Kim Jong-Il’s Aesthetics

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 10:37 AM - 0 Comments

This might be an appropriate time to link to a couple of posts Merrill Markoe wrote in 2006, where she looked through two of the books Kim Jong-Il wrote when he was merely a dictator-to-be. One was “On the Art of Opera,” and the other was “On the Art of Cinema.” There’s also this piece from 2005 by John Gorenfeld, who gives a little more background on the books.

In these books, written when the future Glorious Leader was just out of university and learning the rudiments of controlling the country’s culture, we learn what we might expect to learn: capitalist art is decadent, but the Revolution will also have no truck with artsy formalist art that the people can’t understand, so the solution is to have art that speaks directly to the people in a language they can understand, and delivers politically correct messages about Communism. By a strange coincidence, the peak of both musical theatre and film has been achieved by productions of the North Korean government. And everyone, of course, must know what their real job is: unlike Western movies, which are compromised by the star system, actors in his idea movie “must be ideologically prepared before acquiring high-level skills… The actor requires an ardent love of his class, and a burning hostility towards the enemy.”

Yes, it’s your usual Zhdanovite boilerplate, and let it be said that none of this is actually funny if you have to live and work under people like that. It’s still hard to resist making fun of it, and Markoe does her usual good deadpan job. There are also some funny reviews of “On the Art of Cinema” at its Amazon.com page, as well as the page for “On the Art of Opera,” to the point that the books are listed under “Humor & Entertainment.”

Better democracy through swearing

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Maher finds reason for optimism.

I found Trudeau’s outburst tremendously encouraging, because it showed that opposition MPs are finding new ways to draw public attention to this government’s willingness to smear its opponents and stifle debate… 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government often looks authoritarian and mendacious, and he’s often accused of failing to respect Parliament, but when you look at all the stories about Trudeau cursing, you see that Parliament will continue to matter if MPs find ways to make it matter, and they will do that, because their careers depend on it.

North Korea test-fires missile

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 9:31 AM - 0 Comments

North Korea test-fired a short-range missile on Monday, the same day it announced the death of its leader Kim Jong-Il, according to reports in the South Korean media. A South Korean official, who declined to be named, however, told Yonhap news agency that the launch was likely unrelated to Kim’s death, Reuters reports. North Korea is thought to have launched the missile in the morning, before the announcement of the supreme leader’s passing. The country routinely test-fires missiles. Such launches, however, are sometimes tied to sensitive political developments.

Reuters

Your Parliament at work

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The end of the fall sitting should not pass without some mention of perhaps the least consequential question ever raised in the history of Question Period.

Early in Thursday’s session, Stephane Dion rose and wondered aloud whether the government employed a Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Peter Penashue did not stand to confirm his existence, but later he was set up with the following question, posed by Scott Armstrong, the duly elected representative of the people of Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley.

Mr. Speaker, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians received a lump of coal from the interim Liberal leader this week when he forgot their province was actually part of Canada. He wrote a letter to his supporters saying that daylight broke over Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia and began its journey across the country.

Conservatives know that Peggy’s Cove is 1,100 kilometres west of St. John’s, the most eastern city in this country. Can the minister responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador please inform the Liberal leader that his province is part of Canada and that our government is committed to delivering for them?

Two months ago I noted that Mr. Penashue had made it through 27 sitting days without saying anything in the House. A few days after that he made his first comments and he has now made a total of nine interventions.

Literacy test

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Global takes a look at our scripted Question Period.

Kim Jong Il dies

By macleans.ca - Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 10:56 PM - 0 Comments

Kim Jong-Il, Supreme Leader of North Korea, has died at the age of 69, North Korean State television announced today. The son of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-Il held various positions in his father’s government, taking over as leader after his his father died in 1994. Running North Korea, Kim Jong-Il presided over a dismal economy, concentrating mostly on military buildups to stimulate the economy. In the West, he was primarily known for his nuclear program, which he continued in defiance of an agreement with the U.S.; North Korea’s status as a possible nuclear power, along with Kim Jong-Il’s reputation unreliability, gave him a reputation as a power-mad and dangerous dictator, and he was the main villain in the comedy Team America from the creators of South Park. He was also known for cultivating a personality cult among his people, reminiscent of the cults of Stalin and Mao. Kim Jong-Il’s health has not been good for some time, and he had already been grooming his third son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor.

