Angie, meet Gina—the new warrior queen

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

INFUSNY-198/USPA-11/CP

The heroine of Haywire, a new spy movie from director Steven Soderbergh, is a role that could have been written for Angelina Jolie. She’s distaff 007, a femme fatale with a cold gaze and a dominatrix flair for putting men in their place when not beating them to a pulp. It would be a typical assignment for Jolie, a warrior queen who has played secret agents in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wanted, Salt and The Tourist. But Soderbergh was aiming for a realistic upgrade of the spy genre. And as he says in Haywire’s press notes, “I knew there had to be a woman other than Angelina Jolie who could run around with a gun.”

So just as he recruited a real-life porn star to play a prostitute in The Girlfriend Experience, the director cast a real-life warrior in Haywire—but with more spectacular results. Gina Carano, a top-ranked fighter in the brutal sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), makes an explosive screen debut as hard-boiled heroine Mallory Kane, a ruthless black-ops agent working for a private security firm. She not only performs her own fights and stunts, but carries the movie in what feels like a landmark role. Outside the Asian martial arts genre, she must be Hollywood’s first female action star drawn from the ranks of real-life gladiators.

Just as Carano has left the MMA cage to step in front of the camera, Jolie has broken out of her gilded cage to step behind it. She has written and directed an ambitious drama that frames atrocities in Bosnia with a star-crossed romance between a prisoner and his captive. In the Land of Blood and Honey is a foreign-language film with an all-Bosnian cast that tackles a still-controversial subject. Although reviews so far have been mixed, Jolie’s directorial debut (it opens this week, along with Haywire) is surprisingly strong.

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Is Ricky turning into the Globes’ Billy Crystal?

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 12:07 PM - 0 Comments

There’s a fine line between mean-spirited and warm ‘n’ fuzzy. Ricky Gervais swung from one extreme to the other in a twinkling last night, morphing from the hostile host who would never get invited back to the man who looks poised to become the Golden Globes’ Billy Crystal. And the Globes themselves—always the ‘fun’ party compared to the quasi religious ritual of the Academy Awards—even seems to have usurped some of Oscar’s dignity and gravitas. Where were the drunken gaffes? The sloppy acceptance speeches. Aside from Meryl Streep forgetting her reading glasses and stumbling through a speech before being played off by the band, everything went like clockwork. And was Gervais even drinking that beer on the podium?

Gervais, of course, had promised he wasn’t going to soften his act to appease critics, but there was a definite spoonful of sugar surrounding the satirical barbs this year.  He actually said some nice things about people. And it helped that he arrived at 69th annual Golden Globes riding a huge wave of hype. The audience was primed, the stars were ready to be roasted, and that made all the difference. Even Gervais seemed surprised by the tone of goodwill in the room, as he noted midway through the show, “It’s going well, isn’t it? You’re so much better than last year’s audience. They had a right stick up their ass.” Continue…

The real festival stars

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 3:35 PM - 0 Comments

George Pimentel/WireImage/Getty Images; Courtesy of TIFF

It was celebrity gridlock. Each year the juggernaut of the Toronto International Film Festival seems bigger than ever, but with its 36th edition (Sept. 8-18), it turned a corner. Anchored by its grand new headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the festival finally moved fully downtown. As black SUV limos lined the streets, disgorging stars into the red-carpet blaze of cameras, the city’s entertainment district turned into a glass-and-concrete answer to Cannes—with some surreal moments worthy of Fellini.

Counter-spinning tabloid gossip, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wrapped their arms around each other in a regal show of marital bliss at the premiere of Moneyball—for which Pitt earned up to $15 million as a hero who reinvents baseball by casting low-rent players instead of high-priced stars. Fresh from her hydrangea-bashing faux pas with a fan in Venice, Madonna ran a gauntlet of critical scorn for W.E., her risible take on Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, then denied reports that her goons told festival volunteers to avert their eyes when the Queen Mother of Pop came into view. Impresario Garth Drabinsky, on the eve of going to prison for fraud, took a hubris-heavy perp walk down the red carpet with Christopher Plummer for the premiere of Barrymore. Bono introduced a U2 documentary by comparing songwriting to sausage-making. And Neil Young did a double take when a grey-haired lady introduced herself at the premiere of his concert film—he confessed he had a crush on her in the fourth grade.

Now that the stardust has settled, and the circus has left town, all that remains of the festival are the movies. Some of them we’ll still be talking about in February. Each year TIFF launches the fall season of Oscar-pedigree films, and as the buzz merchants tried to sniff out the next King’s Speech or Slumdog Millionaire from 268 feature titles, there was no obvious champ. But some clear contenders stood out. It was above all a festival of stellar male performances—Clooney, Pitt, Gosling, Fassbender, Harrelson—even if the audience prize went to Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now?, a feel-good fable of female liberation from Lebanon.

Continue…

‘What’s your favourite sports movie?’

