Björk is crazy, like a fox

By Elio Iannacci - Monday, October 10, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 1 Comment

Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

Many have tried—and failed—to figure out the thinking behind singer-songwriter Björk Guðmundsdóttir’s sometimes magical, sometimes questionable career moves. In 1994, for instance, Madonna asked the Icelandic talent to collaborate on the pop queen’s sixth studio album. Björk repeatedly declined Her Madgesty’s requests but, as a consolation, sent Madonna one song—which ended up becoming the most obscure hit of her career: Bedtime Story.

Six years later, after a critically praised performance in the movie Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the best actress prize at Cannes, Björk announced that she would never act again. Most confounding of all is her walk on the red carpet at the 2001 Oscars: she managed to stupefy Hollywood by wearing a dress that resembled a stuffed swan. Joan Rivers demanded Björk be “put into an asylum.” (Ellen DeGeneres further mocked the singer by wearing a version of the frock when hosting the Emmys later that year.)

Her latest disc, Biophilia, to be released Oct. 11, maintains Björk’s status as the weirdest—and craftiest—kid at the school of pop. “I feel technology has finally caught up with humans,” explains the 45-year-old via phone from New York. “That’s why I got this guy in Iceland who makes instruments to make me a small pipe organ that I could connect directly into an iPad touch screen. He reworked my old celesta [a keyboard that resembles a glockenspiel in sound] this way—which made composing much more tactile and impulsive.”

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The rehabilitation of Wallis Simpson

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 3 Comments

John Rawlings/Conde Nast Archive/Corbis; EOne Films

What a difference a year makes. At last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Wallis Simpson was portrayed in The King’s Speech as a vulgar Yankee huntress who’d so bewitched Edward VIII that the handsome king chucked everything to be with her. This year another film about those pivotal events in 1936 was centre stage at TIFF, but this time, in Madonna’s W.E., the twice-divorced American is a vulnerable woman whose love for Edward sparked only jealousy and outrage from his family. The new Wallis-friendly attitude is a sea change for a woman reviled to mythic extremes for decades—she was a Nazi! A lesbian! A man! A prostitute! In The King’s Speech, the monarch’s fascination for her is attributed to “certain skills, acquired in an establishment in Shanghai.” It was “a terrible portrayal,” recalls Hugo Vickers, a historical adviser on the Oscar-winning movie. (Obviously, some of his suggestions were ignored.)

W.E., for which Vickers also gave advice, isn’t alone in re-evaluating “that woman” as the 75th anniversary (in December) of the abdication approaches. Two new biographies, including Behind Closed Doors by Vickers, present Simpson in a sympathetic light. The new tone can be partly explained by the fact that the passage of time, and decades of royal scandals, have softened once harsh attitudes. New interviews and documents have also cast her motives and actions in a more favourable light. “I can’t believe that such a thing could have happened to two people who got along so well,” she wrote plaintively to her second husband, Ernest, about their marriage shortly after the abdication, in a previously unpublished letter. Far from an uncaring woman who’d flung off her spouse, she was in fact full of regret: “It never should have been like it is now.”

The abdication story still fascinates, largely because it is so unique. “No man ever gave up so much for one woman,” says Vickers, who’s written about the couple for nearly four decades. “And we don’t understand why. These things don’t happen normally.” Simpson was and still is “a very provocative character,” Madonna said at TIFF. “She is also a mysterious and enigmatic creature, not conventionally beautiful, not young, twice divorced.”

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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.

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TIFF gridlock and Norman Jewison’s next act

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 8:25 PM - 1 Comment

I ran into Norman Jewison at a rooftop cocktail atop the TIFF Bell Lightbox Friday evening. The 85-year-old Canadian director, looking nowhere near his age, showed up along with such luminaries as Robert Lantos, Atom Egoyan and Sony CEO Howard Stringer to pay tribute to Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, the exemplary indie distributors who being feted on their 20th anniversary at the helm of Sony Pictures Classics. Eventually I got around to asking Norman what he was up to these days, and he said he had a couple of movies in development—one with Moonstruck writer John Patrick Shanley and another pitched to him by a pair of Saturday Night Live writers—a farce called The Iranians Are Coming, which would update Jewison’s satirical hit, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). That Norman would even consider making more movies at 85 is inspiring, but hey, Tony Bennett is the same age and he’s still performing. And last time I checked, Jewison was still taking ski vacations. He’s fond of quoting William Wyler, who once told him he’d direct “until the legs give out.”

