(416)
677-5883
langfieldent@rogers.com
www.langfieldentertainment.com
LE NEWSLETTER
January 31, 2008
Talk about blustery weather! And imagine my surprise to wake
up at 4am yesterday morning to the crashing of
building materials to the street from 35 floors up in the air -
the condo across the street was spewing off material due to the high winds we
are experiencing. Luckily no one was injured ... but many lost hours of
sleep!
February is right around the corner so mark your calendars for the special
events! An amazing night of entertainment is on its way to Toronto -
Richard Loring’s African Footprint at the Sony
Centre coming in early February!
Don't forget to get your tickets for Andrew Craig's Valentine's concert
entitled Celebrate Love - a special night out with your special someone!
Now there's the cue to you - take your time and take a walk into your weekly
entertainment news!
::HOT EVENTS::
Celebrate Love – Thursday,
February 14, 2008
Source: Andrew Craig
You’ve made all the plans for the perfect Valentine’s Day. You’ve
reserved your favourite table at your
favourite restaurant. You have the flowers, the chocolates, the card, the gift.
The limousine picks you both up after work, and you slip across town to dine.
Once you arrive at the restaurant, everything is perfect: the ambience, the
food, the wine, the conversation. You decide to top off a sumptuous meal with a
decadent dessert and coffee.
It’s only 7:30 p.m. Now what? It’s too early to retire to the bedroom, and yet
you don’t want the magic to end. What to do?
It’s time to Celebrate Love!
Celebrate Love is, simply put, an evening of the world’s greatest
love songs, sung by some of
Canada’s greatest voices, accompanied by top-flight musicians. Celebrate Love
is the brainchild of musician, producer, broadcaster and impresario Andrew
Craig, and is the realization of a decade-old dream: to create a
Valentine’s Day event so compelling and beautiful that it would draw fans back
year after year.
Molly Johnson, Canada’s first lady of jazz, headlines a stellar cast of
vocalists, including Kellylee Evans (the 2007 Canadian Smooth Jazz
Awards Female Vocalist of the Year), rising star DK Ibomeka,
Indo-Canadian vocal sensation Kiran Ahluwalila, and Mary Jane Lamond,
Canada’s preeminent interpreter of Gaelic songs from the East Coast. Add to
this mix some of Toronto’s finest emerging vocal talents, the exquisite sounds
of the Toronto-based cello quartet Lush, and the Celebrate Love
Orchestra, and the result is magical.
Don’t think this show is just for couples! Featuring a unique blend of classic
popular songs, rare musical gems from across the planet, poetry and
reflections, Celebrate Love is the perfect Valentine’s Day activity for people
in all stages of love: from new love, to unrequited love, to jilted love, to
old love, to true love.
Andrew Craig first produced Celebrate Love as a proof-of-concept show in 2004,
in Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre. Despite minimal advertising, the show
sold-out completely, and patrons anxious to get in caused a major traffic jam
at Bloor and Avenue Rd!
Audience response to Celebrate Love was overwhelmingly positive. Here are but a
few quotes from ecstatic attendees:
“Congratulations on an outstanding
performance. Wow! We were totally blown away. The music selection, the
individual vocal performances, the tremendous musicians, lighting, sound, and
an enthusiastic audience just spoke volumes about the true heart of Canadian
music.” - K.S., Toronto
“I want to say that last night was FANTASTIC 10 out of 10, please do it
again, Toronto missed the best show in town, if you do the same as last night
you will have triple as you did last night.” - J.A., Toronto
“Celebrate Love - WOW! I attended Saturday night’s show...and was blown
away. Andrew Craig...remarkable job. The mix and choice of music and culture
and diversity beautifully represented the Toronto scene.” - R.T., Toronto
“Amazing Valentines Performance! Thank you so much for making our 9th
Valentines together so special.” - S.T., Toronto
“I was at the "Celebrate Love" concert on Saturday, February
14. It was one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to (and I've been
to quite a few concerts).” - I.D., Toronto
“What a great show! The last time I left a show feeling that good was when
I saw Luther Vandross and the Voices of Blackness at Maple Leaf Gardens. Keep
up the great work!” - C.P., Toronto
Celebrate Love 2008 promises to be even
bigger and better. There simply is no better place to be this Valentine’s Day
than The Music Hall.
Log into www.celebratelove.ca and get a taste of what the show will be like.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2008
Celebrate Love: An Evening of the
World’s Greatest Love Songs
The Music Hall
147 Danforth Ave., east of Broadview
8:00 p.m.
$50
Click HERE
to purchase tickets
Richard Loring’s African Footprint – February 7-9, 2008
Source: Sony
Centre for the Performing Arts
African Footprint combines dance and song in an
incredible 90 minute spectacle. The show melds the hypnotic heartbeat of the
African drum, with the soulful saxophone and the haunting pennywhistle,
marrying Afro- and Euro-centric music and dance to create an exhilarating
series of numbers featuring Kwela-jive, traditional gumboot, tap, contemporary
ballet and hip-hop pantsula! African Footprint is so entertaining that
critics have dubbed the show “the Riverdance of Africa”. Yet by structuring the
show around the poetry of Don Mattera, South Africa’s foremost poet, African
Footprint also makes an important and emotional commentary on how Africa
can heal the past and reach the hopes and dreams of the future.
