A tall tail tale
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - 0 Comments
After she lost her tail, Winter the dolphin is now a movie star
Barry Bland/Barcroft Media/Getty Images
Aquariums aren’t generally the sorts of places to host a red-carpet movie screening, but on Sept. 21, Florida’s Clearwater Marine Aquarium will be an exception, and with good reason: one of its residents is a movie star. Winter the dolphin appears alongside Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr. in the upcoming film Dolphin Tale, which tells the true story of Winter—a dolphin with a prosthetic tail.
Rescued after she got wrapped up in a crab-trap line at just three months old, Winter lost her tail and two vertebrae. Transported to the aquarium, she underwent intense rehabilitation—and was fitted for a prosthetic tail attached by a stretchy plastic sleeve, like those designed for human use. “She learned on her own to swim in a new way,” says David Yates, the aquarium’s CEO.
The plucky dolphin is already a star attraction at the Clearwater aquarium, and with the release of the film, attendance should boom. “Every aquarium in the country says it’s hopeless,” one grim-faced character says in the preview, and another replies: “Well, they haven’t met Winter yet.” No word yet on whether Winter’s castmates will show up for the aquarium screening.
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Newsmakers
By macleans.ca - Friday, June 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Ashley Judd vs. miners, “Sonny” Franzese rats out his dad, and Shaun White finds another sport he’s brilliant at
Run all the way home, boys
Prime Minister David Cameron jogged with British troops in Afghanistan Friday and said their mission was about “our national security in the U.K.” The task isn’t a “dreamy idea” of building a model society, he said. “We are here to help the Afghans take control of their security so we can go home.”Anything but harmonized
British Columbia’s version of the anti-tax Tea Party continues to gather steam. On Friday, provincial Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom quit the cabinet and the Liberal caucus to protest government plans to press ahead with the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on July 1. Opinion is divided: was Lekstrom acting on principle or trying to save his political skin? More than 15 per cent of B.C. voters have signed a recall campaign opposing the tax. What isn’t in dispute is that Premier Gordon Campbell is in trouble, thanks to recall organizer Bill Vander Zalm. The 76-year-old Vander Zalm resigned as premier in 1991 after questionable business dealings caused a public uprising. -
Harrison Ford, Raider of the Lost Sweatshop
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 6:15 PM - 1 Comment
Harrison Ford and Alice Braga in 'Crossing Over'
Crossing Over
Pity the poor immigrant. That’s Harrison Ford’s job in Crossing Over. He plays Max Brogen, an Immigrations and Customs officer who raids Los Angeles sweatshops to round up illegal migrants. He has a soft spot for pretty young women, and deliberately lets them slip through his fingers. But it’s strictly paternal. This crusty veteran is a good cop, just trying to eke some altruism out of a dirty job—unlike Ray Liotta, who’s typecast as a sleazy bureaucrat who fast-tracks a citizenship application in return for sexual favours. They are just two of the multiple protagonists riding the eight-lane narrative freeway of Crossing Over, an L.A. ensemble piece that’s derivative of Crash and Babel, but not in the same league as either. Employing realism as a style while undermining it with cliche, it’s heavy-handed, moralistic and confused. The movie is not unlike Ford’s tormented character, as it tries to expose and aggrandize the American Dream at the same time.
Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what’s wrong with a film. With Crossing Over, the viewer’s heart sinks in the first few lines of dialogue a hard-boiled colleague establishes Ford’s character for us with a clunky line-reading: “Jesus Christ, Brogan! Everything is a goddamn humanitarian crisis with you.” This is not a Harrison Ford movie. He just keeps his head down and does the job—acting with that one-note level of total intensity that he likes to bring to Serious Drama, as if he’s haunted by more backstory than we could possibly imagine. His job in this ensemble is to track down a Mexican factory worker (Alice Braga), who has escaped during a raid. He doesn’t want to rescue her, just reunite her with her son, and get her to safety. His colleagues make cracks about him lusting after pretty young things, but that innuendo is left undeveloped. It makes you wonder if Harrison, who’s been known to refinish his scripts, has a clause in his contract exempting him from non-virtuous behavior. Continue…
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The little country that cried wolf
By Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments
Towns are putting bounties on wolves that menace livestock
Wolf bounties became something of a cause célèbre last year when it came out that, as Alaska governor, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin had offered hunters $150 per kill. American actress Ashley Judd kept the issue alive into the new year, releasing a video calling upon Palin to “stop this senseless savagery.”
Judd’s pitch triggered what the press pounced on as a “cat fight,” the kind of celebrity row that can cloud an issue. In fact, wolves and people are increasingly encroaching upon each other’s territories, and the implications for both sides are serious. This winter, a pack in Bradore, Que., not far from Labrador, has residents cowering indoors, with one woman recently describing how wolves devoured one of her Siberian huskies.