But before I steered Jewison onto the subject of film, all he wanted to talk about was the insane downtown traffic, the city’s crumbling infrastructure, and his nightmarish ordeal in trying to get to the Lightbox. He’s not alone. Everyone at TIFF is apoplectic about the traffic, both inside and outside the building. (If you don’t frequent downtown Toronto, or live in a less stupid part of the country, you may want to tune out at this point.) Swollen by unchecked growth of condos, the downtown gridlock is bad at the best of times— Mayor Rob Ford can forget about defending drivers from the alleged “war against the car”; the car is at war with itself. But during the 11 days of  TIFF, a bad situation becomes untenable. Continue…

Bono, Madonna and Neil Young walk into a bar… looking for Brando

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 3:35 PM - 0 Comments

Rock stars have always seen themselves as movie stars in the flesh. From a black-and-white Bob Dylan playing hide’n'seek with the camera in Don’t Look Back to Mick Jagger performing as a man is stabbed to death near the stage in Gimme Shelter, the big screen validates rock’s delusions of grandeur as nothing else can. But it’s a two-way street. You can’t imagine Martin Scorsese’s movies without the Stones on the soundtrack. And Bruce Springsteen has talked about how his seminal album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, was heavily inspired by American film noir. That was at last year’s TIFF, when the Boss, interviewed onstage by Edward Norton, was the hottest ticket at festival. This year, it’s raining rock stars. Continue…

This Week: Newsmakers

By Nancy MacDonald, Julia Belluz and staff - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Danny Moloshok/Reuters

Harper: Monarchy is a man’s job

Queen Elizabeth II only came to the throne because she had no brothers, and Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first son will leapfrog any older sisters to become king, thanks to a 300-year-old act. Now Britain’s deputy PM, Nick Clegg, wants to reform the law. The move requires the agreement of Commonwealth countries directly affected. New Zealand’s PM, John Key, supports the change. Not Stephen Harper: “The successor to the throne is a man,” he said this week. “The next successor to the throne is a man. I don’t think Canadians want to open a debate on the monarchy…at this time.” It’s the same unerring instinct that’s characterized the treatment of female Tory cabinet ministers—think Lisa Raitt, Helena Guergis—and which observers say has limited Harper’s appeal among female voters. Good man, Mr. Harper, good man.

A rapidly Freying narrative

Bestselling Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson is facing buckets of bad press following a 60 Minutes report that questioned his work with his charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), for schools in remote Pakistan and Afghanistan. It alleged some schools don’t exist, or haven’t received support from CAI, and that Mortenson uses the charity as a “private ATM machine.” Then there are allegations Mortenson was never kidnapped by the Taliban in Waziristan, as he wrote. Mansur Khan Mahsud told The Daily Beast he played host to Mortenson in Waziristan and was shocked to get a call from Into Thin Air author Jon Krakauer (a former Mortenson supporter) telling him the author had described the experience as a kidnapping. Mortenson’s publisher is investigating.

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This week: Newsmakers

By Nancy Macdonald and Maclean's staff - Friday, April 1, 2011 at 11:06 AM - 0 Comments

Jerome Delay/AP

The heartless contessa?
Celebrity chef Ina Garten, of Barefoot Contessa fame, was shamed into fulfilling a six-year-old cancer patient’s dying wish of cooking a meal with her. “Last year, Ina gave a ‘soft no,’ supposedly because she had a 10-month book tour,” Enzo Pereda‘s mother explained in a blog post. Her son, who was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, loves watching Garten while resting in bed; he told Garten’s people he would wait. Even after being turned down a second time, last week, she wrote, “he STILL loves the Contessa.” Garten, who was criticized by bloggers and news sites, said she “became aware of Enzo’s story this weekend,” and will be calling him immediately to invite him to the set.