In 1999, Richard Loring, television and theatre star and show producer,
recruited a group of young people from the dusty streets of Soweto. From
hundreds of hopefuls, only 30 young aspiring performers were chosen. The next
year was taken up with vocal classes and intensive dance instruction which, for
most of these youngsters, was their first opportunity to enter the world of
professional theater. Seemingly going nowhere, the long hours of rehearsal were
rewarded when, on December 31st 1999, African Footprint was invited to perform
before Nelson Mandela in Block B on Robben Island, the very place where South
Africa’s leader had been a prisoner for some 18 years. The result was an
explosive and emotional performance televised around the world and seen by over
250 million viewers. This is how the journey began…
GET A SNEAK PEEK ONLINE!
“Don’t miss this hugely successful show!”
- Atlantic Sun, South Africa
“African Footprint is to South Africa what Riverdance is to
the Irish and Stomp is to the Brits!”
- Entertainment iafrica.com, South Africa
“A night of amazement!”
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany
“A show of polished gold!”
- Newcastle Herald, Australia
“Run to get tickets to this exhilarating spectacle!”
- Times Picayune
FEBRUARY 7-9, 2008
RICHARD LORING'S AFRICAN FOOTPRINT
The Sony Centre For The
Performing Arts
1 Front Street East
Tickets: $25 to $75
Buy Tickets HERE
Performance times:
Thursday February 7 @ 1PM (Special Senior’s Price $25!*)
Thursday February 7 @ 8PM
Friday February 8 @ 8PM
Saturday February 9 @ 2PM
Saturday February 9 @ 8PM
*Some conditions apply. Service charge applicable.
For tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca or
(416)872-2262
For group tickets, call (416)393-7463 or 1-866-737-0805
::TOP STORIES::
'How She Move': Dance Movie Steps Up
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Susan
Walker, Dance Writer
How She Move
(out
of 4)
Starring Rutina Wesley, Tre Armstrong and Dwain Murphy. Written by Annmarie
Morais. Directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid. 92 minutes. At major theatres. PG
(January 25, 2008) In the increasingly crowded field of
movies based on urban dance – from Rize
to You Got Served, Stomp the Yard, Save the Last Dance and
Step Up – How She Move stands out as a well-written and
well-acted drama with an appeal that reaches beyond dance fanatics.
Not that scriptwriter Annemarie Morais or director Ian Iqbal Rashid entirely
avoid the clichés of the genre, because in dance movies, as in movies about
sports heroes, there would be no story without conflict and obstacles to
success.
The conventional plot line goes all the way back to Flashdance:
Underprivileged, come-from-behind aspiring dancer wishes to get out of the
ghetto/dead-end job/life of crime and against all odds makes good on his or her
talent and determination. Sometimes the protagonist has lost a sibling to
drugs, gang warfare or crime, and has more to prove to parents who are
terrified of losing another child in a competitive and potentially dangerous
milieu.
Such is the case with Raya Green in How She Move. Her older sister has
died of a drug overdose. Her parents are in financial ruin and Raya is forced
to leave the private Seaton Academy that she has been attending. Back in the
'hood – clearly a Toronto environ resembling Jane-Finch or Rexdale – Raya is
plunged back into public high school to face considerable resentment from her
peers who think she counts herself too good for them.
Raya's difficulties mount as she attempts, and seems to flub, the exams that
could earn her a university scholarship. Getting into a step competition could
bring her the money she needs to pay tuition, but first she must persuade her
friend Bishop to let her join his all-boy crew called Jane Street Junta. That
she does, with a little help from Bishop's brother Quake, a nerdy-looking kid
who is a secret stepper.
All the pressures – school, parental and peer – come to bear on Raya, as they
always do in these movies, in a climactic dance competition. She has a lot
riding on being in the crew that takes the top prize of $50,000.
For all that its plot follows a familiar path, How She Move hits home
some truths without being heavy-handed about race, poverty, immigrant
struggles, crime and punishment. Rather, we deduce these ever-present currents
from the way they twist the characters out of shape. Shot with a lot of
handheld camera work in a gritty 16-mm format, the movie feels more like life than
an imitation of life.
As Raya, American actor Rutina Wesley, less than two years out of the Juilliard
School when this movie was made, gives a performance so grounded and true as to
make the similarly motivated strivers in Dreamgirls look like amateurs.
Wesley had to be a dynamite dancer too, and she pulls off the part of a
dazzling, passionate stepper.
Toronto supplied most of the dancers in the movie, beginning with Tré Armstrong
who plays Raya's chief rival Michelle, a role that required her to be as good
an actor as she is a dancer. There's no faking or stand-ins, as far as the
roving eye can tell, in How She Move.
Bishop, leader of the JSJ, is played by Dwain Murphy, an engaging Toronto actor
and convincing dancer, who also has a part in Clement Virgo's Poor Boy's
Game. B.C.-born Brennan Gademans, another dancer with all the right moves,
plays Quake, the bookworm who secretly choreographs step routines.
How She Move is a roll call of recognizable faces from Toronto's
performing community: actor/playwright Djanet Sears plays a vice-principal;
actor Alison Sealy-Smith plays teacher Mrs. Davis, poet Lillian Allen makes a
brief appearance as a student's mother. Singer/songwriter Shawn Desman plays
Trey, the white member of JSJ.
The Toronto step crew Black Ice shines in one of the competition scenes,
dressed up in hospital scrubs. And local hip-hop artist Cali (Sarah Francis)
has a spot on Michelle's crew FemPhatal and a song on the soundtrack.
Avoiding the sentimentality and most of the earnestness of the urban dance
drama, How She Move takes the prize with kick-ass dancing and
on-the-mark acting. Nikki Yanofsky: Jazz Baby
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com
(January 26, 2008) Nikki Yanofsky is correcting her mother. “No, Mom. It
was 2005 the first time,” she says. “I
remember because I was in Grade 5, and I
got that shirt, the one with the ruffles, and I wore it there. I remember it
very, very clearly,” she asserts, looking at her mother who is seated near her
in the kitchen of the large family home in the Montreal suburb of Hampstead.
