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Carlton Street, Suite 1032, Toronto, ON
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LE NEWSLETTER
December 4, 2008
Whoa
- not only is the weather crazy but there's so much of a whirlwind going on
this week in the world of politics. But this week also
brings us a blizzard of entertainment news - even with attempts to scale it
down. So read on my friends!
The HOT events continue ... Aubrey Dayle and
Vernon Reid perform together on December 4 and 6. Celebrate the season with the Gospel Christmas Project on
December 7th. Not to mention, there's
the very popular annual AroniMAGE awards
in honour of Aron Y. Haile on
December 7th. And the
supersensational Soweto Gospel Choir on
December 17 and 18 at Massey Hall.
::HOT EVENTS::
Aubrey Dayle and My id with Vernon Reid – December 4 and 6, 2008
Aubrey Dayle and My id collaborate with Grammy Award winning
guitarist Vernon Reid for shows in
Toronto on December 4th at Toronto's Lula Lounge. On
December 6th, Hamilton’s The Pepper Jack Cafe is the
venue.
My id for Dayle is the
conscious musical illustration of his instinctual needs and drives; and the
Toronto based drummer who formed this group harnessed some of the city’s finest
eclectic musicians. Pooling their strengths in jazz, rock, world beat, R&B
and hip hop My id projects outstanding musicianship; and this musical
brilliance will be further boosted for the upcoming concerts with virtuoso
Vernon Reid collaborating.
Vernon Reid and his exceptional Black rock band, Living Colour
made tremendous strides throughout several decades; and their first-rate
platform back in the 80s and 90s ushered them into the realm of a ‘Black
Coalition’ of conscious and ground-breaking, top instrumentalism and selling 4
million recordings world wide. Fusing philosophies of social justice, Reid and
My id will together bring a sound of equality and freedom to the Ontario
concert halls this December.
Living Colour continues to
impress audiences today and are enjoying a current major resurgence because of ‘The
Guitar Hero 3’ video game that features their massive hit, “Cult of
Personality.”
Featured on Dayle’s debut CD along with, Allman Brothers
bassist, Oteil Burbridge and singer Hassan Hakmoun, Reid has worked
with some stellar talents like: Mick Jagger, Bill Frisell, Carlos Santana,
Public Enemy, Garland Jefferies and James Blood Ulmer.
Described by James Blood Ulmer as “He was born in Jamaica, grew
up in Canada and plays like he's from Georgia!”, Dayle has toured and
recorded with Reid on the James Blood Ulmer Grammy nominated CD project
'Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions' and 'No Escape from the Blues: The Electric
Lady Sessions'. The contemporary ‘jazzist’ recently returned to live in
Canada after being based in New York City for 14 years. He has also toured and
recorded with Garland Jeffries, Sonny Rollins, Peter Gabriel, Hassan Hakmoun
and John Popper Band.
The December 4th show at Lula Lounge will serve as My
id’s second CD release party. Recorded live in another Reid/My id joint effort
last year, the CD is titled “Aubrey Dayle's My id & Vernon Reid Live
Revival.”
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008
AUBREY DAYLE AND MY ID WITH VERNON REID
Lula Lounge
1585 Dundas Street West (one an a half blocks west of Dufferin)
8:00 pm
TICKET PRICES: $18.00 in advance via Ticketweb.com $22.00 at the door and
$27.00 with CD.
BOX OFFICE number: www.ticketweb.ca 888-222-6608
The Gospel Christmas Project –
Sunday, December 7
Source: Andrew Craig Productions
The Young Centre for the Performing Arts invites you to ring in the Christmas
season with one of the hottest shows this season: The
Gospel Christmas Project!
Imagine 20 of the world’s favourite Christmas carols, totally re-imagined and
re-arranged in the high-energy style of Contemporary Gospel. Then imagine
hearing those arrangements sung by powerhouse vocalists like Dora-award winner
Jackie Richardson, Alana Bridgewater of “We Will Rock You”, Kellylee Evans (the
2007 Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards Female Vocalist of the Year), and Gospel
singing sensation Chris Lowe. Add to that mix the dynamic Sharon Riley and
Faith Chorale, and put them all under the masterful direction of Andrew Craig,
with his explosive band. It’s a recipe for an unforgettable holiday experience!
The Gospel Christmas Project has already been an acclaimed CBC Radio
special, and made into a coveted CD recording. It’s also been a CBC Television
special, not only nominated for a Gemini award, but a Bronze World Medal winner
at the prestigious New York Festivals. It was a groundbreaking concert
presentation with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and it was one of last
year’s most-talked-about shows at Massey Hall. And now, you can experience it
live at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, in Toronto’s Distillery
District!
“I left with a surge of joy” – Carol Lipson, The Live Music Report
“It was the star on the top of the tree of Christmas experiences this year” –
from the Gospel Christmas Project blog
Don’t miss this year’s most-uplifting holiday presentation. There are two
shows only, and tickets are going fast!
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2008
THE GOSPEL CHRISTMAS PROJECT
The Young Centre For The Performing Arts
55 Mill Street, Building 49
Distillery District
2:00 pm and 8:00 pm
Tickets: $20 – $45
www.Youngcentre.ca
www.Gospelxmasproject.com
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2008
AUBREY DAYLE AND MY ID WITH VERNON REID
The Pepper Jack Café
38 King William Street - Hamilton, Ontario
8:30 pm
TICKET PRICES: $12.00 in advance $15.00 at the door and
$2O.00 with CD.
BOX OFFICE number: (905)525-6666 and www.pepperjackcafe.com
www.myspace.com/myidmusic, www.myidmusic.org, or www.myspace.com/vernonreid
Get Ready To Inspire – December 7, 2008
Following
the successful 2006, 2007, INSPIRE events, the Aroni Awards returns on
Sunday
December 7th, 2008 for yet another captivating event, with the presentation of
five AroniMAGE awards to the unsung heroes of our community. The AroniAwards
Education Grants will be presented to three students who show strong
dedication to community service, a positive outlook and continue to persevere
despite socioeconomic hardships and other obstacles. The Aroni Awards
Gala was created in honour of Aron Y. Haile, an African Canadian and
accomplished student, entrepreneur, software developer, who died in a vehicular
accident in 2003, at the young age of 30.
GREAT THINGS HAPPEN AS CANADA'S TALENTS GIVE BACK
Canadian Idol’s favourite judge Farley Flex returns as Master of Ceremony, with
some of Canada’s premier entertainers as they presenter, participate or
performer in support of our Youth. The evening features a VIP Reception, Silent
Auction, Awards Presentations, 3 Course Dinner (Dynamic Catering),
Live performances, and After Show reception and more. This year’s Aroni Awards
Gala will once again be held at the newly renovated Atlantis Pavilions (Main
Ballroom). The magnificent complex with its 30-foot floor to ceiling
windows, panoramic views of the Toronto skyline and waterfront, offers a unique
venue to create the perfect setting for the Aroni Awards Gala.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7
3RD ANNUAL ARONI AWARDS GALA
ATLANTIS
955 LAKESHORE BLVD.
(ONTARIO PLACE)
4:00 pm – 10:00 pm
$60 (Includes 3 Course Dinner Catered by Dynamic, Silent Auction, Cocktail VIP
Reception, Live Performances, After Awards Reception)
www.aroniawards.com
Soweto Gospel Choir Returns to Toronto For Two Performances
Only! - December 17 & 18
Source: Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
The exciting and dynamic Soweto Gospel Choir will return to Toronto for two
performances only on December 17 and
18, 2008 at Massey Hall. The performances are presented by The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts.
Two-time Grammy® Award-winning Soweto Gospel Choir thrilled capacity
audiences on each of their previous visits in 2005 and 2007. These return
performances will include their newest holiday offerings as well as traditional
favourites.
Expect earthy rhythms, rich harmonies, a cappella numbers as well as
accompaniment by an exciting four-piece band and percussion section. Add
energetic dancing and vibrant, colourful costumes, and the mix is awesome. The
Choir performs in six of South Africa’s 11 official languages.
The popular Choir has made its mark on the international stage performing with
such luminaries as Bono, The Eurythmics, Jimmy Cliff and many others. They have
also performed for Nelson Mandela. Often referred to as the “Voices from Heaven”,
the Choir reaches across cultural boundaries and each performance is uplifting,
exhilarating and thrilling.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17 AND THURSDAY,
DECEMBER 18, 2008
SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR
Massey Hall, South side of Shuter
Street, between Yonge & Victoria Streets
8:00 pm
Tickets: $18-$78 plus applicable service charges
Tickets can be purchased through the Roy Thomson Hall Box Office (60 Simcoe
St., Toronto), by telephone 416-872-4255, online at masseyhall.com or ticketmaster.ca.
GROUPS of 10 or more call Roy Thomson Hall 416-593-4822 ext. 225
Visit www.masseyhall.com for more details.
::TOP STORIES::
'Hit Man' Still Trying To Achieve Greatness
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Guy Dixon
(December 01, 2008) Producer-composer David Foster, his hair well tousled for a day promoting
his autobiography Hitman and career-spanning concert DVD, twice cuts the
conversation to ask if I'm a "rocker."
"I'm always a little nervous when I'm with someone like you," says
the 59-year-old hit factory and mega-starmaker to Celine Dion and Michael
Bublé. "I can tell right away that you're respectful of what I do, but
you'd rather be interviewing Bruce Springsteen. Am I right?"
It's difficult to know how to respond. Even for someone who isn't dying to
revisit his mid-eighties staple Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire, Foster's
story is compelling: from the kid growing up in Victoria with perfect pitch, to
years of struggling in the Los Angeles music business, only to rise to
commercial heights producing the industry's biggest names, from Barbra
Streisand to Alice Cooper (of all people).
Foster is at a contented time in his life right now, reason enough for the book
and the DVD Hit Man (which will air on PBS's Great Performances
this month). En route to this level of comfort, he has gone through three
marriages.
He has also juggled a hectic second career of charity work, mainly through his
David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children needing organ
transplants. He even starred in his own Osbournes-like,
dysfunctional-family reality TV show, The Princes of Malibu. In the
midst of all this, he weathered a crisis in 1992 in which he nearly killed
entertainer Ben Vereen in a freak accident, after Vereen walked out onto
California's Pacific Coast Highway in the middle of the night. Vereen,
according to Foster's book, phoned him three months later while recovering and
said, "Good hit."
But Foster is drifting into retrospective mode. He's still driven by work, he
says, reaching for a cassette recorder to jot down musical ideas - sticking to
old habits rather than using digital devices. In short, he isn't so content
with life that he wants to slow down.
"What's keeping me going is that when I do look at my whole career, it
doesn't look like much."
In one breath, he admits he would have liked to have worked at discovering more
new talent in the eighties - a role he's particularly known for now - rather
than focusing on a few superstars. Yet in the next breath, he adds: "I would
have liked to have been a Burt Bacharach, or a Henry Mancini or a John
Williams. That would have been very satisfying for me. Not particularly more
fame than I have, but a career more concentrated on your own work, rather than
coming to the aid of others."
Then comes the non sequitur: "But maybe you're just a rock 'n' roller and
you don't want to be here in the first place. I mean, you lean toward rock
music, right?"
Foster isn't intentionally baiting me. There's no slyness here. It's just a
question, even though it seems irrelevant whether or not one leans toward the
power balladry of Dion, Groban or Whitney Houston. It's his production work
with Houston on I Will Always Love You, from 1992's The Bodyguard soundtrack,
that solidified Foster's reputation, particularly coming after his work on Unforgettable,
Natalie Cole's album of duets with her late father Nat King Cole. With
vibrato-driven whole notes and sentimentality rising with each key change, the
David Foster sound is as immediately recognizable as Phil Spector's Wall of
Sound.
"I mean, my shit is kind of obvious," Foster says. "It's the big
key change, the big stop, the heart-stopping moment, the moment where the crowd
is going to burst into applause when watching it live. I try to do that with
every song, and it works - sometimes." It's all about taking listeners on
a journey, he adds.
"In the case of Michael Bublé, he makes you believe that he really
believes what he's singing about in his lyrics. He takes you on a journey. In
the case of Celine, she literally gave me chills. Now I know that you can be a
Celine hater or a Celine lover, but there are at least 150 million people that
have bought her records. You can love it or hate it, but you've got to respect
it. It's a phenomenal instrument that she has."
Still, the question of defensiveness keeps recurring, and Foster persists with
his "rocker" question. "I mean, ah, no, I don't have a David
Foster album in my collection," I finally have to say.
"Fair enough," he replies. No offence taken, none intended. And the
conversation, and even subtle ribbing, continue with ease. But on face value,
it's a strange tone for someone of his stature: 15 Grammy Awards, a No. 1 hit
with Chicago's Hard to Say I'm Sorry and John Parr's Man in Motion,
and other accolades too many to mention.
But there's a story he relates about Kenny G that seems telling. Foster wanted
to pull together a big band to play at the pop saxophonist's 10th wedding
anniversary. Foster was working on one of Bublé's early albums at the time, so
crooning melodies were in his head. But Kenny G didn't like the idea.
"I don't want those [jazz] guys at my party. Those are the kinds of
musicians who look down on my music. It would make me too uncomfortable,"
Kenny G said, as quoted in Foster's book.
Perhaps it's an insight into how aware commercial stars are of the critical
orthodoxy commonly espoused by music journalists. And that's obviously what
Foster is getting at with this "rocker" label. For Foster, huge sales
are a clear sign that at least someone is listening. He says his music is what
comes naturally to him.
"I can unequivocally tell you that every single second that I'm in the
studio, I'm trying to achieve greatness. Every single second," he says.
"I don't always achieve it, but there's a saying people use all the time
in the studio that I don't allow. 'It doesn't bother me.' ""
He will never disparage anything he has done, he says. "That came about
from a Quincy Jones moment when I gave him [an album] of the Average White Band
that I produced. I handed it to him and said, 'Don't listen to track one and
track three. Track two the vocals are a little out of tune. Track six, I hated
that song, but they wanted it on the record.' And he snatched it out of my
hands, and said, 'You're an idiot, it's got your name on it. Do not make any
excuses for it.' And from that moment on, I never made any excuses for anything
I did."
Nor should he have to.
Durham County And Englishman's Boy Win Big At Geminis
Source: www.thestar.com
- Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
(November 28, 2008) The gritty cable drama Durham
County and the CBC miniseries The Englishman's Boy ruled over the
sexy historical series The Tudors at the Gemini Awards on Friday, picking up the most hardware at a glitzy televised event
honouring the best in Canadian TV.
Durham County, which airs on the Movie Network and Movie Central, earned
three awards, including best actor for Justin Louis, best actress for Helene Joy
and best direction for Holly Dale. The series stars Hugh Dillon as a Toronto
homicide detective that moves his family to the suburbs only to discover that
his neighbour may be a serial killer.
CBC's The Englishman's Boy was named best dramatic miniseries, while its
star Nicholas Campbell took the best actor title. Those wins were in addition
to four Geminis it picked up at a ceremony last month.
Former 90210 hunk Jason Priestley hosted Friday's star-studded party,
while current 90210 star Shenae Grimes was among the homegrown
luminaries that appeared as presenters.
The best drama series was the Vancouver-based Intelligence, a CBC crime
show that was cancelled earlier this year despite being embraced by critics.
Meanwhile, the rock 'n' roll mockumentary Cock'd Gunns, an IFC show, won
for best writing in a comedy series and best ensemble performance in a comedy.
The glamorous night put the spotlight on the industry's most coveted awards,
but most Geminis were handed out last month at a series of non-televised
ceremonies.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers' King Henry VIII drama The Tudors on CBC was among
the big winners in those categories, netting four trophies.
Other early winners included the CBC's The National, The Fifth Estate
and Hockey Night in Canada, which each snagged three trophies.
On Friday, CBC's veteran news parody This Hour Has 22 Minutes beat out
CTV's ratings giant Corner Gas for best comedy, while George
Stroumboulopoulos was named best talk show host for his night-time chatfest, The
Hour With George Stroumboulopoulos, also on CBC.
The best actress trophy for work in a dramatic program or miniseries went to
Natasha Henstridge, who appeared in CTV's Would Be Kings.
CBC's Ron MacLean was named best sports host for his duties on Hockey Day in
Canada, while Ian Hanomansing won the trophy for best anchor for CBC's
supper-hour newscast in Vancouver.
Project Runway Canada on Slice was named best reality program or series.
Citytv's 19th century detective series Murdoch Mysteries had led the
pack with 14 nominations overall but walked away with just two wins in the
non-broadcast portion of the awards.
2008 Gemini Winners:
Best Comedy: This Hour Has 22 Minutes
Best Drama: Intelligence
Best Reality Show: Project Runway Canada
Best Dramatic Miniseries: The Englishman's Boy
Best Performance by an Actor in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role: Justin
Louis, Durham County, "What Lies Beneath"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading role in a Dramatic Program or
Miniseries: Nicholas Campbell, The Englishman's Boy.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Rols: Helen
Joy, Durham County, "Guys and Dolls"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries: Natasha
Henstridge, Would be Kings
Best Ensemble in a Comedy Program: Inessa Annie Frantowski, Brooks Gray, Andy
King, Rebecca McMahon, Leo Scherman, Morgan Waters in Cock'd Gunns,
"A Taste of Success"
Best Direction in a Dramatic Series: Holly Dale, Durham County,
"What Lies Beneath"
Best Host, Talk Program: George Stroumbolopoulos, The Hour with George
Stroumbolopoulos.
Best Host, Sports Program: Ron MacLean, Hockey Day In Canada
Best News Anchor: Ian Hanomansing, CBC News at Six - Vancouver
Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Program or Series: Brooks Gray, Andy King,
Leo Scherman, Morgan Waters for Cock'd Gunns,
Gemini Humanitarian Award: Gord Martineau
Barbadian
Descendent Eric Holder Favoured To Head United States Justice Department
Source: The
Brandman Agency
(December 1, 2008) (Bridgetown,
Barbados)– Eric Holder, who traces his family roots to
the parishes of St. Joseph and St. Philip in Barbados, is President Elect Barack Obama’s
pick for the United States’ next attorney general. A former D.C. Superior
Court judge, U.S. Attorney and Deputy Attorney General, Holder is currently a
senior legal advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, and was instrumental in
selecting Senator Joseph Biden as Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.
Pending Senate confirmation, Holder would make history as the first
African-American attorney general of the United States.
Holder was born and raised in a Bajan home in Queens, New York, where his
parents placed large emphasis on education in his upbringing. With family
currently in St. Michael, Barbados, Holder continues to visit the island
frequently.
Ties between the U.S. and Barbados date back to as early as 1751 when Barbados
welcomed America’s very first president, George Washington. His first trip out of the US to the
sun-drenched island functioned as a possible cure for his brother Lawrence’s
ailment. In 2007, the plantation house that George and Lawrence rented was
restored and is now a museum named the George
Washington House (www.georgewashingtonbarbados.org) open to the public.
More recently, during an official visit to Barbados
with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton unveiled a plaque outside the George Washington
house that recognized the bond between Barbados and the US.
The island of Barbados offers the most authentic Caribbean experience with its
exceptionally rich culture and history rooted in remarkable landscapes,
including The Crane beach, St. Philips, voted one of the world’s sexiest
beaches for 2008 by Concierge.com. Barbados is the first and only
Zagat-rated Caribbean island with numerous internationally renowned chefs who
masterfully put signature spins on local delicacies and traditions. Barbados is
also an ideal stage for world-class events and has hosted numerous athletic
championships, including the ICC Cricket World Cup Final 2007 and the 2006 PGA
World Golf Championship-The Barbados World Cup. Accommodations range from
picturesque plantation houses and villas to quaint bed and breakfasts to
award-winning five-star resorts. The newly renovated Grantley Adams
International Airport offers non-stop and direct service from a growing number
of U.S. cities via Air Jamaica, American Airlines, Delta and US Airways, making
Barbados the true gateway to the Eastern Caribbean. The Barbados Tourism
Authority has provided excellent service for 50 years and is a proud member of
the Barbados Hotel & Tourism Association. For more information on
travel to Barbados, visit www.visitbarbados.org, or contact the Barbados Tourism
Authority at 1.800.221.9831.
