The Descendants

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:20 PM - 0 Comments

Balancing offbeat humour and abject sentiment, Alexander Payne (Sideways, About Schmidt) rides the perfect wave between comedy and drama in this tale of a shattered family in Hawaii. George Clooney does a credible job of dulling his charisma as an ineffectual lawyer and father whose wife has been having an affair—something he discovers only after a powerboat accident has put her in a serious coma. But his unruly daughters, especially the elder teen played by Shailene Woodley, are the driving force of this movie, which follows a wonderfully unpredictable course through some breathtaking landscape. Payne does for Hawaii what he did for wine in Sideways. “In Hawaii,” says Clooney’s character, “some of the most powerful people look like bums and stuntmen.” That’s just one wry observation in a bittersweet social comedy that treats the Pacific “paradise” as lead character, portrayed, by turns, with rhapsodic beauty and idiosyncratic wit.

Buttonholing Brad Pitt 2.0

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:01 PM - 0 Comments

Kara Dillon/Maclean's

A few hours before my colleague, Jessica Allen threw that question to Brad Pitt on front lines of the red carpet—”What’s you’re favorite sports movie”—I asked the same damn question in TIFF’s Moneyball press conference yesterday. I was the first to get a word with Mr. Pitt, and, of course, like a polite Canadian, I didn’t ask about Angelina or the kids or those recent tabloid headlines about her being pissed that he’s allegedly smoking reefer—reefer!— in some obscure “drug den” on their estate. No, like Jessica, I lobbed him a softball query about his favorite sports movie. As on the red carpet, he mentioned his childhood affection for Bad News Bears. Then he talked about how North Dallas Forty, starring Nick Nolte, has a special place in his heart because he snuck into it. But I also asked Brad if the Moneyball strategy—trying to score hits with the right combo of utility players rather than high-priced stars—should be tried, or has been tried by Hollywood.”Well, not if they hired me,” he quipped. He went on to says that, “with digital video on the rise, we’re going to see more of this talent that wouldn’t have had a shot before.” (I can only think that he’s referring, with uncanny prescience, to our rising red carpet star, Jessica Allen).

As the press conference wore on, the issue of disparity between marquee players and hired hands in Hollywood became the prevailing theme. On a podium that included Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the least known actor was Chris Pratt, who plays Scott Hatteberg, the struggling first baseman in Moneyball. And as soon as he opened his mouth, this rather dull affair known as “the Brad Pitt press conference” suddenly perked up. When fielding a group question about what inspired the actors, he compared himself to his character and gushed with genuine passion, “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m inspired right now! I don’t get paid a shitload of money. You guys got me for really cheap. I’m kinda like Scott Hatteberg.” He went on to rave about the baseball skills of the cast. “Every bit of baseball you see is real. I would put this team against any baseball team in any movie.”

Jonah Hill also weighed in with his underdog credentials. With Superbad, the film that launched his career, he said “I was a very unlikely person to be the star of a big motion picture. And I continually get that underdog opportunity.” In fact, the novelty of his nerdy character in Moneyball is the secret to the movie’s odd couple chemistry. You wonder: what is this guy doing sharing power in the clubhouse with Brad Pitt? Later, when director Bennett Miller launched into a long and lofty dissertation about the beauty of baseball—talking about its “bicameral existence” as romance and science, its attachment to superstition, its timeless, clockless nature, its “long periods of boredom and monotony punctuated by moments of excitement and extreme terror. . . “—Jonah Hill cut him off with a verbal line drive: “He’s trying to say that it looks really cool.”

On the underdog issue, meanwhile, Philip Seymour Hoffman finally put the all this celebrity relativism in perspective by pointing out that no one on the podium was really an underdog actor. “Most actors don’t work,” he reminded us. “Everyone at this table is in the top five per cent.”

