woman who discovered Justin Bieber. All she did was post videos on YouTube of a 12-year-old Bieber singing in her “Stratford Star” competition, an American Idol-style sing-off where he placed second. Now the 26-year-old coordinator at the Stratford-Perth YMCA fields callers from L.A. asking about how to discover an international teen idol. “We weren’t planning on finding Justin Bieber when we did, so I really can’t give anyone advice,” she laughs.

These kinds of aftershocks from Justin Bieber’s career explosion are felt all the time in Stratford, Ont., with the 3-D documentary Justin Bieber: Never Say Never promising to further reposition the Ontario town of 32,000 for an audience that never shrieked like this for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Kids have gathered outside the arena on tips from texts and Twitter that Justin is inside playing hockey. Mayor Dan Mathieson’s responsibilities have expanded to include photo shoots with fans who’ve followed one of the town’s “Justin’s Stratford” maps into his office.

“It’s almost overwhelming for some of the residents to be thrust so far into the spotlight,” Mathieson says. “To have a 16-year-old who has such incredible draw around the world refer to Stratford in such glowing terms as he does about it being his hometown, they just can’t believe how incredible this is.”

The feeling is mutual. “Coming from a small town, and having that mentality, it’s just made me humble,” Bieber said at a press conference in Toronto on Feb. 1. “I didn’t have a lot of money growing up. I lived in a little apartment, with geared-income housing. I was just as happy then as I am now. I’m just really blessed.”

Continue…

Unfrozen Caveman Minister of State

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 50 Comments

From Julian Fantino’s remarks at a news conference with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson yesterday.

I  don’t know much about politics—I’m learning a lot—but one thing I have learned is that part of Mr. Ignatieff’s agenda is flip-flopping on critical public safety issues.

This rhetorical trick—call it the “naive insight”—was of course pioneered by Cirroc, the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

Hugh Segal's "North American Community" idea

By John Geddes - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 8:41 AM - 14 Comments

Sen. Hugh Segal’s new book The Right Balance presents a peculiar challenge to the reviewer. In next week’s issue of Maclean’s, I contribute a brief note on it, focusing on Segal’s main thrust—his bid to explain the common denominators of Canadian conservatism from its roots in New France to the Harper government. But Segal throws a curve in his concluding chapter, veering away from mapping the DNA of his party to float an unexpected proposal. He calls for the creation of what he labels, with significant capital letters, a North American Community. “This should be a Conservative and conservative priority,” he writes.

Continue…

Week in Pictures: February 7th – 13th 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 4:55 PM - 0 Comments

Canadians Can Re-Tool Our Bad Shows, Too

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 4:44 PM - 0 Comments

Nothing much I feel driven to post about today. In TV, I mean — in world news you’ve got this guy who just won’t leave no matter how many people on Twitter tell him to. There’s also this John Doyle article on “The murky future of Canadian TV,” for reasons ranging from uncertainty about the CRTC to the departure of Susanne Boyce, the programming executive who helped turn CTV around.

Otherwise, I’ll go with a semi-nostalgic Canadian TV flashback. “Nostalgic” because I watched it when I was a child, and it may have been the first Canadian non-kids show I watched. “Semi” because I think I suspected even at the time that this was not a good show, and you know a show isn’t good when even little kids know it’s bad. It was also apparently an adaptation of a British sitcom, which makes it much less unique than the most legendary bad Canadian sitcom: The Trouble With Tracy, which recycled all the scripts from an old (good) radio comedy called “Vic and Sade.”