Source: www.thestar.com - John Goddard, Staff Reporter
(December 02, 2008) ADDIS ABABA–Toronto singer Kemer Yousef buried his head deep in his father's neck and smelled him again for the first time in 24 years.
After a long embrace, he crossed the room to likewise smother himself against his mother, emerging with a broad smile and a face wet with tears.
"I never thought this day would come," he said of the highlight so far in an emotional homecoming as one of Ethiopia's top pop stars, part of a week otherwise crammed with radio, television and magazine interviews.
Kemer (Yousef is his father's name) is living out an almost surreal immigrant dream: returning as a celebrity to a country he once fled in terror.
In 1984, at age 20, he walked for three days across a desert into Somalia, where he was tortured as a suspected spy and eventually released into a UN refugee camp.
Three years later he made it to Toronto, where he began a musical career singing to pockets of Ethiopian Oromo people in North America, Europe and Australia.
Last year, his seven-track music DVD Nabek scored a major hit throughout Ethiopia, crossing all ethnic and language lines, and igniting a clamour for his return.
"Even two, three months ago, it was nothing but Kemer," taxi driver Terefe Muluneh said last week while negotiating downtown traffic, the hit song "Nanawe" blasting from his cassette player. "In every café, people want his songs."
Demand has dropped slightly since, Muluneh said, but the singer's arrival one week ago seems to have rekindled the frenzy.
The latest covers of Rose, Royal and other celebrity magazines feature Kemer's beaming face. Interviews began running on the weekend in the national media. His songs and videos remain in rotation on radio and television, and singers at Club Habesha covered several of his songs the other night.
Some TV clips include three Toronto Caucasian dancers – Jennifer Dallas, Elisha MacMillan and Yaelle Wittes – trained in popular Oromo moves and travelling in Kemer's entourage.
Security is tight. Two government drivers and two armed guards accompany the group everywhere, an unexpected novelty for a singer accustomed to passing largely unrecognized through his home in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.
Some fans managing to contact the group have told how Kemer's music has changed their lives, including one woman, Eman Mohamed, who said listening to his songs has brought her remission from cancer.
"I'm going to surprise her and have Kemer visit," said tour co-organizer Aisha Abdulwahb.
Heightening the family-reunion drama Friday night, the power failed on the city's outskirts where Kemer's parents and other relatives are staying. They are visiting from the eastern city of Dire Dawa.
Kemer entered a candlelit front room and seemed instantly to recognize his father. He is thought to be 103. Kemer next headed straight for his mother, sitting next to an aunt and an elder sister, all three wearing the naqab robes of devout Muslim women.
Kemer's first homecoming concert is planned for Sunday. He headlines an invitation-only celebration for the country's annual Nations and Nationalities Day at Addis Ababa's 20,000-seat Millennium Hall.
Raptors Fire Coach Sam Mitchell
Source: www.thestar.com
- Doug Smith, Basketball
Reporter
(December
03, 2008) DENVER — Sam Mitchell is out as the head coach of the
Toronto Raptors.
Team president and general manager Bryan Colangelo fired the 45-year-old
Mitchell today, a day after a horrendous 132-93 loss to the Denver Nuggets
dropped Toronto to 8-9 on the season.
Jay Triano, one of Mitchell's assistants and the longest-serving member of the
coaching staff, takes over on an interim basis, becoming the first
Canadian-born head coach in NBA history.
Mitchell leaves with a career record of 156-189 and after winning the NBA's
coach of the year award in 2006-07. He also guided the Raptors to the only
Atlantic Division title in franchise history and consecutive playoff
appearances in the last two seasons.
However, the team has not made much progress this season towards becoming one
of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference, despite a roster Colangelo said
before the season was the most talented in his three-year tenure in Toronto.
The loss in Denver was shocking for the manner in which it occurred. After
winning two of their last three games and having what Mitchell called a great
practice the day before, the Raptors were listless and lifeless from the
opening tip. They were out-hustled and out-played in every facet of the game,
leaving veteran players to question not the coach but themselves.
"It's about us," point guard Jose Calderon said after the game.
But Colangelo obviously thought differently. The general manager was livid
after the game and cancelled plans to leave the team in the middle of the road
trip to remain here and travel to Salt Lake City for a game with the Utah Jazz
on Friday night.
Mitchell was in the second year of a four-year contract. He was to be paid
about $4 million this season and next with some guaranteed money on the final
year of the deal he signed after winning the coach of the year honours.
Triano, 50, is in his seventh season on the Raptors staff, having worked with Lenny
Wilkens, Kevin O'Neill and Mitchell.
The native of Niagara Falls is a former head coach of the Canadian national
men's team and has worked for the past two summers as an assistant coach and
consultant with the U.S. Olympic select team.
There was no immediate word on the fate of Alex English and Mike Evans, the
other assistants on the staff.
Mitchell became the sixth head coach in franchise history in 2004, taking over
from the fired Kevin O'Neill. After a 13-year NBA playing career, he was an
assistant for two seasons with the Milwaukee Bucks and was on the staff of the
expansion Charlotte Bobcats as an assistant when the Raptors gave him his first
head coaching job.
Mitchell becomes the third NBA coach to be fired already this season after
Oklahoma City fired P.J. Carlisemo and Washington axed Eddie Jordan last month.
::SCOOP::
Media Giant Ted Rogers Dies
Source: www.thestar.com - The Canadian Press
(December
02, 2008) Ted
Rogers, the founder of the communications empire that bears his
name, has died at his Toronto home at the age of 75.
The founder of Rogers Communications Inc. was admitted to hospital on Oct. 30
for treatment of an existing heart condition.
A statement from the company's board of directors says Rogers was surrounded by
loved ones when he died at his home.
Rogers, who has long been listed as one of Canada's wealthiest people, earlier
handed over his corporate duties to Rogers chairman Alan Horn.
The company owns the Toronto Blue Jays and their home the Rogers Centre, five
Citytv television stations across the country, as well as the Rogers cable,
wireless, radio and television businesses.
Tributes to Ted Rogers
His legacy will be one of connecting family, to friends and to information
through his telecommunications and publishing empire, and also through his
philanthropic work, like his recent $15 million contribution to Ryerson
University.
- Toronto Mayor David Miller
He did a lot of good for us and he will be missed.
- Premier Dalton McGuinty
Ted Rogers was one of the greatest entrepreneurs and builders our country has
ever seen. For us at CTVglobemedia, he was both a wonderful partner and very
tough competitor. But at all times, he was a gentleman and his word was his
bond.
– Ivan Fecan, CEO of CTVglobemedia.
He was a visionary, an entrepreneur and a nationalist. People are often
described as great Canadians. Ted Rogers represented the gold standard when it
comes to great Canadians.
– Ontario PC Leader and former Rogers executive John Tory.
Though Ted was relentless in business and building this company over the years,
he was also very much a family man. His impact on family, community and country
was as impressive as his business success.
– Phil Lind, Rogers vice-chairman.
::TRAVEL NEWS::
Affordable
Caribbean
Source: Movie Entertainment,
Melanie Reffes
(December 2008) When the
winter winds start to blow and the snow begins to fall, thoughts turn to a
vacation under the tropical sun. And with a little creativity after the
less-than-stellar year on Bay St., even the cash-strapped can head to the
sunfreckled beaches and gin-clear ocean without breaking the bank. So swap that
seaside villa for a hilltop hotel and you’ll discover travel on a shoestring is
the real deal.
The perennial favourite, Jamaica is easy to get to, with plenty of
flights from various cities. An all-inclusive hotel is the best bet because
tipping is not allowed and you can cavort at the swim-up bar without taking out
your credit card. Leading the pack in Montego Bay, Breezes fronts Doctor’s Cave
beach, famous for its healing waters, which might come in handy if you took a
bath in the stock market. With three restaurants and a rooftop Jacuzzi, $119
U.S. per night will warm your heart and your wallet. www.superclubs.com
“Hold this vial of sugar water
and the birds will come to you.” With that directive, Fritz Beckford welcomes
nature buffs who rise with the sun to watch birds in the wild. Close to MoBay,
Rockland Bird Sanctuary is an untouristy tourist attraction with no snack bar,
gift shop or website and an admission fee of just $8 U.S. Good eats don’t have
to stretch the budget, either. Scotchies is a no-frills bonanza where a dinner
for two of roasted breadfruit, frosty Red Stripe beer and chicken blackened in
fiery peppers will come in under $20.
Another favourite of the winter
weary and the penny pinched, Barbados beckons with beaches, bargains and a trio
of Almondall-inclusive resorts. The newest, Casuarina Beach, starts as low as
$300 U.S. per night, per room (not per person), which includes fine dining at a
choice of three restaurants, unlimited margaritas at four bars, state-of the-
art gym, tennis court, water activities and a Kids Club so the grown-ups can
spend a quiet afternoon on the beach. “With the current economic situation,
value is very important and the best value is an all inclusive,” says Wendy
Cole, vice-president of sales and marketing. “It is the only way to afford a
vacation without the guilt.” www.almondresorts.com
In Paynes’s Bay, blink and
you’ll miss it, which would be a shame, because Connie de Grill Master dishes
up fall- off-the-bone ribs at his roadside stall. When he’s not “de Grill
Master,” Connie is in the kitchen at the swishy Sandy Lane resort, where his
claim to fame, apart from his rib recipe, is the dinner he cooked for Tiger
Woods’s wedding.
Practically next door, Grenada
is all about spices, sugary sand and an azure sea. Facing Grand Anse Beach,
Jenny’s Place — www.jennysplacegrenada.com — is owned by Jenny Hosten,
Grenada’s first and only Miss World. With rates starting at $60 U.S. including
Wi-Fi, should the urge strike to check your stocks, you’ll have plenty of cash
for day-tripping, underwater exploring and a stop at the market for a sack of
fresh nutmeg that costs less than a bottle of beer.
And if it’s Friday, head to the
coastal village of Gouyave for the Fish Fry. Chefs grill and sauté marlin and
snapper till the wee hours and with the streets groovin’ with reggae and
calypso, this may be the best bargain under the starry skies.
Sun, sand and savings:
www.cheapcaribbean.com
www.cheapoair.com
www.visitjamaica.com
www.barbados.org
www.grenadagrenadines.com
Caribbean Provides
Value-Added Packages For The Winter 2008-09 Season
Source: Lou
Hammond & Associates
(December 3, 2008) NEW YORK – The Caribbean region (www.CaribbeanTravel.com) is offering
a variety of last-minute travel deals with value-added escape packages this
holiday and winter season. These market-mindful values are available throughout
2009 for travelers seeking a romantic getaway or a vacation with the family.
“These select hotel values along with the increasing number of new direct
flights to the region, make this 2009 winter season the perfect time to enjoy
the warm-weather beaches of the Caribbean,” said Hugh Riley, acting secretary
general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization. “Travelers who are reluctant to
forego their vacation considering the current economic climate, should take
advantage of these deals being offered throughout the holiday season and
beyond.”
In the coming months, offers in the Caribbean include:
ANTIGUA
The Verandah Resort & Spa and St. James’s Club & Villas,
two eco-friendly, upscale family resorts, grant parents’ vacation wishes with a
new holiday “Kids Stay, Play and Eat Free” program. This program allows up to
two children to stay and dine free per room when sharing the same
accommodations with their parents, with a maximum of two adults and two
children per room. Rates start at $635 based on double occupancy. All food,
beverages, room accommodations, activities, non-motorized water sports, taxes
and gratuities are included and air credit of $2,000 is available Dec. 23, 2008
– Jan. 3, 2009. The credit is available Dec. 21, 2008 – Jan. 6, 2009,
when booked by December 1, 2008. For more information or to book a reservation,
call 800-345-0356 or visit www.eliteislandvacations.com.
BERMUDA
Elbow Beach, Bermuda offers the “Suite Temptations” promotion now
through Mar. 31, 2009. The package includes a complimentary fourth night free
when booking a three-night stay with continental breakfast for two, VIP
services, a welcome amenity and a $50 voucher for an 80-minute spa treatment.
Reservations must be made by Dec. 31, 2008. For more information or to book a
reservation, call 800-223 7434 or visit www.mandarinoriental.com/bermuda.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Hilton Santo Domingo offers savings of up to 50 percent off on holiday
getaways. From Dec. 12, 2008 – Jan. 11, 2009, rates start at $110 per night,
based on single or double occupancy. Rates do not include 26 percent tax. For
more information or to book a reservation, visit www.hiltoncaribbean.com.
PUNTACANA Resort & Club is offering the “Winter Caribbean 3-Day Spa
Getaway” Dec. 12, 2008 – Apr. 12, 2009. The package includes deluxe
accommodations, fine dining each night at a choice of three of the resort’s
restaurants, VIP roundtrip transfers and a lunch at The Grill at the Club
House. Rates start at $240 per night. Guests who book will be treated to a
luxurious treatment at Six Senses Spa, one of the world's premiere spa
destinations. For more information or to book a reservation, visit www.puntacana.com.
GRENADA
Grenada True Blue Bay Resort & Villas is offering the “Surf and Turf
Adventure Package” Dec. 15, 2008 – Dec. 14, 2009. The package includes
seven-nights accommodations, continental breakfast buffet, River Tubing and
Sulfur Pond Tours and a Sea Fun Adventure Cruise. Rates start at $1,025 based on
double occupancy and $607 based on single supplement. For more information or
to book a reservation, visit www.truebluebay.com.
Maca Bana’s “Rejuvenate for 2009 Package” is available from Jan. 1 – 31,
2009 and includes a seven-night stay in a one-bedroom villa, airport transfers,
daily maid service and stocked welcome fridge. Rates start at $1,923 per person
inclusive of all taxes and service charge. For more information or to book a
reservation, visit www.macabana.com.
JAMAICA
Sandals Grande Ocho Rios is providing 60 percent off value rates for
guests traveling now through Dec. 26, 2009, starting at $152 per person per
night. Additionally, guests who book seven nights or more in a Great House
Premium room category or higher by Dec. 22, 2008 and travel by Dec. 26, 2009,
will also be rewarded with a $250 credit to the exclusive Red Lane Spa. For
more information or to book a reservation, call 800-SANDALS or visit www.sandals.com.
NEVIS
Nisbet Plantation Beach Club is offering guests a free night’s stay on
Christmas Day, a bottle of champagne and a massage when booking a seven night
getaway. For more information or to book a reservation, call 800-742-6008 or
visit www.nisbetplantation.com.
ST. KITTS
Golden Lemon Inn is offering the “All-Inclusive
Winter Special” from Dec. 16, 2008 – Apr. 15, 2009. The package includes the
choice of a spacious room in the romantic Great Hour or a one-or-two bedroom
Beach-side Villa with private plunge pool, full American breakfast served in
the Great Hour Pool-side Garden or Front Gallery, complimentary lunches,
gourmet dinners nightly, bar well drinks, airport transfers and a half-day
sightseeing tour. Rates start at $650 per couple based on double occupancy. For
more information or to book a reservation, call 869-465-7260 or visit www.goldenlemon.com.
ST. LUCIA
Windjammer Landing Villa Beach Resort is offering vacationers 50 percent
in “Sun Dollars” savings now through Apr. 19, 2009. Sun Dollars are valid for
exciting activities and amenities such as spa treatments at the resort’s
Serenity Spa; fine wine; a room upgrade; Zip Lining through the Rainforest and
horseback riding. This new increase gives travelers half back on their vacation
dollars in resort credit. Sun Dollars are not refundable or redeemable for
cash, and are credited to the guests’ bill upon check-in and are applied toward
resort purchases. For more information or to book a reservation,
call 800-345-0356 or visit www.windjammer-landing.com.
TURKS & CAICOS
Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort Villages & Spa invites the entire
family to take advantage of its exclusive “Beaches Resorts’ Family Reunion
Package” with a discounted rate of up to 55 percent off. The package includes a
private Caribbean cocktail reception, Caribbean-inspired family reunion
activities, a family portrait session courtesy of Beaches Resorts’ Snap Shots
studios, a complimentary 5 x 7 family photograph, private check-in for the
entire family, a special farewell cake and nightly group gourmet dining. For
more information or to book a reservation, visit www.beaches.com.
Seven Stars Resort is offering complimentary nights now through May 31,
2009. Guests who book a three or more night stay get one night complimentary.
Guests who book at least seven nights get two nights free. Guests also receive
a 20 percent resort discount on all food and beverage, spa treatments and
boutique purchases. Daily rates start at $485. No blackout periods apply,
including Christmas and New Year’s. The program is valid for all room
categories. Offers cannot be combined and are subject to availability. For more
information or to book a reservation, call 866-570-7777 or visit www.sevenstarsresort.com.
USVI
Bolongo Bay Beach Resort offers the “Holiday Celebrations Special”
featuring a savings of 20 percent off the resort’s European Plan (EP). The
package is available on all EP bookings of five nights from Dec. 15, 2008 –
Jan. 15, 2009. Nightly rates start at $96 per person per room, based on
double occupancy. Rates quoted do not include 15 percent tax, service charges
and $5 per day energy surcharge. For more information or to book a reservation,
call 800-524-4746 or visit www.bolongobay.com.
The Westin St. John Resort & Villas is offering value-driven deals
with its “Sunsational Savings” program now through Dec. 31, 2009. The program
offers a fifth night free to guests who book a four night stay, a sixth night
free plus a $150 resort credit to guests who book a five night stay or a
seventh night free plus a $200 resort credit for guests who book a six night
stay. Nightly rates start at $489. For more information or to book a
reservation, call 877-782-0149 and request rate code SUNFREE or visit www.westinresortstjohn.com.
Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa is offering the “Sweet Caribbean
Holiday Getaway” Dec. 24, 2008 – Jan. 1, 2009 with rates starting at $470 per
night. The package includes buffet breakfast daily, a gourmet marketplace lunch
option, dinner in one of the resort’s three restaurants, à la carte dining,
tropical drinks, nightly themed dinners with live calypso music, kayaking,
windsurfing and other non-motorized water sports. All-inclusive rates start at
$719 per night based on double occupancy. One child ages 3-12 per adult may
stay, eat and play at no additional charge and rates for children ages 13-17
are $95 per night. For more information or to book a reservation, call
877-999-3223 or visit www.wyndham.com.
The Caribbean Tourism Development
Company
The Caribbean Tourism Development Company (CTDC) is a marketing and business
development unit, owned equally by the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism
Association (CHTA) and the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). Its mission is
to own, promote, protect, advance and enhance the Caribbean brand. The
CTDC combines the resources of the Caribbean region’s destinations,
accommodations and service providers to create a viable, cohesive, business
unit that is able to identify commercial opportunities and allow the members of
CHTA and CTO to benefit collectively from those opportunities in ways that
individually they could not. In all its endeavours the company engages
only in activities that honour the Caribbean brand.
::MUSIC NEWS::
Radio One, Toronto's No. 1
Source: www.thestar.com
- Greg Quill, Entertainment Columnist
(November 28, 2008) For the first time in
radio ratings history, CBC Radio One (99.1 FM) ranks as the top station in the Toronto radio market,
according to the all-important fall 2008 audience survey, published yesterday
by BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) Canada.
Radio One increased its share of total hours tuned by Toronto area listeners
over the age of 12 by a full 1 percentage point, to 9.4 per cent, and enlarged
its reach (the number of local listeners who tuned in for at least 15 minutes
each week) by 53,700, to 696,100 over the same period in 2007.
The network's local morning show, Metro Morning with Andy Barrie,
continues to hold top place in its time slot with a 12.9 per cent share of
hours tuned.
"These results are hugely gratifying," said Denise Donlon, executive
director of CBC Radio. "We've held listeners right across the schedule, in
non-news programs."
The fall ratings "book," reflecting listening habits in September and
October, determines advertising rates charged by commercial radio stations for
the coming year.
Radio One bumped adult-contemporary music stations and perennial Toronto market
favourites, CTVglobemedia's CHUM-FM (104.5) and Rogers' CHFI-FM (98.1), into
second and third places respectively. CHUM-FM is down by 0.1 of a percentage
point over the previous fall book, to 8.8 per cent for hours tuned, despite an
increased reach, up almost 148,000 to 1.034 million. CHFI-FM's share fell by a
whopping 1.2 percentage points, to 8.4 per cent, with a diminished reach, now
745,200.
