Computers Are Everywhere!

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 6 Comments

Long before the Y2K panic or today’s panic over the internet replacing television, there was the happy talk of “Computer Critters,” a series of PSAs that ABC ran in the mid-1980s during their Saturday morning cartoon block. The message is that everything we use has a computer, computers do everything, that they’re going to take over our lives, and that this is a good thing. As a child, I appreciated the commercial because I myself was increasingly dependent on a computer (I wrote well on the word processor, but not so well by hand) and this crocodile person reassured me that it was okay. But even at the time, I thought there was something a little sinister about being so upbeat about the whole thing.

Rampart

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 7:23 PM - 0 Comments

Rampart

Woody Harrelson re-teams with Messenger director Oren Moverman to deliver a dynamite performance as a dirty cop. Set in the scandal-tainted Rampart division of the LAPD, and co-written by James Elroy (L.A. Confidential), this atmospheric odyssey through the underbelly of Los Angeles would make a fine drive-in double bill with Drive. Nicknamed “Date Rape” because of his alleged murder of a rapist, Harrelson’s martini-swilling, drug-taking cop is vicious and corrupt, but he’s more dimensional than a mere Bad Lieutenant. We can’t help but like him. Glimmers of humanity lurk behind the bravado, along with a blundering affection for his daughters and ex-wives. He’s also has a disarming verbosity, which he whips out as a secret weapon every now and then. He’s a brute with a brain. There has already been some Academy Awards buzz for Harrelson’s performance. And after his Messenger nomination, he’s due.  But this kind of tough fare—like Drive and Shame—may be too strong for Oscar’s sensitive palate.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 7:15 PM - 0 Comments

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt generate terrific chemistry is this quirky romantic comedy from Lasse Hallström, based on the bestseller by Paul Torday. McGregor plays a fisheries scientist and avid angler who is confounded when Blunt’s character asks him to embark on what seems like a preposterous project: creating a salmon river in the sands of Yemen. A Yemeni sheik with a Scottish mansion and a passion for fly-fishing—played with tender charm by Amr Waked—is bankrolling the project. And the British PM’s press secretary (Kristin-Scott Thomas) is spinning the venture as an upbeat distraction from the horrors of war in Afghanistan. Her giddy, over-the-top caricature throws the tone of the film off—it’s as if she’s acting in a screwball comedy that’s torqued way higher than the rest of the film. But McGregor and Blunt are both a picture of droll restraint, as their shy romance comes to the surface. McGregor’s Scottish wit is as nuanced as single-malt scotch, the story has a sweet arc, and the landscapes are lovely. It’s no surprise Salmon Fishing in the Yemen has  emerged as one of TIFF’s big crowd-pleasers.

Cocktails at the Soho House with Jessica Allen

By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 5:33 PM - 0 Comments

‘That’s their choice’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 4:43 PM - 17 Comments

A few weeks after a group of doctors and medical professionals called on Conservative MP Kellie Leitch to renounce her government’s position on asbestos, a group of individuals who’ve lost loved ones to asbestos-related illness are calling on Ms. Leitch to choose between politics and her medical license. When she spoke to the Barrie Advance earlier this month, she seemed unpersuaded by the controversy.

“The Canadian government has stated that it supports the safe controlled use of Chrysotile,” said Leitch. “It will continue to do so, anything to do with the decision that [buyers] make – that’s their choice.” … When asked about how her medical expertise affects her decision to support or not support the mining and export of asbestos, Leitch, an orthopedic surgeon, said her expertise is in bones. 

Conservative Jacques Gourde: chutzpah with a capital ‘C’

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 4:25 PM - 9 Comments

“The resources of Parliament should serve to help all constituents of a district, in a non-partisan fashion.” – Conservative Jacques Goude, reacting incredulously at the news that the NDP might sell memberships out of MP’s district offices.

So, Gourde is so furious at the prospect of the NDP selling cards out of their offices that he lodged a complaint with the, uh, Board of Internal Economy. How nice. In other news, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney is appearing at events for Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak—on his own time, we’re sure. Yes, the same Kenney whose office “used government resources to raise money for the Conservative party” last March.