ABC News

Vaclav Havel: a life almost too full to be true

By Paul Wilson - Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 7:45 PM - 0 Comments

One of my most vivid memories of Vaclav Havel—who died this morning after a struggle of many years with infirmities that would long since have killed a lesser man—involves a conversation he had in 1996 with our then governor-general, Romeo LeBlanc, who was in Prague on a state visit. It was during an intimate dinner in one of Havel’s favorite restaurants; I was there too—officially, as LeBlanc’s “cultural advisor,” though really, my job was to hold hands on both side of the table. His Excellency was nervous about meeting a great man and an author of world stature; Havel was nervous, too, because he was a naturally shy, modest man who, in his thirteen years as head of state (first of Czechoslovakia and then, from 1993 on, of the Czech Reublic) never really felt comfortable on official occasions like this. He was far more at ease exchanging monosyllables with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (Havel’s English was servicable, but rudimentary) or visiting Valdice, the Czech maximum security prison that is, in a sense, Havel’s alma mater, where he could mingle with inmates who treated him as one of their own. Continue…

Remembering Havel, and how he and Mandela made us think

By John Geddes - Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

In the space of a few months in late 1989 and early 1990, two events occurred that made it seem anything evil in the world’s political order, no matter how entrenched, might be definitively ended, and two inspirational figures embodied this new sense of radical possibility.

First came the peaceful uprising in Prague in November 1989, which overthrew the Soviet-backed dictatorship in Czechoslovakia, and then came Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990, which announced that the end of South Africa’s racist regime was at hand.

These developments happened a long way from Canada. It’s parochial, I know, but on hearing today of the death of Vaclav Havel, the leader of Prague’s Velvet Revolution, I’m reminded of his visit to Ottawa in 1999, and of the contrast between that stirring moment and Mandela’s uplifting  trip to the Canadian capital in 1990.

Continue…

“Hitchens,”

By Noah Richler - Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 10:52 AM - 0 Comments

Christopher and I knew each other from London. He had been one of the few Englishmen I knew who had the generosity of spirit to understand North America and its freedoms and so I was thrilled that he was among the first to write for me when, in 1998, I returned to Canada as the National Post’s first Books editor. He’d said yes, though our dollar was not worth much, he’d review—though agreed only after cautioning me that Conrad Black, its proprietor then, had approached him at a party in London after his purchase of The Spectator to say, “I bought the magazine to put shits like you out of work.” A year or so later, Black did give me trouble when I ran a long review Hitchens wrote of a memoir by Edward Said that the paper had me pull on dubious grounds. I telephoned Christopher and told him that it didn’t feel to me like a quitting offence, it was Black’s paper after all, but also that I knew he could handle himself, so what would he like to know? Continue…

Havel in Ottawa, 1999

By Paul Wells - Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 10:15 AM - 0 Comments

Vaclav Havel died today. Perhaps my friends at the National Post won’t mind if I reproduce the column I wrote for that paper’s edition of April 30, 1999, after Havel addressed the Senate and House of Commons of Canada.

Apparently at some point, after you have sat too long in jail for something you wrote, you lose your patience for wasted words.

Vaclav Havel, the Czech president, addressed a joint session of the Senate and the House of Commons yesterday. Such visits are almost always the occasion for vapid, back-slapping cocktail speeches. If the visitor is a U.S. president, he announces with amazement that our two great nations share the world’s longest undefended border. If he is a potentate from some other land, he thanks Canada for its unflagging loyalty and marvels at the beauty of our athletes or our trees. Bilateral irritants are gravely acknowledged, but all resolve that friendship will overcome any obstacle.

His Canadian hosts clearly expected similar banter from Mr. Havel. The House was packed to the rafters, MPs in their chairs, senators and Joe Clark seated in the middle aisle, galleries lined with invited dignitaries. Jean Chretien greeted Mr. Havel, and the speakers of the House and Senate thanked him, with the sort of dishwatery odes Mr. Havel must have had to endure thrice weekly for the last decade.