“It was in December, and then in 2006, I did the [Montreal International] jazz
festival.”
Her mother is obviously accustomed to her teenager's exuberant confidence.
“That's right,” her mother says slowly in recollection.
“Of course it's right,” the young Yanofsky responds brightly. “Look who you're
dealing with.” She taps her forehead. “Best memory.” She laughs.
“You're right.” Her mother nods, certain now of the date.
“Say that again,” her daughter implores.
“You're right,” her mother repeats, laughing.
“That's what I like to hear,” Yanofsky says, bobbing her head of dark, glossy
hair in a show of approval. Her confidence is precocious, but charming. She
offers a huge smile, complete with shiny braces. “It's not very often I get to
hear that,” she continues, slapping a hand lightly on her thigh in mock
congratulation of herself.
Yanofsky is 13 years old, 5-foot-1 in height and weighs 89 pounds. Her heft is
all in her spirited personality and in her prodigious talent as a jazz singer
who can scat sing like the legend she most admires, Ella Fitzgerald. Since
performing in Montreal in December, 2005, with her father's garage band at a
local club for a fundraiser, she has quickly caught the attention of the music
industry's biggest players.
She has performed at several international jazz festivals and charity events.
“Stunning doesn't begin to describe it,” wrote Globe and Mail jazz critic J.D.
Considine of her performance at last summer's Toronto Jazz Festival.
In the spring of that year, under the guidance of Tommy Lipuma, the legendary
chairman of Verve Music Group, she recorded Fitzgerald's Airmail Special
for We all Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song, a tribute
album to mark the 90th anniversary of the jazz singer's birth. She had learned
the complicated vocal-improvisation piece in two days. Produced by another music
legend, Phil Ramone, the album includes performances by Natalie Cole, Gladys
Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang and Michael Bublé, among others. She's in
discussions with Ramone about recording her first solo album.
But her biggest gig is around the corner. On the heels of two concerts in
Toronto early next month, she will make her debut at New York's fabled Carnegie
Hall on Feb. 8, which happens to be her 14th birthday.
“It's, like, freakishly huge,” she says, laughing. “Any kid my age probably
wouldn't know what Carnegie Hall is.”
Marvin Hamlisch, the multi-award-winning conductor, composer and pianist, will
lead the New York Pops orchestra in the evening's program of swing-era
classics. Grammy Award-winner Dee Dee Bridgewater headlines the event. Yanofsky
will sing When You Wish Upon a Star and Fitzgerald's hip version of Old
MacDonald Had a Farm.
“I don't feel that I've changed,” Yanofsky says, as she chats animatedly at the
kitchen table, popping fresh blueberries into her mouth. “My parents have succeeded
in keeping me grounded, because they always teach me that if you believe that
you can grow as an artist and as a person, you'll never get too cocky or full
of yourself because you always feel that there is room to grow.”
Her parents, both native Montrealers, who have been married for 21 years,
describe their daughter as “a force” who has commanded attention from an early
age. Her 50-year-old father, Richard, a principal and founder of WowWee, a toy
company, has always had a studio in the house for his band, which he has since
folded as he focuses his musical interest on his daughter's career. He plans to
remain her manager.
“She would come and noodle around with us from an early age,” he recalls.
“And then they were, like, wait, something is weird here. She can sing!”
Yanofsky gleefully exclaims.
“I always say that she has a photographic ear,” he explains. “She hears
something once or twice, and it's done. I've never met anyone that musical in
my life.”
With her two older brothers, Michael, now 19, and Andrew, 17, she would often
give musical performances during family meals on Sunday night. When she was 2,
she learned all the songs in the hit musical Rent and would compete with
her brothers about who could remember the most words on long car rides to the
family ski chalet in Stowe, Vt. At 4, she was singing Britney Spears songs. At
5, she discovered the Beatles. By 8, she was hooked on jazz.
“She found jazz by herself. She is driven to knock off exact replicas of Ella
Fitzgerald and Ray Charles, and so these people became her teachers,” explains
her father, adding that his daughter often begs him to help her learn jazz and
R & B classics.
Yanofsky didn't take any formal voice lessons until last year. “Now I know how
you are supposed to breathe,” she says, leaping to her feet to give a
demonstration.
The family purposefully kept her talent under wraps until that fundraising
event in December, 2005. They wanted her to develop her talent without the
influence of the music industry, which can be damaging to child prodigies.
“We said to each other that night that our lives were going to change. We had
let the cat out of the bag,” says Nikki's mom, Elyssa Yanofsky, 46. Even though
they were aware of her musical gift, they were not inclined to enter her in
talent shows. “The JonBenet Ramsey thing, that's not my speed,” Elyssa Yanofsky
says, wrinkling her nose. “I am not a stage mother. She is her own force, and
we just go with it. We don't push her.”
“I pull them,” the younger Yanofsky pipes up brightly, explaining that if she
goes too long without being onstage she feels she is in withdrawal. “I think my
parents were worried that, ‘Oh my God, she's going to get discovered.' But now
they see that I've put in a lot of work for this, and now they see I'm capable
of doing it.”
Last year, her father, uncle and three other investors started A440, a company
set up to handle her career. Her father hired a vocal coach and musicians who
rehearse with her three times a week. “We are prepared to invest up to seven figures,”
Richard Yanofsky states. To date, they have spent close to $200,000, he
figures. “We want to keep her career really organic and natural. If we can seed
her with a brand centred around art and goodness, it will stand her in good
stead for when she wants to sell a record. We have created in Montreal her own
private Juilliard [School], with access to a studio, to shows and to
musicians.”