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

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

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

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

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

Photo gallery: Cannes Film Festival

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

Here’s a gallery of my photos from 11 days in Cannes, mostly stars at press conferences . . .

Cherchez la femme—and Angelina, crayoning femme fatale

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 7:46 PM - 3 Comments

Emily Browning at the 'Sleeping Beauty' press conference in Cannes / photo by Brian D. Johnson

Each year we come to Cannes, hoping to be shocked, surprised, possibly blown away—but expecting at the very least to see the values of conventional cinema turned upside down. That usually happens here, up to a point. In Cannes, high art is placed on an Olympian altar, while Hollywood fare provides the tacky floor show, safely sequestered out of competition. But one area where Cannes has too often fallen into lock step with Hollywood is in its deference to the pantheon of Male Genius. Last year there was not a single female director in the main competition. Ah, an oversight, no doubt. This year, as if to shake up the optics, if nothing else, the competition has opened with three movies in a row from female directors—Sleeping Beauty, We Have to Talk About Kevin, and Polisse—each of which throws down a provocative gauntlet to conservative notions of motherhood and sexuality.

And we’re not even counting The Beaver, Saint Jodie Foster’s ritual cleansing of Mel Gibson, which is programmed out of competition. Or Kung Fu Panda 2, which DreamWorks showcased in Cannes this week, even though it’s not even dignified by an out-of-competition slot in the official selection. It, too, is directed by a woman, Jennifer Yu, and marketed by the unparalleled celebrity of Angelina Jolie.

Cherchez la femme. At the end of Day Two, that could be the rallying cry of Cannes. Last night I collared festival director Thierry Frémault at the opening night party at the Majestic Beach for Midnight in Paris. I asked if he was making a statement with this opening fusillade of films by women. It was midnight, and Frémault—in a hurry to get to the VIP area, where Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen were exchanging fond looks—seemed as if like he was about to brush me off. Then he shrugged, grinned and said, “Oui, un peu!”

The trifecta of women’s films kicking off the festival are attention-getting. Sleeping Beauty, a feature debut by Australian writer Julia Leigh, is an erotic/narcotic, fable that doubles down sexual taboos by exploring a pedo/necrophilia demimonde. An endlessly naked Emily Browning stars as a twentysomething waif who looks 15, in a Story of O/Belle de Jour tale of a university student who is paid to be drugged unconscious and ravished by filthy rich dirty old men. (If a male director, like Atom Egoyan, had made this film, he would have been crucified.) Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, adapts Lionel Shriver’s prize-winning novel about the tormented mother of a demon-seed boy whose idea of high school excellence is mass murder. And Polisse, by French actress-director Maiwenn is about a raucous squad of child services police in Paris who investigate pedophilia while negotiating their own torrid relationships. (I could have done without the lingering shot of the teenage rape victim’s stillborn baby.)

'Sleeping Beauty' director Julia Leigh

At a press conference for Sleeping Beauty, Browning, 22, said she had no problem whatsoever with being naked on screen, as if it barely warranted talking about—although the film has fetish gear to rival Eyes Wide Shut and more arty nude tableaux than anything by Peter Greenaway. I asked director Julia Leigh a question about the the male gaze, and how her film tried to redirect that, which she never quite answered. Midway through, Leigh pointed out that Browning’s mentor, Australian director Jane Campion, was sitting among the journalists. Later she told me that even though this was Leigh’s first film, she’s an ardent cinephile and knows way more about movies than herself.

This morning, I was forced to choose between the Panda 2 press conference and one for We Need to Talk About Kevin, featuring the lethally articulate Tilda Swinton as the mother-in-hell. I thought the latter would be more interesting, but like any self-respecting media slut, I obeyed the summons of Hollywood royalty and headed down to the Carlton Hotel to pay homage to Queen Angelina, who was flanked by competing jokers Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman. Continue…

Opening Weekend: 'The Tourist' is strictly for tourists

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 10, 2010 at 3:09 PM - 3 Comments

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in 'The Tourist'

In the past couple of days, I’ve seen a couple of films that stagger the imagination. Films with high-powered talent that left me reeling with shock and awe, thinking, “I can’t believe that this movie exists.” And not in a good way. One of them was How Do You Know, the new James L. Brooks romantic comedy, starring Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson. It doesn’t open for another week, so I’ll hold my fire for now. The other is The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, which opens this weekend. (Also opening this week is The King’s Speech—by now I’m sure you already know that it’s an Oscar front-runner and highly recommended by critics across the board. For more on The King’s Speech, go to my piece in Maclean’s: Going up against Hitler with a stutter.)

The Tourist is directed by German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for the brilliant Stasi intrigue The Lives of Others (2006). It’s almost inconceivable how such an intelligent director could make such a mediocre, witless, deliberately dumb movie. And you can’t just say it’s because he got married to a misconceived project as a director-for-hire. The Tourist was von Donnersmarck’s baby. He brought it to producer Graham King and the director’s reputation helped lure Jolie and Depp. So he’s got no excuse.