They kept reciting his curriculum vitae — playwright, dissident, prisoner, President — as if the story still held surprises. None of his greeters could think of much to say about Mr. Havel’s decade in office, the modern world he operates in, his political ideas or their own. “Your presence in this chamber is a very strong symbol for us,” Gilbert Parent, the House Speaker, said.

It has clearly been some time since Mr. Havel found the symbolism of his own presence impressive. He had come to take care of business, which for a writer can only ever mean he came to discuss ideas. Stockier than in the old photos, slow-moving but apparently in fair health, he strode to the podium and dispensed with ceremony with a single sentence: “Prime Minister… distinguished guests, I certainly do not need to emphasize how honoured I am to address you.”

So he didn’t. Continue…

REVIEW: The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 6:05 PM - 0 Comments

This book should come with a guarantee: “You’ll be wholeheartedly cynical about the political process in all its forms, or your money back!” In a brutally forthright work, the authors distill the process by which politicians gain and retain power. Their conclusion: be it tyranny or democracy or anything in between, it is favourable, even necessary, for politicians to be selfish, brutish and mean if they want to stay in power. “Politicians are all the same,” they write, and anyone “who thinks their leaders do what they ought to do—what’s best for their nation of subjects—ought to become an academic rather than enter political life.”

To the pair (who are, yes, academics), there are no such thing as despots, at least in the accepted sense of the word. Rather, the likes of Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein are beholden to the power brokers in their immediate circle. Successful despots keep this circle small, sublimated—but very well paid. They know that losing control of them means losing control of the purse strings and the men with guns. All of this might sound uncouth to your average Western democracy, but Bueno de Mesquita and Smith argue that what applies to despots also applies to democrats—the only difference being the democrats’ demise is the ballot box, not bullets.

But the ballot box is no panacea. Gerrymandering has essentially allowed politicians to rise to power thanks to small, highly motivated blocs of voters, while leaders who make noises about fixing the system find themselves abandoned by the “essentials” on Wall Street—and in their own cabinet. Those politicians who do good deeds do so because their hand is forced; South Africa’s F.W. de Klerk cut a deal with Nelson Mandela because his apartheid government ran out of money, not because he wanted to do away with the awful status quo. The authors are careful to illustrate a few of history’s bright points—Washington, Mandela, Nehru—but make a frightfully good argument by turning an old cliché on its ear. Power doesn’t corrupt. Rather, power inevitably attracts the corrupted.

And what have we learned?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 5:26 PM - 0 Comments

Bruce Anderson considers the Speaker’s ruling and the campaign against Irwin Cotler.

Does the leadership of the Conservative Party interpret the ruling as carte blanche to do more of this kind of “wet-work”? If this tactic were carried out on a broader scale, would anyone really think it is nothing more than sporting politics? (As an aside, do we really think the Speaker would have arrived at the same decision if the tactic was used against 50 or 100 opposition MPs?)

Do other leading Conservatives share the views of Government House Leader Peter Van Loan, who said that the calls made into Mr. Cotler’s riding were vital free speech and a sign of good health in our democracy? If Mr. Van Loan truly is speaking for cabinet… well, that would be kind of frightening. If not, he should seek an opportunity to step back from that argument and acknowledge that a line was crossed.

Torture and Oxford

By Michael Petrou - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments

Abbas Kowsari/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The son of a former Iranian president who is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Oxford under hotly contested circumstances has been ordered by an Ontario court to pay a Canadian man millions of dollars in compensation for torture he suffered while imprisoned in Iran.

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani is the fourth child of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president of Iran from 1989 to 1997, and whose family is among the wealthiest in the country. It was while Akbar Rafsanjani was president that Houshang Bouzari crossed paths with his son, Mehdi. Bouzari had worked as an adviser to the Iranian parliament and oil ministry. But he severed ties to the government in 1987 and became an international business consultant, helping foreign companies strike deals to tap Iran’s oil wealth.

In 1991, he had signed a monster contract involving five European and Japanese companies. Soon after he got a message that President Rafsanjani and Mehdi wanted to meet with him. Bouzari was then living in Italy but he flew back to meet them. The president told Bouzari that he wanted Mehdi, then about 22 years old, to learn the oil business.