The way Canadian sitcoms used to be made was the method used in U.S. syndicated shows, and the method U.S. cable networks like CMT have recently taken up. Really fast, really cheap, on a soundstage with no Continue…

The epic voyages of the Polynesians

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 4:24 PM - 0 Comments

ISLANDERS: THE PACIFIC
IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE
Nicholas Thomas

The names of the great Western explorers of the Pacific Ocean are well known, commemorated in everything from the Cook Islands to the city of Vancouver to the bougainvillea vine. Thomas, a professor of historical anthropology at Cambridge University, opens his account of a transformative century in the Pacific—what he calls the long 19th century from about 1790 to 1914—with a tribute to the equally epic voyages made by the anonymous Polynesian navigators who took humanity to the last empty corners of the globe. One of those  series of voyages—”unlike anything else in world history for range and rapidity,” according to Thomas—crossed thousands of kilometres and populated dozens of islands in only 100 or so years.

Thomas’s aim is not simply to establish that Polynesian society produced navigators every bit as skilled as any the Royal Navy possessed, but to point out that its history had seen short, sharp transformations before. The rapid expansion wave, in fact, almost certainly arose from population pressure and political upheaval, conditions again bubbling under the surface as Europeans arrived. Islanders were not passive recipients of what Westerners brought—although guns, germs and steel had their horrific effects there.

Instead, indigenous peoples strove, often successfully, to use the outsiders for their own ends. By 1815, the pre-eminent Hawaiian chief had Western advisers and the beginning of a full-sized navy; nonetheless, he asked a visiting British captain if “King Georgey” might spare him a warship. Perhaps hundreds of young men joined Western naval, whaling or merchant vessels. Some, losers in political fights, sought weapons and allies, others wanted adventure. By 1800, Polynesians had been to Australia, China, India, New England and the royal courts of Europe, often leaving accounts of their travels. By focusing on individual stories like theirs, Thomas beautifully accomplishes his aim: not an all-encompassing history, but impressionistic insight into the islanders’ voyages, real and conceptual. Brian Bethune

IS EATING PEOPLE WRONG?
Allan C. Hutchinson

A law degree will take three years of your life and a big chunk out of your bank account. This book promises to turn anyone into a font of legal opinion and trivia in a fraction of the time and cost. Osgoode Hall law professor Hutchinson sketches the people, issues and precedents involved in eight of the most important, and intriguing, legal cases from Britain, Australia, Canada and the U.S. These cases, some hundreds of years old, cover everything from shipwreck cannibalism to a snail in a bottle of root beer, and represent the foundation for much of the English-speaking world’s common law tradition.

The grisly title case involves an unfortunate cabin boy named Richard Parker who provided sustenance for two other castaways when the British yacht Mignonette sank in 1884. The resulting trial wrestled with the issue of whether it is ever permissible to kill one person in order to guarantee the survival of others. The two survivors were eventually convicted of murder, but only served six months each. The defence of necessity remains a legal conundrum to this day.

The “great cases” are lively and educational in equal parts. The ownership of contested goods is parsed in a case involving a fox on the run from American hunters in 1800. Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis’ 1940s campaign against the Jehovah’s Witnesses reveals how the rule of law serves as a check on abuses of political power. And rapist Ernesto Miranda’s coerced confession paves the way for the adoption of Miranda rights in the U.S.

Focusing on these precedent-setting historical vignettes allows Hutchinson to present the law as a fascinating and organic thing, reflecting both the specifics of legal conflict and the broader influence of society at large. While his penchant for obscure terminology and judges’ biographies does slow the book down (What’s an assizes? Who cares who clerked for whom?), the stories themselves are rich enough to turn a reader into an instant legal expert.
Peter Shawn Taylor

DIRTY SECRET:
A DAUGHTER COMES CLEAN ABOUT HER MOTHER’S COMPULSIVE HOARDING
Jessie Sholl

Jessie Sholl left New York City and went home to Minneapolis when her mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. The cancer wasn’t the biggest problem. It was the clutter. “If I could get her to unclutter her house, her cluttered mind would follow: somewhere under all the filth is a reliable mother, a consistent and compassionate mother?.?.?.?I know she’s in there. I just have to find her.” Good luck with that, Jesse. Sholl has been the adult in their relationship from the get-go, and this memoir is a therapeutic purge of every complicated emotion that she has ever felt toward her mother. It’s surprisingly breezy but often heartbreaking. Hoarding, as a topic, is big these days, with reality television tapping into our voyeurism, but this is not a bandwagon book. Sholl has been struggling with her mother’s hoarding for 20 years, secretly, and she can’t take it anymore.

