On one gracious loser and May as an 'independent'

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 6 Comments

A brand-new question period?

Much media ink has been spilled over the young MPs elected in the NDP orange wave. But age wasn’t a problem for Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon and pharaoh of Egypt, who ruled the Greeks and had conquered Persia by age 25. The NDP say they now have both seasoned people and youthful enthusiasm. Since they have always been an opposition party (though now with a huge increase in resources), NDPers have fine-tuned every trick in the book to force delays and fight procedural wars on issues dear to them. Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow says her party, over the last four years, helped delay the free trade deal with Colombia and a transportation bill. However, NDP deputy leader Libby Davies says watch for the Conservatives to work hard to erode their ability to challenge bills within the current system. NDPers also say to watch for a different kind of question period. After the G20 in Toronto, the Liberals hammered the government over items such as the infamous “fake lake,” while the NDP went after the Conservatives on the trampling of civil rights. Re-elected NDP MP Don Davies, who was his party’s public safety critic last session, says he expects there will be more focus on substantive issues in QP rather than simply a bunch of scandal questions, a strategy the Liberals had turned into an art form. Former Liberal MPs told Capital Diary in the past they were literally harassed by their own party to help when mud throwing was needed.

May called Harper but Harper…

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A mad rush toward the GOP? Not quite.

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 4 Comments

RexFeatures/CP

Republicans are united in their desire to oust President Barack Obama, but they are quite divided on how to proceed. Behind the headlines about the emerging presidential campaign, reality TV stars who might take part, and presidential birth certificates, there is internal party jostling over fundamental questions. After small-government activists helped Republicans take back the House of Representatives last November, they opened an internal debate over how far the party is willing to go to balance the books—and what political price it is willing to pay to get there. How much can Republicans cut government spending, like medical care for senior citizens and Social Security, and still remain electable? Can they cut Pentagon budgets without alienating foreign policy hawks? And are they willing to call a “truce” on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion to build broad coalitions to achieve fiscal reforms?

As congressional Republicans in Washington wrestle with the upcoming vote on raising the limit on the national debt and working out a federal budget, many of the biggest names among the presidential wannabes have been hanging back, watching. The result is a primary race that, by traditionally epic American standards, has been slow to get going. The empty stage has been filled by a cast of characters that can most charitably be described as eclectic. The first GOP candidates’ debate held last week in Greenville, S.C., included several candidates who want to legalize marijuana, the libertarian Texas congressman Ron Paul, who wants to audit the Federal Reserve, and Georgia pizza magnate Herman Cain, who boasted of never having been elected to anything.

“You’ve got two or three different things going on that at least explain why candidates are not lining up this year as they have in previous years,” says Bruce Buchanan, a specialist in presidential politics at the University of Texas at Austin. “One thing is, there is turbulence inside the Republican party that is nice [for potential candidates] to be able to avoid to a certain extent.” Meanwhile, the incumbent President is presiding over an improving economy, has just killed America’s worst enemy, and is expected to break fundraising records and run the country’s first billion-dollar campaign. “The big money donors are holding back and the big feet in the party are reluctant to launch a campaign they can’t finance,” adds Buchanan.

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'This is my destiny'

By Jonathan Kay - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 157 Comments

Steve Ludlum/The New York Times/Redux

In Among the Truthers, his wide-ranging look at conspiracist thinking on everything from the 9/11 attacks to the causes of autism, journalist Jonathan Kay is less interested in what the conspiracies proclaim than in examining how modern society lost its “consensual view of reality.” As part of that effort, Kay considers the various paths individual conspiracists have followed, and in this excerpt relates his interactions with one very persuasive truther, a popular speaker on the 9/11 conspiracy convention circuit, in the grip of a mid-life crisis.

Of all the truther headliners I’ve seen, the very best is Richard Gage, a balding, mild-mannered, middle-aged architect who heads up a California-based group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. I’ve heard Gage speak three times in three different cities. At each event, the response was rapturous. At a 2009 lecture in Montreal, his crowd sat mesmerized as he spoke for three straight hours—on a night when the Montreal Canadiens were contesting a playoff game, no less. At a speech in New York City a few months later, the audience burst into a spontaneous chant of “Ri-chard! Richard!” Blushing and grinning like an earnest, overgrown schoolboy, Gage blurted out: “Your enthusiasm knocks my socks off!”