With his background in business and marketing, he carefully planned how to
introduce his daughter to the music industry. “From a visibility perspective,
from a credibility perspective, I wanted to have her ushered into the industry
by its leaders.” He has been able to arrange for introductions to “everybody at
the highest level,” he says, including Canadian music producer David Foster,
singer-guitarist John Mayer and jazz icon Wynton Marsalis.
Watching Nikki move about the house, it's clear that her family has had little
choice but to organize itself around her. She is a diva in a little girl's
body. She speaks her mind with no inhibition or threat of censure from her
parents. She poses for photographs as effortlessly as she might skip rope, if
she had the time.
“It's like we're living with a Wayne Gretzky or a Louis Armstrong or an Ella
Fitzgerald,” her father says, with a slightly dazed look of awe.
“She's an old soul,” her mother says. “It's like she's been doing this for
thousands of years.”
A maturity beyond her years has not always been easy to handle, however. “Lots
of the girls don't get me,” Yanofsky says. “I often feel like an outcast. And I
don't talk too much about what I'm doing, because they'd get all snooty and
think I'm being egotistical.”
Currently enrolled in Grade 8 on a flexible learning program at St. George's, a
private co-ed school in Montreal, she is a top student.
A year and a half ago, girls in her class put wads of chewing gum in her hat
and boots. “No one ever owned up to it,” she says with a pout.
Were they jealous?
“Oh, maybe,” she says, waving one hand dismissively in the air. “To each his
own. I have no clue. I didn't do anything to them. I just had to get over it.”
The friend that never lets her down is the microphone. In rehearsal, she is all
force and nuance, using her voice like a finely tuned instrument.
Her father enters the studio to listen to her after returning from doing some
errands.
“That's good,” he says to her as she finishes When You Wish Upon a Star.
“I know,” she replies with a laugh.
“Can't I hear [Stevie Wonder's] Signed, Sealed, Delivered?” he asks,
referring to a song in her jazz repertoire. She tells him she has already
rehearsed it.
“You'll hear it in Jamaica,” she squeals, holding his hands as she leans
affectionately into his lap. The band is heading south for the Jamaican Jazz
Festival this weekend.
“He pays the bills,” the drummer cajoles.
“Yeah, but I'll be paying them really soon,” she retorts playfully as she steps
up onto the wooden platform to indulge her father's wishes.
Luminato arts festival, in partnership with TD Canada Trust, presents Nikki
Yanofsky in her solo concert debut Feb. 5 and 6, in Toronto.
Juno Not Canadian Enough For Genies
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Peter
Howell, Movie Critic
(January 29, 2008) The Oscar-nominated comedy smash
Juno has a Canadian director (Jason Reitman),
two Canadian stars (Ellen Page and Michael Cera), and it was filmed in
Vancouver and area.
Yet it's not Canadian enough for the Genie Awards, even though British and American films
and talent do qualify as Canadian.
The omission of Juno from yesterday's nominations for the annual
celebration of Canadian film was just one of many puzzlers in an otherwise
sterling year for maple leaf cinema.
The London-filmed Eastern Promises and the Rwanda-filmed Shake Hands
With the Devil dominate the noms for the March 3 awards at the Metro
Toronto Convention Centre, with 12 bids apiece.
They're followed by Away From Her with seven nominations, The Tracey
Fragments with six, Continental, un film sans fusil (a Film
Without Guns) with five, Silk with five and L'Âge des ténèbres
(Days of Darkness) with four.
Juno wasn't submitted for Genie consideration, said Sara Morton, the CEO
of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
Yet even if it had been, Morton said it's unlikely Juno would have been
eligible for a Genie, owing to the complicated requirements for Canadian status
laid down by the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office, part of Heritage
Canada.
The office requires that at least a portion of a film's funding come from
Canadian sources and Juno was funded by Fox Searchlight, a U.S. company.
It's not unlike the situation that caused a national ruckus in 1991 when Vancouver
rocker Bryan Adams was declared un-Canadian by federal content watchdogs,
because his album Waking Up the Neighbours was co-written with a Briton
and recorded in London.
"Juno did not apply, so it's really hard for me to comment on why
it might not be Canadian," Morton said in an interview.
"I'm making a guess based on the fact that it's got a clear association
with a U.S. studio. Chances are it wouldn't fall within the CAVCO requirement,
even though it has some Canadian talent in it."
No one from Fox Searchlight was available for comment last night.
Had Juno been submitted and ruled eligible, it would have made this
year's Genies seem more like an Oscar-calibre event than it already is. This
year has a record number of nominees who are also in the running for Academy
Awards, although not all of them are strictly Canadian:
Halifax's Ellen Page, nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as the title star of Juno,
qualified for the same category at the Genies as the title star of The
Tracey Fragments.
Toronto's Sarah Polley, nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Away
From Her, drawn from an Alice Munro short story, is also recognized in the
same Genies category. Polley also has a Genies nom for Best Director for Away
From Her, her helming debut.
New York-born Viggo Mortensen, the star of David Cronenberg's London thriller Eastern
Promises, has a Genies nomination for Best Actor to add to his Oscar nom in
the same category.
Britain's Julie Christie, the female lead of Away From Her, is competing
with Page for Best Actress both at the Oscars and the Genies. And this time,
her Canadian co-star Gordon Pinsent joins her in the spotlight with his own
Best Actor nomination, something the Oscars denied him.
Montreal's Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski add a Genies nomination for Best
Animated Short to their Oscar nomination and Cannes festival win for Madame
Tutli-Putli, their story of a dark and scary train ride.