CBC Radio One broke multiple regional and national records in the survey,
including: an all-time high share of 11.1 per cent of total hours tuned
nationwide, up from 9.9 per cent a year ago, and an audience of 3,460,100, up
240,000.
The network has also grown its audience in both the under-50 and over-65
demographic groups in the past year. Radio One has an 8.6 per cent share of
hours tuned by listeners in the 35-49 demographic, up from a 7 per cent share a
year ago.
Other notable gains in the fall book were made by Corus Radio's classic rock
station Q107, which now ranks fourth in Toronto with a 7.3 share (up 1
percentage point) and a reach of 749,200 (up 90,000), and Rogers Media's 680
News, which ranks fifth, with a 5.4 share (also up a full point) and a reach of
1.062 million, up by 203,500.
680 News knocked long-time Top 5 champ NewsTalk 1010 (CFRB), now owned by
Astral Media, down to sixth place, with a 5.3 share and a local reach of
471,400.
Astral's other recent Toronto radio acquisition, the adult contemporary station
EZ Rock (97.3 FM), fell to ninth place, with a 4.7 share.
CBC Radio Two, which had just changed its format to contemporary Canadian music
after a loud row with its classical music fans, saw its share fall to 1.9 per
cent.
Swagger An Odd Addition At Legend's Concert
Source: www.thestar.com
- Ashante Infantry, Pop & Jazz Critic
(November 30, 2008) My favourite part of John Legend's Friday night concert was the encore.
At the behest of an imploring capacity crowd, the Ohio native emerged from the
wings of Roy Thomson Hall wearing a suit and sang "Ordinary People"
while accompanying himself on piano.
The Grammy-winning tune from the 29-year-old's 2004 debut Get Lifted is
his best song: a realistic narrative about the hard work of monogamy which
contains the lines "Though it's not a fantasy/ I still want you to
stay."
The words showcased his bona fides as a lyricist; his rich, beseeching voice
shone without the ten-piece band; and he displayed the leadership skills of the
erstwhile choir director turned record label boss that he is by guiding the
audience through the bridge with an authoritative "c'mon" when they
hesitated at the high notes.
That was followed by a rousing version of change anthem "If You're Out
There" which Legend performed at the Democratic National Convention. In
closing, he encouraged attendees to donate to his African charity, cementing
his reputation as an entertainer with a social conscience.
It was a classy finale to the meandering, 100-minute show which began with
black-and-white footage of Legend as tough guy taking on a phantom opponent in
a boxing ring. Then the singer, clad in black leather jacket, tight grey
leather pants, white T-shirt, fingerless gloves and sunglasses, emerged from
the rear of the theatre, walked through the audience to the stage and posed
with an index finger in the air to sing the first tune "Used To Love
U."
It's the kind of swaggering entrance that would bring fans of Jay-Z or T.I. to
their feet; this audience cheered his arrival, but seemed perplexed by
gospel-rooted Legend's gangsta pose.
There was so much posturing at times, I expected him to do the Michael Jackson
crotch grab and tunnel scream. Thankfully, the grinding was subdued when Legend
brought a female fan onstage for "Slow Dance," though he did fall to
one knee, putting his face awfully close to her nether region.
Legend is best when seated at the piano, band at the minimum, with simple
lighting and no distractions, when intensity is wrought by emotion rather than
volume. He's a masterful musician – highlighted by the improvised piano-vocal
transition from the ballad "So High" to club jam "Green Light"
– with plenty of Stevie Wonder years ahead of him, so I guess an Usher phase is
allowed.
Looking like Sam Cooke in skinny pants and V-neck sweater and sounding like
'60s era Motown, opening act Rafael Saadiq delivered a surprisingly fierce set from his current retro disc The
Way I See It.
Nagata Is Fit To Be A Taiko
Drummer
Source: www.thestar.com - John Terauds, Classical Music Critic
(November 28, 2008) Most musicians don't have to live like a cross between a
monk and a marathon runner on a remote island to perfect their craft.
Unless they practice taiko, the art of Japanese drumming. Toronto native Kiyoshi Nagata, at 38, is one of the masters of a musical art form that
was dragged out of the tradition-bound confines of court music and Shinto
religious ritual into public performance in the 1950s.
His take on the current state of the art is on display Saturday night at the
Ryerson Theatre, in celebration of a new album as well as the 10th-anniversary
of his group, Nagata Shachu (Japanese for Nagata Ensemble).
The concert features various sizes and types of daiko (drums) being played on
stage, alongside traditional Japanese melodic instruments such as the shinobue
(bamboo flute) and shamisen (three-stringed lute), plus vocals.
"Taiko is such a visual art form. There's choreography. There's big
movements. To listen to it live, you can feel the vibrations, it's very
loud," says Nagata before one of two community classes he teaches every
Monday at the Royal Conservatory of Music.
He also teaches at the University of Toronto, where he has 18 first-year and
eight second-year students. In everything he does with taiko, Nagata tries to
balance past, present and future. He explains that creativity comes from
respecting tradition and working within it.
"I think there is still lots to be said within that framework," says
Nagata. "It's like a haiku poem, where you are limited to a certain number
of syllables, but the possibilities are endless."
Nagata Shachu's new album, Tsuzure
(Tapestry),
reflects the breadth of expression possible on the combination of drums and
melodic instruments. It is a richly layered 11-track offering, parts of which
get a live performance on Saturday.
In the traditional Japanese costume the group uses in performance, Nagata
hardly looks like a second-generation Canadian who grew up in Richmond Hill and
went to University of Toronto to study economics and political science.
He was 11 when he was bitten by the taiko bug after seeing a live performance
at the long-defunct Caravan festival. By age 16 he was leading a taiko group at
the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.
In university, he decided to make taiko his life. "In 1992, I moved to
Japan and lived there for two years. My ultimate goal was to study with the
Kodo Drummers," Nagata says.
That group was founded by Oguchi Daihachi, a jazz drummer who fell in love with
the possibilities of taiko after World War II. Nagata was profoundly influenced
by Daihachi, who was killed in a roadway accident in July.
Nagata signed up for a two-year apprenticeship with the Kodo Drummers on the
Japanese island of Sado.
"I lived with five other apprentices, all of them were from Japan. We
lived communally in an old, drafty schoolhouse," Nagata relates. They had
to wake up every morning at 4:30 and run for 10 kilometres.
"You practice literally from 8 o'clock in the morning to around 6 o'clock
at night and then you have your own individual practices in the evening, six
days a week for the year. It's pretty intense. It's like boot camp," he
adds.
"Their rules were no smoking, no drinking, no girlfriends." Nagata
laughs.
"The acceptance letter said I had to bring my own clothes, my own futon
and a planer."
The last item was a mystery, until he discovered he would need it to make his
own drumsticks. The daily running – something Nagata has kept up – is good
preparation for the sheer physical and mental concentration required of taiko.
"I can't think of any other musical art form that is as much of a physical
workout or that uses as much arm movement," says the Toronto master.
Just the facts
WHAT: Nagata
Shachu
WHERE: Ryerson
Theatre, 43 Gerrard St. E.
WHEN: Saturday
@ 8 p.m.
TICKETS: $20-$30
@ 416-978-8849 or www.uofttix.ca
Source: www.thestar.com - Nick Aveling, Staff Reporter
(November 30, 2008) The chances of making it big in Toronto's famously cynical hip-hop scene are about the same as being struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket at a Notorious B.I.G. concert.
So when Marco Bruno, the 28-year-old Toronto-bred producer known as Marco Polo, set his mind to making beats for some of the most legendary names in hip-hop, he skipped town. Fast.
"Right now, unfortunately, (Toronto) still has that title of being the Screwface Capital – and it's wack, but it's the truth," said Marco, who graduated from the Harris Institute for the Arts' engineering program in 2002. "To be honest that's part of the reason why I left. I didn't feel that support from other artists. It's so hard to make it in Toronto because nobody wants to work together. Every opportunity they get to blow up or make money, they don't want to share that. There's no movement."
Marco settled in New York City, the Mecca of hip-hop, and promptly got down to the business of fetching coffee and answering phones for no pay at Manhattan's Cutting Room Studio. But after studio sessions with Talib Kweli, Mos Def, De La Soul and pre-fame Kanye West, it wasn't long before word spread throughout the underground hip-hop community that some kid from Toronto was producing "dope beats."
"I just knew I had to keep working hard on those beats and perfecting my craft until the word got around," said Marco.
In 2007 his debut album Port Authority hit the streets. Not a keyboard was harmed during the making of the album – which features a litany of rappers over-top beats produced exclusively by Marco – because not a keyboard was used. Instead, the album was entirely sample-based – a production technique scarcely heard on the radio in the last decade.
Staying true to the early- to mid-'90s boom-bap aesthetic – "boom-bap" being an onomatopoeic nod to the ferocity of the kick and snare drums – the album was unapologetically rooted in New York's Golden Era. And so were its featured rappers, many of whose careers peaked, at least commercially, during that time.
But to anyone who had been listening to hip-hop for as long as Marco, Port Authority's line-up read like a hall of fame ballot: O.C., Masta Ace, Buckshot and Kool G Rap, your favourite rapper's favourite rappers, all made appearances. The album's lead single, "Nostalgia," seemed to say it all.
"I'm not blind to how things are going," said Marco. "A lot of these rappers I grew up listening to are not at the forefront as they once were, but that's just where I came from and that's what I always wanted to do. I don't even look at it as a style of hip-hop. I just make the beats that I want to make."
Marco will be back in Toronto this Thursday, remaking the beats he wants to make live on stage at the Beat Lounge II production showcase.
"It focuses on local Toronto producers and showcases their material. They called me up to be the feature producer. I'm going to be doing a 45-minute set with DJ Linx. I'm going to load beats up on my MPC, and he's going to play songs that I've produced, and we're going to go back and forth," he said.
And while he's there, he might just find some local talent for his next album.
"(Toronto has) so many dope artists that make good music, but the examples that get heard are not the best," said Marco. "We have diverse talent."
Marco Polo performs at Beat Lounge II at the Silver Dollar Room (486 Spadina Ave.) on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 at Rotate This, Soundscapes
Sarah Brightman: Goddess Of Chaste
Source: www.thestar.com
- John Terauds, Music Critic
(November 30, 2008) With her little-girl
voice and elaborate frou-frou dresses, Sarah Brightman comes across as musical Ritalin for attention-challenged listeners.
Is this because the British artist can't let go of the child inside – or is she
a shrewd judge of her times?
Like Madonna, Jay Chou, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra – and most other recent
and upcoming multimedia spectacles to blow audience ears and minds at the Air
Canada Centre – Brightman sells millions of albums, inspires hundreds of fan
sites, and soothes many a troubled breast.
As is the case with her frequent singing companion Andrea Bocelli, either you
love the singing or you loathe it, and there's no changing anybody's opinion
about that. So let's not even dare question the music itself.
But Brightman is about so much more than music. Our collective love of
big-scale entertainment consistently trumps highbrow quality standards, and is
as old as our great civilizations.
The ruins of old cultures are dotted with giant temples and yawning
amphitheatres. French king Louis XIV's theatre at Versailles could literally
move heaven and earth with its mind-blowing backstage mechanics. Surely
Mozart's Vienna would have loved André Rieu's reproduction Schönbrunn Palace as
much as Torontonians did last winter.
With her high-tech Symphony tour in full sail across North America – landing at
the Air Canada Centre tonight – Brightman sits near the top of the pop-star
pantheon for over-the-top visual theatrics.
These days, only Madonna seems to play a stronger hand. Which leads to an
interesting comparison: In the post-feminist world, both performers portray
themselves as goddesses – very, very different kinds of goddesses.
For her Sticky & Sweet tour, Madonna appeared in a cloud, astride a throne,
black-booted leg provocatively swung over the giant chair's right arm.
Brightman loves nothing more than to fly atop her stage, released from the
mortal bounds of gravity like a guardian angel.
Madonna is our Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love who married the
unattractive Hephaestus and went on to become associated with adulterous love.
The Romans called her Venus – different name, but as naughty as ever.
Brightman is Artemis (Diana, to the Romans), the goddess of hunting who
represented light and chastity as she swanned about the bucolic mountains of
Arcadia.
On stage, these women are locked in a pseudo-immortality arrested somewhere in
teenagehood – Madge smoking covertly with the other bad grrls at recess, Sarah
rehearsing the role of Mary for the Christmas pageant.
It's probably pushing the parallels too far to show how both women are roughly
the same age and astrological sign (Madonna, born Aug. 16, 1958; Brightman,
born Aug. 14, 1960) and that they began their performing careers as dancers.
Voice and acting came later.
Madonna has sold somewhere north of 60 million albums. Brightman has flogged
about 15 million of her own, not counting earlier successes in Andrew Lloyd
Webber musical mega hits such as Phantom of the Opera.
A live performance by Madonna & Co. is like a drug-fuelled party. The
Sticky & Sweet tour concert at the Air Canada Centre was a bombardment of
images and sound.
The Brightman experience is more like a long, pleasant daydream.
They know how to pick collaborators: Madonna used Eric Jao, a.k.a. DJ Enferno,
to juice up the crowd. The more sedate Brightman has invited Greek pop-opera
tenor Mario Frangoulis to begin stirring the emotional pot tonight.
And full control of the creative process is paramount.
"I do all of it," says a surprisingly relaxed and affable-sounding
Brightman, on the phone from Ottawa this week. "I've never made a big deal
of it, because it's something I've done from the very beginning. It's my
pleasure to put it together. I have so much experience doing what I do that I
could work on other people's shows." She admits to considering theatrical
production as her next career move.
Besides two new albums (Symphony and its Christmas-themed companion, Winter
Symphony), Brightman's tour is pushing stage technology up a notch.
A South Africa-developed 3-D projection system sets Brightman afloat in a
variety of elaborate visual atmospheres. "It's like a breath of fresh
air," she says of the technology that wasn't available four years ago for
her Harem tour.
For Brightman, "the spectacle runs alongside the music." She is proud
that "the whole visual side has become stronger as I get older."
Symphony takes her audience on a series of voyages. "My career has lasted
about 30 years now. It's been this amazing journey," Brightman says.
"I picked feelings and understandings of visual things to create a series
of journeys."
She describes a Dorothy-in-Oz sequence, a gothic Phantom of the Opera-inspired
section, even an Alice in Wonderland fantasy. (There's that little-girl
thing again.)
The subject of goddesses doesn't come up. But when she is asked who she sings
to in a packed stadium, she replies: "I always sing the song for somebody
– it's one person, yet many people."
Isn't that the way all goddesses make us feel special?
Eldredge
Jackson's 'Pleasure' Principles
Source: www.eurweb.com -
(December 01, 2008) *Jazz saxophonist Eldredge
Jackson has released his highly anticipated disc, “Listening
Pleasure," and is making a name for himself with the help of some great
names of the genre.
The CD boasts the “fresh, explosive energy” that the artist is bringing to
contemporary jazz, laced over the production of legendary bassist Wayman
Tisdale and producer Preston Glass.
“It came about from the place that any musician who looks to put a CD out or
something that comes from within,” Jackson said of the inspiration for the
disc. “And having this gift of music that has been given to me as a child, it’s
been a long-awaited dream of mine to have a CD and to be able to finally
produce a CD (with) Wayman Tisdale. When we got started on it, he was not only
the first person; he was the only person – with his knowledge of the industry –
to work with me on this. We collaborated on about nine or ten of the songs on
the project.”
Jackson also recruited Preston Glass for the project. Glass is a renowned
songwriter and producer who’s worked with the likes of Whitney Houston, Aretha
Franklin, George Benson, Kirk Whalum, and Earth, Wind & Fire just to name a
few.
“He produced the (Lionel Richie) ‘Hello’ track and the Michael Jackson ‘Rock
With You’ remix track (on the CD). I was deeply honoured to have him be a part
of this as well,” Jackson said.
The artist explained that he thought of redoing Richie’s 1984 hit “Hello” while
he was driving and listening to the radio in his car.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this song was awesome back when it originally came out. This
may not be a bad song to see if we can put the sax to it and see what we can
come up with.’ So when we got in the studio and started playing around with it
we thought, ‘We’ve got to do this.’”
Jackson added that that was the pretty much the same process
in doing the 1979 Michael Jackson hit “Rock With You.”
“Michael Jackson – another great inspiration to the music industry,” he said.
“So I thought ‘Let’s see how this would sound if we slowed it down and put a
little groove to it and see what we come up with.’ We tested it out and the
vibe that we received from playing it, we thought maybe this is something we
can cover and add that flavour to, as they say.”
Jackson told EUR’s Lee Bailey that most of the album was recorded at Tisdale’s
studio, The Basement Studios, so he had the opportunity to work with the former
NBA forward in writing, composing, and directly in producing the album and
selecting music, like his track “I Like That.”
“I got a call about 11:00 one night and it was Wayman and he said he had a song
I had to listen to,” Jackson said. “I went over to his place, he started
playing it and I started saying, ‘I like that. I like that.’ And he said,
‘Well, that’s what we’ll call it.’ So that’s how it came about. I added the
melody to it and there you have it.”
“One thing about Wayman that I really appreciate is [that he gives] me the
space to be creative and make sure that my creativity was in the forefront and
being able to express the music that I have and that goes from the likes of the
title track, ‘Listening Pleasure,’” he said. “That was a song that I wrote
many, many years ago and had a chance to let Wayman listen to it. When he first
heard it, he loved it, and he immediately said, ‘This is your style and your
sound; this is one out of your heart.’”
For your “Listening Pleasure,” check out Eldredge Jackson’s sound at www.eldredgejackson.com.
“The response that we receive when we’re playing the songs is overwhelming, so
I am very pleased with how the project turned out.”
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Michael Posner
(December 01, 2008) It has been an annus horribilis for Canadian pop band Barenaked Ladies, but things look like they might be starting to turn around.
In July, co-founder and lead singer Steven Page was arrested in New York State and charged with a felony, possession of a controlled substance (cocaine). The charges were later reduced to misdemeanours, and adjourned until April, at which time it's expected they will be dropped.
A month after Page's arrest, BNL co-founder Ed Robertson's Cessna 206 float plane crashed near Baptiste Lake, north of Bancroft, Ont. Miraculously, he and his wife and two friends walked away without a scratch.
Now, interpreting these events as a kind of wake-up call, the 20-year-old band that has sold 12 million records and become a household name is starting to put itself back on its professional legs.
The events of the past several months “have brought us closer together,” drummer Tyler Stewart said on Friday, as the band took a break from their latest project: recording a cover of the former Hockey Night in Canada theme song. “Any time one member of the group has a problem, we tend to rally. And I think that person becomes a better person because of it.
“I watched [keyboardist] Kevin Hearn, after he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1998, become an ambassador. He handled that incredibly gracefully. And Steven has also handled this quite gracefully and is working hard to improve himself, and get to some of the underlying issues that lead to things like that. I've seen him really improve as a human being over the last six months. He's working hard on himself. It's the whole rock-bottom thing or not even rock-bottom – just something that slaps you awake.”
Later this month, they'll have four concerts at Toronto's Massey Hall, including two matinees based on their best-selling children's album Snacktime, two more at Ottawa's National Arts Centre, and a New Year's Eve show at Detroit's Fox Theatre. In February, they'll embark on their third annual four-day Ships and Dip Caribbean cruise cum musical festival, with Sloan, The Weakerthans and Great Big Sea (among several other bands) and some members of the Kids in the Hall comedy troupe.
And next April, after writing and recording some new songs, the band will begin a 20th anniversary North American tour.
After Page's arrest and Robertson's plane crash, Stewart says he had friends calling to say, “ ‘Don't leave your back yard.' But I think there's an opportunity to rise out of it. We've been through 20 years together, a miracle to begin with, and we've had a lot of trials and tribulations. A lot of things you wished had never happened. But it's the old adage, ‘What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.' I kind of believe that these days.”
Despite their two decades together, says Stewart, “in some ways, it sort of feels like it's back to square one. We feel our best work is still ahead of us. … This whole thing has made us realize that when we're out doing what we were put on the Earth to do, make music and make people happy, we're doing the right thing. So we need to do our thing. Sometimes you don't know what that is until somebody almost takes it away from you.”