Continue…

Give us a year

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:55 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Dewar offers a tuition break for a year of community service.

Dewar’s ‘Your Canada Year’ will provide 10,000 youth with a grant for training or post secondary education in exchange for one year of service with a non-profit organization … Under the program Canadians between ages 17 and 25 will be eligible to volunteer in Canada or overseas. In exchange they’ll receive a maximum of $1,500/month to help cover expenses during their service and a grant of up to $6,000 for one year of post-secondary education or training afterwards.

Why Ottawa’s ban on veils at citizenship ceremonies is unlikely to survive

By John Geddes - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:50 PM - 0 Comments

Johnathan Adam Davies/National Pictures/Keystone Press

Fierce debates over religious symbols and beliefs are nothing new in Canada. Should a Mountie be allowed to wear a turban? Should a Sikh boy be permitted to carry a symbolic dagger in school? Should Hutterites who disapprove of photography on grounds of faith be excused from having their pictures on their driver’s licences? These controversies all ignited heated disputes over cultural sensitivities and legal rights. But none arguably has generated reactions quite so intense as Muslim women who cover their faces by wearing the niqab or burka—a practice Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has now challenged on unusually sweeping grounds.

Kenney decreed this week that immigrants who wish to become Canadians will no longer be allowed to keep their faces covered while taking the citizenship oath. He made the move after a Conservative MP from a Toronto suburb reported seeing four burka-clad women taking part in a recent group citizenship ceremony. Kenney said it’s hard for a presiding judge to tell if a veiled woman is really speaking the oath. But that practical quibble was clearly secondary to him. “It is,” he said, “a matter of deep principle that goes to the heart of our identity and our values of openness and equality.”

Past clashes of this sort have focused on balancing religious rights against pragmatic policy considerations. In 2009, for instance, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a small Hutterite community’s objection to photography was trumped by the government’s need to have a secure system for driver’s licences. Cases involving the Sikh kirpan have focused on minimizing the danger of the ceremonial daggers being used as weapons. When it comes to veils and citizenship ceremonies, though, Kenney didn’t dwell much on practicalities. He said allowing women “to hide their identity from us, precisely when they are joining our community, is contrary to Canada’s proud commitment to openness and to social cohesion.”

Continue…

The World Junior Championships are obscene. But we better win.

By Dave Bidini - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

This is not a Leafs column, so let’s put the sorrow and hope and impossibility of faith aside for a moment. Let’s take a breath, let’s launder that blood and mustard-splotched Boimstruck sweater. Let’s set aside the schedule and the standings and forget that Luke Schenn was ever born, for in a few weeks, NHL teams won’t matter. Pro hockey won’t matter. What will matter is what happens in Calgary and Edmonton, and even there, the Oilers and Flames won’t matter. Soon, it will be Christmas and New Year’s: junior hockey time. Players you don’t yet know yet will fill your screens and busy your papers and crowd your radio dial. Canada will be playing. Canada is always playing. And they better win. They better.

That our country—or rather, the dominant hockey-loving pie slice of our country—will bend routine and design days and evenings around games is a given. What’s not a given is whether this is necessarily, unequivocally, a good thing. A few questions: Are we putting too much pressure on kids to carry on Canada’s obsessive desire to succeed at all things blade and skate? Does that obsession mean that we unconsciously absolve the trappings of the junior game: young men playing for peanuts while owners get rich off their dreams; the dirty secret of hazing and alcohol and drug abuse; youth fight culture; and a citizenry that emerges from the pro hockey derby having learned nothing through their formative years except how to take a pass and throw a hit? Lots about junior hockey is good—giving identity and economy to small places; allowing kids, in the best case scenario, to absorb lessons about leadership and courage—but there’s a certain obscenity in blanket coverage of awkward kids posing for TSN promos like the gladitorial men they are not. And if discussions about the failings of the NHL to make the ice friendlier and more concussion-free—consider wider rinks and small equipment—then shouldn’t that be part of the junior hockey discussion, too? Continue…

Politics in politics, boring is better

By Emma Teitel - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

“I made a vow to God . . . that’s stronger than a Texas handshake.”—Rick Perry

“What if [poor kids] became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom.”—Newt Gingrich