It’s my party, I’ll cry if I want to
Danny Williams‘s big snit continues. After abruptly cancelling a tribute in his honour—an event organized by his own brother, lawyer and veteran Tory fundraiser Tommy Williams—the ex-premier accused his replacement Kathy Dunderdale and her ministers of distancing themselves from him. “They don’t even want me to have the cell numbers of cabinet ministers—I mean, I can’t explain that,” Williams told the CBC. Newfoundlanders who want to relive the memory of his happier days can pick up a copy of Danny Williams: A Profile, a newly released collection of photos from his time in office.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

A different kind of lone gunman
A five-foot-seven-inch Gurkha soldier from the British county of Kent who single-handedly repelled a Taliban attack has been awarded Britain’s Conspicuous Gallantry Cross—its second-highest honour—for outstanding bravery. Acting Sgt. Dipprasad Pun, 31, spent more than 400 rounds of ammo and 19 grenades in his lone-wolf battle against 30 Taliban fighters at a remote checkpoint in Helmand province. At one point, when his gun would no longer fire, he wielded it like a bat and knocked a Taliban fighter off the rooftop, shouting “Marchu talai“—”I will kill you,” in Nepali.

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic/GETTY IMAGES

Bachmann in overdrive
With Sarah Palin’s star apparently on the wane, get set to hear a lot more about Michelle Bachmann. The Tea Partier from Minnesota told ABC News she’s “in for 2012″—not an official declaration, but enough to whip the chattering classes into a tizzy. The darling of the far right garners a lot of attention, not all good: she’s famous for delivering a state of the union rebuttal while staring goofily into the wrong camera, declaring “not all cultures are equal,” and calling for her colleagues to be investigated to see if they are “pro-America” enough. Expect more hyperbole in months ahead as she zeroes in on Barack Obama, whom she calls the “worst president ever.”

Unlucky star
Madonna’s plan­ned $15-million Raising Malawi Academy for Girls has been scrapped amid charges of eye-popping embezzlement by its now-ousted board of directors. A damning audit showed lavish spending on offices, cars and golf memberships, but not the school, funded by Madonna and fellow Kabbalians like Gwyneth Paltrow—there isn’t even a valid land title. For Madonna the fiasco goes on: staffers are suing the pop star for wrongful dismissal and lost wages.

Where is Iman?
As though Iman al-Obeidi‘s account of a gang rape by 15 of Moammar Gadhafi‘s men after her arrest at a Tripoli checkpoint wasn’t chilling enough, she now faces criminal charges for speaking out. “The boys accused of doing this are furious,” said Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, in a nightmarish twist to the story. “They have filed a case to defend their family name.” Obeidi has been missing since being dragged off by security forces after trying to tell foreign reporters of her two-day ordeal. So far, Libya has levelled a litany of excuses, variously claiming she was drunk, “mentally ill” and a prostitute; according to her family, she’s a lawyer. They told al-Jazeera they were offered money and a house in return for her recanting her story.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 5, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

It just isn’t Brett Favre’s year
Despite being hobbled by two fractures in his foot, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback started in his 292nd consecutive NFL game. It was a bittersweet affair for fans, who saw Favre throw a costly interception, draw two penalties and leave the game with an eight-stitch cut to his chin in a loss to the New England Patriots. Then there are his alleged follies off the field: the married QB reportedly sent texts and lewd photos to TV personality Jenn Sterger.

The Parti is hungry
There are a few constants in life in Quebec: good food, cold winters, and infighting within the Parti Québécois. But knowing this can’t allay the worries of Pauline Marois, who after three years at the helm of the sovereignist party is facing restive ranks. A group of 50 young sovereignists recently signed an open letter criticizing her. That came on the heels of a Radio-Canada interview in which Jacques Parizeau chided Marois and complimented Bloc leader (and one-time PQ leadership hopeful) Gilles Duceppe for his “remarkable clarity” on the sovereignty issue. It seems the party that eats its leaders—Marois is the sixth in 10 years—is licking its chops once again.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 30, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Madonna fiddles while Joni burns
Canadian singer Joni Mitchell rarely gives interviews—a good thing for Bob Dylan and Madonna. Mitchell unloaded on her fellow folkie, the former Bobby Zimmerman, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “Bob is not authentic at all,” she said. “He’s a plagiarist and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.” As for Madonna, Mitchell linked her to America’s decline into the “stupid and shallow.” Madonna, she said, “is like Nero, she marks the turning point.” Madonna also inspired the wrath of supermodel Paulina Porizkova, in an online essay on the abuse of cosmetic procedures. She’s a Botoxed blond “who cannot frown,” Porizkova writes, while the much enhanced reality star Heidi Montag is “a cheap, plastic pool float.”