How bad is it? Well, if there’s anything groundbreaking about The Tourist, one could say that it redefines the notion of guilty pleasure. You could buy a glossy magazine just to look at the ads, or you could see The Tourist.  Its pleasures are twofold: gazing at luxurious images of Venice, and gazing at luxurious images of Angelina Jolie—who does not act so much as pose in a series of regal close-ups, in which her features are barely more mobile than those of the city itself. Don’t get me wrong. Angelina and Venice are to die for—breathtakingly beautiful, even if both may have had some work done. But I can’t remember that last time I saw a movie where the camera seemed so enslaved to a screen goddess, doting on her in one unflinching close-up after the other, letting her gazelle-like jawline find the perfect angle, fixing on those Sophia-Loren-sized smoky eyes. And everyone else in the frame seems to be doing the same thing, just gawking at her.

Did I mention Johnny Depp? Yeah, he’s in it, too. We love Johnny. But frankly, he’s looked better. And acted better. Not that he has much to do. I mean, Angelina’s got her work cut out for her, wearing the clothes and the jewelry and the infinite makeup, and being the object of so much adoration. He’s got that chopped-liver air about him. Maybe the Keith-Richards role modeling is taking its toll. Or maybe his ragged appearance is contrived for the role. Who knows? With Johnny, it’s hard to tell.

You don’t really want to know about the plot, except that there is one. Sort of. Angelina plays Elise Ward, an International Woman of Mystery who is being tailed by British agents and a big-time gangster. They’re trying to get to her paramour, Alexander Pearce, an International Man of Mystery who has stolen a fortune. He leaves her a divine little hand-written note in a cafe telling her to pick up a stranger on a train to Venice, someone of his approximate height and build. A decoy. She chooses Frank Tupelo (Depp), a math teacher from the Midwest. He presents himself as a simple tourist trying to mend his broken heart. Chase scenes ensue. Frank is hot for Elise, who toys with him. The plot seems to be the same kind of set up as in Knight and Day or Red, with an innocent civilian getting dragged into a dangerous cloak-and-dagger intrigue. With a much lazier plot. That’s because the main event in The Tourist is tourism. The backdrop is the foreground. This is a movie about buildings and boats and canals and hotel rooms. . . and Angelina. Her character, if one could call it that, is a female James Bond, whose only job is to strike a pose, smolder and let things happen around her. She’s good at it. But don’t go looking for any chemistry between her and Johnny. Playing straightman for a screen goddess is a thankless job, and he seems to be just going through the motions, waiting to split this Venetian pop stand and get back to the Caribbean.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 22, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Guess who?
Always controversial, Sri Lankan musician Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., donned a niqab for Spike TV’s Scream Awards. Whether it was a comment on burqa-banning fever everywhere from France to Quebec to Syria, or just a fashion statement, was left unsaid; M.I.A. gave photogs a black-gloved middle finger.

One local boy to another
After 27 years, Vancouver’s B.C. Pavilion Corp. is pulling the plug on its controversial pink and green beaux arts Terry Fox Memorial Arch, the city’s lone memorial to Terry Fox. It will go, as part of an ongoing $563-million renovation of B.C. Place. Vancouverites who have griped quietly about the garish memorial—made of tile, brick and stainless steel, and featuring four fibreglass lions—may be heartened to know that Vancouver artist Douglas Coupland, who wrote 2005’s touching tribute, Terry, has signed on to design the new one. Coupland’s latest piece of public art, “Digital Orca,” is being shown outside the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Eyes right
Angela Merkel left pundits round the world slack-jawed with a weekend speech claiming German multiculturalism had “utterly failed.” It was an illusion, the German chancellor added, to think that Germans and the country’s immigrant class could “live happily, side by side” without newcomers assimilating. Immigrants, she said, “should learn to speak German.” Even centre-right daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung seemed cool to Merkel’s new hardline stance. Newcomers, it argued, “should be made to feel welcome.” But the hard right, whose support Merkel needs, feels differently. Merkel, once Europe’s most popular leader, is facing a conservative revolt within her centrist Christian Democratic Union party and, with a poor showing in regional elections this spring, could lose the leadership altogether.

Continue…

Angelina Jolie: a biographer’s nightmare

By Kate Fillion - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Bob Scott/Fotos International/ Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Contour/ Getty Images/ AP

Angelina Jolie would seem to be a biographer’s nightmare. What else could there possibly be to say about the actress who has, in the tabloid press, played man-eating Veronica to Jennifer Aniston’s jilted Betty for the better part of a decade? To make matters even more daunting for an author looking to tell all, Jolie, apparently, already has.

Over the years, she’s regaled reporters with tales of her drug use, love of knives, sexual exploits with men and women—and even the story of how, feeling suicidal, she hired a hit man who subsequently backed out, counselling her to wait a month or two and see if she still required his services.

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When a man is just not up to the job

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT INC.

