Pride and Politicians

By Mitchel Raphael - Sunday, July 10, 2011 at 10:08 PM - 19 Comments

MPs hit the Toronto Pride Parade. Below, Green leader Elizabeth May (right) with Green volunteer Michael Wall.

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NDP leader Jack Layton and his MP wife Olivia Chow.

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(Left to right) Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett,  Liberal leader Bob Rae and former Liberal MP Rob Oliphant.

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Party at Stornoway

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:32 PM - 0 Comments

The media mingled with NDP MPs at the garden party at Stornoway NDP MP Olivia Chow shows off a white chocolate Jack Layton moustache.

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(L to R) NDP leader Jack Layton, MP Jack Harris and Doris Layton (Jack’s mom).

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Jury Duty, ’50s Style

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 4:36 PM - 3 Comments

Cable news coverage of high-profile verdicts frequently sort of put me in mind of the above strip (from the end of a 1950 Pogo arc – hopefully soon to be reprinted by Fantagraphics – about the trial of Albert Alligator for allegedly eating a cute puppy). But it also put me in mind of Twelve Angry Men, because that’s the go-to reference for anything involving juries. (Maybe someone should produce a sequel about the reaction to that jury’s verdict.) But it led me to seek out the original version of Twelve Angry Men, the 1954 live television play written by Reginald Rose and directed by Franklin Schaffner (Patton).

Rose expanded the play for the film version, and that script is more satisfying because it used the extra half-hour to flesh everything out; a lot of this version feels, inevitably, rushed by comparison. But most of the familiar bits are already here, as is the old-school liberal attitude about crime and punishment, a familiar part of ’50s and ’60s TV (though not Dragnet) but not common today. What I like about this original version may actually be a result of miscasting. The star is Robert Cummings, a star of light film comedies and sitcoms with not much live performance experience. He seems nervous (whether because of the live TV or because he’s directed that way, who knows) and not quite comfortable. Which actually works better for me than Henry Fonda’s casting in the film, because that guy is an out-and-out hero, better than everyone in the room. The juror # 8 here seems more like a regular person, a bit nervous about bringing up his doubts and going against the crowd, who gains confidence as it goes on.

Watching ’50s live TV drama – this, and the work of Sidney Lumet (who directed the film version, though not this one) is a reminder that live drama had a visual energy that filmed drama didn’t have, and wouldn’t have for quite a while. In fact, this is an era of TV that truly influenced feature films: not only did a lot of the better live drama directors go into features, but a lot of the techniques they used to make live TV more visually interesting – like panning the camera around someone as he speaks, or having him walk into extreme close-up – became more a bigger part features than they had been before.

The “Twelve Angry Men” story has become a big part of TV comedy, too, since so many comedies do a jury duty episode. Probably my favourite episode of that type is actually called “Twelve Angry Men,” from Hancock’s Half-Hour. It’s sort of a direct parody of the film version, since it replaces the good liberal humanist hero with a juror (Tony Hancock) who is a complete idiot, trying to acquit an obviously guilty person for no good reason, but who acts like he’s convinced that he is a crusading hero. It’s not just British sitcoms that do this, of course, but it does seem to be particularly popular in UK sitcoms to have the central character be someone who tries to act as if he or she is in some other type of story: David Brent is a recent example of the type.

Adam Sandler Derp de Derp

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 3:46 PM - 0 Comments

There seems to be a feeling that this does not look like a good movie.

There are some subtle signals it’s sending out that this might be Adam’s Sandler’s unexplained act of vengeance on the human race. Also, that the people who put together the trailer want to ruin Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” for everybody.

It’s amazing that after all the deserved scorn heaped on the announcements in bad comedy trailers – the same rhythms, the same tone of voice – bad comedy trailers still look and sound the same as they did in 2002 when South Park did the “Rob Schneider trailers” bit. I don’t know if it works, or if the people who make these trailers are just signaling their contempt for the material. You can’t blame them.

What’s in a name?

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:21 PM - 8 Comments

American media have concealed the identity of alleged sexual assault victims for years, but recent developments in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case have prompted news outlets to revisit this long-held policy. The case appears poised to collapse amidst revelations about the credibility of Kahn’s accuser, raising questions about the circumstances that would justify ignoring the policy and naming the woman. Legally, journalists in the U.S. are not required to conceal the identities of victims and alleged victims of sexual assault. But the prevailing view of the U.S. media is that keeping identities secret help women feel safe reporting sexual assault. News outlets in Europe and Africa have already published the name of Kahn’s accuser, making it easy for anyone with access to a search engine to know her identity.