Oy vey.

Drabinksy and Gottlieb’s appeals denied

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Theatre moguls Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb have had their appeals of their 2009 fraud convictions rejected – but their sentences both reduced – by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Tuesday. Drabinksy and Gottlieb were each convicted of two counts fraud and one count of forgery after new management of their theatre company, Livent Inc., discovered financial irregularities and the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998. Each man’s sentence was reduced by two years, meaning Drabinsky will spend five years behind bars, and Gottlieb four years. The appeal court judges reduced the sentences in consideration of the lack of any actual financial loss caused by the fraud.

CBC News

Grand theft tax break

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 3:46 PM - 65 Comments

The New York Times has published an exhaustively reported piece exposing the cocktail of deductions, write-offs and tax credits that make the video game business one of America’s most heavily subsidized industries. This level of government cheese is usually reserved for enterprises presenting some kind of clear social benefit in terms of education, health, environmentalism or the like. Heavy subsidies like this can also be put in place to nurture fledgling industries.

Without engaging in the ever-annoying debate on whether video games are good or bad for us, I think we can all agree that they’re not as sympathetic a cause for hand-outs as, say, clean energy tech or funny costumes for puppies.

And the health of the industry is inarguable—sales of video games reached $15 billion in the U.S. alone last year, eclipsing the music industry, if that still means anything—and it would likely do just fine without the charity. So why the corporate welfare?

The reasons are many, but underpinning them all is the dodgy notion that video game jobs are somehow more valuable than other jobs, and that video game technology is somehow a crucial area that America should lead. I’m not sure how making BoneTown can be equated with the space race, but the magical thinking that has convinced American legislators they are in desperate need of unshaven game devs in funny Internet t-shirts has also mesmerized our own Canadian policy makers.

Name-checked in the Times piece are Canada’s video game industry subsidy schemes. Each province is elbowing the next in the neck in a hyper-competitive battle to lure foreign game-makers to their soil. The objective? Jobs for coders. Seduced by sexy talk of information workers and creative economies, provincial governments have collectively handed billions to game makers. Quebec, for example, contributes as much as 37 cents for every dollar on a coder’s paycheck.

I suspect that once the magical silicone dust settles, both governments will learn that coders are the grunts of gaming. Companies like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts will exploit our tax breaks for as long as it serves them. When developing workforces in, say, Bangalore train enough skilled code-monkeys to undercut local coders, the jobs will quickly migrate to India, leaving little of the creative economy behind.

Jesse Brown is the host of TVO.org’s Search Engine podcast. He is on Twitter @jessebrown

Canada’s Tripoli embassy set to reopen

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 3:22 PM - 0 Comments

Canadian diplomats are set to reopen the country’s Libyan embassy, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced Tuesday. The Canadian ambassador was in Tripoli over the weekend paving the way for Canada’s return, Baird said. The minister also revealed that some $2.2 billion in frozen Libyan assets have been made available to the new transitional government.

Postmedia

Snapshots from the red carpet

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 3:14 PM - 0 Comments

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Snapshots from the red carpet

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Robert De Niro

September 10, 2011: Robert De Niro poses for photographers at the premiere Killer Elite at Roy Thompson Hall during the Toronto International Film Festival. (Kara Dillon/Maclean's)

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Do unto others

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 2:52 PM - 3 Comments

Apparently invoking the sponsorship scandal as a comparison, the Liberals are pressing the Conservatives to allow a committee investigation into the G8 Legacy Fund to proceed. Despite holding a majority of seats at the time, Liberal members did allow the public accounts committee to investigate Adscam in 2004: 47 meetings were held over a period of four months and 44 witnesses testified. Alas, the Liberal members brought a halt to the proceedings in May of that year, shortly before an election was called. This greatly disappointed a young idealist by the name of Jason Kenney.

The Liberals “used their hammer to shut down the only inquiry in town,” said Kenney. ”The truth is that this represents a coverup,” said Kenney. “This represents a clear effort by the prime minister to stop difficult questions from being asked days before an election about a huge Liberal scandal involving the theft of millions of tax dollars.”