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Newsmakers '09: Lingo

By Katie Engelhart - Friday, December 4, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

	Reverse mullet: Fashion faux pas of the season: the “reverse mullet”—named after the haircut that Kate Gosselin (of Jon & Kate Plus 8) got last spring. The asymmetrical bob—short and spiky at the crown and longer in the front—was widely mocked, notably by celebrity site TMZ.com, which dubbed it a “bi-level, Flock of Seagulls-humped-a-porcupine” weave.
	Death panels: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote a Facebook post falsely accusing Obama of trying to set up “death panels” to ration access to health care. She mused: “My baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide . . . whether [he is] worthy of health care.” Fear, it seems, is contagious. A later CNN poll found 41 per cent of Americans felt seniors could fall victim to “government panels.”
	Toxic resumés: That’s about all that bankers from Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. were left with when their firms went bust. Well, that and the millions in bonuses they accrued over the years, giving out “toxic loans” from “toxic banks” on “toxic streets” (think Wall).

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This immortality thing worries me

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 10 Comments

Immortality! Gilgamesh strived to attain it. Indiana Jones had it briefly in his grasp. And I’m sure Madonna’s plastic surgeons are trying their best—but come on guys, gross.

According to one renowned futurist, the goal of living forever may no longer be the fevered dream of whoever keeps jabbing Botox into Sylvester Stallone. Ray Kurzweil says our understanding of genetics and technology is expanding at such an exponential rate that within two decades we will have “the means to reprogram our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, aging.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sex and the City XXXVII: Samantha’s Bawdy Bicentennial. Enjoy the threesome with Betty White. Continue…

Things you find when you're looking for something else entirely (Vol. 1, No. 1)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 10, 2009 at 4:53 PM - 26 Comments

Michael Ignatieff, passing judgment on Madonna in 1994.

‘I don’t mind that I see her face on every magazine cover. I don’t mind that she is obscene. I don’t even mind that she can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act and is none the less the most famous person on the planet. What I can’t stand is that she thinks she’s an artist.’

Discovered as an end note to this 2005 profile of the pop star.

The Pope signs a record deal, Nadal plays in Montreal, and William Shatner: environmental activist?

By Lianne George - Friday, August 7, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment

Lord forgives, doesn’t forget
In 2001, Conrad Black renounced his Canadian citizenship after former prime minister Jean Chrétien intervened in an attempt to block Black’s nomination to the British House of Lords. But this week, Black—also known as Lord Black of Crossharbour—told Bloomberg he didn’t begrudge Chrétien the Order of Merit, recently awarded to him by Queen Elizabeth. “It is not for me to dispute that his services to Canadian federalism over nearly 40 years entitle him to it,” he wrote in an email from the Florida prison where he is currently serving 6½ years for fraud and obstruction of justice. This doesn’t mean, of course, that he’s forgotten. “I think even he would acknowledge that his treatment of me was not his finest hour, but that is water under the dam,” he wrote. “I will request my citizenship back when this nonsense in the U.S. is over, as I said I would when I renounced it.”

