Public display of disaffection

By Anne Kingston with Alex Ballingall - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 6 Comments

Zero Creatives/Getty Images

Last June, Kevin Newman delivered the commencement address at the University of Western Ontario. Reading from his iPad, the veteran TV news journalist extolled social media’s increasing role in shaping global events—and how it’s destined to make the graduating class “the most consequential generation in more than a century.”

Afterwards, the 52-year-old, who received an honorary doctorate at the ceremony, took his seat on the dais and began typing into his iPhone. Once, in the paleolithic pre-Facebook era, a guest of honour displaying such distracted behaviour would have summoned dismayed cocked eyebrows. But if the university’s robed dignitaries were offended, they showed no sign. Nor did the graduates facing the stage, many of whom were quietly typing away on mobile devices themselves.

Newman, CTV’s newly appointed “digital news evangelist,” says he sees the tableau as the way of the world: “That’s how I live my life now. I capture moments and experiences,” he told Maclean’s. His behaviour was “within the boundaries of etiquette in a social-media age,” he says, admitting that these rules are being established on the run, often by the user himself (Newman only posted photos to his Twitter feed from backstage, didn’t text during the formal part of the ceremony, and says he wasn’t “too showy” about it).

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Fine-feathered frauds

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 3 Comments

Kaine Doen/Laif/Redux

In the animal world, the closest thing to gold may be the fluffy underfeathers of the eider duck. The down, which female eiders pluck from their breasts to line their nests, is typically only found in parts of Iceland, Greenland and islands in the St. Lawrence River, and its warmth, softness and rarity make it a coveted filling for duvets—so much so that it costs $1,000 per pound. It’s why, after showing off a clump of eiderdown, Michael de la Place, president of industry group Downmark, gingerly plucks tiny plumules from the air before they float away. And it shows what’s at stake as companies in Canada’s close-knit down industry fight an onslaught of fakes and knock-offs flooding retail stores.

Down, the layer of fine feathers next to a bird’s skin, is nature’s most efficient insulator. It’s also expensive, with duck and goose down duvets, pillows and coats running from several hundred dollars up to more than $5,000. Money like that has spurred Chinese manufacturers to crank out cheap copies filled with low-grade materials. And while fake down goods make up a tiny fraction of the multi-billion-dollar market for knock-offs, the experience of those in Canada’s down industry shows how hard it is to battle the onslaught of cheap fakes. “The fraud against consumers that’s going on is mind-blowing,” says De la Place.

Last year, Canada Goose, famous for its winter coats, went on the offensive against fakes. Its jackets sell for $500 and up, but the company said a plague of knock-offs—stuffed with “feather mulch”—selling for under $100 has seriously cut into its business.

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The woman in a war zone

By Alex Derry - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

As rebels stormed Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s lavish Tripoli compound in August, one foreign correspondent, Alex Crawford of Sky News, was there to cover the action. At one point, she even interviewed an ecstatic rebel fighter wearing one of Gadhafi’s military caps stolen from the dictator’s master bedroom. Crawford has been called the journalistic face of the Libyan conflict. But she is also a mother, and her presence at the deadly conflict has reignited a familiar debate over whether female correspondents, mothers in particular, belong on the front lines of a conflict zone. Is it legitimate to question whether they should be putting themselves at risk in deadly environments while their children grow up far away, or are such doubts inherently sexist?

Crawford, 49, is a veteran journalist, having worked at Sky News since its founding in 1989. After becoming a foreign correspondent for the network in 2006, she has reported from hostile zones including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt. Her coverage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks won Sky News a BAFTA, and she was also awarded the 2010 Woman Journalist of the Year by Women in Film and Television, among other awards. According to her company bio, she has been “arrested, detained, interrogated and faced live bullets, tear-gassing, rubber bullets, IEDs, and mortar shells.”