The 45-second BNL cover of the iconic hockey anthem has a banjo-driven bluegrass sound and will include a brief vocal. Sports channel TSN is inviting other famous Canadian bands to rerecord the song for later use on TSN and RDS hockey broadcasts. The band Simple Plan was the first to participate.
“The song is so memorable,” says Stewart, a major hockey fan. “Too bad for the CBC, but finally the artist [composer Dolores Claman] got [her] due and wasn't screwed out of the money [she] should be getting. It's iconic because of the repetition, yes, but also because the music is incredibly good. … And she wrote an incredible percussion part.”
The Barenaked Ladies' version of the tune will debut this month.
Cross-Country
Concerts Mark World AIDS Day
Source: www.globeandmail.com - James Bradshaw
(November 27, 2008) A trio of free
concerts will grace stages in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto this weekend,
forming the first national event to mark World
AIDS Day.
The events, dubbed Voices of Hope, mark the 20th anniversary of the
international awareness day on Dec. 1.
Jazz diva Molly Johnson will host the Toronto event on Monday, while Friday
night CBC Radio broadcaster Kelly Rice and writer-broadcaster Bill Richardson
will lead the Montreal and Vancouver concerts respectively.
The three organizers – the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation (Vancouver), Casey House
(Toronto) and La Maison du Parc (Montreal) – have enlisted performers including
the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Conservatory Academy Orchestra, the
Metropolitan Silver Band and the Toronto Men's Chorus.
The Toronto event will also feature a 54-bell carillon concert by candlelight.
Hosted in local churches, the repertoire will include works by Bach, Handel,
Mozart and Vivaldi.
Organizers hope to promote awareness of some alarming recent trends in the
spread of HIV/AIDS. The number of Canadian cases is rising, particularly in
Ontario where infection rates have equalled those of the epidemic's peak in
1984. And cases of AIDS among adults aged 15 to 29 are increasing.
The concerts are also meant to help break the stigma that still surrounds the
disease while honouring those whose lives it has taken.
“There's so much you can possibly do, but it's never enough,” said Toronto
performer Eugene (Dr.) Draw, an electric violinist and veteran of AIDS benefits
whose father ran the first AIDS clinic in Soviet Russia in the late 1980s.
Draw believes firmly in the arts as a way of raising funds and dispelling
misconceptions about the disease, another conviction he inherited from his
father, who started a theatre and dance company as part of his clinic work “to
cut down the alienation” of people with AIDS.
Casey House chief executive officer Stephanie Karapita said she hopes this
year's model will spread to become a countrywide event.
Broadway's
Best Kept Secret: Chester Gregory
Source: J'ai St. Laurent-Smyth, Inque Public Relations, inquepr@comcast.net, inquepr@gmail.com
(December 03, 2008) *Chester Gregory is currently acclaimed as one of the most dynamic
musical theatre presences in the entertainment business - a young black man in
possession of a powerful five octave voice that has elicited high praise from
the late Isaac Hayes, a standing ovation from Michael Jackson and inspired Phil
Collins to compose a Broadway song custom made for what his God-given
instrument can do.
Now - after several years of blowing audiences away playing the lead in the
biographical musical The Jackie Wilson Story, key roles in Hairspray, Tarzan
and Cry Baby, and he originated the "Donkey" role for Dreamworks'
Shrek on Broadway - Chester Gregory reveals to the R&B/Soul world the
regular guy behind all of those dazzling characters...the man in the mirror he
faces everyday.
With his sincerely soulful and introspective debut CD In Search of High Love,
Chester Gregory introduces himself as a thoughtful and sensitive songwriter
blessed with a voice that captivates and demands attention. Each song is either
a true to life tale spun from a life spent in heavy pursuit of love (and the
lessons that brings) or an old school soul classic that will warm hearts within
a whole new generation.
"The best way to describe my album In Search of High Love is a soulful
journey of self-discovery through the ups and downs of love, ultimately
resulting in self realization" Chester shares. "The path of learning
to love yourself and love God before you can love someone else. While I've
thoroughly enjoyed performing on Broadway - eight shows a week of telling other
people's amazing stories - I have a personal one I'd like to express. I hope
people enjoy this music and can get into the overall message I'm trying to
share."
From the sunny, feel-good soul of "On and On" to the quiet fire of
the power piano ballad "Questions" (with hooks that the man
telegraphs straight to your heart with spine-tingling passion), Chester Gregory
steps up as a man unafraid to lay his emotions on the line. As prepared by
producers Grammy-winner Dave Tozer (John Legend), PJ Morton (India.Arie) and
David Liang (Carl Thomas), as well as peers Afta-1, Nevi-Nev and J. Most,
Chester's roof raising stage voice is massaged into musical settings that will
melt R&B lovers' hearts.
Highlights of Chester's CD include the poetically perplexing "Clouds to
the Ground" (an interlude that likens the sensual attraction of a
mysterious woman to the gravitational pull of the earth's atmosphere), a
digital lounge take on the doo wop gem "I Only Have Eyes For You"
(graced with the mesmerizing harmonized layering of Chester's elastic voice)
and the crossover-bound "Say it's Over" (featuring sexy guest rapper
Farrah Burns and a sample from Kenny Loggins' "This is It" that was
also recently used by Kirk Franklin - proving creative minds think alike).
There's also the spacey, four-on-the-floor club pump of Jackie Wilson's soaring
1967 chart-topper "Higher and Higher," balanced nicely by the
completely contemporary "High Love" - a heavy backbeat ballad laced
with bluesy guitar changes and Chester's smoothed out voice delivering some
seriously mackalicious likes. "I don't wanna roll trees / The only thing I
wanna smoke is you / It sounds insane / You're pumpin' through my veins / And I
love this feeling / I get weak / You knock me off my feet / You make me feel
so...oooohhhhh" (the last line punctuated with a euphoric falsetto flight
that does the master Lenny Williams proud). "Most of my songs come out of
me 'having a moment" Chester says elusively.
Gary, Indiana-native Chester Gregory grew up admiring all around entertainers
ranging from King of Pop Michael Jackson to triple threat icons Sammy Davis,
Jr. and Gregory Hines. Years of dedicated vocal training (surprisingly not in
the church) led to a bachelors Degree in Musical Theatre at Columbia College in
Chicago.
Now, alongside the successful cast of characters he continues to inhabit in the
footlights, Chester Gregory (a.k.a. Chess Gregory) peels back another layer to
show the world what he is truly made of with his accomplished and inspired
debut CD In Search of High Love. Chester concludes. "My album is a musical
expression of healing thru the discovery of love…"
In Search of High Love in stores February 24, 2009 on CD.
www.ChesterGregory.com
Neil Diamond Shines Bright At ACC Show
Source: www.thestar.com
- Ben Rayner, Pop
Music Critic
(December
03, 2008) Neil
Diamond looks pretty spry for a 67-year-old, but he's obviously
getting on enough in years that he feels he should be looking out for the
health of his audience.
Don't get me wrong: the 20,000 greying super-fans who took in Diamond's thoroughly
enjoyable gig at the Air Canada Centre last night – there's another show for
another 20,000 greying super-fans this evening – came to party. That was a
pretty major love-in, right there. If he'd reprised the chorus to "Sweet
Caroline" just one more time, Forest Hill grandmothers would have been
taking chunks out of the seats in front of them with their teeth.
When your crowd is largely closing in on retirement age (or past it
altogether), you've got to be cognizant of the fact that many people in the
stands perhaps don't get out to shows as much as they once did. Thus, the ACC
was courteously treated to two separate pre-show recordings over the P.A. last
night warning patrons to take their seats quickly because the show was about to
start and "the lights will dim abruptly." Wouldn't want a scene of
mass panic and blind stampedes with screams of terror ("Oh my god,
it's a blackout!!!") echoing 'round the bowl.
Still, what the room might have lacked in concert-going savvy, it more than
made up for in contagious exuberance. This might have been mainly a sit-down,
Vegas-y kind of show, but at the slightest suggestion from Diamond that it was
time to get up and dance – for more rollicking (if slightly less rollicking
than they might have been 30 years ago) standards like "Cherry
Cherry" or "Kentucky Woman" or "Forever in Blue
Jeans," for instance – that place was on fire. Even the three schoolmarms
at the end of my row, who could barely be bothered to move aside when I got up
for beer or bathroom, were on their feet, swaying and clapping like proper tent
revivalists, by the expected big finale, "Brother Love's Traveling
Salvation Show."
And why not? Diamond was the consummate "smoothie" entertainer for
the duration of his two-hour show, hitting all the expected marks – surefire
singalong moments like "Solitary Man" and "Cracklin'
Rosie," along with the bottomless well of baritone ballads ("Love on
the Rocks," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Play Me")
that had 60-year-old women erupting in girlish screams all night long – and a
few less omnipresent oldies such as "Beautiful Noise" and the Hot
August Night opener "Crunchy Granola Suite" that no doubt went
down well with the diehards.
Material from 2005's 12 Songs and this year's Home Before Dark –
Diamond's two recent, acclaimed records with super-producer Rick Rubin – wasn't
overlooked, either, with the ruminative, autumn-years balladry of "Home
Before Dark" and "Hell Yeah" standing strong against some of his
best material.
The songs aren't quite as rustic and stripped-down as Diamond thinks they are,
being conducted as they are with the aid of the same 14-piece band he uses for
"I Am, I Said," but the chap obviously believes strongly in where
he's at right now as a songwriter. He's heading back into the studio with Rubin
to record another disc when the tour winds down in January, in fact, so he's
probably less interested in standing still musically than his audience might
like him to be. He's pretty good to that audience, though, I gotta say, and I
get why it dotes on him so much.
Singing Comes Second For Trio Of Priests
Source: www.thestar.com
- John Terauds, Classical
Music Critic
(December
03, 2008) There isn't much going on at Queen and Parliament Sts. on Monday nights.
But inside the looming St. Paul's Basilica this week, it was standing room only
for a concert by three Irish priests who have made an unimaginable journey from
rural parishes in Northern Ireland to the world stage.
Fathers Eugene O'Hagan, his younger brother Martin and David Delargy were
struck by proverbial lightning last spring, when they were offered a recording
contract by Epic, a division of Sony/BMG.
The album, called The Priests, is a mix of traditional and
contemporary sacred music. It has already topped the classical charts in
Ireland and, if Monday night's reception in Toronto is any indication, will do
very well here, too.
You're forgiven for rolling your eyes heavenward at the thought of three
40-something men singing the likes of "Panis Angelicus," "Ave
Maria" and "O Holy Night." But, lo and behold, this is good
singing – the O'Hagan brothers are classic Irish tenors, Delargy a rich
baritone.
The new arrangements of the disc's 14 tracks are free of any sticky sweetness.
The orchestral accompaniment is tasteful. The choir backup – recorded at the
Vatican – is balanced (as it was Monday night with young singers from St.
Michael's Choir School).
After a whirlwind visit to Washington and New York this week, the trio will be
back in their parishes in the diocese of Down and Connor to lead masses on the
weekend.
They are probably the only recording artists who have a clause in their
contract that says their day jobs come first.
Ideally, they won't be away from their Christian flocks more than three days at
a time, Martin O'Hagan said in an interview with the Toronto Star yesterday.
O'Hagan looks like he just walked out of a Hollywood casting call for Irish
priests: all wavy salt-and-pepper hair, bright blue eyes, a ready smile and
engaging burr.
But he is the real deal, a Christian minister who happens to have a lifelong
love of singing.
The O'Hagans and Delargy met in high school and have been singing together
since 1974, he said.
"We've always had to spin the plates to make sure we maintain the balance
between music and the priesthood as well."
His rural parish, "right down by the sea," has about 720 people.
"Music is something that has kept us sane amid all the other pressures we
have to face," the priest said with a laugh.
He has sung Messiah umpteen times with local choral societies,
especially at this time of year. The annual performances of Handel's great
oratorio help "get people into the Christmas spirit," he said.
In Northern Ireland, goodwill toward one's fellow man was often difficult to
find during Ulster's protracted bouts of terrorism.
"Music, in that context, was so uplifting, so healing, so
enlightening," O'Hagan said. "It helped us journey through the
difficulties. Also, in the Troubles, it helped us build bridges and reach
across divides. Music helped us overcome any sense of us and them, and helped
us celebrate things that we have in common."
This open, inclusive attitude is what gives the Priests a genuineness missing
in a world overflowing with manufactured pop acts.
Folk Music Legend Odetta Dies
Source: www.thestar.com
- Polly Anderson, The
Associated Press
(December
03, 2008) NEW YORK–Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful
voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century,
has died. She was 77.
Odetta died Tuesday night, said her manager, Doug Yeager.
With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life
to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and
washerwomen, blacks and whites.
First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob
Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.
An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine
themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a
weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.
"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which
she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the
emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with
a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.
"She is a keening Irishwoman in 'Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in 'Take
This Hammer,' a deserted lover in 'Lass from the Low Country,'" Time
wrote.
Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the
American Negro" and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang
at the March on Washington in August 1963, 'Odetta's great, full-throated voice
carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times wrote.
She was nominated for a 1963 Grammy awards for best folk recording for Odetta
Sings Folk Songs. Two more Grammy nominations came in recent years, for her
1999 Blues Everywhere I Go and her 2005 album Gonna Let It Shine.
In 1999, she was honoured with a National Medal of the Arts. Then-President
Clinton said her career showed "us all that songs have the power to change
the heart and change the world.''
"I'm not a real folksinger," she told the Washington Post in
1983. "I don't mind people calling me that, but I'm a musical historian.
I'm a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I've been
fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my
propagandizing.''
Among her notable early works were her 1956 album Odetta Sings Ballads and
Blues, which included such songs as "Muleskinner Blues" and
"Jack O' Diamonds''; and her 1957 At the Gate of Horn, which
featured the popular spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.''
Her 1965 album Odetta Sings Dylan included such standards as ``Don't
Think Twice, It's All Right,'' "Masters of War" and "The Times
They Are A-Changin'.''
In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me
on to folk singing was Odetta." He said found "just something vital
and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a
teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar
and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said.
Belafonte also cited her as a key influence on his hugely successful recording
career, and she was a guest singer on his 1960 album, "Belafonte Returns
to Carnegie Hall.''
She continued to record in recent years; her 2001 album Looking for a Home
(Thanks to Leadbelly) paid tribute to the great blues singer to whom she
was sometimes compared.
Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930, she moved with her family to
Los Angeles at age 6. Her father had died when she was young and she took her
stepfather's last name, Felious. Hearing her in glee club, a junior high
teacher made sure she got music lessons, but Odetta became interested in folk
music in her late teens and turned away from classical studies.
She got much of her early experience at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles,
where she sang and played occasional stage roles in the early 1950s.
"What power of characterization and projection of mood are hers, even
though plainly clad and sitting or standing in half light!" a Los Angeles
Times critic wrote in 1955.
Over the years, she picked up occasional acting roles in TV and film. None
other than famed Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported in 1961 that she
"comes through beautifully" in the film Sanctuary.
In the Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed
music and dance because of fear, "fear of God, fear that the sun would not
come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease
something. ... The world hasn't improved, and so there's always something to
sing about.''
Interview: Behind Judy Collins' Blue Eyes
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian, Entertainment
Reporter
(December
03, 2008) Judy
Collins looks at you and her eyes are still as azure as they were
when Stephen Stills immortalized them in song 40 years ago.
Yes, "Judy Blue Eyes" is in Toronto, finishing a two-night gig at
Hugh's Room tonight. Yesterday, she performed an hour-long live concert
broadcast on Classical 96.3 FM and AM 740.
The lady still knows how to enthral an audience, with a voice that sounds like
lace-making set to music, and nowhere was that more evident than in her
rendition of "Send in the Clowns." She performed with eyes tightly
shut until the final line when she opened them in all their aqua splendour to
sing, "Well, maybe next year."
After the concert ended, the autographs were signed and the guests had gone,
she unwound on a sofa in one of the offices and talked about why she sang it
that way.
"I'm meditating. I often do that when I perform. It puts you in a
different place where you're free to let your feelings flow."
And that's something she's been doing for 50 years now, both as a singer and a
songwriter.
Many of her compositions seem to be autobiographical at first glance, but a
closer examination reveals they're more likely to resemble the title of her
1973 album, True Stories and Other Dreams.
Most Collins fans know her hauntingly lyrical song "My Father" and
assume it must be an accurate portrait of the man who "always promised us
that we would live in France" while "we lived in Ohio then, he worked
in the mine."
"With writing you have to realize you must have poetic licence,"
Collins admits.
The original promised destination of the song was Spain, but "I couldn't
find any rhymes except plain and rain, which weren't very exciting," she says.
In defence of her alterations to reality, she quotes Mark Twain: "History
doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
The important thing is the point of the song, "which is my father teaching
us the promise of how special the world was with us in it."
But that didn't mean her childhood was all happiness. At 14, she swallowed 100
Aspirin in an adolescent attempt at suicide.
The reason? "My father was a perfectionist and he had very high
expectations" of his piano prodigy daughter.
"I was studying a Paganini piece, `La Campanella,' and I didn't have it up
to speed. It's an insanely difficult piece of music, but he wanted me to play
it and I wasn't ready."
After her suicide attempt, her father wrote her an apology: "Sometimes I
expect too much of my children."
Many years later, she made peace with her past by composing "My
Father," "but he died before he ever heard it."
A later song, "Holly-Ann (The Weaver)," is a seemingly elegiac piece
about her younger sister.
There's such a profound underlying sadness to the piece, one feels her sibling
must have reached a tragic end, but Collins laughs. "She's a great artist
living in Vancouver now with three kids and a happy, busy life."
When asked to account for the melancholy in the song, she shrugs and says,
"There's melancholy in everything I write."
Then there's "Born to the Breed," written for her only child, Clark,
when he left home at 16. "I know you're going to make it," she
affirms, "as sure as you were born."
But 17 years later, in 1992, after relapsing into alcohol abuse, he killed
himself.
"Suicide blows your life to pieces," says Collins. "It fractures
everything you think you know about who you are. It makes you realize how
little influence we have, how powerless we are."
And yet, she still sings the song to this day. "It brings me closer to
Clark," she insists.
However, it's not just the songs she writes about others, but the songs others
write about her, like Stills' famous "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes."
"I'm writing a book now all about my life in the '60s," reveals
Collins, "and I'm calling it Suite: Judy Blue Eyes – Sex, Drugs, Rock
'n' Roll and Folk-Rock."
She still remembers the first time her ex-lover Stills sang it for her.
"It was supposed to get me back. I thought it was beautiful. So beautiful.
And too bad it's not going to work.
"My granddaughter and I had dinner with Stephen last year and he told me
he's always been sorry I never made any royalties from the song. `Well, it's
never too late,' said my granddaughter."
She laughs and shakes her head. "I've finally learned that none of us were
meant to be perfect. As Leonard (Cohen) said, `There's a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in.'"
Judy Collins performs tonight at 8:30 at Hugh's Room, 2261 Dundas St. W. For
reservations and information, call 416-531-6604.
MUSIC TIDBITS
Hip Celebrates Toronto Teacher
Source: www.thestar.com
- The Canadian Press
(November 28, 2008)
Amid rapturous applause from students and cheering by members of The Tragically
Hip, Alex Voros of Toronto was honoured yesterday as Canada's music
teacher of the year. Voros, from Chaminade College School in North York,
received the award for his 30 years of work in promoting musical education and
for encouraging students of all backgrounds to learn an instrument. Voros, 60,
said he was thrilled to have The Tragically Hip on hand as the Catholic high
school's 70-member concert band performed the theme song to the film The
Godfather. Tragically Hip singer Gordon Downie said the band was
honoured to acknowledge Voros's talents and the work of all music educators.
"It's been said that those who can, teach – and those who can't, join rock
bands," Downie joked. "Alex
Voros isn't just teaching, he's making introductions, he's introducing you to a
lifelong friend. He understands (music's) magic and beauty, and believes in its
power to transform and to lift up spirits." The MusiCounts Teacher of the
Year Award is sponsored by the music education charity of the Canadian Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences.
T.I.