Randall Hopley arrested

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 2:25 PM - 0 Comments

Randall Hopley, the suspect in the abduction of Kienan Hebert, was arrested on Tuesday morning, the RCMP said. Hopley, 46, was apprehended by an RCMP K-9 unit three kilometres east of the B.C. border in Alberta, where he was found in a gravel pit near a highway. Hebert, 3, was returned seemingly unharmed to his home unharmed in Sparwood, B.C. on Sunday, after being taken from his home on the morning of September 7. The RCMP have called a news conference to discuss the case at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Postmedia

Need for speed

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 1:27 PM - 15 Comments

NDP MP Brian Masse wants the government to get aboard the high-speed bandwagon.

Masse sent a letter to federal Transport Minister Denis Lebel and launched a “Need for Speed” campaign calling on the government to join with the private sector and ensure highspeed rail investments become reality.

It should include investments to run a high-speed service through Windsor to Chicago, he said. ”Significant upgrades to Canada’s rail capacity are long overdue and impacting our ability to compete in the global economy,” said Masse in his letter to Lebel. He noted this country remains the only G8 country which has no high-speed rail networks.

Jessica Allen hits the red carpet at the ‘Coriolanus’ premiere

By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 12:55 PM - 4 Comments

Will “Ringer” Still Have Hilarious CGI?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

Probably not. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s new show Ringer, premiering tonight, became a little bit famous over the summer for one thing: the pilot screener that circulated featured some really terrible green-screen effects. Including a scene on a boat where the background was so obviously fake it would have embarrassed Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The special effects have undoubtedly been fixed by now, so we won’t get that element of fun. But I almost wished they would leave it in, and make the show a tribute to cheesy ’50s melodrama movies, including their obvious process shots. It would be more entertaining that way.

(Update: Apparently the version that aired tonight still had the bad green screen in place. So we can consider that, at least, a highlight of the evening.)

Instead, the show is going for a more serious tone, and not all that successfully. As part of that attempted seriousness, they’ve deprived Gellar – famous for her skill with a wisecrack – of much opportunity to be funny. But watching the pilot struggle with the tone was in some ways more interesting than the story: it was an example of a serious show trying very hard to avoid tumbling into farce. The story is absolutely one that would be a farce if it were played slightly differently. Most of the pilot focuses on Gellar posing as her twin sister, discovering all the secrets and lies she’s now involved in. Which means we get a succession of scenes where she has to make stuff up on the fly, play along with embarrassing situations that she’s discovering for the first time. Scenes where, with just a slight shift in emphasis, it would be intentionally funny to watch her pretend to be someone else (Joss Whedon had these types of scenes a few times on Buffy and Angel, and they were usually played for laughs) and it would be even funnier that so few people seem to catch on.

Playing a mistaken identity story seriously is not impossible or unprecedented, of course. But the over-careful pilot may have something to do with the writers and director and performers treading very cautiously to avoid being funny (the presence of the guy from Suddenly Susan just adds to that danger). Too many jokes, any winking at the premise, would bring the whole thing crashing down. It’s a bit like Dollhouse had to (at first, anyway) tone down some of the creator’s trademark humour to keep from trivializing its premise. The normal practice, post-Sopranos, post-Buffy post-Breaking Bad, has been for shows to tweak the crazier elements of their premises or play them for laughs, but then turn around and show that they’re deadly serious about other things. (It’s the Bonnie and Clyde method, which Pauline Kael described as a journey from “we’re only kidding” to “and you thought we were only kidding.”) But some of today’s shows are more earnest than that and less inclined toward post-modernism or giving us an “out” on certain aspects of the premise. Ringer seems pretty committed to its own identity as an over-the-top melodrama.

Now, will that work? It didn’t in the pilot, at least for me. I feel like the pilot wasn’t committed enough to that florid melodramatic style: it seemed to be holding back in the acting, the settings, everything except those goofy symbolic mirror shots. A full-blown, shameless Aaron Spelling approach – melodrama without irony or shame – might suit the material better. Or it could go the other way and become a smarter drama where there’s no danger of becoming goofy. The pilot felt caught in the middle.