But Crawford, who lives with her family in Johannesburg, South Africa, also has four young children—her oldest is 14—and has faced criticism for neglecting her duties of motherhood. After all, say critics, women are more nurturing than men, and children need their mothers. “I knew having a child would mean I would miss lots of stories and would never again be the first one inside a city under siege or get the first interview with a dictator,” wrote Janine di Giovanni, a journalist and mother, in the Daily Mail, addressing the controversy, “but I would have pages and pages of diaries filled with memories of [her son] Luka’s first tooth and witness the first moment he walked.” It was a sentiment that Crawford herself admitted to feeling when she spoke via satellite from Tripoli at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, saying “I hope I’m a role model for my daughters, although my children say, ‘Why can’t you be a dinner lady at school?’ ”

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Why home ownership is becoming passé in Britain

By Leah McLaren - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 1 Comment

Fuse/Getty Images

After arriving in London in 1896, the German architect Hermann Muthesius observed in a letter home, “There is nothing as unique in English architecture as the development of the house. No nation is more committed to its development, because no nation has identified itself more with the house.”

Judging by the number of home improvement programs clogging the TV dial in contemporary Britain (picture an endless parade of middle-aged couples expending their savings and sanity renovating medieval thatched cottages in Wiltshire), his words hold true today. From the enclosure riots of the 16th century to Margaret Thatcher’s “right to buy” scheme, which in the 1980s and ’90s encouraged tenants of government-subsidized housing to buy their council homes at a discounted rate, the issue of property—who owns it, who doesn’t, and who gets to lord it over whom—has become a national obsession, and in times of economic uncertainty, a class-based sore point.

Today it’s both. As beleaguered Britain wrestles with a shortage of affordable housing (1.5 million are on social housing waiting lists in England), many young urbanites are losing hope they will ever achieve the middle-class dream of owning—in some cases even renting—their own private space. The rise of what the media here has now dubbed “Generation Rent” is highlighting a whole new class divide: the one that exists between the land-rich older generation and their priced-out offspring.

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Where wannabe journalists are flocking

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 3 Comments

Carmen Smith used to think she didn’t need graduate school. And why would she? Even before finishing her bachelor of journalism degree at Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., Smith was the publisher of a women’s magazine called Belle, which she founded.

But she changed her mind after an academic adviser told her about a new master’s in journalism program offered at King’s College in Halifax that could help her do better with her own publication. “I really thought it was interesting to see how they were developing their program around entrepreneurial journalism,” Smith recalls. “That’s why I came.”

Smith, now 22, is one of a growing number of wannabe journalists heading to master’s programs in Canada. Before 2000, there were only two degrees available in the country, at Carleton University and the University of Western Ontario. Today, there are six, with the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Wilfrid Laurier University both gearing up their own programs.

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A pinch of reality about salt

By Alexandra Shimo - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 8 Comments

iStockPhoto

The Canadian government is in an all-out war on salt. According to Health Canada, about half of us are consuming more than double the recommended daily dose, and it plans to rectify that by altering the food supply. The problem, say critics, is that the response could do more harm than good. There’s no question high-salt diets can affect blood pressure, but several studies suggest this outcome, generally speaking, is dwarfed by other health benefits. In fact, the government’s position, critics charge, is based on out-of-date data, and ignores the most recent studies. Worse, Ottawa’s salt offensive could cause serious health concerns, including heart disease, low birth rates, kidney disease, or an early death. “[Canada’s] limits are not based on science,” explains Michael Alderman, a physician and epidemiologist at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and editor of the American Journal of Hypertension. “Folks that eat the least amount of salt have the worst outcomes. They die.”

The average Canadian consumes 3,400 mg—about 1½ teaspoons—of sodium every day. Health Canada advises an adult dosage of 1,500 mg a day, and a maximum of 2,300 mg. These are based on the “significant body of evidence linking high sodium intake to elevated blood pressure, which is the leading preventable risk factor for death worldwide,” reads the Health Canada website. “High blood pressure is the major cause of cardiovascular disease and a risk factor for stroke and kidney disease.” To achieve these targets, Health Canada is trying to raise consumer awareness on the dangers of salt, fund research, and change the food supply by lowering the amount of salt in everything from breads to cheeses and soups to sausages. If all goes according to plan, the average Canadian will be down to 2,300 mg of sodium a day by 2016.

The targets, says professor Mary L’Abbé, chair of the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, are based on a number of studies, including one from the Cochrane Collaboration from 2006 that conclusively linked salt to high blood pressure. L’Abbé is the former chair of the Sodium Working Group, which, before it disbanded last December, set Ottawa’s sodium-reduction strategy. “Reducing sodium by 1,700 mg per day would result in an average drop in blood pressure of two millimetres of mercury,” she explains (millimetres of mercury, or mmHg, is the measure used to describe the force of the blood against arteries. Optimal blood pressure is below 120/80 mmHg). Although 1,700 mg is still above the recommended daily level, even modest changes can affect the incidence of stroke and heart disease. “Obviously, the higher your initial sodium intake, the greater your benefit,” says L’Abbé. “But even with a 1,100-mg reduction, you still get blood pressure reductions.”