Another surprise no-show from the Genies list was the Oscar-nominated I Met
the Walrus, directed by Toronto's Josh Raskin. This film also wasn't
submitted for Genies consideration, Morton said, but in this case it likely
would have qualified since "it does look as though it were a Canadian
production."
Raskin was unavailable for comment last night.
Gilliam Reportedly Working Hard To Save
Ledger's Last Film
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Marsha Lederman
(January 30, 2008) VANCOUVER — Director Terry Gilliam is trying to figure out a way to save his
film, the
Canadian co-production The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, following the death of its star, Heath
Ledger.
"Terry's throwing himself into the job of trying to salvage the
picture," co-star Christopher Plummer, who plays Parnassus in the film, is
quoted as telling People.
Plummer says Gilliam may take advantage of the film's magic-based story to save
the picture - perhaps by turning Ledger's character into other people, using
stills or using computer-generated-imaging effects.
The Imaginarium was supposed to begin 40 days of shooting in British
Columbia this past Monday, following about three weeks of shooting in London.
The Canadian-British co-production is produced by Vancouver's William Vince,
head of Infinity Features, along with Samuel Hadida and Gilliam's daughter, Amy
Gilliam, who lives in Vancouver.
The film is about a man, Parnassus, who acquires magical powers by making a
deal with the devil (Tom Waits) that affects the fate of Parnassus's daughter
(Lily Cole). Ledger played a mysterious stranger who joins Parnassus's
travelling theatre troupe.
Vince, clearly distressed by Ledger's death and its impact on the $30-million
production, has refused interview requests. Instead, Infinity released a
statement on Friday.
"Heath was a great actor, a great friend and a great spirit. We are still
in a state of deep shock, saddened and numb with grief. Over the coming days
Terry and the producers will be assessing how best to proceed."
The film's production office at Bridge Studios in Burnaby, B.C., is still being
staffed, but all inquiries are being referred to a public-relations firm in Los
Angeles.
Ledger's death has also delayed the production of Blue Valentine. The
film co-stars Michelle Williams, with whom Ledger had a child, along with
Canadian actor Ryan Gosling. The film's distributor is the Toronto-launched
company THINKFilm.
Ledger, 28, died last week in his New York apartment. The cause of death has
still not been confirmed, as medical officials await test results.
The day after Ledger's death, Plummer told The Globe and Mail that he thought
the actor, who had been shooting exterior scenes in damp, wintry London, may
have had pneumonia or walking pneumonia.
"Of course, if you take sleeping pills with that, you can stop your
heart," he said.
Plummer, who had been due on the set at Bridge Studios today, told The Globe
that he was shocked and saddened by his young co-star's death. "There was
a great sweetness about him and a great joy."
Writers Union Blesses Grammy Ceremony
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Lynn
Elber, The Associated Press
(January 29, 2008) LOS ANGELES – The Grammy
Awards will be in full voice next month, with
the striking writers guild agreeing Monday to allow its members to work on the
show.
The Writers Guild of America gave its blessing last week to a picket-free
Grammys. Now that the guild's board of directors has decided to sign an interim
agreement for the Feb. 10 ceremony, the Grammys will escape the fate that
befell this month's Golden Globes.
The Globes were stripped of stars and pomp when the guild wouldn't agree to an
interim deal and the Screen Actors Guild encouraged its members to boycott the
ceremony, which was reduced to a news conference.
The agreement allowing guild-covered writing for the Grammys is in support of
union musicians and also will help advance writers' own quest for "a fair
contract," the guild said in a statement.
"Professional musicians face many of the same issues that we do concerning
fair compensation for the use of their work in new media," Patric M. Verrone,
president of the guild's West Coast branch, said in the statement.
Payment for projects distributed via the Internet is a central issue in the
contract dispute between the writers union and the alliance that represents
studios.
Neil Portnow, president of the Recording Academy, called the guild's Grammy
decision gratifying and promised a 50th anniversary show "with an amazing
lineup of artists and performances.''
Earlier this month, Portnow had vowed to stage a full-scale show with or
without guild support.
Informal talks began last week between the union and several studio chiefs in
an effort to resolve the nearly three-month-old strike that has disrupted movie
and TV production. Formal negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and
Television Producers broke down in early December.
During the impasse, the Directors Guild of America reached a tentative deal
with the alliance that addressed new-media issues and created pressure for the
writers to resume talks.
The writers guild has agreed to allow next month's NAACP Image Awards to
proceed with guild support, a courtesy also granted to Sunday night's Screen
Actors Guild Awards.
But the guild has declined a waiver for the Academy Awards, raising doubts
about how the Feb. 24 ceremony will be staged if the strike continues and
actors stage a boycott. The ceremony's producer has vowed the show will go on,
hinting it could be padded with clips from 80 years of Oscar history if writers
and stars do not cooperate.
::MUSIC NEWS::
Climbing Black Mountain
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Jennifer Van Evra
(January 30, 2008) VANCOUVER — It begins
with a few slow, ominous notes on the electric guitar - a Hells
Bells-style warning that says you, sir or madam, are about to rock. Then
come the drums, hammering out the kind of beat that inspired an entire
generation of tight pants and long hair, and the stadium-sized guitar and
keyboard riffs to match. The ghosts of early Fleetwood Mac stir as a woman's
voice howls out the backing vocals, and before long, listeners are swept into a
vast, stormy world full of witches, lords, hunting hounds and frightened
daughters.
It's a fittingly grand entrance for Black Mountain, a Vancouver indie rock band that hasn't
released a full-length album since their 2005 self-titled debut, which they
thought would sell 500 copies and allow them to play around town. Instead, it
landed them on Top 10 lists around the globe, attracted the attention of
Rolling Stone magazine and won them an opening spot on tour with Coldplay.