“I’ll bet you $10,000!”—Mitt Romney

“WIN, WIN, WIN!”—Michele Bachmann

“I distinguish between nationalism and patriotism.”—Michael Ignatieff

Continue…

Good news, bad news: Dec. 8-15, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

Protests broke out against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. (Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/Keystone Press)

A better pact

A UN summit in Durban, South Africa, ended with what could become the framework for a long-term deal on climate change. Unlike the Kyoto accord, the new agreement, details of which remain to be negotiated, would bind all nations—not just those in the developed world—to specific greenhouse gas emission targets. After the summit ended, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto pact. The move sparked howls of outrage but it was hardly a surprise; Ottawa never had a serious plan to meet Kyoto targets. Now maybe everyone can get serious about crafting a new, more equitable climate change regime.

Scouts’ honour

Scouts Canada offered a blanket apology last week to former scouts sexually abused by troop leaders. In an online video, the organization’s chief commissioner acknowledged the youth organization hasn’t always done enough to guard against predators. The apology comes as a welcome change after years of private settlements and silence. But while the consulting firm KPMG has been hired to review the organization’s files, continued pressure will be needed to make sure the results of that probe are made public, too.

Continue…

A 19th-century canine mystery solved

By Kate Lunau - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:15 PM - 0 Comments

Oral tradition suggests that blankets, robes and other textiles made by the Coast Salish—a First Nations people from southern B.C. and northern Washington state—were made with dog hair, although some researchers doubted these claims. Historical accounts told of a small “Pomeranian-type dog” bred for its woolly coat until the mid-19th century, says Susan Heald, senior textile conservator at the Smithsonian Institution; the breed disappeared after contact with Europeans. Maybe because it was lost, “some people had their doubts about whether they really used dog hair,” she says, or whether that was simply a legend. Now modern science has put the debate to rest. Using cutting-edge equipment, researchers have confirmed dog hair was indeed used in Coast Salish weaving.

A team led by Caroline Solazzo of the University of York studied 25 different samples, mostly dating from the early to mid-19th century, extracting proteins to pinpoint distinct sequences of amino acids. “Each species has a unique sequence,” says Solazzo, reached over the phone from Paris. They found dog hair in all the textiles produced before 1862, often blended with goat hair, suggesting it might have been used as a bulking material. Sheep wool was incorporated after contact with European traders increased and commercial products became more available.

Coast Salish weaving is an “active tradition,” which is enjoying a resurgence today, says Heald, who collaborated with Solazzo on the study. While weavers don’t use dog hair in their textiles anymore, this research is important, she says, because it confirms a part of the community’s history. As for the dog itself, no photographic records exist, she adds, but it was depicted in paintings and described in explorers’ accounts. According to Heald, “it looked like a small, woolly white dog with its tail curling up.”

Do rating agencies still matter?

By Richard Warnica - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:10 PM - 0 Comments

When the rating agency Standard and Poor’s announced recently that it was considering downgrading the debt of 15 eurozone countries, including that of economic powerhouse Germany, Angela Merkel reacted with what, if she were French, could have been described as a Gallic shrug. “What a rating agency does,” the German chancellor told reporters, “is the business of the rating agency.” Not every European nation was as sanguine. France—threatened with a two-notch cut to its triple-A ranking—may have had more reason for worry. But Merkel’s response struck a chord nevertheless.

Rarely in their century-plus-long histories have the big three rating agencies been held in such low regard. S&P, Moody’s and Fitch have all been castigated for their failure to predict the housing and banking crises of 2008. (Up until nearly the moment of collapse, the big three continued to rate asset-backed securities stuffed with subprime mortgages as triple-A investments.) Those failures came stacked upon earlier blunders involving Enron, WorldCom and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Calif. After S&P downgraded the credit rating of the United States this past August—relying on numbers that were reportedly $2 trillion off base—many began to question not just the rules that govern the agencies, but even their continued relevance to the financial system. Continue…

‘Downton Abbey’ makes a scene

By Patricia Treble - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Nick briggs

It’s a cultural touchstone in Britain and a ratings hit in the United States, yet the socially stratified, angst-ridden world that is Downton Abbey nearly didn’t make it to air. In 2007, a project that executive producer Gareth Neame was working on with writer Julian Fellowes had stalled. But Neame had another idea: “a new episodic TV series set above and below stairs in an English country house in the Edwardian era with a big cast of characters.”