His singular focus—laboriously examined in a 600-slide PowerPoint presentation he trots out at every opportunity—is the precise sequence of events leading to the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Avoiding speculation on the Pentagon attacks and the machinations of the Bush White House is critical to the mission of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, he says. “We’re building and technical professionals,” Gage tells his audiences. “We’re not conspiracy theorists.” Gage inevitably elicits emotional gasps and shouts with his slide show. In Montreal, a couple sitting behind me seemed particularly moved. “How can those murderers sleep at night after what they’ve done?” one exclaimed. (She wasn’t talking about al-Qaeda.) Even my own guest, a conservative-minded 65-year-old woman, seemed transfixed, falling silent at points where I expected she’d be chortling and rolling her eyes.

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It's French for blockbuster

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 2 Comments

The Cannes Film Festival is once again showcasing its usual fare of upbeat, crowd-pleasing entertainment. I’ve not entirely been paying attention, but here’s what’s playing so far as I can tell:

Despair and Isolation—Several orphans struggle to comprehend the human condition in a cruel world where the only constants are heartbreak and suffering. Running time: six hours.

Isolation, Despair and also Anguish—Several thinner orphans struggle to comprehend the human condition while wheezing in a crueller world where the only constants are heartbreak, suffering and their leprosy (the skin kind and the social kind). Running time: six hours.

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Silence is golden

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 7:09 PM - 0 Comments

Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Béo in 'The Artist'

After watching too many films about sexual degradation, pedophilia, and parental abuse, it was a tonic to see The Artist this morning. I went into it with some trepidation. Making a black-and-white silent film in 2011 sounds impossibly precious, a whim of cinephilia that’s perverse in its own right. But despite its classic form, The Artist is not an art film, at least not in any restrictive sense. It’s a pure, undemanding delight, sure to entertain any audience that can be dragged into it. And it was met with the most generous applause of any movie screened here so far at the 8:30 a.m. press screenings (which are attended by several thousand journalists).

It’s a French movie, but you’d never guess. This is something I haven’t seen in 17 years of attending the Cannes Film Festival: a French film without subtitles. There are titles, but just the kind of sparse dialogue cards typical of the genre. The whole silent, black-and-white,  square-aspect-ratio thing, by the way, isn’t a gratuitous conceit. It sets up and frames a playful narrative set in late 1920s Hollywood, during the transition from silent films to talkies.

By turns farcial and tender, The Artist is a romantic comedy about star-crossed lovers, they kind who spend most of the movie sadly separated. They are George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a vain silent film star whose career is doomed with the advent of talkies; and Bérénice Béo, an exuberant extra who flirts her way into a small role in one of his films. She goes to become a big star just as he sinks into oblivion. Inevitably, this faux silent picture is flecked with homages to the era. On some level it’s a gender-flipped Sunset Boulevard, with James Cromwell cast as Valentin’s loyal chauffeur. But  the irony is beautifully restrained, and it’s a revelation to see how rich, emotional, and downright riveting a movie without dialogue can be. It’s strange that such an antique form can feel so fresh. This is a movie that you can imagine Woody Allen wishing he he made. Oh yes, there’s also a wildly talented dog in the cast. I’m not a big fan of dogs in movies, but this pooch is something else.

That was the highpoint of a day in which I consumed four movies. The other three were all dramas about abused and messed-up women. Don’t have time to go into details. It’s after midnight and I’ve got to be back at the Palais bright and early to fight the mob that will show up for Terence Malick’s Tree of Life, the most hotly anticipated title in Cannes.

But briefly, in those three films I saw more naked bodies than you can shake a stick at. Almost all female, except for the sick sadist who violated the sick heroine of Code Blue—a weird mix of palliative care and art porn—in a scene of unsimulated masturbation that could not have been less of a turn on. The other two films were: House of Tolerance, a painterly slice of life from the prostitutes’ POV in in a French Belle Epoque brothel—whose employees include The Woman Who Laughs because a permanent smile has been knifed into her face by a  client—and Martha Marcy May Marlene (cool title), a dark drama featuring Elizabeth Olsen in a star-making performance as a fugitive from a dangerous cult who seeks refuge with her sister.

OK. Enough. . . That Tree of Life better live up to its title.