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How the Prime Minister could rescue hockey

By the editors - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 6 Comments

Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty Images

It may be the most thrilling of winter sports, but summer is proving to be hockey’s toughest season.

In June, Vancouver was terrorized by a massive riot following the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. In recent months three well-known NHL tough guys were found dead by their own hand: Rick Rypien and Wade Belak from apparent suicide, Derek Boogaard from accidental drug overdose.

And head trauma continues to cast a pall over the entire sport. While professional hockey has always involved substantial physical contact and ritualized fighting, new research suggests hockey tough guys such as Boogaard, Rypien and Belak may face a lifetime of degenerative brain disease and depression. Shots to the head are shortening the careers of many talented players as well. Gifted left winger Paul Kariya retired in June due to post-concussion syndrome. In August, the Boston Bruins’ star centre Marc Savard (who signed a $28-million, seven-year contract in 2009) announced he won’t play this coming season because of a concussion. He may never play again.

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2 million women diagnosed with cancer in 2010: report

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

Around the world, two million women were diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer last year, according to new global statistics from worldwide cancer registries, the BBC reports. A sharp rise was seen in women under 50 in developing countries, while women in developed countries did better due to health policies, screening and better health care. Breast cancer cases are rising each year at about 3 per cent, with death rates rising at 2 per cent per year. An aging population, diet, obesity, and economics are among the contributing factors.

BBC News

Explosive device may have brought down Swissair Flight 111

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:48 AM - 0 Comments

A former RCMP officer involved in the investigation of the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 near Peggy’s Cove, N.S. told the CBC that his superiors at the police force ordered him to drop his suspicions that the plane was brought down by an explosive device. “There was sufficient grounds to suspect a criminal device on that plane,” Tom Juby told CBC’s The Fifth Estate. The Transportation Safety Board has always maintained that an electrical fire brought down the plane, but Juby says he found evidence of an explosive device in the cockpit area that was deliberately removed from the final report. “I’m convinced the investigation was improperly done,” Juby told the CBC. A Saudi Prince, a relative of the Shah of Iran and several UN officials were among the 229 people killed when the plane went down in the Atlantic Ocean. Five hundred million dollars worth of diamonds were also on board and remain missing. Juby said that if his suspicions are true, then the inquiry into the plane crash should have been a homicide investigation.

CBC News

Constant cravings

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 0 Comments

Rushing out the door in the mornings, it can be hard to find the time for a decent breakfast, let alone a cup of coffee. According to results from the Symptom Profiler (formerly known as the Q-GAP), an online survey completed by over 29,000 people in 2010-11, skipping meals is fairly common: 23.5 per cent sometimes miss their morning meal; another 6.5 per cent never eat it; 20.6 per cent skip lunch occasionally; and 8.3 per cent miss dinner. But those who skipped meals in this survey also reported more negative symptoms than those who always ate three a day­—and the more meals skipped, the worse shape they were in.

Taking a break for regular meals is important not just for overall health, but for mental acuity and ability to pay attention, as one fascinating study suggests. Over a 10-month period, Shai Danziger from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev studied the decisions of eight Israeli judges at more than 1,000 parole board hearings. At the start of the day, when they presumably felt refreshed, judges granted about two-thirds of applications, but as the hours progressed, that number declined. After a meal break, the odds of granting parole jumped, then plummeted again. Judges were more likely to refuse parole to offenders who seemed at risk of reoffending and those who weren’t part of a rehabilitation program, but the timing of their meal breaks created a remarkable pattern.

There could be a few reasons for this. After concentrating for an extended period of time, our attention wears thin and decision-making faculties become overloaded. Low blood sugar could also be the culprit. Whichever factor was at work, this study strongly suggests that, when trying to stay sharp and focused, making sure to break for a meal might be the smartest thing a person can do.

Get the skinny on shut-eye

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

Over 13 million Canadians are overweight or obese, but for those trying to shed pounds, giving up on a full night’s sleep for a 5 a.m. gym session might do more harm than good. Lack of sleep actually increases appetite and drives people to binge on unhealthy “comfort foods,” according to Dr. Charles Samuels, medical director of the Calgary-based Centre for Sleep and Human Performance.