However, the writer was reluctant to sign on because he had used a similar “upstairs-downstairs” concept in the movie Gosford Park (2001), won an Oscar for the screenplay and didn’t think lightning would strike twice. Neame, who has a reputation for successfully rethinking old TV concepts, didn’t believe anyone else “would write it with such affection and confidence.”

Fortunately Fellowes was reading a book about rich American girls who married poor Victorian aristocrats. He spent the next few weeks turning that concept into a series.

Continue…

Why Hitchens deserves to be remembered with Orwell

By Michael Petrou - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 3:48 PM - 0 Comments

My editor has asked me to “cover off” Christopher Hitchens’s politics. It is, of course, an impossible task. Or at least it seems so at first. How to distill a political mind that ranged so widely? There was nothing that Hitchens wouldn’t tackle in print, and the diversity of his interests might suggest a certain erraticism in his convictions.

There was, too, his supposed migration from the left to the right. George Galloway, in one of his many debates with Hitchens, told the audience they were witnessing a phenomenon of nature—reverse metamorphosis. Hitchens, he said, had turned from a butterfly into a slug.

Hitchens deserved the slur, in Galloway’s feeble if eloquent mind, because of his support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Hitchens had made common cause with George W. Bush, and had therefore betrayed his leftist roots. Galloway was not alone in this view. Tariq Ali declared that Hitchens was among the casualties of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that the man now bearing his name and image was a “vile replica.” An online friend of a friend dismissed him as a “good mind lost to Bush and booze.” Continue…

How cancer became Hitchens’s platform

By Richard Warnica - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 0 Comments

In the fall of 1973, Christopher Hitchens’ mother took an overdose of pills in a hotel room overlooking the Acropolis in Athens. Hitchens, then a contributor to the New Statesman, flew to Greece, learned the details of her suicide, returned home and filed a long article for the magazine on the political chaos overwhelming the country. He was 24 years old. “Everyone said, ‘Christopher, how could you?’ ” Hitchens told the New Yorker’s Ian Parker in 2006. “I said, ‘How could I not?’ It was therapeutic to write. No—consoling. Useful.”

Hitchens, who died Thursday at 62, was not a man given to great sentimentality. When his own death by cancer was foreshadowed 18 months ago, he dealt with it much as he did everything else: head on and with many words. Hitchens, who wrote more than a dozen books and endless columns and essays, was legendary for his output, and the volume and clarity with which he wrote about his own illness were remarkable. Bracing, even. So much so that I wonder how much his late output will come to colour the canvas of his larger career. Continue…

The art of cruelty in ‘Young Adult’ and ‘Carnage’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 3:15 PM - 0 Comments

Charlize Theron in 'Young Adult'

This is a week of movies messing with our expectations. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol defies the odds, breathing fresh life into a flagging franchise. Conversely,  Young Adult, the fourth feature from Jason Reitman—the Canadian director who could do no wrong—turns out to be a surprising disappointment. Reitman has had a charmed career. His first three movies— Juno, Thank You For Smoking and Up in the Air were all critically acclaimed hits. Each had a dark edge of satire, and potentially unlikeable characters managed to win our affection with appearing to make an effort. With Up In the Air, Reitman graduated from glib, and ventured into more mature territory, opening a chink in George Clooney’s emotional armour that Alexander Payne would blow wide open in The Descendants. For Young Adult, Reitman has re-teamed with Juno‘s Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to create a movie that is as perversely self-destructive as its heroine.

Charlize Theron gives a raw, outrageous, multi-faceted performance as Mavis, a burnt-out writer of young adult novels who decides to win back her old boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson)—although he’s newly married with a baby. Carrying her miniature poodle in a pink shoulder bag, she waltzes into her the small Minnesota town she once called home, expecting Buddy to fall at her feet after a couple of drinks. Needless to say, things don’t turn out as planned. Continue…