NBC is Still NBC

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 2:14 PM - 4 Comments

A quick note about NBC’s fall schedule announcement: by leaving The Voice and its favourite new drama pilot Smash for midseason, the network is basically announcing that the fall is a work-in-progress schedule – like Fox in the days when all it had was American Idol, they’re almost saying “wait until January and the real fireworks start.” Still, NBC remains NBC; anyone thinking the network’s scheduling decisions were going to make more sense with the new regime should be disabused. A

mong the highlights in terms of poor scheduling are on Thursday, where they have:

1. Left Community at 8 o’clock, a slot it has proven over and over again to be wrong for;

2. Moved Parks & Recreation from the post-Office slot, where it was builidng momentum for the first time in its run, to the far more difficult 8:30 slot;

3) Scheduled one lone multi-camera comedy, Whitney, in an all-single-camera lineup. The executives probably think they’re doing it a favour by giving it the post-Office slot; the likely reality is that it will get worse reviews than it otherwise would have because multi-camera shows are no longer compatible with single-camera shows. I can’t believe networks haven’t caught onto this yet after repeated demonstrations of this problem; it’s like they listen to their Research people predicting the future instead of looking at past evidence of what has actually happened.

The network’s other new pickups are pretty underwhelming at a glance. The Playboy Club is an attempt to imitate Mad Men, except even the cable networks don’t want to imitate Mad Men. (The creator of FX’s Lights Out told the L.A. Times that the head of the network said “don’t bring me Mad Men acclaim and Mad Men ratings, that’s not what I need.” Wise man, from a commercial standpoint at least.) Prime Suspect is the other new drama of interest, and it could be good (if less likely to withstand comparisons to the original than The Office was) but not the sort of thing to get the heart pumping.

In terms of new comedy, NBC was rumoured to be considering a female-skewing comedy block for Wednesday to counter-program against ABC. The point of picking up multi-camera comedies from both Whitney Cummings and Chelsea Handler, similar comedians, was to create a compatible block, and they still might be considering that for midseason when Handler’s show begins (if Cummings’ show hasn’t already bombed in the post-Office slot, and as I said, I fear they’re killing it).

Instead they’ve gone with Christina Applegate’s pilot, which is said to be very good, followed by a less female-centric comedy, Free Agents, based on a dark British comedy. I am looking forward to Applegate’s show because the creator, Emily Spivey, is a good writer, but I wouldn’t advise the network to pin too many hopes on a show starring Will Arnett. Up against The Middle (if ABC keeps it in that slot) I know I would rather see Patricia Heaton with her charming, likable TV husband Neil Flynn than Christina Applegate with her smarmy, unlikable TV husband Will Arnett.

Now, some of my predictions will be wrong, and NBC could have some surprise hits or some surprise non-flops (maybe Whitney will perform better with The Office than I think it will). But looking at it without knowledge of the future, all I can say is that it looks like nothing has changed at NBC: needing aggressive scheduling and re-thinking of their approach, they’re still acting like they’re a super-successful network with an untarnished brand, instead of the fourth-place operation they still are.

Depp on Cruz control

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 4 Comments

Johnny Depp at the Cannes press conference for 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' / photo by Brian D. Johnson

Johnny Depp doesn’t watch his own movies. And after I dragged myself to an 8:30 a.m. screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, I could only think that his morning was better spent than mine. The experience didn’t start well. The damn 3D glasses weren’t working. I wondered, how could that be? First I thought it was the projection, but none of the other several thousand journalists at the screening were fumbling with their glasses. After 20 minutes of dark, blurry images, I left the theatre and handed my glasses to an usher, muttering that they didn’t work.“Oh, monsieur, vos lunettes ne clignottent pas!” Telling me my glasses weren’t blinking. Huh? Then he handed me a fresh pair and, holding them up to the light, showed me that they were were blinking. These are not your granddad’s polarized 3D shades. They’re active-shutter X-pand 3-glasses with lenses that alternately flick on and off at a rapid rate.

So I returned to my seat and found everything crystal clear, including the French subtitles, which hovered annoyingly within touching distance.  Regardless, the movie, directed by Rob Marshall, is an unsightly mess. Don’t get me wrong. I adore both Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz. Throw in Geoffrey Rush and Ian McSwane and this is one fine cast. But it’s a shame to see actors wasted. Amid the two-hour-plus barrage of chaotic action, there’s scarcely an intimate moment between them. How many swordfights can anyone be expected to endure and not be bored silly? Seen one, seen them all. And why does every Pirates movies need such a baroque tangle of plots with three gangs of people fighting over . . . in this case, the Fountain of Youth. The latest additions to the monster menagerie, by the way, are mermaids. One of them falls in love with a Christian missionary. But most  are man-eating vampires that churn up the sea like extras in an over-populated Jaws sequel.