Moneyball

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 4:44 PM - 0 Comments

Moneyball Brad Pitt is having a remarkable year. First he plays the dark side of the American Dream in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes; now he switch-hits to the sunny side of that dream in Moneyball‘s amazing-but-true story of Billy Beane, a general manager who changed the face of major league baseball. Here, after a string of quirky, character roles, Pitt finally unleashes his natural wit and charisma in a role that soaks it up—he has the lustre of a latter-day Robert Redford. A movie star hitting his prime. But what makes the film really click is the hilarious odd-couple chemistry between Pitt and the deadpan Jonah Hill, cast as the nerdy Yale economist hired by Beane to build a winning strategy by number-crunching. Directed by Capote‘s Bennett Miller, this is one helluva good sports movie. It’s a terrific movie, period. Pitt often gets more credit as a movie star than as an actor. But for this, he should get an Oscar nomination.

When states fail

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 12:53 PM - 10 Comments

Michael Ignatieff reflects on 9/11 and the decade that has followed.

We are in need of good politics, of democratic systems that are more than reality-TV shows driven by attack ads, and of democratic debate that allows the people to talk about what actually matters and then to elect politicians who will do what must be done.

We are not short of good ideas about what to do. We are not short of dedicated public servants. Most people, apart from those in the grip of ideological fantasy, know that we need competent sovereigns. But truth be told, a decade later, sovereigns are failing us still. And until they stop failing us, we will not be safe, and our prosperity will not be secure.

See previously: The apparatus

‘What’s your favourite sports movie?’

By Jessica Allen - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 10:27 AM - 7 Comments

Scenes from the red carpet at the ‘Ides of March’ premiere

By Tom Henheffer - Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 0 Comments

‘Love, Bob’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 6:14 PM - 28 Comments

(This post last updated at 7:31pm)

According to the CBC, Conservative MP Bob Dechert, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, will soon acknowledge that he sent flirtatious emails to a reporter with the Chinese state news agency. Earlier the Ottawa Citizen reported on the existence of said emails.

E-mails circulated in Ottawa on Friday contain messages apparently between Chinese journalist Shi Rong of the Xinhua News Agency and Mississauga–Erindale MP Bob Dechert, who serves as parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. One message that appears to have been sent from Dechert’s Parliament Hill account reads: “You are so beautiful. I really like that picture of you by the water with your cheeks puffed. That look is so cute. I love it when you do that. Now, I miss you even more.”

More from the Globe.

6:16pm. A statement from Mr. Dechert’s office has now been issued. Continue…

Scenes from the opening night of TIFF

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 6:13 PM - 0 Comments

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Scenes from the opening night of TIFF

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Opening Night Gala premiere of From The Sky Down

September 8, 2011: Fans wait at Roy Thompson Hall for the Opening Night Gala premiere of From The Sky Down at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Kara Dillon/Maclean's)

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Ten years later (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 3 Comments

Following the President’s letter, the Prime Minister writes to Mr. Obama on the anniversary of 9/11.

The Liberal press office has sent out the following statement from interim leader Bob Rae.

“Ten years ago, the September 11^th terrorist attacks shook the world. And as we extend our thoughts and sympathies to those families affected by this senseless attack, including the families of the Canadian victims, we also remember the strength, compassion and resolve exemplified by Canadians across the country as we responded to this disaster.

We remember the empathy, love and support that poured out from the more than 100,000 people who gathered on Parliament Hill for a national day of mourning.

Continue…

The race is on

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

The NDP federal council has set the convention to elect a new party leader for March 24 in Toronto. The entry fee is $15,000 and the spending limit is $500,000. No votes will be set aside for unions.

Olivia Chow is promising to stay neutral. It is “unlikely” Pierre Ducasse will enter the race.

The landing strip on 9/11

By John Parisella - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:56 PM - 1 Comment

Just as we are about to begin a year of commemorating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 between the U.S. and colonial Canada, we are also recalling the horrific events of 9/11. While there are no similarities outside of lives being lost, the two events give an occasion to recognize how the U.S.-Canada relationship has evolved over the years. It is more than just the largest commercial partnership in the world. It is about respect, trust and friendship.

On 9/11, Canada became a long landing strip for stranded American travelers when U.S. air travel was suspended following the attack on the twin towers. In the days following this horrific act, Canada played a frontline role among the first responder nations. We felt the pain, the anger and the horror at such an irrational act. Twenty-four Canadians also perished that day. So we understood. We were active in rescuing victims, we were leaders in condemning the perpetrators of this unspeakable act, and we helped by welcoming the stranded travelers in our homes and hearts. Continue…

About that world debt

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:08 PM - 1 Comment

Scott Clark and Peter DeVries have some questions for Jim Flaherty ahead of the next meeting of G7 and G8 finance ministers.