Acting badly
It’s curtains for Too Close to the Sun, a universally panned “unlikely musical” about the final days of Ernest Hemingway, playing in London’s West End. After sitting through the show, London Telegraph theatre critic Charles Spencer said he couldn’t help wondering “whether a sickening premonition of this terrible show was what finally persuaded [Hemingway] to put the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger.” Meanwhile, in New York, Jude Law is set to commence his turn as Hamlet on Broadway in September. Although his performance in this production has earned him rave reviews in London, his acting was overshadowed last week by the news that he impregnated a 24-year-old model named Samantha Burke. Burke’s mother told the London Evening Standard, “This was no way planned. Hell no.” Continue…

Newsmakers: Family reunion

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Lindsay Lohan was caught on tape banging on the door of her on-again, off-again lover Samantha Ronson, cursing at Ronson and begging her to let her in. A few days later they were spotted dining together, so that technique must work for repairing a relationship..

Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were seen talking and laughing together at the high school graduation of their daughter Scout, leading observers to pronounce them “Hollywood’s happiest divorced couple.” Unless he was laughing at those embarrassing photos of her Ashton Kutcher posted on Twitter.. Continue…

Newsmakers: Family album

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The genius of Justin Timberlake

By John Intini - Friday, May 8, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 10 Comments

Justin Timberlake was a global brand when he showed up on Saturday Night Live in December 2006 with a cheap suit, cheesy beard and a strategically placed cardboard box. But in two minutes and 37 seconds, the pop star reached a whole other level. In addition to an Emmy and more than 35 million downloads, the skit, a holiday music video parody, in which Timberlake advises dudes on the perfect gift to give your lady—a “d–k in a box”—was crude, but earned the former Mouseketeer a lot of cred. He also proved that night to be one of SNL’s best hosts in years by appearing in . . . no, by being the funniest part of nearly every skit. Fast-forward to November 2008: Timberlake shows up on SNL again, this time in heels and a leotard, dancing with Beyoncé to Single Ladies—another instant Web sensation. After that turn, some New York media types pleaded with Lorne Michaels, SNL’s producer, to hire the pop star full-time. Timberlake, who now has a standing invite whenever he’s in NYC, is hosting SNL on May 9. Chances are, by the time you read this, his latest skit has already gone viral.

The fact that anyone is even talking about Timberlake is remarkable. This is, after all, a guy who spent seven years with ’N Sync and dated Britney Spears, the kind of credentials that might guarantee someone a spot on the The Surreal Life. And yet, several years since his band broke up (and 14 since he and Mickey Mouse parted ways), Timberlake has positioned himself atop a respected pop culture empire that spans music, film, TV, even fashion (his latest collection earned industry nods at New York Fashion Week in February). He’s a boyfriend to beautiful women—the latest, Jessica Biel—and in crowning him America’s most stylish man, GQ credited him with single-handedly bringing back fedoras, sweater vests, three-piece suits and beards. He’s the modern-day equivalent of the Rat Pack, all rolled into one skinny-jean-wearing guy from Memphis who used to have frosted tips.

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What Bono says and what he does

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 92 Comments

After playing the Obama inauguration a couple of months back, the pop star Bono flew back home to a rare barrage of hostile headlines. As you know, the global do-gooder wants us to send more of our money to Africa. So why is he sending his money to the Netherlands? From the Irish Times:

“Bono ‘Hurt’ By Criticism Of U2 Move To Netherlands To Cut Tax.”

U2 hasn’t, in fact, moved to the Netherlands. You won’t find them busking outside downtown Rotterdam mosques of a Friday night. But they did move some of their business interests from the Emerald Isle to the Low Countries. From the Times of London: “Bono Hits Back Over Tax Dodging Claims.”

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The high price of celebrity—in divorce court

By Susan Mohammad and Rachel Mendleson - Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 6:10 PM - 4 Comments

Mel Gibson’s split from Robyn Moore, his wife of 28 years, is expected to be one of Hollywood’s most wallet-emptying divorces. If there isn’t a pre-nup (as some speculate), Moore, who married the Braveheart star before his career took off in 1980, could walk away with half of the actor’s US$1.2 billion in assets.