Pirates 4 joins a growing genre of sideshows at Cannes afflicted by the-press-conference-was-more-fun-than-the-movie syndrome. And you can’t not like Johnny Depp, who is as charming off screen as on. Aside from the fact that he’s a close friend of Keith Richards, and has lived to tell the tale, he’s one of the few superstars who can express a humility that is both genuine and insightful. At a jammed press conference for Pirates, he sat next to Penélope Cruz, his partner in grace, and fielded even the dumbest questions with generosity and wit

. I thought of asking him if he longed make a Pirates Unplugged, where the ratio of action to acting would be reversed, so dialogue would dominate. But I already knew the answer. He would laboriously have to defend the process, and the movie. So instead  I asked, “When you were making little, idiosyncratic films with the likes of Jim Jarmusch, did you ever dream you’d be commandeering a franchise like this? And do you miss the intimacy of those smaller films?”

“I’m lucky. I try and work out a balance, angling toward doing what is true to me. And it just so happens that for 20 years or so I made these films that were considered for the most part failures. Flops. I built a career on flops, so I was quite comfortable in that arena. Then a couple of things hit. It’s a very strange little ride and you get used to it pretty quick. You’ve got a film coming out, ooh, he’s on the list again. Maybe he’s on the list. Producers you haven’t talked to for 15 years call you: “How have you been?” Then that film takes a dump, and then they never call you again til the next one.”

I also asked about Keith Richards, who reprises his role as his dad in a fleeting cameo. “He’s amazing to share a trailer with. I could write a book on that myself one day.”

One journalist asked Depp what it takes to be a good pirate. “I can only speak from my experience,” he said. “I suppose you have to be willing to get fired. The only reason I’m still around is that I was so supported by Jerry Bruckheimer and the director on the first one, Gore Verbinsky, in terms of what I was bringing to the table, character-wise. Let’s say there wasn’t a group of the Disney echelon who had any enthusiasm for what I was doing. They wanted to subtitle me.”

Deadwood‘s Ian McShane, who plays Blackbeard in Pirates 4, offered this note on how he prepared:  “I used to play a lot of music, especially Bob Dylan’s song, Boots of Spanish Leather. The way you act any character, you look at the other character in the eye and try not to trip over your sword. My sword is three times as big as anybody else’s. It was also nice to play an evil character–I’ve played quite a few–but one I could actually see with my grandchildren.” Then he added: “We don’t call them evil characters; we call them complicated characters.”

Inevitably, the stars were asked to compare the experience of working on a low budget and big budget. The answer is always predictable. If you’re promoting a low-budget film, it’s kosher to crap on the whole blockbuster ethic. But if you’re promoting the blockbuster, you say the experience of acting is essentially the same, no matter how many trailers are lined up around the block.  Denying there was any difference between acting in a $12 million movie like The King’s Speech and a gazillion-dollar movie like Pirates, Geoffrey Rush noted, “Whether it’s playing the speech therapist or  the pirate, it’s good that I keep working with people called King George.

As for Penélope Cruz, she and Depp said lovely, flattering things about each other.  Johnny, who’s happy to keep making these movies as long as the audience will have them, said he’d be happy to have  Penélope in all of them, if she were willing. But what spoke louder than their public testimony were the shy, electric glances that flew between them, and whatever it was they whispered to each other off-mic.

Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz at Cannes press conference for 'Pirates' / photo by Brian D. Johnson

A paralyzed Pope and Talmudic thrills

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Actor-director Nanni Moretti (left) and Michel Piccoli in 'Habamus Papam'

There’s a narrative flow to this festival, as if each of the 20 features in competition is the chapter of a secret novel. TIFF, which presents some 300 films, is a different animal. Most of the action is packed into the opening four or five days, as we are force-fed a glut of potential Oscar nominees. In Cannes, the momentum builds with a dramatic arc that spans the course of the festival. It’s a competition, after all. And, as in figure skating, some of the most potent contenders are often positioned near the end of the event, to leave the strongest impact on the jury. There’s a subtle thematic composition as well. Three films by women were front-loaded into the first two days—a tad patronizing perhaps, as if to dispense of them before getting down to the serious business of male auteurs—but they were all provocative, intriguing and oddly related.