While the feverishly anticipated new record is titled In the Future, it
definitely harks back to the past.
"We wanted to make a double gatefold album," says Black Mountain lead
man Stephen McBean, referring to the seventies rock records that would fold
open like a book, and then fold open again. "It's that whole thing of
remembering being a kid, when you would lie in the bean-bag chair with your new
record and your headphones on while you looked at the cover."
Dressed in a puffy brown jacket and brown sneakers, the grey in his beard
hinting at his 38 years, McBean couldn't be further from a larger-than-life
rock hero. Taking a sunny stroll through a seaside park near his East Vancouver
home, the soft-spoken, self-effacing singer and guitarist looks down toward the
ground and smiles as he quietly admits that when he first played Stormy High's
thundering riff, he thought it was funny. "It reminds me a little of
KISS," he says.
Stormy High is only the beginning. The eight-minute epic Tyrants
alternates between thundering guitars, bass, drums and keys, and stripped-down
Neil Young-style vocals about how warmongers will die by the sword. Others,
such as the dizzyingly trippy Bright Lights - which takes twists and
turns for the better part of 17 minutes - are part psychedelia, part modern
atmospherics.
The lyrics are equally tempestuous.
Inhabited by angels and demons, soldiers and queens, lightning and howling
winds, they perfectly match the epic tone of the music. "They usually come
at the same time," says McBean, who adds that playing the songs through
big amps onstage is so much fun, he feels like a little kid. "And if Stormy
High had angry country lyrics about washing dishes in a restaurant,"
he jokes, "it just wouldn't work the same way."
In contrast, the album also offers quieter, more contemplative moments,
including the stunning Night Walks, which has Amber Webber's reverb-drenched
vocals shimmering over Jeremy Schmidt's droning keyboards. Rich with falsetto
harmonies, Stay Free - which was recorded in Los Angeles by big-time
rock producer Dave Sardy and included on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack -
is a beautiful ballad about learning to stop running away.
"We've always had this idea that we don't want to completely be a rock
band, so we battle with ourselves to tone things down. Especially if you're on
tour and having fun and drinking too much, then you tend to be really loud and
forget. But I like the soft stuff," McBean says. "But it's a
challenge to pull it off and not do it in a lighters-in-the-air kind of
way."
Given the response to the album so far, there will probably be a lot more
lighters in the air when Black Mountain heads out on an expansive North
American tour on Thursday that includes stops right across Canada, an
appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and a stint at the uber-hip
British festival ATP vs. Pitchfork.
Already, critics from Rolling Stone to the Guardian are singing the band's
praises and predicting their imminent entry into the mainstream.
But while some groups would sell their souls at the crossroads for Rolling
Stone mentions, Coldplay tours and Spider-Man soundtrack spots, the
members of Black Mountain - several of whom work with a non-profit housing
society on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside - aren't particularly taken with fame.
Hearing that their musical heroes are fans of the band, however, is another
story.
"Finding out that J. Mascis [of Dinosaur Jr.] liked our record - that's
the stuff that really makes it all special and teary-eyed for us," McBean
says. Having Wayne Coyne, lead man for underground icons the Flaming Lips,
appear at their Oklahoma show, he adds, was a dream come true.
"We ended up staying at their houses, and they gave us their bubble
machine from Lollapalooza '94. I mean, I appreciate that we went on tour with
Coldplay, but finding out that Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks and Black
Flag is a fan really means something to me."
Now a full 25 years after he formed his first punk band, McBean, who grew up
listening to Husker Du, Black Flag and Minutemen - what he calls "weird
kid in school stuff" - is already working on new music for his popular
side project, Pink Mountaintops, and gearing up for a long stint on the road. In
The Future may have barely been out for a week, but he argues that its fate
no longer rests in his hands.
"There is always a lot of self-doubt and confusion when you finish
something, because you have been working on it so hard. And when it's actually
done, it doesn't belong to you any more. It's like a stray dog that goes off
and anyone can treat it any way they want to," McBean says.
"But I think sometimes it's made a bigger deal than it is. It's just music
and it's just fun. And if things get too serious, you just have to get back to
what made you want to do it in the first place.
Special to The Globe and Mail
*****
Black Mountain bio
1982 At 13, Stephen McBean forms his first punk band, Jerk Ward, named after a
scene in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. The band plays its first live show a year
later with Scream, Dave Grohl's pre-Nirvana hardcore group.
1996 McBean's band Jerk With A Bomb begins as a four-track project and later
expands to include vocalist Amber Webber, drummer Joshua Wells and
pianist/bassist Christoff Hoffmeister.
2004 Jerk With a Bomb breaks up - at the same time that hipster U.S. label
Jagjaguwar offers to sign them. Bassist Matthew Camirand and Jeremy Schmidt
join Webber, Wells and McBean and Black Mountain is formed. They record their
first EP before they've even played a live show together.
2005 Black Mountain releases its self-titled debut. The album ends up on Top 10
lists around the world. Coldplay invites Black Mountain on tour.
2006 After heading to the studio to record a new album, the band isn't happy
with the results and shelves it. At an Oklahoma tour stop a few months later,
Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips invites the band to stay at his house.
2007 The band camps out at the Hive Studios for two weeks to record In The
Future. Says McBean, "We ended up just staying there and ordering food
and having a good time. But, I mean, we did see daylight and stuff."
Black Mountain records a song for the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack. McBean
calls the experience "a high point in my life."