Reuters

2 children, 5 adults dead in Michigan shooting spree

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:19 PM - 0 Comments

Eight people are dead after a gunman in central Michigan shot seven people, including two children, before allegedly turning the gun on himself. Exact details aren’t yet clear, but police say 34-year-old Rodrick Shonte Dantzler killed seven people in two separate locations before he led police on a high-speed chase around Grand Rapids, where he shot at police cars and hurt two bystanders.  He then broke into a home and took two people hostage. Dantzler was in the process of surrendering when he shot himself in the head.

New York Daily News

Final Atlantis mission lifts off

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 0 Comments

The last mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis took off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Friday morning. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch the launch of the final flight of the 30-year-old NASA program. The four-member crew will deliver parts, supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station on its 12-day mission. NASA decided to cancel the program last year in favour of directing resources to deep-space exploration. Private companies are in works with the agency to create an alternative space vehicle to shuttles.

CTV News

Feds asked Google for user data

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Google’s recently released 2011 Transparency Report shows the Canadian government asked the internet giant to hand over user data 38 times between July and December 2010. It’s not clear which departments requested the data, nor is it clear how many Canadians were involved. U.S. government requests, for instance, could target Canadian users. Google’s report only specifies that the company either complied, either fully or partially, with 55 per cent of the requests. The U.S. topped the list with 4,601 requests for user data, followed by Brazil at 1,804 and India at 1,699.

Toronto Star

Google

Man dies at Texas Rangers game

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 1:56 PM - 0 Comments

A man died in Arlington, Texas on Thursday after falling out of the stands at a Texas Rangers baseball game. The man was trying to catch a baseball headed in his direction by leaning over the bleachers, when he went over the wall and fell six metres to the ground, fire officials report.  A nearby fan tried to grab the man as he went over. He was conscious when paramedics escorted him off the field on a stretcher, but he died shortly after. His young son—whom he sat with in the stands—was uninjured. Sources say the man caught the ball before he fell.

Canadian Press

News on ‘Breaking’

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 1:01 PM - 12 Comments

As we prepare for the fourth season of Breaking Bad, there’s a big article in the New York Times about the less famous (but no less good) of the two shows that put AMC on the map as a producer of original drama. (Those two shows are so good that it’ll take a lot more than The Killing to squander all the network’s good will.) The piece focuses mostly on the creator, Vince Gilligan, a genial soul who channels his dark side into the show.

I think the article probably strains a bit to explain why Breaking Bad is popular in red or purple states – like Missouri and Tennessee – and not very popular on the Coasts. Part of the explanation in the piece is that Gilligan gives the show an unusual sense of morality and a preoccupation with “foisting suffering on characters who sin.” That strikes me as a little dubious; most shows punish people for doing bad things, and any creator will claim that he or she made characters suffer for doing bad things. (The decision to let someone off completely scot-free, even in a dark cable show, is basically a special shock effect, like in Crimes and Misdemeanors; creators will usually try to indicate that someone has suffered personally, even if he or she gets away with it in the end, not necessarily out of morality but just because suffering is more entertaining.) Besides, the show leaves it open as to whether bad things happen to the characters because of karma or just because it’s amusing and exciting.

Part of the fun of doing a show about morally ambiguous and/or awful people is that it enables the creators to beat them up for our enjoyment. The piece starts by describing the fun the writers have in finding new, creative, and budget-friendly ways for Jesse to be beaten up. A lot of the point of the character is to raise questions about to what extent he “deserves” what happens to him; we’re horrified by his constant humiliation because this is not straightfoward retribution. But if he were just a completely innocent person being treated like this, it would be a depressing horror story. The grey-on-grey morality of the characters is what makes black comedy work.

The Middle America appeal of Breaking Bad may owe more to the fact that it is set in, and filmed in Middle America – as the article notes, the biggest market for the show is New Mexico, because it’s filmed in New Mexico. Also, the article notes something I like to think about but don’t think about in enough depth: original cable series are meant to fit in, often in oblique ways, with the reruns where the network makes its money. In this case, Breaking Bad is trying to get some of the very male, often non-coastal audience that goes for the Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies AMC shows (with commercials). It’s not the same kind of story, of course, but it’s just generally part of the network brand, just as Remember WENN fit with the AMC brand back when it was a classic-movie nostalgia channel.