Iran may release American hikers

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

Iran looks set to pardon two American hikers convicted of spying in the country. Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal say they accidentally wandered into Iran. Both men had been sentenced to eight years in prison. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday the two would be released “in two days.” Another Iranian official said they would remain in custody until a $500,000 bail is paid for each of them.

Associated Press

B.C. Father blames system for letting kidnap suspect free

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Paul Hebert, the father of a kidnapped B.C. boy who was returned seemingly unharmed on Sunday, is angry at the justice system for letting the man who police suspect abducted his child loose. Randall Hopley, a convicted sex offender, has been named as a suspect in Kienan Hebert’s abduction and remains at large. Hebert’s father says police wanted Hopley, who has a criminal record with sexual assault charges, locked up years ago, but the justice system let him go free.

The Globe and Mail

Tory MP apologizes for “flirtatious” emails to Chinese journalist

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 11:38 AM - 1 Comment

Conservative MP Bob Dechert, who acts as parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, apologized on Friday for sending “flirtatious” emails to Shi Rong, a Toronto-based correspondent for China’s state-run news agency. In a statement, Dechert insisted his relationship with the Chinese journalists is an “innocent” friendship. Dechert’s amorous messages to Shi were made public when more than 240 emails were released to journalists, and members the political and business establishment. In his statement, Dechert said Shi’s email was hacked as a result of an “ongoing domestic dispute.” Speaking with the Globe and Mail, Shi added that it was her husband who had made the messages public. Dechert, the MP for Mississuaga-Erindale, says he met Shi when conducting Chinese-language media interviews. China’s Xinhua news agency, for which Shi works, has been likened to an intelligence agency for the Chinese government. The media organization reports directly to the country’s ruling Communist Party. Last year, CSIS director Richard Fadden made public his concern that the Chinese intelligence officials were influencing some senior members governments in Canada.

CBC News

Merkel hopes to ease investor worries over Euro debt crisis

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 11:19 AM - 0 Comments

German Chancellor Angela Merkel worked to assuage worries over a Greek debt default on Tuesday as the euro zone debt crisis continues to fuel market volatility. Investor confidence took a hit when Italy was forced to pay its highest yield to sell 5-year government bonds since adopting the euro in 1999. The possibility of a Greek default is raising concerns over the health of larger euro zone economies, such as Spain and Italy. Speaking with the media, Merkel called the challenge “historic,” saying that if Greece were to default on its debt, “we would see domino effects very quickly.” She also urged European policymakers to choose words carefully to avoid further propagating investor fears. Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama told a group of Spanish journalists that European leaders must show the political will to confront the debt crisis in order to stabilize the markets. American Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in an unprecedented move, will attend a meeting of EU finance ministers in Poland later this week. Greece has indicated that it will run out of money in October, and needs the next 8 billion euro tranche of bailout money to pay for pensions and wages.

Reuters

Welcome to the club

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 30 Comments

The Conservatives formally initiate Brian Topp with a leaked memo of partisan attacks.

“Topp is a union boss and has deep union ties,” they say in a memo to MPs and party faithful. “How could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians, when he is so tied to big union special interests…

“Topp is not just the candidate of union bosses but also NDP insiders,” the Tories say, noting that he worked for former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow, former left-wing Toronto mayor David Miller and former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin.

And if that does make Tories shake in their boots, the party back-roomers add that “Brian Topp is most notable for being NDP Leader’s hand-picked negotiator in the coalition talks with the separatist Bloc Québécois … Brian Topp will do anything – including forming a wreckless [sic] coalition with separatists – in order to gain power.”

Via Twitter, Brian Topp pronounces himself honoured.

Afghan insurgents launch series of attacks in Kabul

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 0 Comments

Insurgents launched a series of attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Tuesday, striking the U.S. Embassy and nearby NATO headquarters with rocket-propelled grenades and firing volleys of bullets from automatic weapons. At least 10 explosions rocked Kabul as an undetermined number of insurgents attacked from a multi-storey building that is under construction. Afghan security fought back from below, firing shots up at the building. Elsewhere, two bombs reportedly went off near the Afghan Parliament, although it’s unclear whether the building was targeted. In a text message, a Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attacks. The incident comes amidst continuing security fears in Kabul and other regions of Afghanistan. Earlier this summer, nine suicide bombers attacks Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel, which is popular among foreigners.