Even so, a growing number of us just aren’t getting seven or eight hours of decent sleep a night. According to results from Scienta’s 2010-11 Symptom Profiler, those who said they got less than four or five hours a night reported the most negative health symptoms—and those who slept over 10 hours didn’t fare very well, either. Unsurprisingly, those with a body mass index (a rough measure of body fat based on height and weight) of over 30, who are technically obese, also had more health complaints than any other BMI group.

Lack of sleep boosts appetite, Samuels says, releasing hormones like ghrelin (which signals hunger) into the system. “The body assumes we’re under stress, and we go into survival mode,” and this drives us to eat more calorie-dense foods. One study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in 2010, tracked 10 healthy adults who were put on a calorie-restricted diet, and assigned them to sleep 5.5 or 8.5 hours per night; those who got the least amount of sleep also lost less body fat and felt hungrier than those who slept longer. As for getting too much sleep, the effects are less clear, although studies have associated it with higher mortality rates; sleeping too long could be a sign of another underlying health problem, like depression.

“If the goal is weight loss, the number one thing—and this is very clear—is that you’ve got to get the sleep you need,” Samuels says.

Leaders of UK and France visit Libya

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:33 AM - 0 Comments

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Tripoli on Thursday, becoming the most senior Western officials to visit Libya after the fall of the Gadhafi regime. The two leaders met with leaders of the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the capital, and are scheduled to fly to Benghazi to deliver speeches from that city’s Liberty Square. Benghazi was the main stronghold of the former rebels as they waged their campaign against forces loyal to Gadhafi during Libya’s months-long civil war. In Tripoli, NTC leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil thanked the two countries for taking “brave positions” during NATOs bombing campaign against Gadhafi forces. Cameron pledged continued support, vowed to help bring Gadhafi to justice and remove mines and “dangerous weapons” from the country. For his part, Sarkozy urged Libyans to seek reconciliation and avoid “vengeance and retaliation.”

BBC News

Newest artficial heart beats not

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 1 Comment

The Texas Heart Institute

Craig Lewis lay dying in a Texas hospital bed, skin yellowed from his ailing liver, blood circulating through a dialysis machine that performed the function his kidneys could no longer fulfill. The 55-year-old was suffering from amyloidosis, a disorder that caused an abnormal buildup of protein in his vital organs. It was destroying his heart.

“This man was basically within an hour or two of death,” says Billy Cohn, a doctor at Houston’s Texas Heart Institute who oversaw Lewis earlier this year. Given Lewis’s dire condition, Cohn and veteran artificial heart researcher Bud Frazier received the consent of the man’s family to try something that had never been done before: the complete replacement of his heart with two continuous flow ventricular assist devices (VAD). Each VAD holds a screw-like rotor that spins rapidly to circulate the blood. It would leave Lewis without a pulse. There would be no beating heart, just whirring blades pushing blood through his body.

Frazier was confident. “It’s something we had been working on for years,” he says, referring to decades of research on the devices. In recent years, he and Cohn have successfully implanted similar contraptions in dozens of baby cows. “We weren’t just la-dee-da-ing,” Frazier says.

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Vegetarians: Beware the carbs and cheese

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 2 Comments

Andrew Tolson/Maclean's

When Claudia Osmond’s son Matthew was 12, he told her he didn’t want to eat meat anymore. “He’s always loved animals,” says Osmond, who lives in Toronto with her husband and three kids. It was a big adjustment. “We’d cook vegetarian for him, and the rest of us would eat meat,” she says. She worried about her son getting all the nutrients he’d need, but he seemed to thrive on his vegetarian diet—and four years ago, thinking it would be good for her health, Osmond converted too. She and Matthew, who’s now 19, are both vegetarian, but her husband and two other kids are not. “There are always two pots going in the kitchen.” If the family’s having pasta one night, they’ll make a meat sauce and another with tofu instead of beef.