The compelling pathos of being a prince

By John Geddes - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:54 PM - 43 Comments

I’ve never much liked the atmosphere surrounding royal visits. The anxiety many Canadians seem to feel about putting on a good show for titled foreigners and the press following them always strikes me as pathetic.

But by the end of Will and Kate’s tour, something else was at play. To me, it felt like our main concern had ceased to be about how Canada would come off, and shifted to being about how the young duke and duchess would perform. For instance, live news coverage yesterday left no doubt that everybody was rooting for William to speak well in his good-bye remarks in Calgary.

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‘If this is how the game is being played, we better figure that out’

By Erica Alini - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 81 Comments

The Hill Times talks to Bob Rae.

You said on Tuesday that the Liberals have to be in a position to respond to attacks and that you can’t leave your leader exposed to artillery fire. What’s the plan for preventing that?
“Well, I don’t think it’s a matter of preventing it. I mean, the fact is the Conservatives have demonstrated a determination to do it. It shouldn’t take us two elections to figure this out—that when there are attacks that are made, they should be responded to in an effective way and that means that the party itself has to be turned into a very focused political organization. It also means that everything we do in Parliament and elsewhere sort of has to be connected to that. Financially, we need to reorient our budget so that we’re focused on building up a capacity to respond as well as obviously raising more money and spending it in a more focused way.”

Attack ads in between elections is a recent phenomenon in Canadian politics. How important are they and how does this change Canadian politics?
“I think it’s a mistake to think that you can make up for a lot of lost ground in the 35 days of an election campaign. The fact is that we’re in a mode that has to be seen as a ‘permanent campaign’ and that’s the way in which we have to structure our responses.”

Opening weekend: Horrible Bosses, Page One, Conan, Cave

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

(from left) Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day and Jamie Foxx in 'Horrible Bosses'

Horrible Bosses requires some getting used to. After the first few scenes, you come to accept that nothing onscreen will be believable. Not one plot twist, not one joke, not one line of dialogue. You settle into the fact that you’re watching a farce. There are quite a few laughs, some clever bits of dialogue, and some fine acting. But despite the highly credible performances, the jokes all sound written. Sure, they made me laugh, but it was the kind of laughter that got dragged out of me, with some resistance. The movie is less than the sum of its gags. Which is too bad, because I wanted to like it more. The three male leads—Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day—are all good actors you’re happy to spend time with. The ensemble has a Hangover vibe, without the charisma of a Bradley Cooper. All three men are character actors, each playing a different breed of the Likable Loser. They’re the Three Stooges 2.0, a trio of emasculated idiots who spend the movie trying to grow a pair. These three buddies who have all have bosses from hell—a corporate psychopath (Kevin Spacey) who takes sadistic pleasure in treating his top employee like a slave, a coked-out sleazeball (Colin Farrell) who’s driving his father’s firm into the ground, and a foul-mouthed dentist (Jennifer Aniston) who’s sexually harassing her male hygienist. Commiserating, the three drinking buddies conspire to murder their respective tormenters. They use GPS to locate a rough bar where they hope to recruit a hit man. Instead they get a “a murder consultant” played by Jamie Foxx. He suggests they kill each others’ employers, as in Strangers on a Train, and a plot is born. Continue…

Royal couple launches Calgary Stampede

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, officially launched the 2011 Calgary Stampede on Friday, the final day of their Canadian tour. The couple joined Prime Minister Stephen Harper and parade marshal Rick Hansen to kick off the event after they travelled to the parade route in a motorcade. In a speech Thursday evening, Prince William said their Canadian visit “far surpassed all that we were promised.” Later Friday, there will be a departure ceremony in honour of the royal couple, complete with an inspection of the guard by William and a 21-gun salute. Will and Kate will then head south to California to start their visit to the U.S.

CBC News

Prominent New Brunswick businessman found dead in office building

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

Police in Saint John, N.B. continue to investigate the “suspicious death” of Richard Oland. The prominent local businessman’s body was discovered in an office building Thursday morning. After several hours, police and funeral home officials removed Oland’s body, which was covered in blue cloth, from the building. According to the Times & Transcript, police wouldn’t confirm details surrounding the death, and would not comment on whether foul play was involved. Oland, 69, grew up in Saint John. His brother, Derek Oland, is the owner of Moosehead Breweries Ltd. Oland also worked there until 1981, when he branched out into a series of other business ventures. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday morning at the Saint John Regional Hospital.