Keeps 'Single Ladies' At 'Bey'
Source: www.eurweb.com
(December 01, 2008) *Beyonce's current hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on
It) sold 204,000 digital downloads last week, but it wasn't enough to remove T.I. from his perch atop the Billboard Hot 100. The rapper's
"Live Your Life" featuring Rihanna begins a fifth non-consecutive
week at No. 1, followed by the 28-2 rocket of "Single Ladies," and
Beyonce's other current single "If I Were a Boy" holding steady at
No. 3. T.I.'s former No. 1, "Whatever You Like," slips 2-4. Katy
Perry's "Hot N Cold" drops 4-5, Kanye West's "Love
Lockdown" rebounds 9-6 and Lady GaGa's "Just Dance" featuring
Colby O'Donis powers 16-7. Pink's "So What" drops 5-8, as Ne-Yo's
"Miss Independent" improves 11-9 and Akon's "Right Now (Na Na
Na)" falls 8-10 to round out the top tier. On Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs,
"Single Ladies" begins a second week at No. 1. As previously
reported, Beyonce scored her third-straight No. 1 debut on The Billboard 200
with "I Am ... Sasha Fierce," which sold 482,000 copies.
At
Home With Brian This Christmas
Source: www.eurweb.com - By Fiona McKinson
(December 01, 2008) *Brian
McKnight has a voice perfect for gospel music and on his new
seasonal release, he spreads the good news with "I’ll be home for Christmas." But from the start, his signature style –
tinged with an R&B groove, provides the perfect update to old yuletide
standards and three original compositions.
McKnight’s first studio album in two years, recently promoted on The
Oprah Winfrey Show as part of the "Fabulous Holidays on a Budget"
segment, sets the right tone for Christmas.
It is full of family spirit with appearances from McKnight’s sons Brian
Jnr. And Nikolas on Let It Snow.
McKnight’s friends join the party with guest appearances from country
star Vince Gill, Argentine musician Noel Scharjris, classical/pop vocalist Josh
Groban and Christian jazz group Take 6.
If you are single or if you’re not quite in the mood for festivities,
think party season instead. Scharjris helps McKnight to fiesta in Spanish on
Silent Night. The pace of the album goes
up and down and the up-tempo tracks are probably the best cuts. It’s The Most
Wonderful Time Of The Year should get the party started. McKnight says, "This
is the most musical fun I've had in years." Thankfully the fun leaks from the CD – the
perfect soundtrack to the holidays. "I’ll be home for Christmas" is
available to purchase on Amazon and iTunes now.
Circus: Britney Spears
Source: www.thestar.com - Ben Rayner
(Zomba/Jive/Sony)
(out of 4)
(December 02, 2008) There can be only one Kylie Minogue, but consider Britney Spears
promoted to "understudy" status. Pop tarts don't tend to stick around, yet if they can hang on a
few years – roughly as long, say, as it would take an actual Pop-Tart to start
decomposing – and suffer through enough widely publicized torment, the cool
kids' acceptance is never far away once the right supporting musicians are in
place. Spears started
getting retroactive, redemptive props from the Pitchfork generation circa
2003's pristine pop masterpiece "Toxic." The process continued
unabated with last year's strangely compelling Blackout disc, a record
of clanging dance floor electronics that won surprised raves despite the fact
that its focal point was obviously absent from most of its creation. Circus offers more of the same
faux-voyeurism, assembling an enormous cast of writers and producers to present
a slightly more "together" Spears character. She still merits only
two co-writing credits out of 15 tracks – on the baby-talk horror "Mmm
Papi" and the expected "Oh, god, where are my children?" ballad
"My Baby," both awful – but her collaborators have filled her mouth
with enough expensive venom directed at her ex-husband ("Womanizer"),
the paparazzi ("Kill the Lights") and her own hard-partying ways (the
creepy "Blur," which opens with a dazed Spears mumbling "Who are
you? Wha'd we do last night?") to cement the illusion that this is the
work of a determined tigress on the comeback trail. The runway strut of "Womanizer" puts
Spears in line behind Madonna, Kylie and Nelly Furtado in ripping off Goldfrapp
(ripping off Gary Glitter), but the same swaggering beat hits a relentless pace
on "Kill the Lights" as Britney spews tawdry put-downs like "Is
that money in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"
"Mannequin" is an outright beast of a dance track, with several
Britneys tag-teaming over a gargantuan hip-hop beat. And, in Circus's
one moment of pathos, Bloodshy & Avant – the producers responsible for
"Toxic" – bring techno-pop melancholia entitled "Unusual
You" wherein Brit praises her new man for not being one of the complete
bastards she's used to. It usually takes a team of at least
four Swedish males to give us these flashes of talent and humanity, yes. But
what the hell. I know so much about Britney Spears at this point I kind of
think of her as family. Top
Track: "Mannequin." We are no longer human. We are dancer.
Our Bright Future: Tracy Chapman
Source: www.thestar.com - Greg Quill
(Elektra)
(out of 4)
(December 02, 2008) Relaxed and focused, relying heavily on lightly applied
acoustic instruments and laid-back rhythms, Chapman's new songs range through
blues, pop and country, and display her penchant for thoughtful – and
occasionally playful – lyrics about love, war, aging and other variables in the
human condition. Not as dour as her past work, nor as urgent, this is cozy,
rainy-day music to warm your soul. Top track: "I Did It All,"
a cabaret piece that eschews the melodrama in the faded star's tale for a
nuanced portrait that begs our respect, not sympathy.
Freedom: Akon
Source: www.thestar.com - Ashante Infantry
(Konvict/Universal Motown)
(out of 4)
(December 02, 2008) Akon's third disc features indistinguishable
tracks – mostly about a woman he loves, or has lost – with his nasal Auto-Tune
tweaked vocals sliding over Euro dance beats. Despite the braggadocio of
"I'm So Paid" and appearances by Lil Wayne, Kardinal Offishall and Young
Jeezy, the St. Louis native is suppressing his erstwhile hip-hop sensibility.
Apparently, Akon – who serves up several nonsensical, repetitive choruses on
par with the one from Rihanna's famous "Umbrella" – considers freedom
finding a formula and sticking with it.
::FILM NEWS::
Interview
Hugh Jackman
Source: www.thestar.com
- John Hiscock, Special To The Star
(November 28, 2008) NEW YORK–It's not the
sort of virile behaviour one expects from someone who has just been named the
Sexiest Man Alive by an American magazine.
But Hugh Jackman isn't ashamed to admit that he fainted in the heat during a horseback
scene for Australia, director Baz Luhrmann's epic romantic adventure
starring Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
The movie opened Wednesday.
"When you're the leading man it's not good to faint on the first day of
shooting," he said ruefully.
"But we'd spent hours waiting and I was on horseback and had on these
leather pants and suddenly I felt a hand on my back. I had no idea I was at a
45-degree angle and was about to topple over. It kind of snuck up on me."
The charismatic, easygoing Jackman is a star who has no inhibitions about
laughing at himself and he cheerfully relates some of the reactions from his
friends when People put him on the cover as the Sexiest Man Alive last
week.
"At least 10 people sent me photos of me as a young man or drunk, saying,
`I'm taking this photo to the press' and `This is the sexiest man alive?' One I
loved was, `I've got tennis shoes sexier than you.' Someone else said, `This is
more ridiculous than the Florida 2000 recount.'"
Jackman was talking in a New York hotel having just flown in from Sydney where
he attended the premiere of Australia.
In the $130 million (U.S.) movie he plays a rough, tough cattle drover who
falls for Kidman's prim and proper English aristocrat in Australia's wild
outback.
They join forces to save the land she inherited and together embark on a
journey across some of world's most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain.
Jackman shelved all on his busy schedule and trained for seven months, learned
to ride horses and herd cattle, attended workshops and rehearsals, and then
filmed for nine months in various locations in Australia's rugged outback.
"I just dropped everything else," he recalled. "I couldn't have
come up with a scenario as good as this. It would have been unthinkable a few
years ago to do something like this. In fact, when I first started talking to
Baz I wasn't even going to play the lead. I said I just wanted to be a part of
it, whatever it is."
Jackman has been married for 12 years to Australian actor Deborra-Lee Furness,
a close friend of Kidman's, so before filming began he and Kidman had a deep
discussion about the lengthy love scenes they share in the movie.
"Nic and my wife have been really, really close buddies but although we
socialized a lot together I never really knew her well so when we started
working together it was really the best situation because we were friends but
there was a lot I didn't know about her," he said.
"The worst thing that can happen in onscreen relationships is if you hate
each other, and the second worst thing is if you really, really like each other
and you're too familiar.
"So Nic and I went on a four-hour horse ride down to Kangaroo Valley,
south of Sydney, and just before we were about to cross a river she rode up
beside me and said, `Ah, I think we should talk about our on-screen
relationship.'
"So we had a very frank and honest and – dare I say it? – adult
conversation about how to achieve what we needed to. I won't tell you the
details of the conversation but I'm really thankful to her for it. It made it a
hell of a lot easier."
It also helped that Nicole is nearly as tall as the 6-ft. Jackman. "It's
kind of nice to do a kissing scene with someone where you don't have to be in a
ditch or the girl isn't on a box," he laughed.
Jackman had a varied career as both an actor and a song-and-dance man before
becoming a star. Although he was born and brought up in Australia, both his
parents are English; they separated when he was 8 years old and his mother
returned to England.
Jackman had roles in the musicals Beauty And The Beast and Sunset
Boulevard before being cast as Curly in Trevor Nunn's revival of Oklahoma!
at London's National Theatre. He appeared in a couple of little-seen
Australian feature films before Brian Singer cast him in X-Men as
Wolverine, the mutant superhero with razor-sharp metal claws.
Jackman made his Broadway debut playing Australian songwriter and performer
Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz (rumours are circulating he may return to
the New York stage, perhaps starring in a Broadway musical as magician Harry
Houdini next year).
Onscreen, he went on to star as the monster-hunter in the movie thriller Van
Helsing, played three different characters in The Fountain and he
has the X-Men spin-off Wolverine awaiting release next year.
Despite his international success he remains the down-to-earth, Australian boy
next door who still enjoys a beer and appreciates his good fortune.
He and his wife have two adopted children, Oscar, 8, and 3-year-old Ava and he
wants to pass on to them the lessons he learned from his father.
"The greatest gift I got from my parents was their unconditional
love," he said. "My father always talked about passion. He never
asked me what I was going to do, he only ever asked me, `Do you love what
you're doing?' And if there's anything I want to pass on to my kids it's the
idea of passion for life, because that's really what sustains you.
"If you're lucky enough to find and do something that you love, then
that's the Holy Grail."
He Even Makes The Seventies
Look Good
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Johanna Schneller
(November 28, 2008) James
Franco has the sweetest smile, and a voice like chocolate
pudding. Both onscreen and over the phone, he transmits an appealing,
gentle-dude air. I never bought him as Harry Osborn, the jealous, wet-eyed
villain in the three Spider-Man movies, and now I know why: Franco, 30,
can't help but seem like a guy who'd just forgive everybody right away and have
them over for pasta.
He's having a good year. In August, he played a kindly dope dealer in Pineapple
Express, and everything about him was perfect: his ethnic sweatpants, his
loneliness inside his cannabis haze, and his stoned laugh with its undercurrent
of omnipresent bewilderment. Franco, his co-star Seth Rogen, and their producer
Judd Apatow (who worked together on Franco's cancelled-before-its-time TV
series, Freaks and Geeks), pulled off something pretty rare. Beneath the
sloppy caper plot and filthy jokes, they made a buddy comedy that was genuinely
about male friendship. It pulled in over $87-million in theatres; and now, on
DVD … dude, it's gonna be huge.
In September, in a tiny role as Richard Gere's aid-worker son in Nights in
Rodanthe, Franco was a believable heir to the older actor's sensitive
intensity. Franco also made an amusing appearance in a New York Times piece
about a new software program that takes someone's photograph and then improves
their flaws – widens and enlarges eyes, shortens long noses, smoothes out
foreheads. They tested a photo of Franco's ridiculously handsome face. It came
back unchanged.
Now, he's playing the love of the title character's life in Milk, the moving new biopic from director Gus Van Sant about
Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the first openly gay man to hold a major political
office in the U.S. (In 1977, Milk was elected to San Francisco's board of
supervisors, where he helped bring down Proposition 6, which would have banned
homosexuals from teaching in California schools.) As the boy toy who becomes
much more to Milk, Franco does his best work yet, and makes Penn seem warmer
and more connected than ever.
“I really pursued this movie,” Franco says. “I'm the biggest Gus Van Sant fan,
and have been since before I was an actor. I would watch Drugstore Cowboy and
My Own Private Idaho repeatedly when I was in high school. Then, when I
started acting, I continued to watch those movies, because the performances in
them were really inspiring, and something I aspire to. So I wrote Gus an e-mail
saying I'd play anything, the pizza boy, just to be in it.”
California's Nov. 4 passing of Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, “shows
that a lot of the issues of the movie are still alive, a lot of the fights
Harvey Milk was fighting still need to be fought,” Franco adds.
Next year, he'll take on another fight, playing Allen Ginsberg in Howl,
a drama about the 1957 obscenity trial over that poem. And between films, he's
in two different MFA programs in New York: at New York University's Tisch
School, for film directing; and at Columbia for fiction writing, where he's
working on a second novel. (He wrote his first at UCLA under the tutelage of
the novelist Mona Simpson, and earned a BA last year.) “They're two other
things I enjoy and I'm really interested in,” Franco says. “I believe in hard
work.”
To top it off, turning 30 this year made him feel “a bit more relaxed. I'm learning
about all the things that I'm interested in. I'm doing everything I want. I
couldn't ask for anything more.”
You know what else is having a good year, by the way? The 1970s. Milk is
one of three recent films that showcase the decade in a light more positive
than the way it felt while I was living through it, from age 8 to 18. Back
then, the seventies felt dark and cynical, tainted by Watergate and Vietnam,
gas crises and bankrupt cities, the opposite of the optimistic sixties. But Milk
highlights the giddiness of the gay community's coming out, and the
activism that it prompted, in such a laudatory and inspiring way that it makes
the whole decade look brighter.
Ditto for Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's upcoming movie about the
machinations behind a series of interviews that talk-show host David Frost
(Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in The Queen) did with Richard
Nixon (Frank Langella; put him on your Oscar ballots) in 1977, when Nixon had
yet to apologize for or even admit to any wrongdoing vis-à-vis Watergate. The
movie is a juicy, satisfying meal for journalists, and it makes everyone in the
seventies look more politically informed and active than in the 30 years since.
My favourite 1970s film – and my favourite documentary this year, period – is Man
on Wire, which looks at the now-legendary stunt that a French tightrope
walker named Philippe Petit and a bunch of accomplices pulled off in 1974.
Illegally, they strung a tightrope between the World Trade Center's twin towers,
and Petit performed upon it for an hour or so one dawn, before being arrested
and becoming a sensation.
Now out on DVD, the film is moving on many levels. First, it's immediately
apparent how significant the act was to its perpetrators. It was a serious
piece of performance art, a glorious celebration of human accomplishment. Even
the cops waiting on the ledge to arrest Petit knew they were looking at
something exceptional; watch for the one who says so with an eloquence that is
inimitably New York. Second, most of the original gang was interviewed, so it's
poignant to see them then, in their youthful exuberance – with all their
seventies hair – and now, in their thin-haired, middle-aged maturity. And
third, of course, is the fate of the towers themselves, which is not mentioned
in the film, but permeates it with an almost unbearable poignancy.
Every decade looks better in retrospect, but these three films make a strong
case – which resonates strongly in Obama's North America – that commitment is
worthier than apathy, that action is more admirable than resignation, and that
informed hope, though hard to sustain, is necessary. You should see them all.
Canadian Actors Throw Support Behind SAG
Source: www.thestar.com
- Bruce Demara, Entertainment Reporter
(December 01, 2008) The Canadian union
representing more than 21,000 English-language actors will stand behind the U.S. Screen
Actors Guild (SAG) in the event it calls a strike vote.
The U.S. union, which represents 120,000 members, announced last week it would
contact its membership in coming days with an "education" campaign,
followed by a request for a strike vote authorization.
Stephen Waddell, national executive director of ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian
Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), said the decision to support SAG comes
at a difficult time for Canadian artists.
"ACTRA will support the Screen Actors Guild to the greatest extent that we
can. There is no other alternative for us. We are a trade union and we support
our brothers and sisters," Waddell said.
That includes directing members not to work for any "struck" U.S.
production that attempts to come north of the border to evade the U.S. guild's
jurisdiction.
SAG's contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
ended on June 30. Talks broke off last week, despite the intervention of a
federal mediator.
The U.S. producers publicly blasted SAG for seeking a strike vote "at a
time of historic economic crisis."
Waddell said the dispute is bad news on both sides of the border.
"The whole situation is unfortunate. The fact that this has been going on
for so long means ... there's virtually no U.S. production shooting in Canada,
which is a significant problem for our members," Waddell said.
In recent years, ACTRA members have benefited greatly from U.S. productions
coming to Canada. But Waddell said standard fare – such as movies of the week,
independent films and U.S. TV series work – has dried up in the past year.
Last November, the Writers Guild of America strike, which lasted 100 days until
an agreement was reached in February, resulted in a dramatic drop-off in U.S.
film and TV production in Canada.
"Our members are hurting, as is the production community generally.
Producers, technicians, we're all being hurt by the lack of U.S. production in
Canada," said Waddell, who recently met with studio executives in L.A. to
discuss the crisis.
Waddell said there are limits on what ACTRA can do to discourage or prevent its
members from taking work shipped north of the border.
ACTRA has agreements with hundreds of Canadian production companies, almost all
of them doing Canadian film and TV work.
While U.S. producers who are not signatories to the ACTRA agreement would be
frozen out, it would be difficult to prevent ACTRA members from working for
Canadian companies that land contracts for U.S. productions, Waddell said.
With 50 Years In The Biz, Ron Howard Has Seen His Share Of
Failure
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Simon
Houpt
(December
02, 2008) NEW YORK — “Is there anyone more American than Ron Howard?”
Peter Morgan, the very British scribe best known as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter
of The Queen, is outlining the reasons he okayed the director of Apollo
13 and A Beautiful Mind to helm the feature film adaptation of his
Tony Award-winning play Frost/Nixon, and being very American is evidently
very good. This is what he means: “If you spend time with Ron, he has all the
qualities that we traditionally think of [as American]: polite, respectful,
conscientious, decent, really principled.”
Rebecca Hall, the young British actress ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and
daughter of Sir Peter Hall, who therefore knows a little something about
directors, says of her experience working with Howard on Frost/Nixon:
“He's extremely collaborative. Even when it was stuff that didn't necessarily
apply to me, he'd always be asking my opinions about things.” And also:
“There's no sense of ego or grandeur. He's straight-talking and precise and
wants to tell the story in the best possible way, and he's totally willing to
admit that he's wrong.”
Respect, decency, modesty, deference: These are not qualities one normally
associates with the place called Hollywood or its cultural output, but Ron
Howard is a walking billboard for a reappraisal of the town. Born in a small
Oklahoma burg, Howard entered showbiz at the age of 4 with small film parts and
then a recurring role as the earnest, curious scamp Opie on The Andy
Griffith Show.
Unlike many of the child actors over the ensuing five decades, he proceeded to
not self-immolate in a haze of drugs or self-indulgence. No, he proved decent
to the core.
Rather than elbowing his way into directing jobs, he retreated to film school,
to gain an education in theory that he could marry to the practical knowledge
he had picked up working in the industry. At the age of 21, he married his
high-school sweetheart; the two recently celebrated their 33rd anniversary.
All-American earnestness hangs over Howard like a halo. Sitting in a hotel
suite overlooking Central Park on a recent drizzly, windswept afternoon, he
says of his career that he hopes he is engaged in “an ongoing creative process
of exploration and discovery that's fun for me and hopefully useful to
audiences.” (Yes, useful.)
And the films? Solidly built mainstream entertainments that are shot through
with an all-American decency. Take Frost/Nixon, which opens in Toronto
on Friday and across the country later this month. It revisits, to surprisingly
thrilling effect, the 1977 TV interviews that British celebrity journalist
David Frost conducted over the course of four marathon sessions with former
U.S. president Richard Nixon, who was speaking at length for the first time
since leaving office in disgrace. The interviews are remembered nowadays for
the fact that Frost, a notorious lightweight who had begun his career as a
stand-up comedian, managed to achieve what no one else had ever done: extricate
from Nixon a confession (albeit a grudging one) for his abuses of power.