On the poster for Salt, Angelina Jolie stares down the camera, a photoshopped femme fatale with witch-black hair and alien eyes. “Who is Salt?” asks the tag line, referring to her character, a CIA spy accused of being a double agent. It might as well say, “Who is Angelina Jolie?” Because that’s the secret that seems buried in her truth-or-dare gaze. For a Hollywood icon, playing a spy is the ultimate tease. Movie star mystique is itself a kind of secret identity, a charade of glamorous subterfuge in the cloak-and-dagger game of tabloid espionage. And espionage suddenly seems to be all the rage.

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Newsmakers '09: U-Turns

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

TD Bank recovers from fee-fall
After plans to impose a $35 inactivity fee for lines of credit sparked nationwide outrage, TD Bank got the message. On top of scrapping the inactivity charge, the bank pledged not to implement any new or increased fees on most products this year. At Toronto-Dominion Bank, it seems the customer is right after all.

It’s their party
The last thing sitting politicians need to worry about, says federal Tory party president Don Plett, is duking it out in riding-level nomination fights. After all, holding onto power in a minority government can be stressful. And so, despite razzing the Liberals for the same policy, Conservative MPs will now, for the first time, be granted automatic nominations in the next election.

The natural
Women have yet another reason to throw their panties at Tom Jones. The Sex Bomb singer, 69, has abandoned his signature dark brown hair in favour of a more natural look, a decision he concedes he should have made years ago. “Women love it,” says the silver-haired Jones, who has also vowed to give up plastic surgery.

Okay, Tasers might be trouble
Breaking with past statements, the RCMP recently conceded that Tasers carry “the risk of death, particularly for acutely agitated individuals.” Now when Tasers are deployed, Mounties are advised to steer clear of the suspect’s chest, lest the electricity trigger a cardiac arrest. Apparently, jolting someone with up to 50,000 volts of electricity can, in fact, be dangerous.
Angelina’s dress reversal
Consider it this year’s most literal fashion switch. In a bid for what her stylist called a “more blouson” look, Angelina Jolie wore her Max Azria gown backwards to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. That the plunging neckline happened to highlight her toned, tattooed back was purely coincidental.

Make that a two-child policy
After three decades of imposing a severe one-child-only policy, China is reacting to a new reality: a workforce shortage. To balance out Shanghai’s aging population, men and women who are both only children are encouraged to go forth and multiply—twice.

That $600-million bomb
After a proposal to award $21,000 ($600 million in total) to each of the families of all those killed during the Northern Ireland Troubles—including members of paramilitary groups and even a bomber who died when his device exploded—drew fire from some of the bereaved, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government rejected it.

Alberta: from riches to rags
Canada’s oil-laden province expects to be among those calling on Ottawa for a handout at the end of this fiscal year. Barring an unforeseen economic miracle, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that Alberta has asked for federal financial aid. Badly wounded by the stock market crash and plummeting energy prices, the once-rich province anticipates it will qualify for $220 million in fiscal stabilization funds.

U.S. military coffins visible once again
Eighteen years after George H. W. Bush banned U.S. media from recording images of military coffins returning from combat, the veil of secrecy has been lifted by the new President: provided the family doesn’t protest, media can once again photograph the homecoming of the country’s war dead.

Vatican sees the good in Harry Potter
A year after charging author J.K. Rowling with creating a story where “witchcraft is proposed as a positive ideal,” the Vatican’s official newspaper appears to have warmed up to Harry Potter. In L’Osservatore Romano’s assessment of Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince, the sixth film adaptation of the bestselling series, the paper proclaimed, “there is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil.”

Wikipedia closes ranks
The Web’s biggest open-knowledge bank isn’t so open anymore. As English-language articles passed the three-million mark, Wikipedia began keeping closer watch of entries on living people, giving a group of trusted editors the power to accept or reject revisions.

From reality TV to White House
Alejandra Campoverdi is a campaign intern who took Barack Obama’s message of change to heart. Before joining his team, Campoverdi, a Harvard grad, chose to put her other assets forward, appearing on the NBC reality show For Love Or Money and posing in Maxim. Her transformation prompted yet another about-face: shortly after she became an assistant to a deputy chief of staff, she was rumoured to be dating Jon Favreau, Obama’s 28-year-old speech writer who had previously bemoaned his singledom.

West Bank wall, schmall: it’s fine as it is
The West Bank wall, which Israel once proclaimed as “essential to keep out attackers,” isn’t so necessary anymore. After years of criticism from the international community over the barrier, which runs in and around the West Bank separating the Palestinian territory from Israel, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s security service, told a parliamentary committee that now there’s “no need to finish” construction.

Newsmakers: A is for Atlas

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment

Most parents opt for baby names that won’t get their kids teased off the playground, which explains why Ava tops the girls’ list in Canada, while Ethan is No. 1 for boys, according to Today’s Parent. Alas, celebs saddle their offspring with the kind of monikers—Reign Beau or Tu, who has the last name Morrow—that invite no end of mirth and torment.