President Obama has said that he wants a balanced approach to solving the US deficit and Debt problem. This would require both expenditure cuts and tax increases. Mr. Flaherty has said that he would never raise taxes to deal with a deficit problem.  Lower taxes are needed for growth. This sounds very Republican if not Tea Party. What advice will Mr. Flaherty tell the Secretary of the Treasury regarding taxes to reduce the US deficit?

The Prime Minister claims great success for his leadership at the G-20 in getting countries to commit to reducing their deficits in half by 2013.  What has happened to that commitment?

Ten years later

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 2:12 PM - 3 Comments

President Barack Obama has written a letter to the Prime Minister to thank Canadians for their efforts on 9/11.

Mr. Harper has declared September 11 to be a national day of service.

Do you know what your cellphone carrier is up to?

By Jesse Brown - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 2:01 PM - 2 Comments

A study has shown that wireless providers may be cutting data speeds in half and needlessly sucking juice from their customer’s cellphones (pdf). A team at the University of Michigan and Microsoft Research studied 107 cellphone carriers around the world using 393 volunteers who ran a diagnostic app that interrogates transmissions to track the exchanges between handsets and “middleboxes”—network hardware that stand between you and whatever it is you’re sending or receiving.

One big U.S. carrier (names were withheld for legal reasons) was found to be intentionally hobbling its customer’s mobile data speeds by as much as 50 per cent. The researchers don’t know why, but suggest a motive that’s as concerning as the throttling itself: deep packet inspection. Microsoft Research engineer Ming Zhang believes that this is the most logical explanation for the reduced service—carriers are analyzing the data you send, and slowing it down in the process. Continue…

Everybody at TIFF is so nice!

By Jessica Allen - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

Well, maybe not everybody, but man oh man, have you seen the 2,000+ TIFF volunteers at the screening venues, all smiling and greeting and waving? You can’t miss them in their bright orange festival t-shirts. They’re doing a a knock-out job of making everybody feel welcome. In fact, I was so charmed by their friendly demeanour that I asked if I could take a group photo of several of them outside the Scotiabank theatre. Their faces lit up but a woman standing behind them, presumably somebody in charge—she was not wearning an orange t-shirt—told me I wasn’t allowed. “But it’s just for a blog post that’ll sing their praises,” I insisted. Still no.

Oh well, I’m sure there’s a good reason behind it (no there isn’t). But I won’t let a little burp ruin this party. Besides, everything else is a monument to stellar planning and organization by not only TIFF, but PR firms and film distributors, too. And the hospitality! Take Alliance Films’ TIFF headquarters, the Ben Sherman lounge at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre. They invited accredited TIFF media on the eve of the festival’s opening to mix and mingle with no shortage of drinks and food, plus a DJ—and they’ll keep the lounge open for the duration of the festival for a haven of sorts so media can come and unwind, file stories and freshen up.

I didn’t know a single person, although I did recognize Shinan Govani from the National Post.  So I turned my attention to the bounty of food, particularly the cheese. And I’m not talking about slices of marble and havarti: these platters were piled high with thick wedges of manchego, really old beemster and gooey, ash-rinded goat cheeses.

And I was privy to several conversations: I’ve never heard so many people say, “I really want to do Madonna.” Presumably doing Madge implies interviewing her about her turn as the director of W.E.

As I slinked out of the party, a lovely petite women gave me the warmest greeting. And then she hugged me. Onlookers looked shocked, only because they could recognize the look of confusion on my face: I had no idea who this sweet person was, and she’d clearly mistaken me for someone else. But a hug is a hug. Turns out it was Si Si Penaloza from The Globe and Mail, who confessed she was drawn to the gold detailing in my sweater. I will now be wearing said sweater to every event on the off-chance its charms will work on others, preferably someone named Ryan.

Let’s get this party started

By Jessica Allen - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 0 Comments

On Wednesday morning, the eve before the TIFF storm, I rode my bike past Roy Thompson Hall–the site of all the festival’s galas–and saw several metal stands lined up like soldiers in the lobby.