Times & Transcript

UN to send 7,000 peacekeepers to South Sudan

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:56 AM - 3 Comments

The UN is expected to approve the deployment of 7,000 international peacekeepers to South Sudan, which is set to become the world’s newest independent state Saturday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the mission should focus on protecting South Sudanese civilians and encouraging military and judicial reforms in the new country. After decades of civil war with northern Sudan — ruled by Arabs in Khartoum — South Sudan faces a plethora of social and economic difficulties. More than 80 per cent of the population is illiterate, and The Sydney Morning Herald reports that there are fewer than 500 doctors in the entire country. Furthermore, key elements of a peace deal with the North have not been hammered out. These include agreements on sharing oil, which is mostly extracted in the south and refined in the north. Also, the border has yet to be precisely demarcated, and thousands of northern civilians are fleeing to the south amidst bombing raids and attacks supported by the north’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Sydney Morning Herald

Former News of the World editor arrested

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

Andy Coulson, the former editor of Britain’s News of the World and the now former communications director for British PM David Cameron, has been arrested in connection with the phone hacking scandal that has rocked the nation. Coulson has denied any knowledge of NotW staff breaking into the voicemail accounts of news subjects while he was at the tabloid. He is also being questioned regarding the alleged corruption of police sources. News International, the 168-year-old tabloid’s parent company, announced on Thursday it was ceasing publication of the scandal-plagued paper.

BBC News

Week in Pictures: July 4th – 10th 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:43 AM - 0 Comments

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Week in Pictures: July 4th – 10th 2011

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Pride in Nicaragua

A man with his face painted attends a parade celebrating Sexual Diversity Day in Managua, Nicaragua on June 28, 2011. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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No wading without a life jacket

By Cigdem Iltan - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Todd Pearson/Getty Images

Adults caught wading in King County, Wash., rivers this summer without a life jacket could face an $86 fine. County council members have passed a law that requires anyone swimming, wading or boating in major rivers more than five feet from shore or four feet deep to wear a life jacket, regardless of their age or swimming ability. Fears that a 200 per cent increase in the county’s snowpack this year could make waterways especially dangerous spooked council members into voting five to four in favour of the law. “We are looking at a potentially deadly situation,” council member Larry Phillips said. Supporters of the law say it will save lives, pointing to 17 drowning deaths in major county rivers between 2005 and 2009. But critics have accused the county of over-regulation. “This council sometimes thinks it’s everybody’s mom,” said council member Kathy Lambert, who voted against the ordinance. The law, which is in effect from July 1 to Oct. 31, doesn’t apply to skin divers, adults fishing or people on designated public beaches. A first offence will result in a warning, while second-time offenders will get a fine, whether their bathing suits have pockets for tickets or not.

South Korean schools to go paperless

By Jesse Brown - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 42 Comments

South Korea will be the first. By 2015, they have promised, their entire school system will be paperless. The country is spending $2 billion on creating cloud accessible, perennially updatable digital textbooks.

The U.S. is putting the same amount into their own electronic textbook program. Obama called textbooks a “huge racket” and a “big scam” while campaigning, decrying the common practice of college profs putting their own works on the curriculum, essentially forcing students to pay them personal royalties on top of tuition. Now, the Departments of Labour and Education is investing heavily in “Open Access” ebooks for post-secondary programs. The $2 billion will pay for the creation of the texts, which will then be free for all, and, one assumes, open for Wikipedia-style updates and edits. Other U.S. efforts, like the California Open Source Textbook Project, will push the initiative along for K-12 schools.

Ebooks can be a tough sell for cash-strapped schools lacking the hardware to read them. But add Open Access/Open Source to the equation, and the long-term savings usually outweigh the costs (here’s an app that lets educational buyers calculate exactly what they stand to save). Clunky hardcover textbooks, constantly in need of repair or replacement, with built-in obsolescence, are a major expense for schools. As soon as decent, curriculum-connected free versions are online, they can be used anywhere. Once forward-thinking Canadian classes take the plunge, it’s unlikely they’ll ever go back. (An obvious bonus is that unlike adults, kids prefer to read off of screens.)

But there’s a danger with letting other countries shell out for open ebook production and then swooping in to reap the benefits.  As Michael Geist has pointed out, this will leave Canadian content out in the cold.  Will our schools shun these open alternatives for lack of Canadian content, or will our publishers supplement the American texts with Canadian e-addendums?