THE ANCIENTS

Atlas: Anne Heche & James Tupper
Hermès: Actor Kelly Rutherford & Daniel Giersch
Gaia: Emma Thompson & Greg Wise
Homer: Anne Heche & James Tupper
Moses: Gwyneth Paltrow & Chris Martin
Ptolemy: Gretchen Mol & Tod Williams
Sophocles: Actor Jemaine Clement & Miranda Manasiadis

OTHER CELEBS

Dezi: Actor Jaime Pressly & Eric Calvo
Jagger: Soleil Moon Frye & Jason Goldberg
Kal-el: Nicolas Cage & Alice Kim
Tennyson: Russell Crowe & Danielle Spencer
Harlow: Nicole Richie & Joel Madden

ROYALTY

God’Iss Love: Singer Lil’ Mo & Al Stone
Jermajesty: Jermaine Jackson & Alejandra Oaziaza
Marquise: 50 Cent & Shaniqua Tompkins
Prince Michael II: Michael Jackson & surrogate mom

NATURE

Bluebell Madonna: Geri Halliwell
Daisy Boo: Jamie & Jools Oliver
Daisy True: Meg Ryan
Nakoa-Wolf: Lisa Bonet & Jason Momoa
Petal Blossom Rainbow: Jamie & Jools Oliver
Poppy Honey: Jamie & Jools Oliver
Puma: Erykah Badu & The D.O.C.
River: Actor Keri Russell & Shane Deary

GEOGRAPHY

Alabama: Drummer Travis Barker & Shanna Moakler
Bronx Mowgli: Ashlee Simpson & Pete Wentz
Heaven: Actor Brooke Burke & David Charvet
Java: Actor Josh & Yessica Holloway
Kingston: Gwen Stefani & Gavin Rossdale
Mars: Singer Erykah Badu & Jay Electronica
Shiloh: Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt
Sierra Sky: Brooke Burke & Garth Fisher

ASSORTED OBJECTS

Banjo: Actor Rachel Griffiths & Andrew Taylor
Denim and Diesel: Singer Toni Braxton & Keri Lewis
Loden: Actor Peter & Kelly Reckell
Peanut: Actor Ingo Rademacher & Ehiku

JOBS

Deacon: Reese Witherspoon & Ryan Phillippe
Moxie CrimeFighter: Magician Penn Jillette & Emily Zolten
Poet: Actor Soleil Moon Frye & Jason Goldberg
Pilot Inspektor: Actor Jason Lee & Beth Riesgraf
Ryder: Kate Hudson & Chris Robinson

Week in Pictures: May 14th – May 20th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 22, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 0 Comments

Brad, Quentin and the Canadian 'basterd'

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 2 Comments

Brad Pitt in motion at the 'Inglourious Basterds' press conference in Cannes (photo: BDJ)

Yesterday was Brad Pitt Day in Cannes—although hard-core cineastes, especially the Gallic variety, perhaps thought of it as Quentin Tarantino Day. And for die-hard Canadians, it was Mike Myers Day. In the biggest blitz of Hollywood talent that we’ve seen during the festival, all three were on hand for the premiere of Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s outrageous Second World War epic. It was one of the most anticipated titles among the 20 films in competition here. The 2,300-seat Lumiere theatre was packed for the morning press screening, well before the 8:30 a.m. start time. And at the end of the two-and-half-hour opus, the Palais erupted with some of the strongest applause we’ve seen here. The movie is a hoot, and so was the press conference that immediately followed the morning screening. More on that in minute, but first a few details about the film. Continue…

Dear Brad and Angie

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 12 Comments

According to new reports, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will soon move one child closer to convening their own underage G20. The couple is said to be looking to adopt a child from India.

An open letter to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie:

It has come to my attention – through stories in the press and the telltale sound of millions of orphans simultaneously raising their arms and shouting, “Oooo, pick me!” – that you are thinking of adopting another child. I commend you both on your noble impulse. And I humbly prescribe a provocative course of action as you plan an even larger family.

You should adopt me.

There’s no denying I would be an unconventional choice. For one thing, I am a full-grown adult – which puts me at something of a disadvantage. For instance, I couldn’t find a wicker hamper big enough to leave myself on your doorstep.

But believe me, I’ll fit right in, and not just because I too hate Jon Voight. For instance, you both work tirelessly to ease suffering among the world’s least fortunate – whereas I had an Amnesty International sticker on my math binder in high school.

In media interviews, you’ve indicated that you place a priority on achieving further diversity in your family. Advantage, Feschuk. You are two of the most attractive people on the face of the Earth, whereas I am neither beautiful nor thin. Talk about balancing the ticket.

And that’s not all. Your oldest child, Maddox, is Cambodian. Shiloh was born in Namibia. What a happy coincidence that I too hail from an exotic and mystical land. Perhaps you have heard of Canada? No? Well, it’s very much Continue…

Maclean’s Interview: Russell Peters

By Kenneth Whyte - Monday, March 2, 2009 at 9:30 PM - 0 Comments

Q: We’re going to talk about Oscar and the movies, so let’s start with Slumdog Millionaire. Did you see it? Did you like it?