Frost/Nixon quietly asserts that, even in extraordinary times like the
Vietnam War, there are standards of behaviour that must be upheld.
While Howard doesn't forgive Nixon, he recognizes that not everyone may have
been equally appalled by the president's actions during that time. “I think we
all run into a trap. I do. I felt this way watching the interviews in 1977, of
feeling like: ‘Well c'mon, it's a tough job and it's complicated beyond what we
can imagine. And you know, of course they've gotta bend the rules.' And there's
some logic in that. But by the same token, that's a pretty slippery slope and I
think it's important that the press be there in a democracy to keep askin'
those questions and keep probing and sort of saying, you know, ‘Where is the
truth? How far have they gone?' ”
This is Howard's second film, after the 1994 comedy The Paper, to muck
around in the high ideals and sometimes low methods of journalism. He caught
the journalism bug, he says, while working on the high-school paper. “I always
felt like if I didn't continue in the film business, I'd either become probably
a high-school basketball coach, an English teacher or go into journalism. I
loved it. Loved it.”
Much is made in Frost/Nixon about the U.S. journalism establishment
writing off Frost, with his background in comedy and entertainment, as
incapable of stepping up and doing the job.
Peter Morgan suggested that Howard, too, was an underestimated talent. “Oh did
he?” asks Howard. He sounds a little defensive at first, but then admits there
might be something to his screenwriter's theory.
“You're craving that respect, and that acknowledgment,” he nods. “Look, I don't
lie awake at nights worrying about it. On the whole, I feel like I've been
treated very well. But it's interesting to hear Peter say that, and I do feel
at times that, because I'm drawn to films that celebrate more than critique,
that can be sort of misunderstood in its own way, as somehow not as creative,
or not as artful.”
Howard has certainly earned the respect of the critics, the industry and
moviegoers, and he has the trophies to prove it: Oscars and other awards,
including nods from the Directors Guild, and a track record of numerous
hundred-million-dollar-plus box-office successes. But it took a long time for
him to leave behind his reputation as a comedy guy – earned with his beloved
role as Richie Cunningham in the hit seventies TV show Happy Days,
followed by his direction of goofy comedies like Night Shift, Splash
and Parenthood – to be fully accepted as a serious director.
Even now, there is a hint of a cloud over Howard, one that Frost/Nixon
should go some distance in dissipating. After winning both a best-directing and
best-picture Oscar for A Beautiful Mind (he was a producer on the film),
his last three pictures suffered separate indignities: Audiences and critics
passed over The Missing in 2003; the Depression-era boxing drama Cinderella
Man (2005) garnered appreciative notices but got knocked out at the box
office; and The Da Vinci Code (2006) took in $750-million around the
world but notoriously bombed with the critics. “They were definitely the toughest
reviews I've had,” he grimaces of Da Vinci.
Frost/Nixon is in a different mould: Reportedly made for less than
$30-million (less than half his usual budget), it is Howard's first picture in
two decades without bankable stars (it boasts, rather, the fiercely talented
duo of Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon). It has few special
effects. And its pleasures are aimed at the movie going audience that can still
find thrills in watching conversational pugilists battling it out for posterity.
“This is actually my 50th anniversary, this year,” Howard notes. “I'm 54, I
started when I was 4, and in fact I'm very proud of Frost/Nixon, sort of
as a symbol of some kind of ongoing creative growth.”
Though he got slapped around with the first Dan Brown adaptation, he will be
back next year with Angels & Demons, the Da Vinci Code
sequel. He's in post-production on it, and he is already suggesting it has a
better filmic rhythm than the original. He admits that he hopes it will win
over critics as well as audiences. “I always aim to please, on all fronts,” he
says, earnestly, of course.
Two Cineplex Theatres Plan To Serve Alcohol
Source: www.thestar.com
- Raju Mudhar, Entertainment Reporter
(December 03, 2008) If the blockbuster movie at your local
multiplex turns out to be a bomb, you soon will be able to ease your pain.
Two local Cineplex Odeon multiplexes are
preparing to allow alcohol in their theatres, and it could happen as early as
next week.
"We are obviously delighted. This is something that our guests have been
asking us for years," said Pat Marshall, spokesperson for Cineplex
Entertainment, which is waiting for liquor board approval.
"Our goal is to start selling at the Varsity Cinemas" as of Dec. 10.
Both the Varsity and SilverCity in Oakville already have licensed lounges in
the lobby and VIP theatres that will allow those 19 and older to tipple while
they watch the latest releases.
Licensed lounges in the concourse areas of theatres were allowed before, but
amendments to the Liquor Licence Act allowing in-theatre drinking only took
effect Oct. 23.
At this point, no cinema has been approved for the additional capacity,
although Cineplex's application is well underway. The idea is a pilot project
that will end Nov. 30, 2009.
Besides the requirement to set aside auditoriums for adults, theatres face
other restrictions:
A currently licensed lounge with Smart Serve-trained staff (a program for
bartenders and waiters).
FILM TIDBITS
X Files: I Want To Believe
Source: www.thestar.com - Peter Howell
(20th Century Fox)
(out of 4)
(December 02, 2008) The wacky spaceship X-Files crashes to Earth with a
resounding thud in its second movie incarnation. Let's hope those pesky aliens
give it a proper burial this time. The TV series, which ended in 2002 after
nine seasons, set its sights higher than most such spook shows. It was the
thinking person's paranoia. Which is why it can't survive the mortal tedium of The
X-Files: I Want to Believe, a slapdash movie that the show's creator Chris
Carter directed and co-wrote (with Frank Spotnitz). Gone are head-expanding
plots about shifty aliens and "monsters in the dark," to use the
eloquent phrase of truth-seeker Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), reunited
once again with her acerbic partner Mulder (David Duchovny). Gone are The Lone
Gunmen, Cigarette Smoking Man and other colourful characters of both the
small-screen series and the first big-screen adaptation, Fight the Future,
released in 1998. Instead we get a patchwork plot about a psychic pedophile
priest (played by Billy Connolly) and Russian body snatchers that achieves just
one incredible feat: it manages to be both mundane and utterly absurd at the
same time. Depending on your perspective, the DVD extras are either
enlightening or masochistic. There's a feature-length audio commentary with
Carter and Spotnitz that explains plot and editing decisions. The two-disc set also has a feature-length
doc that deals with the well-founded fears of reviving the series. Unnecessary
extra footage and a mood-killing gag reel should have been sent into deepest
space.
::TV NEWS::
Our Dance Show Better Than U.S. Version
Source: www.thestar.com
- Rob Salem, Television
Columnist
(December
03, 2008) There was reason to expect the worst. Who knew we'd end up getting
the best?
Let's face it, the track record of Canadian adaptations of American reality
show formats has been somewhat spotty. Canadian Idol, superficially at
least a slavish clone of the U.S. version, has never approached its sizzle and
snap. It is – okay, let's say it – dull. Canada's Next Top Model was
just too painful to watch.
Project Runway Canada, on the other hand, very closely approximates its
American counterpart ... and, given the latter's ongoing upheaval, may soon
even surpass it.
But even in its inaugural season, So You Think You Can Dance Canada is
already there.
It's down to the fabled "Final Four" tonight at 8 in the final performance
show on CTV. And then, in another two-hour blowout starting at 9 p.m., the four
will become two and the two will become one, as "Canada's Favourite
Dancer" on Canada's favourite show.
It's a show next to which the American original starts to look like a faded
Xerox copy.
Five reasons why So You Think You Can Dance Canada dances circles around
So You Think You Can Dance:
1. The dancers Creator/co-producer Nigel Lythgoe has said it, and so have
visiting judges Dan Karaty and the vocally volatile Mary Murphy: our dancers
are better, perhaps the best in the world (and there are almost as many
exported Dances as there are countries to dance in).
They are not, as I've said before, just blowing smoke up our tutus. By and
large, from the auditions on, the Canadian contestants have been quite
astonishingly accomplished, particularly in light of their comparative youth.
And they are also far more regionally representative than their American
counterparts, which also speaks to their overall excellence.
Even in the all-important personality department – and let's not forget, it is
"Canada's favourite dancer," not "Canada's best" – they
have exhibited the camaraderie and depth of character that the American dancers
don't usually arrive at until they're down to their final 10.
2. The production The differences here are even more obvious and would be even
more so were the Canadian producers not hamstrung (ouch) by the franchise's
insistence on identical opening and closing credits, and standardized logo and
set design.
As hinted at in the fabulous pre-debut CTV promos, we would have done a much
better job.
As it is, though, our camerawork just gets better and better, even as theirs
has started to rapidly decline. The editing of the montage and rehearsal sequences
are similarly superior and superb. We've even managed to outdo our Dance predecessors
in the uniquely American art of product placement: a revenue-generating gap for
which they should be justifiably ashamed.
And the costume design ... well, the often ludicrously over-the-top American
outfits are vastly outmatched by the often just as extreme, yet still more
inventive and attractive dancewear provided the Canadian contenders.
Which kind of segues into a discussion of homegrown host Leah Miller, faced with
the daunting – and let's face it, impossible – task of following in Cat
Deeley's towering stilettos. Miller confided to me that she's far more
comfortable in heels, but I suspect that may also have something to do with
what they've done with the rest of her wardrobe. Miller never looks anything
less than classy and well put-together, unlike Deeley, whose often awful hair
and outfits never quite seem to match.
(One suggestion, Leah, and it's a small one: please stop punching that
second-last syllable, as in "And here are your JUDG-es ..." You do it
a lot and it's starting to get annoying. I say this as a friend.)
3. The judges And here are your judges. For one thing, we have four instead of
three, expertly anchored by regulars Tré Armstrong, street-dance diva and star
of How She Move, and ballroom veteran Jean-Marc Généreux, returning home
from his prominent spot as choreographer on the American version.
One might say that we are missing out on such U.S. staples as Mary Murphy and
the brilliant Mia Michaels, except of course we haven't missed them at all,
Murphy in particular.
And if we haven't had the remarkable erudition of choreographer Lil' C, or the
weepy enthusiasm of a Debbie Allen, we have had in-house dance master Blake
McGrath and his fellow Canuck Sean Cheesman. On top of that, the judges' table
has hosted everyone from High School Musical's Kenny Ortega to
Canadian ballet stud "Sexy Rexy" Harrington.
Their expertise and enthusiasm, along with that of host Miller, surpasses even
that of the American show – and that's saying something.
4. The choreography We have likewise played host to some of the best of the
Americans, including the aforementioned Lil' C (in the rehearsal hall, if not
on the panel), Mia Michaels and anchor judge Généreux. But add to that McGrath,
Cheesman, Armstrong, fellow rotating judges Luther Brown and Melissa Williams
... and many, many more, on both sides of the camera.
And while I have to give the best of the American choreographers props for
inventiveness, outrageousness and originality, I have to say the Canadian
pieces are by and large a lot more consistent.
Again, one very minor quibble: I had hoped to see a more varied reflection of
the vast cultural diversity of this country, which the melting pot Americans at
least pay lip service to. Something to think about for next season.
5. The pride and the passion Dancers, judges, host, fans ... even in the face
of our collective Canadian inferiority complex, we do seem to have taken genuine
pride in the accomplishments of the show, its producers and participants. You
can see it in the sincere emotion onscreen and the fierce loyalty of its
dedicated viewers, an enthusiastic audience that relatively speaking exceeds
even that of the original show, now four seasons in.
Then again, it may just be residual resentment that they wouldn't even let us
vote.
The notion has already been floated of a major North American dance-off. I say,
bring it on.
In the meantime, we still have the final four face-off tonight, with the winner
announced Sunday.
To your right is a look at the remaining contenders and one fan's (okay, mine)
handicapping of their chances.
THE FINAL FOUR
Allie Bertram, the perky little ballet dancer from Calgary, 18, is the youngest
of the bunch. Which is one of the reasons she'll be the first to go. Don't get
me wrong, the kid showed amazing courage and tenacity. She has energy to burn
and an indefatigable cheery optimism. But she also has a long career ahead of
her.
Miles Faber, 21, also from Calgary, shares Bertram's drive and diversity
as a street popper who seemed able to adapt to whatever was thrown his way,
with an irresistible smile and aw-shucks modesty. Were the slate a bit
different, he might have done better. But the competition is fierce and he's
got to come third.
Local girl Natalli Reznik, 28. She has the chiselled body of a Greek
goddess. If she were any more "cut," she'd be one of those
transparent plastic "Visible Human Body" models we used to construct
when we were kids. Already a hip-hop/Latin dancer, she shares the seamless
versatility of the previous two and the confidence that only comes with
experience. But she's going to be the runner-up. She'd win the season, were it
not for ...
Nico Archambault, 23, the contemporary/hip-hop dancer from Montreal. And
pin-up boy for millions of lustfully gobsmacked Canadian women. It's not just
the bod or the rakish rooster faux-hawk, or the dreamy French accent, or the
tattoos and cheeky bad-boy grin ... okay, it's all those things. And a charm
and genuine good-guy humility that match his considerable dancing skills. He
cinched it with last week's solo, stripped to the waist and body-painted with
graffiti. I'm calling him Canada's Favourite Dancer.
But feel free to prove me wrong.
What Makes Tina Fey So Darn
Funny
Source: www.thestar.com
- Joel Rubinoff, Torstar News Service
(November 28, 2008) I have a clear memory of Tina
Fey standing without shoes on during the 2006 TV press tour
in Los Angeles.
It was the hottest night of the summer – 109F (there is no Celsius in
California) – and while most NBC celebrities had bagged off the all-star
critics' party on the sweltering back lawn of Pasadena's Ritz-Carlton hotel,
the diminutive actor had planted herself at the rear of the property, kicked
off her heels and settled in for a night of high-powered schmoozing.
This was her chance to get the word out on her fledgling sitcom maverick and –
heat wave be damned – she was going to make the most of it.
No wonder. 30
Rock (Thursdays on Citytv) had yet to premiere, but with a premise
that seemed disturbingly similar to another NBC series – the mega-hyped Studio 60 on the Sunset
Strip – scepticism over Fey's whimsical take on the backstage
hijinks at a TV sketch show was running high.
How did she think she would fare, she was asked repeatedly, against such
illustrious competition? And as a former head writer on Saturday Night Live,
how tough would it be to star in her own show?
As she sipped bottled water in her demure cocktail dress and laughed at co-star
Tracy Morgan's antics with a souped-up water pistol, the thirtysomething actor
was self-deprecating but adamant.
"Some actors are brilliant when they're deep, deep, deep in
character," she confided with typical candour. "I'm never brilliant.
That's what makes it easy for me.
"So when the network encouraged me to develop something for me to be in, I
thought `You know what? I'll try it, and if it turns out I'm the worst actor
ever, I'll have that distinction.'
"But I sort of said to myself, I don't think Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser
and Ray Romano worried about it, so I'm gonna choose to not worry about it
either."
Simple, honest, direct. And given all that's occurred in the 2 1/2 years
since this conversation, oddly prescient.
For as 30
Rock embarks on its third season with a raft of high-profile guest
stars (Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston) and consecutive Emmy wins as Best
Comedy, a recent ratings surge indicates its fortunes have finally started to
shift.
From what I can tell, most of the credit goes directly to Fey. As the show's
writer, creator and star, it was her who defined the mix of surreal, cerebral
and simple-minded that won over critics, marked the return of genuine wit to
prime-time and ensured the show's triumph over one-season wonder Studio 60.
It was her who turned her character, Liz Lemon, into a lovably feisty
third-wave feminist who, her boss informs her, "has the boldness of a much
younger woman."
It was her who shepherded the show through two seasons of tragically laggard
ratings that seemed to earmark it as a populist underachiever in the mould of Arrested Development.
And it was her who, during the recent U.S. election, blew it out of the water
when her hilariously satirical portrayal of vice-presidential nominee Sarah
Palin caught fire on Saturday
Night Live and landed her – and by association, 30 Rock –
squarely in the pop-cult spotlight.
"Sometimes, to feel like I have company during dinner, I dispute credit
card charges on speakerphone," Fey's beleaguered TV producer character
confided last week, hoping to impress a suitor (Steve Martin) who asks her to
run away to Canada because "Toronto is just like New York, but without all
the stuff."
It's not the traditional joke-punchline set-up we associate with most
prime-time comedies, nor are wonky references to AIDS-injected chicken nuggets,
Mystic Pizza:
The Musical or Tracy Jordan sex dolls.
And if you know nothing about pop culture, lines like "it's like Picasso
not painting, or Bruce Willis not combining action and rock harmonica"
probably won't mean much.
But there's something about Liz Lemon's irony-tinged underdog that audiences
seem to love. Like Fey herself, she's testy but endearing – and now that
they've found her, my guess is they won't let her go without a fight.
Joel Rubinoff
is the television columnist at The Record of Waterloo Region. Email jrubinoff@therecord.com
Source: www.thestar.com - Rob Salem
(December 01, 2008) Ned, the pie guy with the resurrective touch, is ironically unable to save himself.
He and the other quirky characters who populate ABC's comics-coloured fantasy, Pushing Daisies, will soon be, well, pushing daisies.
The much admired, if underwatched, comedy joins a long list of American network series to be abruptly axed last week, in the middle of their seasons.
Daisies, arguably the best of the bunch, got in only nine first-season episodes before being scuttled by last year's writers' strike, and only seven of this second season's ordered 13, with three more scheduled to run this month, and the final three sometime in the new year. It will then join its "brilliant but cancelled" counterparts in the afterlife of that small corner of television heaven called "DVD."
Show-runner Bryan Fuller, who plans to continue Daisies' storyline in comic-book form (à la Joss Whedon with Buffy and Firefly, and possibly his not-yet-even-aired Dollhouse), is almost sure to return to NBC's rapidly declining Heroes – just in time for a daring rescue.
Other ABC casualties include the similarly wonky, second-season Eli Stone and the credits-heavy Dynasty descendant Dirty Sexy Money – thus putting two veteran Canadian actors out of work: Victor Garber in the former and Donald Sutherland in the latter.
Add to that list Montreal-born Anne Bedian, the sarcastic psychic of CBS's The Ex List, which would seemed to have been doomed to become an ex-show the moment writer/producer Diane Ruggiero walked off the set in a rage six episodes into production, only four of which had aired when the plug was pulled.
Which was one episode more than the critically savaged Jerry O'Connell sitcom Do Not Disturb, which so disturbed viewers its producers felt compelled to issue a public apology in the pages of the industry paper Variety.
Also given its walking papers at Fox – after 14 seasons of increasingly erratic talent turnaround – the already marginalized MAD TV, which never came close to loosening Saturday Night Live's stranglehold on their intentionally overlapping time slot.
The basement-dwelling NBC matched ABC's body count, cancelling two of its freshman shows, Crusoe and My Own Worst Enemy, and Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle, following in the stiletto steps of ex-collaborator Darren Star's Cashmere Mafia, banished to the land of lame Sex and the City rip-offs.
Which is nothing compared to the CW bloodbath that killed all of its out-sourced Sunday-night shows, including the execrable Valentine, a pre-emptive strike on Rob Thomas's about-to-be reborn Cupid, which the CW lobbied for and lost.
In that case it was more like euthanasia, Valentine being one of the worst shows ever aired, with Dexter psychopath Jaime Murray heading up a clan of grounded Greek gods. It was so bad in fact that, in the unlikely event the rest of the run ever airs, it's almost worth watching for the sheer perverse thrill.
And – get this – the empty CW time slots will be partially and temporarily replaced by reruns of mothercorp CBS's twice-cancelled cult hit Jericho.
This would be the perfect time to segue over to the shows that you would have expected to be cancelled, but somehow weren't.
Here there is both good news and bad: Life and Life on Mars are still clinging to life. More or less holding their own are Gary Unmarried, Worst Week, The Mentalist and Fringe. Unfortunately, so are Private Practice, Knight Rider, Kath & Kim and 90210.
Deal or No Deal may have finally burned itself out, at least in its night-time incarnation, though Howie Mandel will quickly bounce back with his Canadian co-produced hidden-camera Howie Do It.
