Forever Young

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 10:22 AM - 5 Comments

Photographs by Jessica Darmanin

It’s a sub-zero Sunday evening in Toronto. Under an unheated canopy, a gang of fledgling rock stars wait their turn on the red carpet, shivering in T-shirts and black leather. They’re Down With Webster, a Toronto rock-rap band of twentysomething sensations whose album, Time To Win, has scored a string of platinum hits. The occasion is the 40th anniversary of the Juno Awards at the Air Canada Centre. The band will get to kick off the show, which is a big deal for them. Earlier in their dressing room, these amiable pop idols had been finessing last-minute details, planning a run from the stage into the crowd and voting down a plea from the drummer to shoot video during the performance for the band’s Facebook page. Then, after correcting their hair, rummaging about for their sunglasses, and freshening their breath with gum from a bowl on the buffet table, they head outside, so they can re-enter via the red carpet.

Huddled in the cold beside the Barenaked Ladies, the boys wait for their cue, as Drake, the show’s emcee, is whisked through with his entourage. “Twenty-two years for this s–t!” yells Ed Robertson of the Ladies. “My Junos are getting cold!” He’s joking. But there is something so forlornly Canadian about frozen rock stars queuing up for their turn on a red carpet. When Down With Webster finally gets the nod, pandemonium erupts. Throngs of young teenage girls, pressed against the barricades with outstretched arms, scream their names at an ear-splitting pitch: the sound of Beatlemania, or Biebermania, on a smaller scale.

Later, a grizzled old dude in a long black coat, black hat and red scarf enters to a decidedly less hysterical response. Many of the kids don’t even recognize Neil Young.

Continue…

This week: Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:57 AM - 1 Comment

Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage/Getty Images

Fatheads resent war on fat

The latest conservative smear campaign against the White House circles around Michelle Obama’s waistline. According to radio host Rush Limbaugh, the first lady could stand to lose a few, particularly since being seen munching on braised short ribs while on vacation in Colorado. Limbaugh, who is no Adonis, suggested Mrs. O is a hypocrite for not following her own dieting advice. “Our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue,” he said. Sarah Palin has ridiculed Obama’s anti-obesity efforts, too, arguing she has no business in America’s kitchens. Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s website ran a cartoon depicting a double-chinned first lady hoarding hamburgers while mouthing pro-health slogans.

The simple life of an Amish schemer

Unlike fraudster Bernie Madoff, Monroe L. Beachy lived a simple life among his fellow Amish in the quaint village of Sugarcreek, Ohio. But the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges Monroe, 77, ran a Ponzi-style scheme for 24 years, costing his largely Amish clients millions. It began to unravel after Beachy declared bankruptcy last June. (A horse, buggy and harness are among his personal assets, the Washington Post reports.) By then, less than US$18 million of the original $33 million invested remained. Ironically, some of the loss resulted from the dot-com bust, a shock to his investors, who shun modern technology. Investors don’t want to pursue the claims in court, saying it’s a matter for the church. “Members of the Plain Community love and trust one another in all their relationships,” an Amish creditors group said.

Win McNamee/Getty Images; Paul Chiasson/CP

Where have we heard that before

Maclean’s took a thrashing last fall for calling Quebec “the most corrupt province” in Canada. While we don’t wish to reignite that debate, it’s refreshing to see the announcement last week of a permanent anti-corruption unit in the province. It will have a $30-million budget and 189 investigators and support staff, said Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil. He called it a better anti-corruption strategy than the public inquiry demanded by the opposition. “We want to have these criminals in jail, not on television,” he said. Stéphane Bergeron, public security critic for the Parti Québécois, conceded the unit “wouldn’t hurt” the corruption fight. It’s “also an admission that the problem is bigger than [the government] has been willing to admit,” he told reporters.

Paul Chiasson/CP

What would Jack Bauer say?