Now it’s back to the male ego with a vengeance. Yesterday we saw two competition entries, from Italy and Israel, that both dealt with biblical orthodoxy and the burden of conferred glory.  Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam stars 85-year-old French legend Michel Piccoli as a cardinal who’s elected Pope and is paralyzed by performance before he can get to the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.  Footnote (Hearat Shuylayim), by Israeli director Joseph Cedar is a tale of two Talmudic scholars, a father and son, whose rivalry is inflamed when one of them receives a major prize–I know, the premise sounds deadly, but it’s an exhilirating film, and the I’ve seen here that’s really excited me.

I’m a longtime Nanni Moretti fan. His Caro Diaro (1993) is one of my all-time favorites, and this comedian’s detour into drama, The Son’s Room, won the 2001 Palme D’Or for its raw portrait of a couple facing the death of a child.  Habemus Papam presents a delicious premise: the Pope who feels he’s unworthy for the job. And the movie has brilliant, hilarious and tender moments. Moretti casts himself as a non-believing shrink who tries to psychoanalyze the new Pope in the Vatican, with all the Cardinals watching. It’s such a delicious set-up that you’re dying to see that relationship take over the film. But then it would become The Pope’s Speech; not Moretti’s style. Instead, the Pope escapes into the streets of Rome, rides the bus incognito, and contemplates his failed ambitions as an actor. The film become The Old Man and the (Holy) See. And as the narrative takes some perverse turns, it’s almost willfully underwhelming.

Shlomo Bar Aba as the father in 'Footnote'

Footnote, on the other hand, makes magic from a more dubious premise. It’s hard to describe what’s so good about this Talmudic intrigue, the story of a purist father who resents his son’s success. But with stunning visuals, a  stabbing score reminiscent of Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, and some devastating twists, there is nothing pedestrian about Footnote. Laced with comic irony, it has the kinetic thrust of a noir thriller, while plumbing the bottomless depths of parental conflict and the quicksand of moral relativism. It even adds some sly grace notes about Israel’s culture as an armed camp, with scenarios of high security at the gates of academe. Footnote unfolds like an O’Henry story on steroids, and is almost certain to win something before the festival is over.

Patriquin and Gohier admit they were wrong about Quebec and the NDP

By Erica Alini - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 5:45 PM - 14 Comments

Bonfire of the Vanities: the Diana conspiracy film

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

Sometimes the press conference is better than the movie. Vastly better in the case of Unlawful Killing, a controversial documentary that suggests Princess Di was murdered and tries to prove there was a conspiracy to cover up the facts of her death. The British press has already created huge buzz around the film with outraged reports that it includes a photograph of Diana in the car wreck that was deemed unfit for publication in the U.K. Consequently a high-powered crowd of press showed up for the film’s premiere in the Cannes market—it’s not in the festival’s official program, and now that I’ve seen it, I can understand why.

The photograph is a red herring. It’s just a fleeting image of Diana in the wrecked car, and is not in the least exploitative. But the film is another story. Without actually accusing Prince Philip of plotting Diana’s demise, it paints him as a former Nazi bedfellow—and the shadowy villain behind a racist mafia of a monarchy that wanted her out of the picture. The epic inquest into Diana’s death is portrayed as a sham, and the media are pilloried for ignoring scandalous evidence and misrepresenting the jury’s verdict. Even if such views are music to your ears, it’s hard to warm to Unlawful Killing.

Neither good journalism nor good filmmaking, it’s a shrill, shabby polemic that does a disservice to its own point of view. Serving up interviews with Piers Morgan, the late Tony Curtis and a psychologist who diagnoses Philip as a psychopath, it unearths no fresh evidence—something British director Keith Allen freely admitted at a press conference that turned into a total circus. It took place at the lavish Grand Salon of the Carlton Hotel, the same regal venue where Angelina Jolie held court for Kung Fu Panda 2 the previous day. Clearly, this is one of those fishy documentaries with serious money behind it. The first question was: whose money?

Mohamed Al-Fayed’s money, as it turns out. After failing to get financing from U.K. broadcasters, Al-Fayed paid for the entire budget of Unlawful Killing. How much was that? The director, who also had to be prompted to remember names of prominent characters in his film, said he had no idea. Then, out of the wings, a heavy-looking Brit who said he represented Al-Fayed suddenly appeared to inform us that the Arab tycoon, and father of Diana’s late suitor, put up £2.5 million (roughly $5 million).