The New York Times

The best way to load people into planes

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 11 Comments

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

As an astrophysicist at the prestigious Fermilab near Chicago, Jason Steffen probes dark matter and, on a contract for NASA, searches for distant planets. But for years, a less esoteric question has occupied his brain: what’s the fastest way to get passengers onto an airplane? Steffen was on his way to a conference five years ago when he hit a series of delays before he could take his seat. There was a line at the gate, another in the tunnel and a final, awkward, push-past-or-wait period on the plane.

Frustrated, he thought: “There has to be a better way to do this.” The answer, Steffen believes, is a complex system cooked up on his own time in the lab, home to the second-largest particle accelerator in the world. The key for an efficient board is to minimize aisle congestion and maximize passenger speed. To do that, he thinks passengers should line up outside the plane, then board, window seats first, in staggered rows one side at a time from back to the front. Steffen first published his theory in the Journal of Air Transport Management in 2008.

Now he has real-time proof that it works. In June, a TV producer in California rented a sound stage, brought in a fake plane, and tested Steffen’s theory against other methods of loading. Toting carry-on luggage and even some children, 72 volunteers walked on and off the plane, stowing bags and taking assigned seats. Along with Steffen’s approach, the passengers were loaded in four ways: randomly, back to front, in three blocks of seats, and from the window seats in—the so-called window-middle-aisle method, or “Wilma.”

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A communist memorial seeks capital

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 2 Comments

The group behind an effort to erect a national monument to the victims of Communist regimes is having trouble collecting the cash to do it. Last year, the $1.5-million project, known as the “Monument to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism,” got the go-ahead from Ottawa’s National Capital Commission (NCC). The Conservative government remains vocally supportive (when mentioning the project, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney still leaves off the “totalitarian” qualifier, added in 2009 at the insistence of the NCC); but the monument has yet to receive any government funding, project coordinator Carolyn Foster tells Maclean’s. Now it is up to the group, Tribute to Liberty, to convince the public to foot the bill.

So far, they have received just $100,000 in donations. Most of that, Foster says, has been gobbled up by administrative costs. At this rate, it will be well over a decade before they have enough money to design and build the memorial (a national design contest will be held once about two-thirds of the project’s total cost has been raised). “We’re a very small operation,” says Foster. “We don’t have the money to do big advertising.”

Beside that, much of the difficulty comes from a lack of public understanding about atrocities committed in places like the Soviet Union or Cambodia under Communist rule, she says. “People can’t get their heads around what the project is about,” she says. Atrocities like the Holocaust are simply better known than Communist crimes, which also included the execution of thousands of people without trial, and the forced starvation and deportation of millions more.

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The race to go rat-free

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 4 Comments

AFP/Getty Images

From time immemorial, humankind has been bothered by rats. They gnaw on energy cables, scratch through walls, spread disease, devour and desecrate agricultural goods and decimate endangered species—not to mention the constant urinating and defecating. Recently in a suburb of Johannesburg, an elderly woman died in hospital after rats chewed her eyelids. “They bite our children and leave them scared for life,” local resident Sheila Hlavangwani told the Look Local news agency. “Even our cats are afraid of them.”

For governments and organizations across the globe, enough is enough. From Dubai to the Haida Gwaii, South Africa to Saskatchewan, eradication campaigns are under way to beat back rat infestations. The battle lines are drawn across geography, ranging from remote unpopulated islands to bustling urban centres like Copenhagen, where officials promise the city will be rat-free by 2015.

Gregg Howald, North American regional director of California-based Island Conservation, works to eradicate the rodents from far-flung islands. “Eradication is a tool for something bigger, which is preventing extinctions,” says Howald, who has participated in over 20 rat eradications on islands all over the world. “You’ll see distribution of rats from subarctic conditions and subantarctic conditions all the way through to the deep tropics,” he says. “They can survive on virtually anything that has any degree of protein and nutrition.”

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