Kiefer Sutherland is considering a return to TV after his break from eight seasons playing CTU agent Jack Bauer on the hit series 24. The Hollywood Reporter says he’s in talks for the lead role in Touch, by Heroes creator Tim Kring. He’d play the dad of a mute, autistic son who predicts the future. Meantime, the past of his real-life grand­father Tommy Douglas resurfaced in declassified documents, the Canadian Press reports. In one curious item, the former RCMP security service claimed Douglas, then NDP leader, met with actress Jane Fonda in 1970 about efforts to stop the Vietnam War and to bring Vietnamese to Canada for a public inquiry.

And baby makes four

Little Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen has an impressive parentage. “Katherine” honours her father Rufus Wainright’s late mother, singer Kate McGarrigle, and “Wainright” his father, Loudon Wainwright III. The other “proud parents” are “Deputy Dad” Jorn Weisbrodt (Rufus’s romantic partner), and Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard Cohen. No pressure to deliver on a dazzling musical career, kid.

Party for one!

Kim Jong Il usually uses his birthday celebration to instill confidence in the North Korean people by giving them at least a day’s worth of rice and corn. This year, though, the Supreme Leader failed to carry out the ritual, since food shortages are crippling the country, with the UN predicting shortfalls of more than 500,000 tonnes of grain. Even senior officials felt the pinch, reportedly receiving knock-off celebratory Rolex watches and Gucci bags in lieu of real ones. But the day wasn’t all for naught: Jong Il went home with presents including a fleet of Mercedes Benz automobiles and a US$16-million yacht. And heir apparent Kim Jong Un was named vice-chairman of the defence commission on the eve of his proud papa’s birthday.

Tears of a clown

Coming from a world of squirting flowers and joy buzzers, Brazilian clown and newly elected congressman Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva would surely be adept at pushing buttons. But last week Silva, a.k.a. Tiririca, generated more groans than laughs when he blew his first congressional vote. He’d pledged to back the government’s austerity measure for a new minimum wage. But he pressed the wrong button on the computerized system and backed an opposition motion for a much higher wage. Tiririca had outpolled all candidates by admitting he knew nothing about politics. But his slogan, “It can’t get any worse,” apparently underestimated his abilities.

High art with a very low brow

Fallen women tend to figure in opera—think of Violetta in La Traviata. But most divas haven’t fallen this far. The Royal Opera House in London dressed itself in sequins and hot pink this week for the premiere of Anna Nicole, an opera about Anna Nicole Smith. Richard Thomas’s libretto—called “caustically witty”—follows the life of the late Playboy model who married an 89-year-old billionaire, then died of a drug overdose. Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage said people will be “surprised how seriously we’ve taken the subject,” and soprano Eva-Marie Westbroek was hailed as sensational. Not all critics were moved: the Financial Times said the opera “belongs in the same genre as Jerry Springer, strung along a clothesline of lewd ditties and frothy choruses.” But the masses gobbled it up: all six performances sold out.

Ye can’t fight city hall, matey

Rodney McGrath calls his backyard—with its homemade two-storey pirate ship and “Mohawk Mountain,” a sculpture of tires and concrete—an “enchanted kingdom.” But what city inspectors and many of his neighbours on Midwood Avenue see is an unsightly safety hazard. Last week, after a two-year fight, councillors issued a demolition order for both ship and mountain. City engineers say the structures are unstable and aren’t built to code. Pirates, of course, aren’t big on rules and codes. “It’s beautiful,” McGrath says of his land-locked ship. “When the sun comes up in the morning it… reflects on the whole structure,” he told the CBC. “It comes alive.”

The new Wonder Woman

It wasn’t enough to possess superpowers, fight crime and look impossibly good in satin granny underpants; in a TV remake starring Adrianne Palicki of Friday Night Lights, she also has a power career and work-life balance issues. The new show departs from the old, but apparently Lynda Carter approves.

Home, sweet KABOOM!

Steve Jobs ended a decades-long battle to tear down his own house. In 1984, the Apple CEO purchased a Spanish-style mansion in Woodside, near San Francisco, in the hopes of demolishing it and building a new residence. But Jackling House was the 1920s dream abode of copper industrialist Cowan Jackling, and Jobs faced legal challenges and cries for preservation of the manse. When he finally obtained a demolition permit this week, Jobs’s demo team destroyed the house in a single day, prompting Wired magazine to note the move was consistent with Jobs’ career: “He doesn’t have any doubts about deleting the past to create the future.”