And let's not forget the voluntary end-of season exits of Boston Legal (yay!), a likely Zack Braff-less Scrubs (boo!) and the Emmy-hogging Monk (still worthy, but past its prime).
TV TIDBITS
Oprah Winfrey To Help Honour Susan Taylor
Source: www.thestar.com - The Canadian Press
(December 02, 2008) *Oprah Winfrey is among a number of celebrities
due in New York tonight for a benefit honouring Susan L. Taylor, editor-in-chief
of Essence magazine. Sean "Diddy" Combs, Terry McMillan and Ruby Dee
will also attend the gala, which celebrates Taylor's 37 years with the magazine
targeted to African-American women. Tonight will also serve as a fundraiser for
the National CARES Mentoring Movement, which is dedicated to pairing vulnerable
African-American children with a caring mentor. The organization, founded by
Taylor as Essence CARES, currently operates in more than 50 U.S. states. Gospel stars Yolanda Adams and Donnie
McClurkin are scheduled to perform. Other notable attendees will include
Michael Eric Dyson, Common and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Courtney
B. Vance Books A Pilot
Source: www.eurweb.com
(December 03, 2008) *Fresh from a guest run opposite wife Angela Bassett in
NBC's "ER," Courtney
B. Vance has been cast opposite Jack Davenport in ABC's new drama
pilot "Flash Forward." According to the Hollywood Reporter, the
series is based on Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel and chronicles the chaos
that ensues after everyone in the world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds
and has a mysterious vision of the future that changes lives forever. Vance will play Stan Wedeck, the Los Angeles
bureau chief of the FBI. Davenport will star as Lloyd Simcoe, who is trapped in
Northern California when the event occurs and struggles to reach his son in a
Southern California hospital. David S.
Goyer will direct the project, as well as co-produce with Brannon Braga and ABC
Studios. For six seasons, Vance played
assistant district attorney Ron Carver on NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal
Intent." Vance and his wife also are shepherding several projects through
their Bassett/Vance Prods., including "Erasure," a feature adaptation
of Percival Everett's novel penned by Dwayne Johnson-Cochran.
::THEATRE NEWS::
There's More To Ross Petty Than Meets The Eye
Source: www.thestar.com - Richard Ouzounian, Theatre Critic
(November
29, 2008) To understand Ross Petty, you have to realize that he loves
two things:
1. Karen Kain.
2. Doing his annual Family Holiday Musical at the Elgin Theatre.
Yes, the arch-villain, whom everybody hisses at when December comes around, the
man who's spent more time in drag than most, except Dame Edna, is really a
total softie when it comes to his bride of 25 years, the artistic director of
the National Ballet of Canada.
"After all this time," he sighs happily, settling into the Consort
Lounge of the King Edward hotel after a recent rehearsal for Cinderella, which opens Thursday night at
the Elgin Theatre, "I love her more than ever for three reasons.
"First, I think she's the most extraordinarily beautiful woman in the
world. Second, despite her public persona, she has a profound shyness about her
that I find irresistible. And third, she has a deep sense of joy about life
that lifts me up even when I'm in the darkest depression."
That sure doesn't sound like the man we see every December wearing more rouge
than Boy George in his heyday, and snapping out snarky one liners like the Don
Rickles of family entertainment.
But then there's a lot more to Ross Petty than meets the eye. The still-suave
62-year-old baritone was born in Winnipeg and his single strongest memory of
his childhood was that "there was a map in our basement with New York City
circled in red ink. Oh, how I wanted to be on Broadway! I wanted to be the next
Robert Goulet."
He studied classical piano as a boy, earning his certification at 17, then
studied at the University of Manitoba, all the time singing and dancing in that
summertime Winnipeg landmark of outdoor musical theatre and supersized
mosquitoes, Rainbow Stage.
After graduation, Petty spent a year in Victoria, B.C., at the city's
then-flourishing regional company, Bastion Theatre. After that, it was on to
Caesar's Palace.
No, not the one in Vegas, the one in Glasgow.
"I spent a year singing in front of a line of beautiful dancing
girls," he laughs, "then I was off to London."
He hit the West End and co-starred opposite aging screen star Betty Grable in a
legendarily bad musical called Belle Starr. "Betty Grable was a
lovely woman," recalls Petty, "but she had no idea what kind of a
piece of s--t she was in."
When it closed, Petty went on to Paris, where he found himself at the Lido,
"once again, singing in front of a line of beautiful dancing girls."
You see a pattern emerging? Something involving beautiful women who dance?
He finally got to New York, where his roles included Goulet's part in a revival
of The Happy Time, a serious turn as a doctor opposite Tony
Award-winning Constance Cummings in Arthur Kopit's drama, Wings, and two
years on the iconic soap opera All My Children.
"I played Eddie Dorrance," he remembers, giving the patented Petty
sneer. "I was a bad guy who kept a nightclub singer on drugs so she'd pay
all my bills."
But next up was the most fateful job in his life, playing the title role in the
touring company of Sweeney Todd, opposite June Havoc.
"We came to Toronto and the Royal Alex was our last stop. I had met Karen
briefly at a party the year before when I was up here shooting a movie called Escape
from Iran. I got word to her that I'd like her to be my guest at Sweeney
Todd.
"A couple of days later, she phoned and said she'd love to come, but she
couldn't because she was leaving the next day to dance in Spoleto. But we kept
talking and by the end of the conversation she agreed to come to the
show."
Petty smiles. "She later said there was something about my voice that made
her want to meet me again."
Kain came to the show, they went out for a drink afterward and when Sweeney
Todd closed that weekend, Petty remained in Toronto, waiting for Kain to
return. When she did, he invited her out to dinner "and we were married
eight months later."
The next major theme of Petty's life was introduced the following year, when
British producer Paul Elliott decided to bring one of his legendary
"pantos" to Canada.
The show was Dick Whittington and His Cat. Petty appeared as the
villainous King Rat and Kain was the Good Fairy, setting up a pattern that
would continue through 1989, by which time Petty was co-producing the shows
with Elliott.
Petty wanted to enter the panto world on his own, but the economy of the early
1990s prevented that until 1996, when he was able to launch his new series of
holiday entertainments at the Elgin Theatre with Robin Hood.
Although the shows have become increasingly hipper in recent years, thanks to
director Ted Dykstra and choreographer Tracey Flye, the formula is still the
same: take a classic story, jive it up, add some Stratford/Shaw actors for
class, some kid-friendly TV stars for glitter and a media name or two for hype.
And keep the villainous Petty front and centre for everyone to hiss at.
It's a formula that still works. Last year's Peter Pan was Petty's most
successful show ever, in his opinion, "because of the superstar presence
of Kurt Browning."
For many of us, Petty is the secret ingredient: the man you love to hate. But
now, we'll have to be conflicted, since we've found out he's such a devoted
husband and generally nice guy.
Maybe he's also the man you hate to love.
Getting Personal with Ross Petty
What was your first job?
I was in the chorus of The Student Prince at Rainbow Stage in Winnipeg
when I was 15.
What would you be if you weren't a performer?
I love to spend what little spare time I have in my garden, so I'd probably be
a landscape architect.
What's on your iPod?
A lot of Brazilian music. And I love the sound of Renée Fleming's voice.
What TV show must you watch every week?
I try never to miss Jon Stewart. He's so brilliant and irreverent.
What's the last good movie you saw?
I think Kristin Scott Thomas is so fantastic, I'd see her in anything, but she
was especially good in her two latest films: The Other Boleyn Girl and I've
Loved You So Long.
Excellent Cast Blesses Soulpepper Show
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian, Theatre Critic
A Christmas Carol
(out of 4)
By Charles Dickens. Adapted and directed by Michael Shamata. Until Dec. 24 at
the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill St. 416-866-8666
(November 28, 2008) Are you looking for the true holiday spirit? Friend,
your search is over. Just head to the Young Centre where Soulpepper Theatre
opened a revival of its production of A Christmas Carol last night.
This totally beguiling show is presented in the round, with inventive staging
(by Michael Shamata) and superlative lighting (by Alan Brodie) eliminating the
need for any cumbersome scenery.
It also allows the beauty of the Dickensian language and the sheer joy of being
in the theatre to triumph over the world of technical bells and whistles, which
is just as it should be.
We're in a world of candlelight and shadows: the perfect setting for this story
of the skinflint Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts who transform his life one
magical Christmas Eve. Actors wheel tables on and off, or steer ladders across
the stage and we believe that we're wherever they want to take us.
Of course, you don't accomplish such marvels without first-rate actors and
there are a lot of them here.
Joseph Ziegler couldn't be better as Scrooge.
We see the crusty tyrant, the wounded young man, the cynical miser, the
despairing old man and the redeemed new spirit. Ziegler feels all of these
deeply and, even more importantly, he makes us feel them as well.
You also couldn't find a more perfect Bob Cratchit than Oliver Dennis. With
humanity simply shining in his eyes, Scrooge's employee helps us understand the
complexity of goodness as he deals with the cards fate has dealt him.
And as Scrooge's nephew, Fred, the splendid Patrick Galligan seems to have
rediscovered all the charm and warmth he temporarily mislaid this summer at the
Shaw Festival. Galligan is so vibrant in the role, the moment when he welcomes
his uncle in for Christmas dinner was when my eyes started welling up,
considerably ahead of schedule.
Kevin Bundy is an ebullient Mr. Fezziwig and Deborah Drakeford a refreshingly
snappy Mrs. Cratchit.
The production does have one problem. John Jarvis again plays all the ghosts,
wearing the overdone costumes of Julie Fox, a combination that results in a
certain shallow sameness throughout.
But it's not enough to damage an otherwise luminous experience, which is a fine
show in its own right. It's the perfect piece of entertainment to remind us in
this economically troubled season that there is more to life than making money.
God bless us, every one!
This is an edited version of the review which first appeared in the Star on
Dec. 7, 2006.
::OTHER NEWS::
Obama: Not A
Stereotypical Brother, But Funny Nonetheless
Source: www.thestar.com - Kenny Robinson, Special To The Star
(November 30, 2008) When Barack Obama became the first black to be elected
president of the United States, he changed the history of America, and
hopefully the level of comedy that is performed by both black and white comedians.
I am excited that many black comics will become more political in nature now
that Obama is in office. The office of president has always been a target for
political humour, and Obama's race should not exempt him from ridicule should
he stumble, stagger or fall.
Hopefully he will do for political humour what Tiger Woods did for golf; he
will show that politics is just not for white men any more.
I look forward to the work of black comics such as Paul Mooney, Dave Chappelle,
Chris Rock, Kat Williams and David Allen Grier's Chocolate News taking
on Obama's detractors, or calling him on his missteps.
I shed a tear like Jesse Jackson's on election night that we'll never get to
hear the late Richard Pryor's or Bernie Mac's take on everything that will go
down in the next four years.
During the campaign Bill Maher mused that Obama was "too perfect" a
candidate. That means that comedians will have to be smarter and work harder to
find the funny.
So what kind of comedy will Obama inspire in the next four years?
When Jesse Jackson ran for president, Eddie Murphy led the pack with
assassination jokes. No doubt they will be recycled for Obama, and with the
high number of death threats already reported by the Secret Service. There will
be jokes about his ears, jokes about his bluish lips and jokes about his
whiteness as opposed to his blackness.
There will be jokes that Oprah may become the new Lewinsky, that Obama is a
pimp and working Hilary too hard. There will be jokes about first lady
Michelle, her clothes, hair, and whether she wears the pants in the family.
There will be jokes, unfortunately, about the Obamas' two little girls – and
jokes about the president's mother-in-law living in the White House.
The Obamas as America's First Family will be closer to that of Vaughn Monroe's
Kennedys than George Jefferson's "Movin' on Up." They are more
Huxtables than Good Times.
But jokes that rely on black stereotypes will be lame and hack. Obama is not
your stereotypical brother, despite his plans to replace W.'s bowling alley
with a basketball court.
At left are samples of some of the Obama bits that can be heard on Toronto
comedy stages.
Kenny Robinson is a Toronto comedy institution.
THEY SAID IT, WE DIDN'T: FOUR TRIES AT OBAMATERIAL
It's been said that U.S. president-elect Barack Obama is hard to make fun of,
but there are those who make a living off such things. We asked four local
comedians to submit the best Obama material they've come up with; vote for your
favourite by emailing his name to entertain@thestar.ca and
the winner gets $200. Yes, we can afford that. (Kenny Robinson and
Rodney Ramsey perform tonight at the downtown Yuk Yuk's black comedy night.)
KENNY ROBINSON
Barack Obama is a smoker, which brings me joy. The media has asked whether
America was ready to have a black man in the White House. I ask the question,
will they allow him to smoke?
I hope so. Being president is a very stressful job. I don't want to see Obama
chewing nicotine gum. If Barack has to decide whether he is going to vaporize
North Korea, I don't want the brother to be on the patch ... I want a big,
dirty ashtray filled with butts right next to "The Button."
I want to be able to go through the ashtray and find a roach, knowing that
Obama is cool with his decision. "Enjoy the light show."
Al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently referred to Obama as
a "house Negro." Silly terrorist, why didn't he use the proper slur
and use the N-word? It isn't as if the world would think less of him.
RODNEY RAMSEY
Has anyone else noticed that the number of black correspondents on CNN has
quadrupled since Barack Obama began campaigning for presidency?
Many thought black political analysts were a myth, like hobbits, unicorns and
heterosexual male hairdressers. It would seem as though blacks have suddenly
been catapulted into positions of authority because of Obama's exceptional
achievements, which is unfortunate for those of us who enjoyed being lazy.
One finds it interesting that Africans have claimed racial ownership of Obama.
With a smile like Will Smith's and a layup similar to Scotty Pippen's, it's
easy to forget that Obama is actually Halfrican American (the other half being
able to get to work on time and possessing good credit).
NILE SEGUIN
A lot of people are excited that the U.S. finally has a black president. But
some people like to say that technically he's half white. I would like to say
that technically he's biracial. I say that because I'm biracial and that's how
I like to be described, not because I'm super politically correct or anything.
I just find the term "half black" sounds like I'm still working on
it.
I just don't think four years is enough time to fix the mess that George W.
Bush left. I think no one knows just how bad it is. I think Barack Obama will
show up at the White House on his first day saying: "Okay, time to fix the
count. WHAT THE F---? Oh my god, it looks like monkeys have been living in
here. Get me the Al-Qaeda file. Why is there a Lite-Brite in this thing?! I've
made a huge mistake."
MARK WALKER
Election night in America was very emotional; even Oprah was jumping on her
couch.
In Chicago, I saw black people and white people crying and hugging each other.
White people were crying in the southern states, too, for different reasons.
"I guess it's all over now, huh, Earl? All right, I want everyone to put
your pointy white hoods in one pile and your crosses and your kerosene in this
pile and we'll have a bonfire. Maybe we can roast marshmallows: you know what
that's like – when something white turns golden brown."
I'm still paranoid about assassination, though; that's not a race thing, that's
a change thing. They kill white people who try to change things in the U.S.,
too: bring that up at the next Kennedy family reunion. I want to see Barack
Obama on Inauguration Day decked out like Iron Man!
Source: www.thestar.com - Donna Bailey Nurse
Valmiki's Daughter
by Shani Mootoo
House of Anansi,
391 pages, $29.95
(November 30, 2008) If the premise of Shani Mootoo's latest novel wasn't so sad it might easily read as farce: A handful of gay spouses in a conservative community pretend to be straight, while their partners pretend not to know.
The action of Valmiki's Daughter unfolds in Trinidad among members of the urban, affluent Indian class whose ancestors climbed out of indentured service in the cane and cacao fields. With such dark memories coursing through their veins, it's no wonder they are prepared to sacrifice personal contentment to maintain their elite status.
Valmiki – the name of Mootoo's eponymous character is also the name of the Hindu sage who wrote the ancient Indian epic Ramayana – is married with two daughters. He is a respected physician, despite his well-known habit of using his medical offices for sexual dalliances with numerous women.
Valmiki's reputation as a philanderer serves a crucial purpose: it camouflages his socially unacceptable passion for men.
Years ago, as a student, he fell in love with a young man named Tony. They hoped to spend their lives together, but in the end Valmiki could not stomach the idea of devastating his parents. He opted for involvement with a local girl and married her. He has not slept with his wife in years. Now he regularly visits a mixed-race male lover who has introduced him to hunting in the forests outside the city.
Valmiki's eldest daughter, Viveka, is a student at the University of the West Indies. The truculent 20-year-old has taken to interrogating her parents about their lifestyle, which she dismisses as snobby and racist. She'd love to invite her mixed-race boyfriend, Elliot, to one of her parents' frequent parties, just to irritate them. Yet Viveka does not wish to encourage Elliott's romantic interest, as she is increasingly uncertain about her own sexuality.
Mootoo is best known as the author of the Giller Prize-nominated Cereus Blooms at Night. She is one of a number of notable Indo-Canadian writers of Trinidadian descent. Partly because of the island's unique history, born of the proximity of African, Indian and European peoples, these writers (most prominently Neil Bissoondath, Robin Maharaj, Ramabai Espinet and, most recently, David Chariandy) excel at articulating the dynamics of class and race.
But in this novel, Mootoo's attempts to address race and class mostly flounder, although she does make a valiant effort in the figure of Nayan Prakash, a friend of Viveka's whose family owns a chocolate factory. Nayan has recently returned from Canada with a degree and a beautiful French wife. He explains to Viveka the sly manner with which he successfully insinuated himself into the "right" Canadian circles:
"I found I had to pull out my credit cards to get noticed and respect ... Once you're in you start to show you are just like they are, perhaps you even have better manners and nicer ways. They take you home. Their parents like you because there is something vaguely old-fashioned about you, something reminiscent of themselves, and before you know it, you're in."
His discussion of the social advantages of a coloured man having a white wife is equally off-putting: "And I know that marrying Anick, or rather Anick marrying me, is an indication of my worth."
Nayan may be calculating and vulgar, but we might have more feeling for him if Mootoo had taken the time to dramatize his experience, rather than conveying it in straight dialogue.
To be fair, race is difficult material to work with, particularly when many writers, of whatever colour, feel implicated in the same racial conflicts they struggle to define. As it turns out, race and class do not emerge as Mootoo's primary concerns in Valmiki's Daughter.
Instead, her central preoccupations include gender expectations, sexual orientation and social acceptance. Viveka turns out to be drawn to Nayan's wife, leaving her to face, unknowingly, the same dilemma her father faced years ago.
This novel takes off on some interesting tangents. We encounter aspects of the island's French history. Nayan's family's chocolate company originally belonged to a French planter. Is it coincidence or fate that the new mistress of the house turns out to be a French woman?
We encounter literary history as well: Valmiki's excursions into the forest further evoke passages of his namesake's Ramayana.
Finally, Mootoo's delineation of the dense mystery of the forest is haunting. Her portraits of the island's intoxicating flowers in all their profusion and blistering colours are utterly surreal. This is where the Toronto author's true powers lie.
Donna Bailey Nurse is a Toronto reviewer and anthologist.
Toni,
Interrupted
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Simon Houpt
(November 28, 2008) Princeton, N.J. - “No one talks about the book,” sighs Toni
Morrison, and while she's mildly irked by this turn of events,
she understands these are exceptional times. She was in England a few weeks
ago, there to do press and public appearances for her exquisite new novel, A
Mercy, and all they wanted to hear was a dissection of U.S. racial and
presidential politics. But she gave them what they wanted, because she knows
this is what it means to be Toni Morrison: to be always and forever the first
African-American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, to be the rare writer of
novels who receives standing ovations from audiences seeking to be transformed
by their encounters with the word made flesh, to be not just an author but an
ambassador.
And, this afternoon, being Toni Morrison means to be anchored behind her desk
on the Princeton University campus, where she has taught writing for almost 20
years, sipping cold coffee and picking at a crumbly cookie. It is just hours
after Barack Obama became president-elect of the United States, and Morrison,
77 years old and operating on little sleep, began the day with a Good
Morning America satellite hit and still has another couple of interviews
before she can take a breather. Even Nobel laureates have publicity
obligations.