By tonight they’ll have strands of rope attached to them (golden? velvet?) to separate the common folk and media types from the stars walking down red carpets, which, by the by, I also saw—stuffed unceremoniously into big clear plastic bags. They’ll be rolled out any hour now and the first people to walk down them will be some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters, including Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, the stars of Moneyball (6:30 pm), and George Clooney, the director, writer and star of Ides of March (9:30 pm). Clooney will be accompanied by some of his co-stars, including Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti.  And it’ll be just as exciting Saturday night, when two homegrown Canadian directors debut their films to Toronto: Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz (9:30pm), starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogan and Sarah Silverman, plus David Cronenberg’s fictional film about Carl Yung (Michael Fassbinder) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), A Dangerous Method (6:30 pm).

It’s going to be mayhem. And Maclean’s will be there.

‘Artist, street organizer, Member of Parliament and mystic’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 1:04 PM - 0 Comments

Simon de Jong, the former NDP MP who passed away last month, is remembered.

As Heritage critic he once railed against Canada Post for issuing a stamp to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Disneyland.  “We are losing our identity,” he argued. “We as a country are promoting a foreign, privately owned institution, a privately owned theme park, and we are promoting it on our stamps.” Among his most satisfying moments as an MP, he said, was getting Parliament to send a message of condolence to Yoko Ono when John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 and delivering a speech on disarmament to the United Nations in 1982…

After he left Parliament he moved to California, spent time in Brazil, then returned to live in British Columbia. Shortly before he died, he was asked what he would do if he was in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s shoes. “It’s a bit facetious, but take LSD,” he said. “See some bigger pictures.”

Ted Morton accused of email hijinks

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Ted Morton is under fire after the CBC revealed his use of a dummy email account while he was the Minister of Sustainable Resources. Morton communicated with his staff under the name Frederick Lee, his real first and middle names, in what some believe was an attempt to dodge future freedom of information requests. Adding fuel to the fire were revelations Morton’s staff shredded documents and erased emails after the former professor left his portfolio to run for the leadership.

CBC News

Radiation leaked into sea from Fukushima plant higher than estimated

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

The amount of radiation that has seeped into the Pacific Ocean from Japan’s damaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear reactors is more than three times higher the original estimate conducted by Tepco, the company that owns the power plant. Takyua Kobayashi of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday that the faulty estimate was likely the result of Tepco’s failure to measure the airborne radiation that landed at sea. Researchers found that, contrary to Tepco’s estimate of 4,720 trillion becquerels of cesium-137 and iodine-131, more than 15,000 trillion becquerels was released into the ocean between March 21 and April 30. On top of that, the researchers didn’t measure the presence of cesium-134, meaning that the true amount of radiation in the Pacific is higher still. In the aftermath of the nuclear meltdown caused by an earthquake and tsunami earlier this year, radiation has been found in seafood and seaweed off the coast of Japan. Tepco hopes to have the reactors in a state of cold shutdown by January.

Reuters

Women In the Writers’ Room

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 12:11 PM - 0 Comments

The behind-the-scenes story of this TV season in the U.S. was supposed to be the larger-than-usual number of shows created by women. And that is a good thing. But the other side of the story is that while there are more female creators, there are fewer female writers in TV as a whole; the exact number may vary from survey to survey, but things don’t seem to have improved since a decade ago. Maureen Ryan has a big piece for AOL TV on exactly this issue, where she talks to many TV insiders about why there are still so few women writers – in all genres, comedy and drama – and how the position of “the woman writer,” the one female in the writers’ room, is still a reality in many cases. (In older shows, the one female writer on a staff would often get stuck with writing only certain kinds of stories, like episodes about hookers with hearts of gold. That might still happen today, though this also overlaps with the fact that many of the female writers are junior members of the staff, who may tend to get the assignments the senior writers don’t want.)

A couple of interviewees cite an economic reason, similar to the reason why older writers can’t get hired in TV: television advertisers value male viewers more than female viewers because of their scarcity (more women watch TV than men), so the shows seek out writers who are perceived as appealing to young men. That of course is more of an explanation rather than an excuse: the idea that writers over 50 can’t write shows that appeal to viewers under 50 is a bit dubious, and so is the idea that a show won’t attract young men if too many women are writing for it.