Unlikely queen of queens

At age 15, Phiona Mutesi may be Uganda’s best female chess player. She’s certainly the unlikeliest, living in a Kampala slum, and just learning to read. She was attracted to the game at age nine, after her brother learned it from Robert Katende of the U.S. charity Sports Outreach Institute. Soon she was beating Katende. By 2009 she’d won regional tournaments. Last fall she travelled to Siberia for the Chess Olympiad, where she was beaten by Dina Kagramanov, the Canadian champ, who gave her advice and books on advanced chess. Mutesi continues to improve. “In chess, it doesn’t matter where you come from,” she said, “only where you put the pieces.”

AFP/Getty Images

Another day for the Jackal

The French aren’t finished with Carlos the Jackal, one of the world’s most hunted terrorists pre-Osama Bin Laden. The 61-year-old Venezuelan—real name is Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez—goes on trial in Paris in November for a series of bomb attacks that killed 11 people in France from 1982 to 1983. He’s already serving a life sentence for a run of deadly crimes, including an attack and hostage taking at the Vienna headquarters of OPEC in 1975.

It’s all in the mail

A forensic scientist and a student from Simon Fraser University may offer the best hope of solving one of aviation’s great mysteries. Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 while circumnavigating the world. Donya Yang hopes to collect DNA from the envelope glue of four letters written by Earhart to see if it matches a bone found on the South Pacific island of Nikumaroro. The letters came from a collection held by student Justin Long’s grandfather, Elgen Long, an Earhart scholar. The letters are personal: “One was written by Amelia on airline letterhead while waiting for a flight—so we can be fairly certain that she is the one who sealed the envelopes,” says Long.

This Week: Good news/ Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:30 AM - 2 Comments

J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

Face of the week
PUMPED UP: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden rallies female student athletes at George Washington University in Washington

J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

A week in the life of Gordon Campbell
His party lags badly in the polls, with almost half of B.C. voters leaning toward the NDP. Yet Campbell marches on. Friday he said he’d miss a Surrey Sikh parade with radical undertones. Sunday he learned he’d receive the Canadian Olympic Order for his support of the Vancouver Games. Monday—way up in northeast B.C.—he announced plans for a 900-megawatt dam project on the Peace River. Tuesday he opened a new Pixar studio in Gastown. Sounds like a last lap to us.

GOOD NEWS

Rain or shine
Neither the soupy fog in St. John’s nor the ash from an Icelandic volcano could derail the Juno Awards. Despite early fears of transportation chaos, the awards show came off a success (and we can’t help but feel heartened that K’Naan, who performed his inspirational Wavin’ Flag, was a big winner). Fears the volcanic ash would shutter the airport did prompt several Tory MPs to jump on special, late-night flights after the show, leaving their Liberal counterparts fuming they missed leaving town early. But given the choice between a return to Ottawa and another night celebrating on George Street, we think we’d take the latter.

The rights stuff
The head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has a solution to concerns that human rights proceedings have become a kangaroo court. Let the real courts take over. Last week, David Arnot said he’d prefer to abolish the province’s human rights tribunal and give the job of hearing complaints to the Court of Queen’s Bench. Arnot argues human rights law has become so complex it requires the attention of real judges. Such a move would also provide a clearer separation of powers between the commission and the adjudication of cases. It’s a step in the right direction. Human rights tribunals were never supposed to be courts—just conciliators. Could common sense soon emerge as a basic human right in Canada?

A fearless leader
At a speech given in the Congo, attended by the country’s president and military leaders, Governor General Michaëlle Jean spoke out against wartime use of rape as a weapon must not go unpunished. Jean continues to be a fearless and passionate representative of this country, even as she nears the end of her term and fascination attends the question of her replacement. That interest is a credit to her work and populist appeal. The downside? Internet sites are suggesting candidates like Leonard Cohen and William Shatner. As the Queen’s representative? Please.