Shortly before that, I’d asked the director: “As a filmmaker doing a ‘forensic’ piece,’ why did you not indicate your relationship with Mr. Al-Fayed in the film, and the fact that he financed the film?” Allen looked baffled, as if it had never occurred to him that a lack of transparency would mar the credibility of a movie that portrays its benefactor as a grossly maligned saint. He said mentioning Al-Fayed’s involvement would “interrupt the flow.” Then he added: “I think you’ll find that there are an immense number of films coming out in America that were financed by the Mafia and there’s no reference [in those films].”

I went on to ask Allen about a scene in which Al-Fayed burns the royal coats of arms that once adorned his Harrods store, in view of his son Dodi’s mausoleum. It appears that the film crew is the only “media” on hand to capture the bonfire.

“That was a set up for the film, no?” I asked.

“No, he was going to do it, and I filmed it,” said the director. “The action didn’t take place because I was making a film. I actually recorded what happened.”

“But if you wanted to present a credible forensic analysis,” I asked, trying a new tack, “Why were you so strident in your condemnation of the monarchy as ‘gangsters with tiaras’?”

“It’s an observation.”

To be fair Allen—an actor who’s also the father of singer Lily Allen—admitted he wasn’t trying to do journalism or documentary, just raise some questions.

But the fun was just starting. Next, British author Martyn Gregory, author of Diana, the Last Days, stood up and launched into a diatribe: “I must say I was really, really disappointed with the film. It regurgitates everything Mohamed Al- Fayed has being saying since the year 2000.” Throughout the press conference Gregory kept jumping up to quarrel with Allen, until the moderator had to give him a lecture on the value of English civility.

In the film, Allen brands all British journalists as establishment toadies controlled by sycophantic employers vying for knighthoods. There were a lot of Brit journalists in the room, and one of them made the valid point that they wouldn’t be there if they were as censorious as he suggested. And one politely asked why there were no dissenting views in the film, at least to give it the impression of balance.

Allen said he thought they’d get expressed without his help. He also wondered if his film would ever play commercially in the U.K. His lawyers have asked for 87 cuts to make it palatable to insurers. A number of them concern accusations that the inquest into Diana’s death was a deliberate cover-up, which leads him into contempt of court territory.

The most jaw-dropping moment in the press conference occurred when a British journalist, curious about the director’s personal stake in the material, asked him if he’d ever met Diana. No, he had not. “But my son and daughter have. Years ago my ex-wife, Alison, had produced a movie called Hear My Song which was chosen as a royal premiere. And bless his heart, Alfie, my boy, it was the first time he had ever worn a suit, a little black velvet suit. He was putting on his trousers and he caught his cock in his zip. I had the awful job of having to unzip him and pull his penis out. Very painful. And I’ve got a wonderful photograph of Princess Di bending over and talking to Lily and Alfie, and laughing. I asked why—my son had told her about what had happened to his penis.”

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 4:38 PM - 28 Comments

Rob Silver suggests the Liberal party pursue a pair of democratic reforms.

1. The era of protected nominations for sitting Liberal MPs is dead and will never return. Ever. Every riding will have an open, contested nomination every single time. We will never allow the undemocratic atrophy that enveloped our caucus to return.

2. We will experiment with open primaries at the riding level just as David Cameron did in Britain. Instead of only card-carrying Liberals choosing the candidate, any voter can get a say. There will be by-elections at some point over the next four years; why not try an open primary when the first ones occur? Really, what do we have to lose?

All hail Matt Drudge

By Jesse Brown - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 3:43 PM - 24 Comments

For fifteen years, Matt Drudge has been the most hated man in the newspaper business. His Drudgereport.com was the proto-aggregator, the web’s original sin, the first major news site to offer no original news content.  Beyond the rare, one-paragraph (or one-sentence) “exclusive,” all Drudge serves is an ugly page a day of links to other people’s stuff, artlessly assembled on a high contrast digital broadsheet, reduced to shrill tabloid headlines bellowing at you in ALL CAPS.  Drudge normalized aggregation and now everybody and your uncle is doing it. Especially your uncle, now that Facebook and Twitter have supercharged news sharing through services that make Drudge look like yesterday’s news.