But even if people only want to talk about the election, A Mercy is
still perfectly positioned to become part of the dialogue. Because, while
Barack Obama will soon be America's first “post-racial” president, the novel is
what Morrison calls “pre-racial,” and they are, in a way, the same thing.
Set in the last couple of decades of the 17th century, when the U.S. was a
half-lawless land of unbound desires whose bounty was being parcelled up
according to whims of various foreign kings, A Mercy is an intimate
story with epic implications, sung in notes of deep ambivalence.
It begins with Jacob Vaark, a Dutch orphan who lives a primeval version of the
American Dream, having scrambling hard enough in the New World to claim a small
patch of land. For a time, the dream tentatively blossoms, even after Vaark and
Rebekka, his 16-year-old mail-order bride from London, lose all of their
natural-born children to illness. They form an ad hoc polyglot family with two
indentured male servants and three young women who are also, in their way,
orphans: Lina, a native Indian girl who lost her entire village to disease;
Sorrow, the sole survivor of a shipwreck; and Florens, an eight-year-old black
girl given away by her mother, a slave whose owner cannot meet his financial
obligations to Jacob. While Florens sees her transfer to Jacob's care as an act
of maternal abandonment, her mother views it as one of terrible, costly mercy.
“For me, the most devastating thing about slavery is – in addition to all the
other little horrors – the separation of the family. Breakdown. You don't know
where your children are,” notes Morrison.
When Jacob dies of smallpox eight years later, the tenuousness of the family
structure is laid bare. And while only one of the young women is black, Jacob's
death leaves them all at risk of being de-legitimized.
“These are women, understand: in most cases, illegal without a man,” Morrison
explains. “I wanted to separate slavery from race. It's not difference that
matters – there are differences that are profound – it's hierarchy. One is
‘better' or ‘lower than.'” She speaks slowly in honeyed tones, emphasizing each
word, like a patient professor. “The hierarchy is planted. Sustained. And who
does that serve?”
Even on a drizzly day, Morrison's office is a warm space, made brighter by
double-height ceilings. A large table to her right is weighed down with
manuscripts sent by publishers and students in hopes of feedback. To the left
is a black-and-white picture of Morrison as a solemn-faced young girl of about
8, the same age as Florens when her mother gives her away in A Mercy. A
clutch of family pictures sits in frames, and a commemorative Nobel poster
hangs on the wall behind Morrison, where visitors are reminded of her rare
achievement but she is not. The pictures she prefers to see are two striking
portraits of disfigured men by the cult photographer Robert Bergman. “They look
Renaissance,” says Morrison approvingly. “I wrote a preface for one of his
books [ A Kind of Rapture, 1998] and finally got up the courage to say,
‘Could you send me a print?' And he did, and I hung it up, but it's too
powerful [on its own], you can't have that eating up a room. So I asked him for
another.”
The seminar she teaches, called The Foreigners' Home: The Literature of
Dispossession, includes novels, “about people who are feeling dispossessed or
exiled.” She has three residences: a pied-à-terre in lower Manhattan; a larger
home overlooking the Hudson River; and a place here in Princeton, near one of
her sons and her grandchildren. And though she jokes about being rootless,
shuttling among the homes – “Oh, I have bags! All I do is carry bags! I have a
bedroom bag, I have a linen bag – Morrison spends most of the school year in
Princeton, where she has been a fixture since 1989.
Mostly, she does her writing up by the Hudson and has it entered into a
computer here, where she works on printouts, revising ad nauseam. “I can tell
when creative-writing students compose on the computer,” she says with a sly
smile. Writing that way is “deceptive because you have this print and you
think: That sentence makes sense because it's in this [professional-grade]
font! But if you're writing” – by which she means actually writing by hand –
“first of all, you may not like the act of writing, so you're not gonna waste
time.” Morrison mimes typing. “I'm a very good typist, I can do this forever.”
She throws her head back and rolls her eyes to the heavens, while her fingers
move with abandon. (If her books aren't known for their humour, she has a comic
wit that often flashes in person.) “Each sentence looks great! ‘Oh yeah, I
meant that!' No! Writing is revising. If you don't like that ” – she stops
herself and unleashes the sort of large, breathy laugh she seems to deploy as a
stopgap measure against chastising people.
A Mercy took about five years to write, half of which was taken up by
research into the time period. “I got this great book, called Changes in the
Land,” about the landscape before the arrival of Europeans. “It has all
this stuff! I didn't know: Were there dandelions? What were the fauna, birds, fowl,
everything? And how the Europeans changed it. Just knowing what the grasses
were!” Only once she knew about the setting could she let her imagination roam
freely.
Morrison is often asked about why she sets her books in the past. “Many people
complain, almost like [the past] is over there somewhere,” she waves a hand to
the middle distance. “But there is no book in the world that doesn't include
the past. The detective story starts with a murder and then you have to go
back.” (She loves mystery author P.D. James.) Another breathy laugh that
suggests she is impatient with this question, but she forges ahead with a
deeper answer: She is interested in periods that strike her as being
unarticulated. “I keep finding these gaps and silences, and ask: Well, what
about this? And suppose this?” She cites two of her novels as examples: “Black
towns, who ever heard of those? Paradise, you know? Jazz – that
belongs to Mr. Fitzgerald? I don't think so! That's the way it coalesces for
me.”
Right now, she's rooting around in the 1950s. “Do you know how many people died
in the Korean War? Sixty-eight-thousand – and it's like disappeared from the
face of the Earth.” She emits another breathy laugh, then spins out a vivid
tableau she's been turning over in her brain lately. It is a simple image,
deeply troubling, and encapsulated by a phrase that's only four words long. But
after describing the image, she insists it stay off the record; she doesn't
know yet if anything will come of it. Though she is, certainly, relieved to
have the seed of an idea in her head. “When I have had periods when I didn't
have another idea, the melancholy and dread is very deep. Very deep. I'm not …
happy.”
There is another reason to keep writing. “My life is so ordinary. I don't ski
and swim and stuff. But the real world for me, the exciting world for me, the
free world for me, the place I don't have to do anything anybody says – nobody
tells me what to do – is in those books. Everything else I do is for my
children, my sister, my students, somebody else's expectations.
“In my work, there are only my expectations” – she thumps the desk with her
hand – “and I can't let anybody in, even though I am writing for you, hoping
that you come in and help me with this book. That's the only way I can do it.
It's the liberation for me, it's the freest place I know. You know, the freedom
of the mind.”
::DANCE NEWS::
Piece's Moving Parts Summon Wonder
Source: www.thestar.com
- Susan Walker, Dance Writer
Lost Action
(out of 4)
Choreography by Crystal Pite
Until Saturday at Fleck Dance Theatre, 207 Queens Quay W.
416-973-4000
(November 27, 2008) Kidd Pivot lives up to its name with Lost Action. Crystal Pite's Vancouver company performs
this rather overwhelming work with the recklessness and irreverence implied in
the word Kidd and the precision of a well-executed pivot.
The narrative is not explicit. It is for the audience to interpret from the
body language. It's enough to know that this dance, which premiered in March
2006, alludes to the conditions of soldiers in combat. But Lost Action depicts
intimate interaction, intense co-operation, camaraderie and group reaction to
loss that could apply to many situations. Performing a dance, for instance.
It is an intensely physical piece, built on incredibly intricate and innovative
choreography.
The dance begins with chaos and a mood of panic, over the clicking sounds of a
Morse code transmission, as seven shadowy figures scramble helter-skelter under
a blue light. The lights come up on a red dance mat, backed with a full-length
finely corrugated red curtain – blood and guts, maybe.
Eric Beauchesne, Malcolm Low, Yannick Matthon and Jermaine Spivey marshal
themselves into a row that keeps breaking down and reforming as they dash from
one corner of the stage to another. Laughter and broken bits of conversation
are overhead: "I don't understand"; "It's funny now";
"No, it's not." It's very loud, disorienting.
Pite, dressed like the men and the other women in pants and T-shirt, performs
an astonishing solo in which she appears to have more movable parts than the
standard human body. Pite moves with extraordinary articulation, a mobile
illustration of Hamlet's "what a piece of work is man."
Recurrent images establish a theme of loss and mourning. Spivey lies inert on
the floor, the unknown soldier. Another dancer slowly walks between the still
figures solemnly bearing the parka of a lost one. Hands cover eyes and mouths
in gestures of helplessness.
The wonder of the piece is in the assemblages of bodies like buildings, quickly
erected and just as quickly collapsed on themselves. A stunning sequence has
four men manipulating a female dancer into many positions so it looks as if
she's dancing in the air. Pite's ballet background shows in duets, trios and
quartets involving impossibly complex holds and lifts.
Owen Belton's soundscape and thundering percussive score create a sense of
relentlessness. Beauchesne's repeated words, "I'm going to start from the
beginning ..." apply to some mechanical routine he's learning. But it's
easily understood as a statement of renewal.
::SPORTS NEWS::
Burke Takes Helm Of Maple Leafs
Source: www.thestar.com - The Canadian Press
(November
29, 2008) The Brian
Burke era has arrived for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
He was handed the reins of the NHL club during a news conference this
afternoon, officially taking over as president and general manager.
He gets a six-year deal worth a reported $3 million annually.
The move comes after months of speculation about Burke's future.
He replaces Cliff Fletcher, who was hired as interim general manager following
the firing of John Ferguson in January.
Burke spent the past three-plus seasons managing the Anaheim Ducks, leading
them to a Stanley Cup title in 2007.
He stepped down from the post on Nov. 13 after declining to sign a contract
extension that would take him beyond this season.
Burke's track record suggests that it shouldn't take very long for him to start
putting his stamp on the team.
During previous management stops in Hartford, Vancouver and Anaheim, the
53-year-old has been unafraid to make bold moves.
Luxury Living Means Little If Raptors Lose
Source: www.thestar.com
- Dave Feschuk, Basketball Columnist
(November 30, 2008) Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, in describing a three-game Western road
trip that begins tonight against the L.A. Lakers, used the word “brutal.”
And considering what happened the last time the Raptors visited the Lakers on a
Sunday night – after which, to refresh your recollection, they printed up
commemorative T-shirts bearing the name Bryant and the number 81 – we concur
with the coach’s horror. But the brutality, even Mitchell will admit, has its
benefits.
In L.A. last night, for instance, the Raptors stayed at the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel, an ultra-luxe crash pad to pop-culture deities from John Lennon to Julia
Roberts. The place is opulent enough that Jim Labumbard, Toronto’s veteran
media relations guru who’s forgotten more nights in five-star hotels than most
of the rest of us will ever experience, recalls bunking in a Wilshire suite
lavish enough to have a bathroom on either end of its acreage.
“Two bathrooms?” said Chris Bosh, the Raptors all-star, shrugging as though
he’d know exactly what to do with such extravagance. “Have two baths, man.”
If NBA players have grown blasé about their luxury lifestyle, consider that
it’s been more than 20 years since the Detroit Pistons led the move to
now-universal private-charter air travel. And even Mitchell, the 43-year-old
former player, can scarcely recall the days when a veteran had to pay a premium
to secure his own room on the road. In this every-man’s-an-island league, a
spacious room of one’s own is now an inalienable right written into the
collective bargaining agreement.
But NBA-style luxury is relatively new to a handful of Raptors. For Roko Ukic,
the 23-year-old rookie who honed his game in Croatia’s lower-pro rungs, life
wasn’t always thus.
“We stayed in some bad places. It just was terrible, terrible. You cannot
imagine,” Ukic was saying last month. “No TV. Cockroaches. No curtains on the
windows, so you wake up at 5 a.m. …”
The continental crossover of talent has pro players comparing notes. Josh
Childress, last year’s Atlanta Hawk turned this year’s Greek-team showpiece,
was telling the New York Times a while back that, while his new squad
doesn’t fly private jets to all their games – and while a 6 a.m. commercial
flight to Israel was “rough” – things are awfully good for pro athletes on the
Continent.
Still, road-tripping European-based players, in lieu of pocketing the
NBA-standard per diem of $114 (U.S.) for food and incidentals, typically eat
three meals a day as a squad (depending on the coach, they may or may not have
to ask permission to order a glass of vino). And they almost always share a
hotel room with a teammate. The mandatory-roommate policy is not necessarily a
financial concern. It endures, says Maurizio Gherardini, the Raptors Italian
senior executive, “because that’s the principle of creating team spirit.”
Anthony Parker, the Raptors shooting guard who grew up in the Chicago area but
made his name in the Israeli league, shakes his head at the memory.
“Most of the beds were single beds, small single beds,” said Parker. “And you
come into the room and they’re separated by, like, three inches. All the
American guys would slide their beds to the opposite ends of the room.”
Parker said he doesn’t miss the only English channel being CNN. And he doesn’t
miss Europe’s economy-class air travel. (“If you’ve got enough seven-footers on
your team, sometimes you had to sit in the middle,” he said). But he
acknowledges he didn’t have it so bad.
Sherman Hamilton, the Raptors TV broadcaster, certainly had it worse. “This was
in the Ukraine. The window’s busted. There’s cold air coming in. I literally
slept in a sweatsuit, winter jacket, gloves, a hat and my boots,” Hamilton
said, speaking of days employed by a not-quite-prime-time Finnish club. “I’m
not joking. We left the hot water running to steam the room. We came back, the
room was flooded.”
That kind of hardship, to be clear, doesn’t befall Europe’s top-flight pros;
Andrea Bargnani, who came to Toronto via the elite Euroleague, said his biggest
burden in Benetton Treviso was a roommate who snored like an earthquake and was
eventually handed the key to a single room. But Gord Herbert, the first-year
Raptors assistant coach who coached in the Euroleague, said his early
impressions of the NBA road life suggest it’s far more conducive to
performance.
While his overseas teams flew the occasional charter, his recollections of
commercial air travel include a nine-hour layover in the Prague airport and a
seven-hour sitdown in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. Far better, Herbert figures,
to pull up to the tarmac, as the Raptors can now, and fly direct on a catered
jet with business-class loungers and all the other trimmings.
Perhaps this is a small reason why Ukic left money on the table overseas to
test himself (and spoil himself a little) in the NBA.
“It’s easy to get used to the good things,” said Ukic, smiling. “Now, if they
don’t put out the food (on the private plane) fast enough, you say, ‘Hey, where
is the food?’ It becomes normal very quick.”
He smiled and glanced at the scouting report in his lap.
“I enjoy it, but I would trade all this food, all these luxury hotels, for one
good game,” Ukic said. “At the end of the day, everything is about the
basketball court. So you can have everything, but if you play bad, you feel
bad. If you play good, you can stay in the worst hotel in the world, you can
eat the worst food in the world, and it would make you happy.”
::FITNESS NEWS::
The
Better Butt Diet: Super 6-Week Plan
By Raphael Calzadilla, BA, CPT, ACE, RTS1, eDiets Chief Fitness Pro
(July 30, 2008) I've designed a simple and effective six-week plan to steer you
in the direction, toward a smaller and tighter butt.
I can't create miracles in six weeks, but I can provide a realistic starting
point.
Let's begin with a reality check. You can't get a good-looking butt if you have
excessive body fat. I'm not suggesting that you have to attain a perfect body
to get a good-looking butt; after all, we need to respect different
shapes, forms and genetic structures. However, don't expect to have great
glutes with excessive body fat.
You need to consume fewer calories than you burn, but that doesn't mean
starving yourself and eating as little as possible.
The key to manipulating nutrition is eating the correct foods in the correct
amounts at the correct times. If you're an eDiets member using one
of our specially designed nutrition programs,
you're automatically on track with this necessary piece of the formula.
What I like about my six-week plan is that it's easy to follow and
includes a schedule that calls on you to progress each week. This will help you
to burn more and more calories each and every week. The pace of progress calls
for in this plan exercise isn't easy, but it's also not complicated. And my simple
nutrition tips are sure to make a difference if you follow them each and
every week for the entire six weeks.
WEEK 1
1. Walking Lunges -- (Watch the video below!) Stand with your feet
hips-width apart, grasp a pair of dumbbells or cans with your arms straight at
your sides, palms facing your body. Take a long step forward and lower your
body so your front knee lines up with your ankle. The back knee is almost
touching the floor. Push off with your back foot and take a long step forward
with your other foot. Walk-lunge 15 steps and then turn around and return to
the start (one set). You should contract your glutes on the lowering of each
movement. Perform two sets on two alternate days per week.
2. Power Walking -- Power Walk for 30 minutes. Generally, a good speed
is between 3.5 and 4.0 mph on a treadmill. You're walking briskly, but you
should still be able to hold a conversation. Begin slowly and build to your max
speed. Walk for 30 minutes four days per week.
3. Eat breakfast every morning. Eating a healthy
breakfast will help to regulate blood sugar and help to prevent
binge eating.
WEEK 2
1. Walking Lunges -- (See the video
from Week 1) Use the same parameters as week 1. Perform two sets on two
alternate days per week.
2. Extension Step-Ups -- Grasp a pair of dumbbells or cans by your sides
with palms facing the side of the body. Stand behind a 6- to 12-inch high step
or bench (normally used in aerobic step classes) and keep your arms straight.
Step onto the middle of the step with your right foot and then lift your left
knee high (to hip height). Step down with your left foot, and then repeat on
the right side. Perform one set of 15 steps on each leg -- two alternate days
of the week.
3. Power Walking -- Increase the time to 37 minutes and keep the days
the same (four days per week).
4. Assess Your Pantry/Refrigerator -- Eliminate foods that you tend to
binge on and that have empty calories .
WEEK 3
1. Walking Lunges -- Perform three sets on two alternate days per week.
2. Extension Step-Ups -- Increase to two sets but keep to two alternate
days per week.
3. Power Walking -- Add a fifth walking day and keep the time the same
(37 minutes).
4. Water -- Consume 64 or more ounces per day. Think that sounds like a
lot? Here are 10 easy ways to
get your water.
WEEK 4
1. Squats -- (Eliminate the Walking Lunge exercise). Place a broom stick
or barbell across the back of your shoulders. Be sure it's not resting on your
neck. Your feet should be shoulders-width apart. Lower the weight, keeping your
knees behind the toes at all times. Think of sitting back into a chair and
contract the glutes on the lowering phase. Stop when the knees are at a
90-degree angle. Return to the starting position and repeat.
Inhale while lowering the weight, and exhale while returning to the starting
position. Do not let the knees ride over your toes (you should be able to see
your feet at all times), and don't arch your back. Perform two sets of 15 reps
on two alternate days per week.
Watch the video below for a helpful guide.
2. Extensions Step-Ups -- Remain with three sets but add a third day
(alternate days of the week).
3. Power Walking -- Increase the time to 40 minutes and keep the days
the same (five days).
4. Junk Food -- Eliminate one junk food item from your diet this week.
WEEK 5
1. Squats -- (Need help? Watch the video
from Week 4.) Increase the sets to three and increase the reps to 20 (two
alternate days per week).
2. Extensions Step-Ups -- Perform three sets but increase the reps to 20
(three alternate days per week).
3. Bent Knee Push-ups -- (Video below!) Start with your hands and knees
on a mat. Your hands should be shoulder width apart and your head, neck, hips
and legs should be in a straight line. Do not let your back arch and cave in.
Lower your upper body by bending your elbows outward, stopping before your face
touches the floor. Contracting the chest muscles, slowly return to the starting
position. Perform one set of six to 10 reps or as many as you can do on two
alternate days per week.
4. Power Walking -- Increase the time to 45 minutes and keep the days
the same (five days).
5. Carbohydrates -- Slightly decrease the amount of starchy
carbohydrates at two of your meals. For example, if you're having pasta for
dinner, decrease your normal serving.
WEEK 6
1. Squats -- Continue with three sets but increase the reps to 22 (two
alternate days per week).
2. Extension Step-Ups -- Perform three sets but increase the reps to 22
(three alternate days per week).
3. Bent Knee Push-ups -- Perform two sets as many as possible. Increase
to three alternate days per week.
4. Power Walking -- Add a sixth day and perform 45 minutes each day.
5. Brown Bag -- If you work outside of the home, bring a bagged, healthy lunch at
least three times this week.
After six weeks you can tailor the program to your liking. My job is to help
jump-start you in the right direction.
As always, check with your doctor before beginning any exercise program.
Motivational
Note
Source: www.eurweb.com
— Colin Powell
"The day
people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading
them."