The kids are alright
Two Winnipeg teachers who performed a routine closely resembling a lap dance at a school pep rally are out of work. One resigned, the other’s contract won’t be renewed. “It was disturbing,” one teen student said of the dance, viewed by millions on YouTube. We long for the days when teachers were dignified—even intimidating—rather than trying to be hip. It’s gratifying the students knew inappropriate behaviour when they saw it. Maybe good taste is inborn and stays intact, no matter what they see at school.

BAD NEWS

Bawdy politic

Saskatchewan Party MLA Serge LeClerc, a former gangland criminal who found God in jail and became a motivational speaker, has come under increasing scrutiny. One NDP member said LeClerc gave him the finger and menaced him outside the legislature. On Friday, the CBC said it received a package containing a recording of a man who sounds like LeClerc discussing recent cocaine use and sex with a man. Though he’d secured his party’s riding nomination and had pursued the process into April, LeClerc—who denies everything—quit caucus, and says he’d planned to leave politics all along. The premier has sent the allegations to police. Whatever comes of this, it’s a regrettable spectacle.

Out of control
Toyota paid a US$16.4-million fine to U.S. safety regulators to settle complaints over sticky accelerator pedals. That should have marked the end of the recall nightmare for the world’s top automaker. Yet the problems keep coming. Toyota was forced to stop selling one of its Lexus SUVs over a report the truck can lose control in high-speed cornering. Worse, a simmering internal dispute between the Toyoda family and company executives went public as the two sides traded blame. It once looked like Toyota’s good name was being unfairly tarnished. Now, we’re not so sure.

Pew says: Pee-u!
Republicans and Democrats can’t play nice. On Saturday, President Barack Obama accused Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of launching a “cynical and deceptive” attack against a measure designed to tame Wall Street. Not exactly bipartisan. For its part, the GOP is using the very real issue of America’s faulty financial system to score points. So goes U.S. politics these days, and Americans are understandably perturbed. A Pew Research Center survey says just 22 per cent believe they can trust Washington “almost always or most of the time”—a historic low; almost a third think the government is a threat to personal freedom.

Out of their tree
A British court fined a hotel $3,100 after health and safety investigators found the owners had failed to carry out a “risk assessment” on the dangers of sawing a tree branch with a ladder leaning against it. Peter Aspinall, the 63-year-old handyman, fell 14 feet after sawing through the branch. The hotel had pleaded guilty to the breaches, and Aspinall is now pursuing a civil suit. Still, the hotel’s solicitor expressed disappointment that “common sense did not prevail” in the ruling. “It is an unusual accident,” he said. “Laurel and Hardy do that sort of thing.”

The keys to Rideau

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 1:31 PM - 18 Comments

The Mark asks various thinkers for viceregal nominations and ends up with a shortlist that includes Preston Manning, Wayne Gretzky, Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Mary Simon, Rick Hansen, Phil Fontaine, Marcia McClung, Jean Vanier and Mike Harcourt.

Relatedly, here is a piece I wrote for the magazine a couple weeks ago, in which there is an attempt to point out that the Governor General is invested with extraordinary powers and so, perhaps, the selection of one should be taken somewhat seriously. And in that regard it might be difficult to present a candidate who can compete with the preferred candidate of our John Geddes.

The Show of Shows

By Paul Wells - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

Even as it inspires a hopeful nation and sweeps beyond its borders around a troubled world, the power of the Olympic dream remains sharply circumscribed. On Friday night Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, addressed the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics via video-link. He called for armies to “lay down their weapons” and observe the traditional Olympic Truce. At that moment, halfway around the world, 15,000 Afghan, U.S. and British soldiers opened the traditional Can of Whoop-Ass on several hundred entrenched Taliban fighters in the southern Afghan town of Marjah. So much for truces.

Throughout the opening weekend of these Games, assorted other enemies of wishful thinking remained intractable. Street protests tested the good cheer that united much of Vancouver. The weather played devilish variations, by turns windy, warm, rainy or simply miserable. The forces of linguistic discord set in after the opening ceremonies made too little place for the sound of the French language.

The worst moment came before the Games had even begun, when the laws of physics plucked the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili off the track of the Whistler Sliding Centre and flung his body like a rag doll into a metal girder, killing him.