Except he isn’t. A shocking Pew Research Center study tracked the web sites of the New York Times, CNN, Fox News and 22 other top news sites to find out how people get to them.  The top “referer” from which traffic originates? Drudge. Drudge beats Google. Drudge beats Facebook. Drudge beats Twitter—by a lot. “Legacy” news folks detest Drudge—just look at the Associated Press story on the Pew study, picked up in hundreds of newspapers, which buried the lede on Drudge’s surprising dominance to focus instead on Facebook’s lesser influence. But as much as journalists hate Drudge, it is clear they need him.  They may consider his aggregation to be a kind of theft or plagiarism, but even so, they can’t afford to have him stop stealing from them. Each time he does, he sends a torrent of readers their way. Continue…

The fresh face of democracy

By Erica Alini - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 3 Comments

The Mark talks to NDP MP Laurin Liu.

Osama bin Laden: porn collector?

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 2:16 PM - 11 Comments

A porn collection described by U.S. officials as “modern” and “fairly extensive” was reportedly found in Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It’s not clear to whom the porn belonged or whether bin Laden himself had ever viewed it, officials said. Since the compound had no Internet access, it is also not known how the material would have made its way into the compound. Officials familiar with materials seized in past raids say it is not unusual to discover porn among Islamic militants’ belongings.

National Post

Two Supreme Court judges announce retirement

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 2:01 PM - 0 Comments

The Supreme Court of Canada will lose two of its nine members by the end of this summer.  Justice Ian Binnie, 72, and Justice Louise Charron, 60, announced on Friday they plan to retire effective August 30, though Binnie suggested he is open to staying on until his replacement is found. Binnie has served on the court since 1998 and was three years away from mandatory retirement at age 75. Charron, meanwhile, wrote she simply wanted to retire earlier.

CBC News

TV: Tell, Show, Laugh

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:56 PM - 1 Comment

Last night Community ended its second and not final season, where it became a breakout show in terms of fandom: the ratings weren’t there, but it became probably the most passionately-loved series on regular broadcast TV, as well as gaining more fans within the industry.

I have had my problems with the show this season, but before I say anything about that I want to talk a little bit about what the show has done right – because I think when a show touches this much of a nerve, it must be doing something very right. (This applies to seemingly lowbrow shows as well as cult favourites, of course.) I think Community, a famously post-modern show, is to TV what post-modern art has been in a lot of areas: a chance to reconcile the pleasures of the old with those of the new.

Much of today’s audience, and certainly the people who both write and watch Community, were raised in a TV-saturated environment; they know all its traditional tricks, and can go on the internet and learn even more about them through TVTropes.org and other resources. Television has been de-mystified, because thanks to interviews with producers and Twitter accounts and DVD commentaries and all the rest, we on the outside know more than we ever did about how these things are put together. That made us cynical, and a lot of televised entertainment for the last 10 years has been sort of in revolt against the old clichés. The most popular shows still tend to be the ones that use these clichés straightforwardly (American Idol) or tweak them just a little bit before using them more or less straight after all (NCIS). But the writers and viewers who want something more, or something different, are often looking to subvert them. In TV comedy, the gold standard for that approach is Arrested Development, a show that was the anti-sitcom for 19 minutes followed by 30 seconds of obligatory heartfelt emotion.

But, like modern music or modern art, modern – maybe even modernist – TV can be wearying; viewers raised on TV sitcoms long for their simple pleasures just as concert-goers long for a good tune. A lot of post-modern music is about bringing back the stuff that modernism rejected (tunes, tonal harmony) but doing so in a way that adds a layer of ironic commentary, so we know we’re not just listening to a pastiche, that it’s not kitsch.

Community is doing sort of the same thing. As everyone agrees, it’s a deconstruction of sitcom tropes. Most ensemble Continue…

Not even arguing the science

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:40 PM - 60 Comments

Whatever Tony Clement has said about the “evidence”—and whatever value you are supposed to place on Mr. Clement’s public pronouncements—the government’s lawyers managed to concede during yesterday’s Supreme Court hearings that Insite has worked.

Federal lawyer Paul Riley conceded health ministers allowed it to operate from 2003-2008 following a wave of deaths in the 1990s “to permit a scientific study of the nature of that program as a question of policy.” 

“And it worked,” interjected Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. She cited the trial judge’s findings based on research showing addiction is an illness; unsanitary equipment is linked to infections and disease, and risk of death is lessened by supervision of qualified health professionals. “Lives are being saved, diseases are being prevented by this site, and are we putting too fine a point on it by saying the site has nothing to do with it?” McLachlin said.