A: I sure did. All of the above. I liked the fact that that movie could have been set anywhere and still been a fantastic film.

Q: Do you think the movie will do anything for perceptions of the subcontinent and for Indian people?

A: I mean, after such a huge sweep like that I think it will only give it some good attention that we’ve been lacking for many, many years. So I think it’s a good thing. It’s probably a double-edged sword, though. Now every product that comes out with any kind of Indian twang to it will always be compared to that.

Continue…

Man-less women rule the Oscars

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments

Meryl Streep has been lamenting the lack of good roles for women for most of her career, most famously in 1990 when she said Hollywood was run by a men’s club of “stupid, greedy people” who seemed determined to erase women from the screen. Who could blame her? She had just turned 40, well past Hollywood’s expiry date for leading ladies. But this year Streep, now 59, starred in the highest grossing musical of all time (Mamma Mia!) and broke records with her 15th Oscar nomination, for Doubt. And finally she is not alone. All those actresses who once complained that Meryl took all the good female roles can relax: suddenly it seems there are more than enough to go around.

All five nominees vying to be named Best Actress at the Oscars this Sunday—Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Kate Winslet, and Melissa Leo—play formidable, self-sufficient women who come armed with their own stories. None of these characters is dependent on a man. None is even involved with a man, unless you count Winslet coldly seducing an adolescent virgin in The Reader. These are women on the attack. Compare that to recent years, when the most reliable way for a woman to seduce Oscar was to play a martyr or victim. During the past decade, half the Best Actress winners portrayed damaged souls who died at the end of the movie. And curiously, seven out of 10 played real-life characters—from Nicole Kidman’s Virginia Woolf to Marion Cotillard’s Edith Piaf—as if dreaming up strong fictional heroines was beyond Hollywood’s imagination.

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Some families are better than others

By Anne Kingston - Monday, February 9, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 3 Comments

Last week, two extreme examples tested the limits of what society deems acceptable motherhood: Nadya Suleman, the 33-year-old who delivered octuplets in California two weeks ago via in vitro fertilization, and Ranjit Hayer, the 60-year-old who gave birth to twin boys in Calgary after receiving fertility treatment in India. And, as tends to be the case when limits are tested, so too are hypocrisies revealed.

First Suleman, a tragic example of a woman overwhelmed by celebrity culture. Watching her on NBC’s  Today was like watching Angelina Jolie’s doppelganger—same hair, same expansive lips—to the point the Internet was quickly awash in speculation the new mother had cosmetic surgery to resemble the actress. Other strange similarities exist. They’re both 33 years old. Both have admitted to experiencing troubled childhoods. And both have displayed a passionate desire for families whose size far exceeds the current norm. Suleman said she intended to have “only” seven children through in vitro fertilization but now has 14 under the age of seven. (“You take risks, and it turned out perfectly,” she explained.) Jolie has six children through adoption and birth and has expressed the desire for more.

Of course, few question Jolie’s motivation or capacity to be a good mother. She and partner Brad Pitt have the wealth to afford the retinue of help to care for and the multi-roomed mansions to shelter their brood. And no one asks the two superstars with high-octane careers, as they do Suleman, whether they have enough time to lavish individual attention on their children. The unmarried Suleman, with no visible means of support and a history of mental illness, represents the sinister side of a cultural mania for “babies” (as opposed to raising children) so entrenched that First Lady Michelle Obama wasn’t in the White House a week before rumours began circulating she was pregnant, despite the fact she’s 45.

Suleman’s comments to interviewer Ann Curry were filled with the kind of narcissistic parenting bromides that would be laughable were they not so deluded: “I’m providing myself to my children,” said the woman who plans to return to school for her master’s degree. “I’m loving them unconditionally, supporting them unconditionally. I’ll stop my life for them and be present for them… And how many parents do that?” The language was eerily similar to that Jolie used on Good Morning America just days earlier discussing how her children are her priority. “I’d say kids first, kids, woman to Brad and then my work internationally,” she said, adding: “But I wake up every day just the happiest mummy… I don’t want to wake up one day and say I had my career that expanded so much longer and I did that many more films and miss out on all those other things in life.”

No wonder Suleman is bewildered. The same media that follows Pitt and Jolie’s peripatetic lives with children in tow, pays the couple millions for photographs of their newborns and speculates feverishly about when their next addition will land, has vilified her as a monster, a drain on the social system and the environment.

Suleman appeared defiant about facing harsher judgment as a single mother, noting that dual parents of children born through IVF are more “acceptable” to society. She has a point. Many have become celebrities in the new hyper-fertile-family reality-show genre: Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, an Arkansas couple with 18 children, star in TLC’s 17 Kids and Counting!; Jon and Kate Goselin, parents of twins and sextuplets, have exploited their fecundity on Jon & Kate Plus 8 and their best-selling book Multiple Blessings; and most recently, Betty and Eric Hayes’s show Twelve at the Table explores the challenges of raising ten children under the age of 12, including one with cerebral palsy.