When Angela Bromstad was running NBC, as I’ve mentioned before, one of her good ideas was to lean on producers a bit and encourage them to hire more female writers. Producers probably do have to be nudged in this way, because it’s so hard to assemble a good writing staff that they may stay within their comfort zones (which means writers they know or have worked with, which often mostly means men). But as Community creator Dan Harmon mentioned in the linked interview, once that push was given, it proved to be a good idea that helped the show:

It was conscious on the part of [former NBC programming head] Angela Bromstad, before she left NBC. Angela said, “Get more women on your staff. Make it half women.”… From the mouths of bureaucrats come the seeds of great things. I dug extra hard. You find somebody like Hilary Winston. You find people later like [Emily] Cutler and [Karey] Dornetto.

Other NBC shows increased the number of women on staff in that era, and that in turn leads to more women creators: two of the writers of Parks & Recreation, Emily Kapnek and SNL veteran Emily Spivey, have created new comedies for this season. Obviously it’s not as simple as just saying that every executive can get every show to hire more women. But a little push does seem to help. Or at least, the situation might be different if network executives would make this kind of thing more of a priority.

Interpol releases arrest warrant for Gadhafi

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

International policing agency Interpol has released an arrest warrant for deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and the former head of the country’s intelligence department. The announcement came on Friday, the same day that reports of a second convoy carrying officials from the Gadhafi regime passed from Libya into Niger. An official from Niger, Libya’s southern neighbour, said the country will abide by the Interpol arrest warrants and will hand over any fugitives found in its territory, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Gadhafi loyalists holed up the town of Bani Walid, one of their last refuges, fired mortars and rockets at surrounding troops on Friday. No casualties were reported. As negotiations between the NATO-backed government and remaining Gadhafi loyalists continue, the prospect of a violent weekend draws nearer. That’s when the ultimatum for surrender is scheduled to expire. Interpol quoted International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo saying that it “is a matter of time” until Gadhafi is arrested. All 188 Interpol members are obligated to arrest and send Gadhafi to the ICC in The Hague if they are able.

The New York Times

Canada lost jobs in August

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

The Canadian job market was weaker than expected in August, with jobs disappearing for the first time since March. Employers cut 5,500 jobs last month, pushing the unemployment rate up slightly to 7.3 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. Despite the setback in job numbers, 233,000 jobs have been created over the past year, while the overall employment rate rose 1.3 per cent. On top of that, full-time jobs have grown by 2.2 per cent and part-time positions have shrunk by 2.3 per cent. Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, speaking in Marseilles, France, where he is attending a Group of Seven meeting, called the overall growth in full time positions “encouraging.” Still, August’s job shrinkage comes amid continued economic woes in Europe and the United States. Speaking Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the government would be “flexible” in its economic approach, potentially leaving the door open to some job-creating stimulus spending should job numbers repeat last month’s decline. For 15 to 24 year olds, the jobless rate this summer was 17.2 per cent, up from 16.9 per cent a year ago.

The Globe and Mail

Obama pitches new stimulus plan

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

In a speech before the joint session of Congress on Thursday, U.S. president Barack Obama proposed a $450 billion stimulus package aimed at creating jobs and jumpstarting America’s moribund economy. The proposal mixes tax cuts with new spending on so-called “shovel-ready” projects. Obama delivered the speech with a newly combative tone, urging Congress to pass the bill immediately.

The Globe and Mail

“Credible” threat cited ahead of 9/11 milestone

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 5 Comments

Americans were warned Thursday of a “specific, credible but unconfirmed” threat of a terrorist attack planned to coincide with Sunday’s tenth anniversary of the 9/11 hijackings. New York police have been put on high alert ahead of the milestone date, with shifts extended and the number of officers on the street increased. According to ABC News, investigators are hunting for three men, one an American citizen, sent to the U.S. to carry out a “vehicle-borne attack against Washington, D.C. or New York.” Rumours of an anniversary attack have swirled for months. Documents found in Osama bin Laden’s compound suggest the late al-Qaeda leader hoped to bomb a train or fly a small plane into a public event ten years after he toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center. For now, Sunday’s planned memorial at the site of the attacks will go on as scheduled.

The New York Times

ABC News