Or, let me crazily suggest, might Canada actually get ahead of the ball, producing our own open textbooks that might be used in other countries? It’s not like our schools don’t have an incentive to break their dependance on the existing textbook racket—they’re about to cut a cheque of $60 million or so to Access Copyright for licensing violations of existing educational materials.

Death from the skies

By Cigdem Iltan - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Edward Echwalu/Reuters

Students at a primary school in western Uganda were waiting for the rain to cease before they went home last week when lightning struck the building, killing 20 of them and injuring nearly 100 more. But this was not a rare freak accident, as 37 more students and two teachers were injured in a lightning strike at another school more than 300 km away on the same day. Indeed, more than 40 Ugandans have been struck dead by lightning in the last few weeks, while hundreds of others have been injured.

Meteorologists point to unseasonably heavy rainstorms that have battered the country, coupled with the fact that, according to state officials, few buildings follow construction legislation and have lightning conductors. “There has been negligence on the part of those who certify if buildings are fit for public use,” said state minister for disaster preparedness Musa Ecweru. The minister disputed claims that witchcraft was behind the spate of strikes, a popular hypothesis in some of Uganda’s rural communities.

We showed them, and the world, a wonderful time

By the editors - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Baz Ratner/Reuters

They just might be the most redundant pictures ever taken. While the national and international media lavished attention on Prince William as he repeatedly practised a water landing in a Canadian Forces Sea King helicopter in Prince Edward Island this week, his wife, Catherine, insisted on snapping some pictures of her own.

Getting a few shots for the family scrapbook is the sort of thing a young couple might do on holiday. But during an official state visit it seems delightfully out of place. All of which suggests a royal tour—and a royal couple—that’s refreshingly different and new.

The event at Dalvay by the Sea this past Monday saw William, the duke of Cambridge instructed in “waterbirding,” a unique Canadian emergency technique in which a helicopter pilot lands on water during an engine failure. Prince William specifically requested this personal tutorial, given that he flies helicopters at his day job as a Royal Air Force search and rescue pilot based in Anglesey, Wales.

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In memoriam

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 15 Comments

Peter Aucoin, the celebrated political science professor and scholar, passed away yesterday at the age of 67.

His last book—Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government—was released this Spring. (One of his co-authors, Mark Jarvis, penned a guest post for us a few months ago that outlined some of that book’s ideas for parliamentary reform.)

A few of Peter’s essays, published in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, are collected here. A longer version of his piece on government accountability can be found here.

Conan and the Grey Lady fight for their lives

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 6 Comments

Filmswelike

“Inside” is a word cherished by the media. It holds the promise of being taken behind the velvet curtain and ushered into a secret world—a celebrity life, a political campaign or a war. Now two compelling backstage documentaries take us inside the media itself: Page One: Inside the New York Times explores the embattled newsroom of America’s most august newspaper, while Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop tracks an angst-ridden comedy tour by a defrocked talk show host. Both are tales of old school underdogs struggling to reinvent themselves in a media landscape where they’ve become an endangered species.

Page One is the more complex and ambitious picture. Director Andrew Rossi spent 14 months shooting in the newsroom of the Grey Lady (whose walls are now lipstick red), “embedded” at the paper’s media desk. The result is a kind of meta-documentary: it tells the story of the Times fighting to survive the social media revolution through the prism of the paper’s own coverage of it. The narrative covers an epic sweep of events, from dire predictions in 2009 that the Times could go bankrupt to its unholy alliance with WikiLeaks and the dawn of the iPad—two game-changing events that promised to render old media obsolete, yet ended up creating rich new opportunities for the newspaper.

A documentary is only as good as its characters, and Page One enlivens its heavy agenda with a diverting ensemble of personalities, led by pugnacious Times media columnist David Carr—a former crack addict whose own survival is as miraculous as that of the paper itself. The film, in fact, originated when director Andrew Rossi interviewed Carr for a documentary he planned to do on Internet entrepreneurs. “The lightbulb went off in my head,” Rossi told Maclean’s. “I said to David, ‘What about doing a movie about you, looking over your shoulder as you report on disruptions in the media landscape?’ He said, ‘You’ll have to speak to my bosses’—assuming that would lead to a big fat no.” But after months of discussions, Bill Keller, then editor of the Times, gave Rossi unprecedented access.

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