2008 In the Future is released. The Guardian calls the opening track
"as thrilling a rock song as one could hope for" and Rolling Stone
says the album is "a high-voltage mix of Black Sabbath riffs, Pink Floyd's
Syd Barrett-era psychedelic sensibility and the Flaming Lips'
eccentricity." Band prepares to tour North America.
*****
Canadian tour dates
Feb. 26: Moncton; The Manhattan
Feb. 27: Halifax; the Marquee Club
Feb. 29: Montreal; La Sala Rosa
March 5: Toronto; Lee's Palace
March 27: Winnipeg; Pyramid Cabaret
March 28: Regina; The Distrikt
March 29: Saskatoon; Amigo's
March 31: Edmonton; Starlite Room
April 1: Calgary; The Warehouse
April 2: Kelowna, B.C.; Habitat
April 5: Vancouver; Commodore Ballroom
Call Michael Buble Mr. Irresistible
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Greg
Quill, Entertainment Columnist
(January 25, 2008) With stubbled jowls, a loosened tie,
windblown hair and a jaundiced eye, Michael Bublé still couldn't render the ennui that
underscores Leonard Cohen's sardonic masterpiece "I'm Your Man," the
song that opened his sold-out show last night at the Air Canada Centre.
Maybe Leonard doesn't swing as well as the composers of the standards that make
up the bulk of the Vancouver-born post-modern crooner's repertoire –
well-travelled gems such as "Me And Mrs Jones," "Fever,"
"Call Me Irresponsible" and "I've Got The World On A
String."
Or maybe Bublé, at 32, just hasn't had time to plumb the depths of adult male
self-loathing. Either way, the song lacked gravitas as an opening statement,
its meaning buried in a big and brassy arrangement and sidelined by Bublé's
sexy swagger, faux dance steps and cheeky grin.
Just short of the kind of snarling lounge lizard routine that made Bill Murray
famous too many years ago to recount, it was, fortunately, a minor stumble in
an otherwise unconventional and engaging performance that relied less on
musical proficiency – though he's backed by a crack, young and hungry 13-piece
assembly and possesses a voice that at times is sensationally smooth and rich –
than on the artist's charm, good-natured wit and self-deprecating manner.
The swing grooves and big horn bravado aside, there's nothing really retro
about Bublé at all.
Too young and too Canadian to have drunk from the well of early 20th-century
jazz that nurtured the crooner idols of the 1940s and `50s to which he is often
and unjustly compared – Sinatra, Bennett and even Anka, one of his early
mentors – Bublé sounded more at ease last night scatting hockey playoff
predictions hip-hop-style than in the very few legit vocal improvisations he
attempted, more suited to the top-selling pop hits "Home" (apparently
about Toronto) and "Everything" than to period classics.
For all that, he clearly loves fronting a big band, and the attention of an
arena-sized audience – that he drew 15,000 last night seemed to impress and
surprise him – and looks, if you squint just right, like a rock star in
banker's drag.
In many ways Bublé has reinvented the crooner for the video generation, one
that doesn't know or care about the deep foundations of the vocal style, about
the acquisition and employment of improvisational skills or soulfulness.
It seemed to matter little to them that Bublé could not imbue "Fever"
and "Me And Mrs. Jones" – songs that earned an earful of approving
hollers – with the aching lust and guilty longing they require. He made them
sexy and breezy, throwing them off with the same kind of cheekiness he
displayed when he abandoned the stage early in the set to hug and mug with
audience members, and to allow one woman to squeeze his buttocks shamelessly
for the TV cameras.
That self-effacing good humour is Bublé's real stock-in-trade. He may have sold
11 million albums, he may be a bona fide international star touring the world
with a big band of top-notch, well-trained American musicians (and one Canadian
– trombonist Josh Brown, from Burlington, Ont.), and he may have the voice
that, some believe, will revive the classic jazz vocal standard.
But at the heart of it, he's a lovable lad with the gift of the gab, and a
playful practical joker who loves centre stage. What's not to like?
Bajans Take A Bow At Awards
Source: Nation News - by Wendy Burke
(January 29, 2008) SEVERAL LOCAL ARTISTES earned
well deserved Barbados
Music Awards on
Sunday and put in splendid performances.
But the event hit a sour note when it dragged on passed the appointed finish
time.
The 7 p.m. scheduled start went over by half an hour and the show ran in excess
of four hours after an extended intermission.
It meant that some patrons missed out on krosfyah's dynamic performance
including some thrilling choreography.
On the inside the audience was in agreement with most of the winners, but the Media
Award-Radio which was won by Hurricane of 98.1 F.M., left
some a bit baffled at the list of nominees which did not include favourite John
Doe.
He got his revenge by winning the People's Choice Award.
The big awards of Entertainer Of The Year female and male went to Rihanna
and Lil Rick respectively, which went down well with the audience from
its rousing response.
As expected Rihanna also took away four awards and was given a special award,
while Lil Rick also won Best Soca Single.
Three for jazz
Others coming out on top were David Kirton with three awards Best Reggae
Single, Reggae Artiste Of The Year and Best Music Video male.
Rubytech & Damian Marvay also took home three BMA's in the rap category,
and Arturo Tappin three for jazz.
krosfyah received Band Of The Year and Best Soca Album Duo
or Group.
Kimberley Inniss and Keann took home two for "Sweat", Mr
Dale two, including Writer Of The Year and Best Ragga Soca Single
Male for Soka Junkie of which he gave a delightful performance with
his "addicted dancers" putting the audience in fits of laughter.
The media award for Print/Internet went to former NATION Publishing
journalist Andrea King.
Overall, the show seemed to be at a slightly lower key than last year's and
lacked the razzmatazz that accompanied the red carpet arrivals in 2007.