Serving family dinners from two separate pots isn’t so unusual anymore. With more people eating less meat or eliminating it altogether, meat sales have slumped: an analysis of fresh food sales from market researcher Euromonitor International showed that while meat sales in North America and Western Europe grew by less than 14 per cent from 2005 to 2010—making it one of the worst performers—sales of meat substitutes boomed. People switch to vegetarianism for all sorts of reasons, from environmental concerns to the high cost of protein, but for many of them, health is a big motivator. That’s why former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a long-time lover of barbecue and chicken enchiladas, went vegan. After two heart procedures, including quadruple bypass surgery, he cut meat, dairy and eggs from his diet.

Even so, abandoning meat doesn’t necessarily make for a healthier lifestyle, as new results from the Symptom Profiler show. Among the 29,138 people who completed the online survey in 2010-11, six per cent were vegetarian. While female vegetarians were as healthy as meat-eating women, male vegetarians were worse off than their peers, suffering especially from gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal symptoms. Dr. Elaine Chin, co-founder of the Scienta Health Group, which developed the Symptom Profiler, has noticed “major nutrient deficiencies” among her vegetarian patients, she says. As for why male vegetarians seem to be more affected than females, “I don’t want to misrepresent males. Some are very conscious of a well-rounded diet.” But in general, she says, “I think women do a little more homework about being a vegetarian.”

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How healthy are you?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 5 Comments

Fill out Scienta’s Symptom Profiler survey and you could be eligible to win a cardiometabolic evaluation. You will learn about some of your risk factors which can lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes using leading edge biomarkers not readily available as part of your routine annual check up. Be coached on how to lower your disease risks by physician, Dr. Elaine Chin and naturopathic doctor, Dr. Shelley Burns of Scienta Health Centre, Toronto, Canada’s leaders in preventative healthcare. It includes a blood analysis of cardiometabolic biomarkers which can be completed at your local lab.

Coaching sessions with Drs. Chin and Burns will be done in person or via teleconferencing for 6 months—3 sessions in total. Travel expenses to Scienta Health Centre or lab are not included. Prize is valued at $2,500. Contest opens September 15, 2011 and closes December 15, 2011. One entry per person. Scienta Health Centre Inc. reserves the right to determine the medical suitability of the prize winner with a confidential phone consultation with Dr. Chin before the prize is awarded. See contest rules on the contest site.

READ MORE:

Get the skinny on shut-eye
Lack of sleep actually increases appetite and drives people to binge on unhealthy foods

Newest artficial heart beats not
Two ventricular assist devices are better than the thump-thump of the compressed-air pump

Vegetarians: Beware the carbs and cheese
B vitamin supplements are a good idea, too

For better and worse
When a woman calls the doctor for her husband, it’s called health work, and men are reaping the benefits

Constant cravings
One in five of us skip breakfast or lunch, and the more we slip, the worse we feel

Beyond the rubble: after the 9/11 anniversary, security and imagination

By John Geddes - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:08 AM - 5 Comments

The Germans coined a term for the early attempts by their writers to create stories and novels after the Second World War: rubble literature, or trummerliteratur. Back in the fall of 2001, anyone might have predicted that 9/11 would generate its own version of the genre, a period of fiction (and maybe movies, music and painting) that tried to come to terms with the attacks.

There have been worthy attempts—from Bruce Springsteen’s album The Rising, to Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday, to director Paul Greengrass’s movie United 93.  But there’s been no sustained outpouring of art to reshape the way we see our situation in the post-Sept. 11 world. Maybe that’s because our world really didn’t need re-imagining in the way we thought. Millions of Germans after World War II actually lived in ruins; unless you visited lower Manhattan, the rubble of 9/11 was something you saw on TV.

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For better and worse

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 9:55 AM - 1 Comment

Moof/Getty Images

Marriage vows don’t come with disclaimers. But mounting research suggests that the bit about “in sickness and in health” should. Corinne Reczek, a sociologist, has been studying spouses for years. She and many others have consistently discovered that while men always experience a major boost in their physical health after getting hitched, women do not derive the same degree of benefit. The prevailing explanation for this difference has to do with what she calls the “health work” that happens at home. “It’s the work that women do to make their men healthier: they cook meals, they encourage exercise.” More often, they make the medical appointments, they promote good sleep, and they discourage drinking and smoking. Husbands, on the other hand, “don’t try to make their wives as healthy,” says Reczek, a professor at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. “So there is a dynamic going on in marriage that is unequal.”