See how Mel and Robyn might stack up against eight of the biggest celebrity splits:

Madonna and Guy Ritchie

Kevin Costner and Cindy Silva

Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison

Ron Wood and Jo Wood

Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving

Morgan Freeman and Myrna Colley-Lee

Neil Diamond and Marcia Murphey

Michael and Juanita Jordan

Newsmakers: Mergers

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments

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…

Megapundit: Sticking it to the Ayatollah

By selley - Monday, October 27, 2008 at 2:35 PM - 29 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Daphne Bramham on Nazanin Afshin-Jam; David Olive and Greg Weston on tough economic times; Scott Taylor, off to the Caucasus; Haroon Siddiqui on the Iacobucci inquiry; Dan Gardner on ending the oil addiction; Barbara Yaffe on Bloc Québécois fundraising.

About those election promises…
Prepare to be disappointed for your own good.

The Toronto Star‘s David Olive observes the “awkwardly choreographed dance” currently being performed by the prime minister and the provincial premiers on the matter of deficit financing, whether it’s necessary and who should be blamed for it if it is. “It’s not just that if a swimming pool somewhere has to be closed next year, the premiers want Ottawa to wear it,” he writes. “They also want Ottawa to speed up its spending on job-creating infrastructure projects for which the premiers and territorial leaders could claim some credit when the unemployed start pounding on the doors of legislatures from Charlottetown to Victoria.”

So long as deficits are short term and exist only when times demand them, The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson says there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. But as a habit, they’re a ruinous addiction that’s incredibly hard to break. Consult Hansard from the 1980s and you’ll find “Liberal and NDP MPs … predicting that any attempts at fiscal prudence would result in tens of thousands of people becoming unemployed, communities being crushed, grim fates awaiting millions of vulnerable people,” says Simpson. As such, it would behove the Tories to ditch as many useless, costly election promises as they can—he suggests the two-cent cut to the diesel excise tax and the $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers—before they’re forced to ditch the one about never running a deficit.

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Hey, and Madonna could play the Sunken Goddess. . .

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 5, 2008 at 12:02 AM - 1 Comment

It’s only Day One, and already the strange encounters of the TIFF kind have begun. Outside the press office at the Sutton Place Hotel, I was ambushed by an ardent blonde who gave me her card, which described her as a “novelist and executive director” with Fireflower Communications. She asked me if I knew where she could find the party tonight for the premiere of Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, starring Gerald Butler. She said she wanted to get her novel to Butler because he’d be perfect for the lead.  Checked out her Fireflower website, which described the novel this way: “Ascension and the end of time upon them, star-crossed lovers the Goddess and the King clash again on the spiritual battlefield of a mysterious Caribbean island, last secret outpost of Atlantis the Fallen. . . ” Hmmm. Tough pitch to make at a party for a director who’s worried about his new movie and his frayed marriage to Madonna. Guess I should have told her to look up Toronto’s Sturla Gunnarsson. After all, he cast Butler, the “Hot Scot,” in Beowulf and Grendel.

And now, the final credits. . .

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 6:21 PM - 0 Comments

So in the end, how was Cannes? As I’m writing this, at 36,000 ft. somewhere above Greenland, I realize I’ll need a response for that question by the time I get back. The short answer: the weather sucked, and it wasn’t a banner year for films, but there were some good ones. They still need time to settle. As much as critics grumble about the quality of the films when we’re racing around the festival, by the end of the year, they’re usually starting to look pretty good. Some final reflections: Continue…

"Oui, Poof Deedy"

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, May 19, 2008 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Walking back to the hotel, I ran into a pedestrian traffic jam on the Croisette, a thicket of outstretched arms holding up cameras in front of a Gucci store, from pro TV types to cellphones. When you run across this kind of feeding frenzy in the street, you can’t see who’s there behind the mob, so you look up at all the LCD screens trying to decipher something.

“Who is it?” I finally asked one of the more professional looking paparazzi.

“Poof Deedy.”

“Puff Daddy?”

“Oui, Poof Deedy.”

Stars from outside the movie business generate a special excitement here. Mike Tyson had a big impact last week. Of all the videos I’ve posted from Cannes, only one has taken off on YouTube—a simple clip of Tyson introducing James Toback’s documentary portrait of him has got over 10,000 hits. Sure Madonna is coming to town, but soccer star Maradona may create even more pandemonium when he shows up tomorrow as the star of a new documentary by Emir Kusturica.