Sholl paints a vivid portrait of her mother. Helen is shockingly self-absorbed and lacking maternal urges. It’s no surprise to learn her marriage ended early and her son remains estranged. Just when readers start to hate her, her daughter gives us a glimpse of Helen’s own traumatic childhood. Sholl tells readers, repeatedly, that hoarding is a mental illness and provides arresting statistics: six million Americans are hoarders; most suffered emotional neglect; many are or were nurses, inexplicably; 85 per cent have “first-degree relatives” they’d describe as pack rats; they often see themselves as artists or inventors.

Finally unravelling from the stress of sorting out her mother, Sholl takes the focus off Helen and tells readers about how she, herself, is falling apart. She gets a bit whiny by the end, but this hoarder’s daughter can be excused some self pity, as she waves a white flag and surrenders.
Joanne Latimer

Thunder Bay goes to the dogs

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 4:03 PM - 2 Comments

British Columbia: A class-action lawsuit has been filed in the B.C. Supreme Court on behalf of Canadian men who claim to have experienced prolonged sexual dysfunction after taking medications to prevent baldness. Merck Frosst Canada and its affiliated companies, which market hair-loss drugs such as Propecia and Proscar, are the targets of the suit, launched by a Vancouver man.

Manitoba: A former inmate of the federal Stony Mountain Institution is suing Ottawa. He alleges that prison staff didn’t intervene immediately during a riot in which he was injured. The Brandon, Man., man’s lawsuit states that during the January 2009 violence, he was stabbed multiple times and beaten, resulting in permanent disabling injuries.

Ontario: A Thunder Bay family has filed a statement of claim against a dog owner and the city after their dog, a chihuahua mix, was allegedly attacked and killed by a pit bull mixed breed. The $49,000 claim alleges the city was negligent in its supervision of the park’s off-leash area and the other dog’s owner did not properly supervise the animal.

Quebec: A Concordia University student, who failed to win a $15-million lawsuit against the school in 2007 after being expelled for plagiarism in 2004, is taking Concordia to court again. He wants the Quebec Superior Court to order the university to grant him a new disciplinary hearing on the plagiarism charges, which he failed to do in his previous case, and he alleges that he was expelled due to “discriminatory motivated ‘errors’ committed by his professors with respect to his grades.”

Nova Scotia: A P.E.I. man has launched a lawsuit in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court against Cheers and its staff for injuries he allegedly sustained while being escorted out of the Halifax bar. The man claims that a man “threw or shoved him a distance of approximately five feet onto the pavement,” causing his skull to fracture in three places. Statements of defence have not been filed.

Membership would have its privileges

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 3:56 PM - 0 Comments

A government-appointed task force is proposing radical changes to the way news organizations operate in Quebec. Its 51 recommendations include the creation of a special status to differentiate “professional journalists” from amateur and citizen journalists, and a system of tax credits and grants to support what the panel says is a struggling industry.

What the proposals would also do is transform the largely toothless Quebec Press Council into a full-fledged regulator. In addition to its role as disciplinarian, the press council would gain the authority to decide which media companies qualify as “news organizations” and would therefore be eligible for potentially lucrative government benefits. Those benefits would also include the iron-clad right to protect sources, and to have government departments prioritize the Access to Information requests from their duly accredited journalists.

The recommendations appear expressly designed to force Quebecor back inside a regulatory tent after the media behemoth left the council last summer. At a press conference to announce the release of the report, task force chair Dominique Payette made it clear her group’s recommendations are aimed at reducing the influence of media conglomerates. “I could have started by saying, ‘we’re going to dismantle the empires,’ ” she said. “But I didn’t want this report to be shelved within a half-hour of its release.”

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