Suleman had hoped to jump aboard that gravy train. She hired a publicist and was angling for an appearance on Oprah, her own parenting show and the deluge of freebies heaped upon multiple-birth parents since the Dionne quintuplets were born in 1934. When Nkem Chukwu of Houston became the first woman to give birth to octuplets in the U.S. in 1998, her family was given use of a six-bedroom suburban home, a battalion of volunteers helped care for the seven surviving babies, and they received a lifetime supply of Pampers.

Proctor & Gamble isn’t delivering a lifetime supply of anything to Suleman, even though the needs of her children are as great. Nor is Ranjit Hayer about to land any endorsement deals. Aside from the fury that her lifelong desire for motherhood has cost the Alberta health system a bundle, her advanced age has many apoplectic that she will not live to see her children become adults. What is curious, though, is the absence of any mention of her husband’s age. Or maybe not. There’s a socially unquestioned assumption that the mother, not the father, does most of the backbreaking work of child-raising. More, though, it’s assumed that a good mother has to be a young, healthy mother, which is not true. Just as it’s assumed the Hayer twins will suffer as a result of being raised by people old enough to be their grandparents, though that’s far from the worst fate a child can face. Just ask Barack Obama.

The Oscars: Scandalous Omissions

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 5:51 PM - 6 Comments

The Oscar nominations are in, and they are even more boring and predictable than might be expected, which I guess makes them slightly less predictable than expected. For a list of nominees, click on: Oscar’s list. The main event comes down to a David and Goliath clash between two fables: Danny Boyle’s the Little Movie that Could, and David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a big tedious Hollywood epic about the magic of make-up in which Brad Pitt is reborn as a wizened old man. Benjamin Button, which plods through the decades with the folksy fakery of Forrest Gump, strikes me as the worst movie to make waves this awards season. I found it interminable. But it topped the list of films recognized by the Academy with a total of 13 nominations. Why? Well, the Academy has always adored sweeping epics that use history as a backdrop for fables about the triumph of the human spirit. Or something. And it also likes movies that keep all the motion picture crafts well employed. BB is not just a period epic with lots of elaborate sets, costumes and make-up. It’s about sets, costumes and make-up. Especially make-up. As for Slumdog Millionaire, it came in second with 10 nominations. And its crowd-pleasing appeal is easier to fathom.

Slumdog, a Dickensian melodrama about adorable urchins in the slums of Mumbai, framed by the whimsical conceit of a grown-up street kid eking out redemption on India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The movie submerges its fairy-tale plot in the vivid, kinetic realism of its location shooting. And Boyle, who does his most vital work since Trainspotting, captures all the colour and beauty and corruption with roaring style.

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Further reading (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 1, 2008 at 9:56 PM - 2 Comments

One way or another, it would seem our present predicament will be left for Michaelle Jean to sort out. Lucky her. (As of 6:07pm today, her plans had not changed. She remains due back in Canada on December 6.)

Time then to read-up on the Vice Regal.

To my knowledge, Maclean’s has published two major features on Madame Jean. In Oct. 2005, Shanda Deziel wrote about her and we compared the Governor General to Angelina Jolie. Earlier this year, I wrote about her and we compared the Governor General to Oprah.

Furthermore, shortly after her appointment was announced, John Geddes looked into the much-discussed political leanings of her and her husband.

Even furthermore, two years ago Michael Petrou wrote about Lafond and his book, Conversations in Tehran.

Sex, celebrity—and the Good Book

By Brian Bethune - Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 8:00 AM - 3 Comments

Taken in the vast open-air slaughterhouse in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the photos show crowds of young workers piling up mounds of dead animals amid toxic smoke from burning tires while Armageddon-like rivers of blood flow by their feet. Revelation, that Biblical book of end-of-days terror and desolation, has always fired artists’ imaginations. For the publisher of a new photo-illustrated Bible, though, actual images of the prelude to the second coming were not an option, and the Nigerian abattoir is an inspired stand-in. It’s also the sort of eclectic, often edgy, marriage of image and text—consider Angelina Jolie as one of God’s special messengers—that’s created so much buzz around the North American launch of Swedish ad executive Dag Soderberg’s Bible Illuminated. The two thick, photo-stuffed, $35 magazines (one per Testament) resemble nothing so much as spiritual editions of Vogue. But while the look is cutting-edge modern—old wine in new bottles, to reverse Jesus’s parable—the idea is as ancient as the Bible. Continue…

Poor needy pathetic desperate Jen

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 7:59 AM - 75 Comments

Vogue editor Anna Wintour knows how to sell magazines, which explains the “What Angelina Did Was Very Uncool” line on the cover of the December issue next to Jennifer Aniston’s face. The quote was lifted from an interview in which the former Friends star was asked about Angelina Jolie’s gushing to the magazine in 2007 about falling in love with Brad Pitt while he was still hitched to her. Playing Aniston’s first public comment about Jolie so boldly was a master stroke destined to generate epic buzz.