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Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" gets no rest

By John Geddes - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 12 Comments

Yet another version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” this one sung by Matt Morris and Justin Timberlake on the U.S. Hope for Haiti TV telethon, is now one of the hottest singles on iTunes. This in blatant defiance of Cohen’s request, after countless covers, some of them pretty big hits, that everybody give “Hallelujah” a rest. Given the cause I figure he’ll be okay with the moratorium being broken. (Our Brian D. Johnson probed the lasting allure of “Hallelujah” last year.)

Sweating to the Oldies

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 2 Comments

Moses Znaimer wants to get you laid. To that charitable end, and just in time for Valentine’s Day, he’s about to release Moses Presents Zoomer’s Choice: BUT I Still Believe in Love, a compilation CD  described in the case notes as, “My surefire personal selection of romantic songs & hurtin’ music guaranteed to get that special someone in the mood.” Alas, careful inspection of the jewel box, adorned with a Bryan Adams photo of the founder of MuchMusic and CityTV grinning like a feline who’s just dined on prime canary, reveals no money-back warranty.

The 12 tunes (“songs that Moses has listened to all his life … mellow, moving and meaningful, without the cynicism of much of today’s pop music,” according to the accompanying press release) are intended to appeal to those who still buy CDs, the same folks familiar with the now-alien concept of an album played in its entirety. That would also be the target audience for Znaimer’s magazine Zoomer, “Canada’s Lifestyle Magazine for Boomers,” and Toronto radio stations, the classical 96.3 FM and golden oldie hits AM 740, on which this CD will likely be in extended rotation.

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The Princess and the President, Cohen's collapse, and Senator McMahon?

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Zalm returns
Neither age nor scandal has slowed the ebullient former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm. The Zalm, looking a decade younger than his 75 years, has emerged from obscurity as a potent political force in the fight against B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s decision to implement a harmonized sales tax, or HST. Combining provincial and federal sales taxes is good for business, but it adds to the cost of everything from restaurant meals to new homes, which were exempt from provincial tax. Vander Zalm, who resigned in 1991 after mixing public and private business in the sale of his Fantasy Gardens theme park, pounced on the HST issue well before NDP Opposition Leader Carole James. He upstaged her again last Saturday as they both spoke at an anti-HST rally in Vancouver. He called it a “cruel tax” that piles extra costs on consumers, “particularly those who are packing the lunch bucket.” With his typical “Faaantasstic” grasp of facts, he estimated the crowd at 4,000 to 5,000 people. More dispassionate estimates put the number at 1,000 to 2,000, still enough to worry Campbell’s Liberals.

Bush league
It was tails and tales aplenty last week for new Dallas resident and former president George W. Bush. On Sunday, accompanied by his wife, Laura, Bush gave the coin toss (tails) for the Dallas Cowboys at the home opener in the team’s new $1.2-billion stadium. Its problematic giant video scoreboard, barely 27 m above the playing surface, has already inspired a new NFL rule: a replay of the down if punted balls hit the board. If presidents had do-overs, would Bush still have hired Matt Latimer as a speech writer? Latimer’s new book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, dishes on Bush’s catty assessment of Washington power players. Of Joe Biden, now vice-president: “If bulls–t was currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire.” On then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s run for the vice-presidency: “This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for.” Of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama: “This is a dangerous world, that cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it.” Of his own abilities, lest there be any doubt: “I was qualified.” Continue…

'Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music from Hank Snow to The Band,' by Jason Schneider

By Michael Barclay - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 3:35 PM - 2 Comments

For a book about Canadian music, the word “Canada” is conspicuously absent from the title of Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music from Hank Snow to The Band. It’s likely a marketing ploy to attract U.S. readers who would never buy a book with “Canada” in its title. Yet as the book’s invisible thesis would suggest, Canadians were an integral and influential part of ’60s folk rock in all its guises precisely because they were musicians first and Canadians second, for whom borders—both geographical and between genres of music—were meaningless.