That inequality between men and women is reflected in the responses of more than 29,000 Canadians who took the Symptom Profiler test last year, a self-evaluation tool developed by Scienta Health in Toronto. The data shows that although married men reported the fewest symptoms compared to all other males, married women were no better off than divorced or widowed females. “The finding is consistent with a good amount of literature showing that for women it’s not marital status per se that results in well-being,” says Harry Reis, a psychologist at the University of Rochester in New York. “It’s the quality of the marriage.”

“People who are in poor marriages where they’re fighting all the time are probably no better off than being single, and maybe worse off,” says Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. A bad marriage harms well-being in two ways: it creates stress, which can “slow wound healing” and “affect immune function.” And it deprives spouses of a safe haven. Explains Waite: “A bad marriage doesn’t allow you to recover from the other stresses you face, like work.” Historically, women have been willing to tolerate a greater level of unhappiness in marriage, according to David Roelfs, a sociologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

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Is the NDP tearing itself apart yet? How bout now?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 23 Comments

Globe and Mail, April 30. The push for a merger between the Liberal Party and the NDP has quickly become a major issue among the growing field of candidates to replace Jack Layton, threatening the steely discipline and tight focus that propelled the New Democrats to unprecedented standing in Ottawa.

Globe and Mail, September 4. The first clean split among federal New Democrats since Jack Layton passed away last month rests on an issue that strikes at the historical heart of the party: the role of union members in choosing the next leader.

Globe and Mail, September 14. NDP caucus members running to replace Jack Layton will have to quit their positions as critics or committee chairs, according to rules unveiled Wednesday by Interim Leader Nycole Turmel. But the interpretation of those rules has created confusion in the NDP caucus … With the race only just begun, tension is already mounting within caucus. 

Bestsellers – Week of September 12th, 2011

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Monsieur Lazhar

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 6:11 PM - 0 Comments

Monsieur Lazhar

Adapting the play by Evelyne de la Chenelière, director Philippe Falardeau brings a luminous warmth to this affecting story of an Algerian emigre who finds work as a teacher in a Montreal elementary school. Bachir Lazhar (Fellag), who is applying for refugee status,  inherits his job from a beloved teacher who has hanged herself in her classroom. Despite that melodramatic premise, the drama is supremely sensitive and understated, as Lazhar—recovering from his own family tragedy—tries to adapt to the liberal classroom culture in Quebec. As in his previous film  (C’est n’est pas moi, je le jure!), Falardeau gets wonderful performances from his child actors.

Sarah Michelle Gellar Is On a Boat

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 5:18 PM - 1 Comment

Here is the boat scene from Ringer as it aired last night. It’s been a long time since a dramatic show had a process shot quite that bad. Looking at it again, it may be that one of the reasons they couldn’t “fix” it is that the real problem with the scene is not the green screen – it’s the boat itself. Like many cars and boats in old movies, it’s being rocked back and forth in a way that doesn’t match any footage they can use, and the lighting doesn’t suggest two people on a boat. So to get the scene right, they’d have had to re-shoot the whole thing.

As I said, it brings back memories of old movies, particularly those Universal movies of the ’50s and ’60s where the over-use of rear projection was compounded by some less-than-beautiful colour processes. The movie Down With Love already paid tribute to that kind of shot in comedies, the ones with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. If Ringer just starts doing every vehicle scene that way, it could be a tribute to Douglas Sirk melodramas, although Todd Haynes already has that covered. These things seem better when they’re done intentionally.

It is a little strange that every time you think we’ve gotten beyond certain types of bad special effects, they come right back again. I feel like obvious process shots in cars and elsewhere, while done differently, are more common on TV now than they were in, say, the ’80s (when a show like The Fall Guy stood out for its over-use of process shots, and other shows preferred to shoot inside a real moving car as much as possible). Sometimes it seems like there’s a perception that because special effects have improved for TV – allowing some locations and buildings to be faked without any of us noticing – shows can get away with any kind of fakery at all. But there’s a limit, and some things still do look better when they’re done for real.

Ralph Fiennes on directing and starring in ‘Coriolanus’

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Yesterday, as four other reporters and I sat on plush sofas and stools around a leather coffee table in the mezzanine lounge of the Park Hyatt, Ralph Fiennes walked in—no, glided in—and sat at the head of the table. I was the last one to introduce myself: “I’m Jessica Allen from Maclean’s magazine.”  Squinting his blue eyes for a moment, as though he was going through the file folders of information in his mind, he responded in a soft voice, “Ah yes, I know Maclean’s.”