For Aniston, though, the incident ushered in yet another of the “Poor Jen! Duped again!” moments that have dogged her since her 2005 divorce from Pitt. Not only did Vogue exploit Aniston’s tepid smackdown, making her appear obsessed with the siren who stole her husband, it squared the two women off against one another more subtly. Astute fashionistas were quick to note that the cover image of Aniston posed on a beach in a cleavage-displaying, off-the-shoulder, red Narciso Rodriguez gown echoed the cover shot of Jolie in January 2007 in which she rocked a cleavage-displaying, off-the-shoulder, red Bill Blass against a sandy backdrop. Jolie’s cover line, however, was a more triumphant “Why Her Real Life is More Romantic Than Any Movie.” The disparity continued inside: in 2007, Jolie was shown with Pitt and their numerous children; in the current issue, Aniston is pictured with her dog Norman.

Aniston’s Vogue appearance is part of a publicity blitz for her two new movies, Marley & Me, which opens on Dec. 25, and He’s Just Not That Into You, which arrives in February. Neither role, it’s safe to say, will eclipse the one she currently plays in the cultural imagination—that of the archetypal Wronged Wife subject to an endless loop of “Jen Is Devastated!” “Jen Is Furious!” “Jen Gets Revenge!” bogus theorizing. Since her divorce, America’s Sweetheart has morphed into America’s Spinster. The unmarried, childless Aniston has become the tabloids’ Miss Havisham, portrayed as lonely, needy and locked in the past. The website Dlisted.com recently advertised a US$19.95 “Boyfriend Arm Pillow” thus: “Now, every time the Jennifer Aniston in your life calls you, wanting to whine for hours about how they are so f–king lonely and their cats are even giving them the side-eye, you can simply say, ‘Aniston in my life, go canoodle with the Boyfriend Arm Pillow I got you for Christmas.’ ” Celebrity gossip site PerezHilton.com refers to her cruelly as “Maniston.”

Her alleged tribulations sell big time. “We can’t get enough of her,” says Dina Sansing, entertainment director at US Weekly, where every issue features at least one Aniston photo or story. She’s No. 2 on the “Most Valuable Celebrity Faces” of 2008 list in terms of newsstand sales, according to Forbes. (In a rare case of tabloids imitating life, “Poor Jen!” was knocked off her No. 1 perch this year by Jolie.) Women relate to her, says Sansing, a bond that dates back to 1994 when Aniston entered homes as flaky, likeable Rachel Green. Female fans flocked to copy Aniston’s haircut, known as “The Rachel.” And now they rally to share her pain—as well as a schadenfreude thrill.

Aniston’s position atop the tabloid pantheon was cemented with her union with Pitt, whom she met Hollywood cute in 1998 through their mutual agent. The merger of America’s Sweetheart and the World’s Sexiest Man in 2000 was a lavish event that featured a 40-person gospel choir and fireworks over the Pacific. They were the king and queen of the Hollywood prom, with matching tans and blond streaks. When they split Aniston was poised for post-Friends career breakout; initially she was the one blamed for being unwilling to “have Brad’s babies,” to employ tabloid lexicon. When Jolie’s involvement became known, Aniston became the object of sympathy, and pity. After all, what chance did the Girl Next Door have against the Girl From the Next Galaxy? The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane summed up perception of Jolie’s snaring of Pitt: “She took one look at the world’s most widely desired man and scooped him up with no more ado than a Parisian grande dame tucking a chihuahua into her clutch bag.”

The scandal was likened to Eddie Fisher leaving Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor in the ’60s. But back then there wasn’t a celebrity media complex ready to pounce on Reynolds’ every humiliation, real or imagined. For the wounded Aniston, the salt poured down, beginning with an arty 60-page photo spread in the June 2005 W titled “Domestic Bliss,” in which Pitt and Jolie presided over a band of little blond Brads.

Aniston shot back with a tearful Vanity Fair interview in which she admitted to being hurt and lonely and denied rumours that she didn’t want children: “That really pissed me off. I’ve never in my life said I didn’t want to have children. I did and I do and I will!”

BTC: What do you see?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 31, 2008 at 5:51 PM - 10 Comments

This week’s asbestos thing is probably difficult to get excited about. A little lacking in relevance to your day-to-day life, what with your kids, your spouse, your job, those leaves that need to be raked, the flavoured tobacco your kids are smoking, Stephane Dion’s permanent tax on everything, Angelina Jolie’s marital status, the decline in the housing market, your retirement savings, international terrorism, the socialist who is about to be elected president of the United States, Madonna’s marital status, and the financial crisis that will ultimately leave your children with nothing to eat but flavoured tobacco already demanding so much of your attention.

So here’s another way to look at it. How you feel about asbestos defines how you feel about the fundamental human responsibilities of your government. It’s a political inkblot test. Continue…