“In the end this program somehow, while not being perfect, works,” said Justice Louis LeBel. “Have you got anything that tends to demonstrate that this program doesn’t work?”

Riley stammered in reply: “I think that’s a fair observation.”

Gadhafi may have fled Tripoli

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

There are unconfirmed reports that Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi has left Tripoli and may have been injured in the fighting that has laid siege to the country. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Friday that Tripoli’s Catholic bishop had told him Gadhafi is “probably wounded,” though Frattini emphasized his country has “no hard information” to support the claim. Frattini added “international pressure has likely provoked the decision by Gadhafi to seek refuge in a safe place” outside the capital, though it’s unlikely the Libyan leader has left the country altogether. The Italian official has also said he expects the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Gadhafi before the end of the month, a move which would make his exile impossible.

Associated Press

Al Jazeera English

Are the Thrashers Winnipeg-bound?

By Erica Alini - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:24 PM - 1 Comment

A report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers NHL franchise have failed to find a buyer who would keep the team in Atlanta, opening the the door to talks that would see the Thrashers move to Winnipeg. It’s not known how far negotiations with True North Sports and Entertainment, the company that would move the team, have progressed or whether they’ve even started at all. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman nonetheless opened the door to a possible relocation in an interview with NHL Live radio on Thursday, saying “if [Thrashers ownership] can’t find local ownership, then we might all have to deal with that.” Deputy commissioner Bill Daly had earlier said he couldn’t guarantee the Thrashers would be playing in Atlanta next season.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Supreme Court rules PM's agenda may be kept private

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:01 PM - 1 Comment

In a landmark unanimous ruling issued on Friday, the Supreme Court decided the Canadian public does not have the right to access sensitive information held by public officials like the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The ruling, written by Justice Louise Charron, held that such an expansion of the Access to Information Act “can only be achieved by Parliament.” The decision followed the rejection of requests by opposition politicians and the media for access to minutes, agendas, e-mails and day timers that related largely to former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s use of government aircraft, and to high-level national defence meetings.

The Globe and Mail

Does Harper really care about the Arctic?

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 12:56 PM - 0 Comments

New cables released by WikiLeaks reveal the U.S. government perceived Stephen Harper’s position on Arctic sovereignty only as a politically expedient way to win votes during the 2006 and 2008 elections, the CBC reports. While the PM often used strong rhetoric about the need to defend the region and rolled out a series of pledges, including the purchase of armed icebreakers and ocean sensors to beef up surveillance, the cables reveal that he did little to implement them. “The persistent high profile which this government has accorded ‘Northern Issues’ and the Arctic is, however, unprecedented and reflects the PM’s views that the North has never been more important to our country’ — although one could perhaps paraphrase to state ‘the North has never been more important to our Party,” wrote U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson in a January 2010 diplomatic cable. Jacobsen also said that during an extended meeting he had with Harper in January 2010, the PM did not mention the Arctic once. Since coming to power in 2006, Harper has consistently touted Arctic sovereignty as a top priority for the Conservative government, and has visited the region on several occasions.

CBC News

'I think Canadians are fed up'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 12:24 PM - 17 Comments

Jack Layton promises a measured opposition.

The NDP will ask “tough” questions but will not resort to “antics.” “That certainly is my commitment. Our party didn’t have a reputation of being mad dogs in the House of Commons. We tended to be, I think, pretty well-controlled when it comes to the heckling that goes on. I feel that it is vitally important that the whole tone of Parliament change. I think Canadians are fed up with the kind of juvenile behaviour that we were seeing.”

Presumably this means no more puppet shows.

Nobel laureate steps down from post at microfinancing bank

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

Mohammed Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for fighting poverty, has resigned as managing director of the Grameen Bank on Thursday. Yunus had been battling the Bangladeshi government for control of the bank after they ordered his resignation, on the grounds that the 70-year-old was a decade over the mandatory retirement age. Yunus said in a statement that he stepped down to prevent further disruption to the bank’s operations.

Globe and Mail

Ron Paul to run for president

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

Texas Representative Ron Paul will run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, he announced Friday. Paul, 75, first ran for the presidency as a Libertarian in 1988; this will mark his third attempt. “Time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much of what I’ve been saying for 30 years. So, I think the time is right,” said Paul, who is known as “Dr. No” on Capitol Hill for bashing runaway spending and government overreach. He is the second Republican to announce his candidacy—former House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced he is running for the 2012 nomination via Twitter on Wednesday.

CBC News