Whew.

Fiennes is at TIFF to promote his directorial debut, Coriolanus, which he also stars in along with Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Chastain. (Then he’s back to London to perform on stage in The Tempest as Prospero, which explains the long hair and the beard.) It’s shocking that the last installment in Shakespeare’s Roman series has never been adapted for the screen considering it’s one of the playwright’s most radical plays; peasant revolts were taking place in England while Shakespeare wrote it and the play was even banned in France during the 1930s. And its plot has all the makings of a really good drama: think tough-as-nails-but empathetic general with political rivalries, social unrest, riots, revenge and ultimately tragedy. Leave it to Ralph Fiennes, who played the lead part on stage 11 years ago and instinctively knew it would make for a great dynamic modern film, to make it happen.

I ask the first question: how does he think the plot, which bears an eerie resemblance to current world events, will resonate today? “I hope it provokes discussion,” he says, looking straight at me. “I love it dramatically because I think audiences are challenged about where to put their allegiance. They can start off resisting Coriolanus and then find a way to admire him despite their thoughts about his views. I think it’s actually much more of a dissection of perennial dysfunction in humankind: of war, conflict, social unrest and what do you do when you put an extreme figure in the middle of it.”

I was having a hard time paying attention. Fiennes looks like a Roman emperor despite being dressed in worn-in jeans, a long-sleeved black cotton shirt and runners. It’s taking all I have to behave like a pseudo-professional.

Sitting up in his chair, Fiennes admits he found it hard to act and direct at the same time. “It was a bit schizophrenic. But I guess I knew it would be hard and I tried to be as prepared as I could be. And I knew the part—the learning of the lines wasn’t an issue because I’d learned them over the years.”

The hardest part, Fiennes says, deliberatly and in a near-whispered tone, was learning to trust the editing process. “You see a whole shot in the course of things and you start to look at it as a complete performance and it’s never going to be,” he says. “And then a good editor comes in and says, No I’ll just take this. Oh!”

Like Baz Luhrmann, who Fiennes believes “created a very coherent world” in Romeo and Juliet, he and scriptwriter John Logan decided to keep the Shakespearean text but set the movie in modern times (it was filmed in Belgrade.) “I think it’s a potent mix when you put Shakespeare in modern dress,” he says. “It’s a sort of artifice, but it’s been done in the theatre. I was intrigued by the idea of a film that was like a documentary or had a gritty style of shooting and people are speaking Shakespeare… The pitfall is that you’ve got to strip the language of any theatricality, and yet not deny its poetic power.”

Fiennes was first exposed to Shakespeare at the age of five when his mother took him to see Laurence Olivier in Henry V. “And then, two or three years after that, she told me the story of Hamlet and she produced this LP of Olivier’s speeches from Hamlet and Henry V, which I listens to again and again and again. I found this voice of this man using words I couldn’t understand but I became fascinated by what they might mean.”

With our 20 minutes up, an assistant comes over and thanks us. Fiennes lifts up his arms and slowly stretches them over his head. His back arches slightly and his shirt lifts up just enough. Like a wide-eyed child grabbing for something sparkly and shiny, I almost reach out to touch it, but I’m not that kind of lady.

If you miss Coriolanus at TIFF, it opens in North American theatres this January.

Check out Maclean’s chatting with Fiennes and costars Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain and Gerard Butler on the red carpet here.

The Williams bump

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 4:11 PM - 3 Comments

Getting back to this debate, I decided to run the numbers for the entire shortlist using rg’s metric: by popular vote, compare the last election result before the leader took over to the election in which that leader peaked. So, for instance, for Jack Layton I compared the NDP’s 2011 result to the NDP’s result in 2000.

Using that measure, our seven leaders (including Mr. Layton) post the following gains by percentage point.

Danny Williams 29.0
Gordon Campbell 24.4
Jack Layton 22.1
Dalton McGuinty 15.3
Gary Doer 8.0
Stephen Harper 1.9*
Jean Charest 1.5

Add those numbers to our previous stats as you see fit.

*That compares 2011 to the combined result of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2000.

NDP fantasy league update

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 3:44 PM - 1 Comment

I’m told Anne McGrath is planning to stay on as chief of staff through March and will not be seeking the leadership of the NDP.