In revisiting oft-told stories of The Band, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, Whispering Pines runs the risk of recycling mouldy oldies about boomer icons who have already been duly canonized several times over. But Jason Schneider’s reach is much wider—stretching back to the dawn of recorded music itself, and the role that Emile Berliner of Montreal, owner of the Canadian patent for gramophone technology, played in nurturing a nascent Canadian recording industry, starting with Wilf Carter and Hank Snow. Continue…

What’s with that song ‘Hallelujah’?

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 9 Comments

Leonard Cohen spent almost two years writing Hallelujah, blackening two notebooks with some 80 verses before finally settling on a few that pleased him. He once told a British journalist, “I remember being on the floor of the Royalton Hotel [in Manhattan], on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor saying ‘I can’t finish this song.’ ” He did, eventually, but the song wasn’t finished with him. Since Hallelujah’s first release on his 1984 album Various Positions, it has been recorded by over 100 artists, including Bob Dylan, Bono, Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Rufus Wainright, and Jeff Buckley. It has graced soundtracks ranging from Shrek to The O.C. And last month, after Cohen had rallied from financial ruin to stage a triumphant world tour, his comeback was heralded with a Hallelujah chorus that went through the roof.

Producers of X-Factor (the U.K. version of American Idol) paid $1.8 million to use the song for their contest finale. And a gospel-fired version performed by the winner, 20-year-old Alexandra Burke, became the fastest-selling download in Internet history, rocketing to No. 1 on the U.K. top 40 chart. Then partisans of Buckley’s version joined the fray and pushed his recording into the No. 2 spot. Even Cohen’s original track found a new life, hitting No. 36.

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Photo Gallery: Hot Concerts

By Jeff Harris - Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

Indie pop darlings Of Montreal spare no expense with their live show, complete with feather machine, glitter, red body paint, and lots of shaving cream. Other recent concerts include Patti Smith’s intimate appearance at the Gardiner Museum and Metric’s electric set on the Toronto Island. If you can’t make it out to the venues, follow the link below and it’s almost like you’re there…

Click here for exclusive photo gallery.

Cohen wore earplugs to a Dylan show?

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 11:24 AM - 0 Comments

Here’s the full transcript of my backstage interview with Leonard Cohen last week at Hamilton Place. Watch the video here.

Q: Tell me about the hat.

A: I’ve been wearing a fedora for a long, long time. This particular hat is from a little hat store just opposite my daughter’s antique store in Los Angeles. They have a very good hat store there.

Q: You never used to perform with a hat.

A: I’ve never performed with a hat. But I always wore a hat. I started wearing the hat more and more, independent of these preparations. I stopped wearing a fedora after 9/11. I didn’t think it was appropriate to wear this kind of hat, and I switched to a cap.

Q: Why?

A: I don’t really know. It seemed to be too dressed up for a situation that was closest to mourning than any other situation. So I didn’t feel like getting dressed up. I always wore a suit, but I stopped wearing a fedora after 9/11. Continue…

Backstage with Leonard Cohen at Hamilton Place

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 9:43 AM - 0 Comments

Brian D. Johnson interviews Leonard Cohen backstage at Hamilton Place.

For the complete interview transcript click here.

Shot on a Sony HDR-SR12 camcorder, on loan courtesy of Sony Canada. For more Brian D. Johnson’s videos go to http://www.youtube.com/bdjfilms.

Continue…

Video Gallery: Maclean's Gala

By Jeff Harris - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

Maclean’s celebrates it’s 100th birthday — and relaunch — with pinache. Canadian celebrities and literatti came out for a night on the town, and to offer their opinion on the magazine’s redesign. Our 15 videos include clips from Kim Catrall, Conrad Black, former premier Brian Tobin, and more.

Click here for exclusive video coverage.

Video Gallery: Toronto Film Festival 2005

By Jeff Harris - Friday, September 23, 2005 at 3:35 PM - 0 Comments

Nova Scotia’s Trailer Park Boys can’t stop talking about “drinking, smoking” and Viggo Mortenson gets a little lesson on NHL regalia (hint: the “C” stands for Canadiens). Canadian actor / director Don McKeller had two mini-films in the festival which were both shot on a cell phone. The Toronto Film Festival celebrates it’s 30th year, and here are 30 “short films” that celebrate the festival!

Click here for exclusive video coverage.