Divine intervention
The carpet missed the hot fashions making it easy for a few of the awardees and
VIPs to stand out with a welcoming by "angels".
The stage setting was somewhat confusing as the area where the actual awards
were presented did not seem the most suited and the "bridge" used by
the ushers delivering the awards was not functional.
Part of the excitement of the night was dampened by the number of absent
winners.
On the other hand other performers who stood out were Tara, Philip Scantlebury,
Machel Montano, who got a Lifetime Achievement Award, Patrice Roberts,
Shontelle and Beenie Man, Livvy Franc, Hal Linton and Sizzla who
brought the audience to its feet.
However, a dapper Lil Rick showed why he was the top entertainer moving
the stoic VIP section into a bit of "wukking up" to his Caan Wait.
February Officially Declared As Reggae
Month In Jamaica
Source: Caribbean Net News
(January 29, 2008) KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS): February
was officially declared as Reggae Month by Jamaica's Governor-General, Professor Sir Kenneth Hall, at a
ceremony held last week.
Sir Kenneth read the formal proclamation, which will also provide for the
annual celebration of the music genre, for which Jamaica is known around the
world.
Several dignitaries, headed by Prime Minister, Bruce Golding and key
stakeholders in the local music industry, participated in the historic launch,
which followed Golding's announcement on January 9 of Government's
decision to declare February as Reggae Month annually.
In a brief address, the Prime Minister noted that the music has served to
clearly and definitively distinguish Jamaica from the rest of the world, adding
that Jamaicans could be proud of the fact that Reggae is what has given the
country global recognition.
In paying tribute to the music's pioneers, the Prime Minister noted that
"none has captured, explored, and expanded the music's potential more than
Bob Marley. There's no country in the world that you go (to) where Bob Marley
is not known and recognized. Bob Marley is Jamaican music. He personifies,
(and) he symbolizes Jamaican music."
According to the Prime Minister, the music genre had evolved over the years
through many stages and varying influences.
"Our music was influenced by our own indigenous mentor but it (also)
absorbed jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and it fashioned all of that
into a musical expression that I don't think has been done in any other music
form in any other part of the world. It is Reggae that is (now) influencing
other music (genres)," Golding pointed out.
Stating that much of Reggae music is a profound commentary on life, he said
that, "it has become a powerful medium to carry a message, not only in
Jamaica, but all over the world. I'm not sure that we understand its power and
how it can be used as a transformational tool, not just to transform our own
country that needs transformation in so many ways, but to change the culture of
the world and the way in which people relate to and treat each other."
While noting that this year's celebration would serve as a "learning
curve", the Prime Minister said that the aim was to make the annual celebration
an international event.
"We want it to be an international event. We want to advertise it all over
the world. I want the (Jamaica) Tourist Board to get involved and promote it, I
want Jamaica Trade and Invest to recognize it as an area for investment. I want
us to really come together and say to the world 'we dey ya and we ain't going
nowhere', because Reggae music is here to stay".
The occasion also saw the unveiling of the Reggae Month logo, which depicts the
pioneers of the music.
Temptations Take Fans 'Back'
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com -
(January 30, 2008) You know what they say, the
first 48 are crucial. The Temptations know that very well,
releasing their 48th album, “Back to Front.”
The disc has the five-some paying tribute to legendary artists and
some of the best sounds to come out of the ‘60s and ‘70s, including Barry
White, LTD, and the Bee Gees.
“It’s something we’ve done before,” said Otis Williams – the only
surviving member of the original group. “The company wanted us to do another
covers album, except not to do any Motown songs. So we ventured outside and did
some other classics that I’ve always loved.”
The vocal group released the cover album of standards called “For Lovers
Only” in 1995 and one titled “Reflections” in 2006, which featured Motown hits.
“‘Reflections’ did fairly well,” Williams said of the motivation to release
another disc of famous hits, but promised that the group would still do
original music, too. He also added a few more motivations for the legendary
group to release an album of remakes.
“If you look, a lot of artists of our ilk are doing cover jobs,” he said,
referring to popular blue-eyed soul man Michael McDonald’s 2005 disc “Motown”
and the Boys II Men 2004 release “Throwback.”
“And there are not many great songs being written, so that’s part of the
problem. And artists of our ilk are catching a lot of flack for not getting a
lot of air time,” he continued, recalling an article on R&B songbird Angie
Stone, who said she just focuses on putting out a good record and not on
getting mainstream airplay.
“Here’s a young lady that just got on the scene and she can’t even get
airplay.”
Williams, a veteran of the music business with almost 5 decades with the
Temptations, says that the group’s lack of play on radio doesn’t really faze
him.
“I don’t let it bother me to the point it bugs me. I just know that
that’s just what the business has come to,” he said. “And the one thing that’s
constant in life is change. We still make our money giggin’ and doing other
things. It would be great to get mainstream [airplay], but it’s geared for the
young, and we understand that. That’s what time it is. They want to hear the
cussing and the rapping and the hip-hop. Artists like us; we have to go a whole
other route to let our fans know that we’re still recording. Mainstream will
not play acts of a certain genre.”
“Back to Front” certainly has hits that got a lot of mainstream airplay
originally. The disc features The Temps’ rendition of Barry White’s “Never
Gonna Give You Up,” “Love Ballad” made famous by Jeffrey Osborne-led LTD,
“Don’t Ask My Neighbors” by The Emotions, and the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your
Love,” just to name a few.
“When [our label] New Door asked us to do a second cover job, they said
‘Otis, pick out some other songs’ and I just picked out the ones that I’ve
enjoyed over the years,” he said. “They’re songs that I grew up with and
admired the artist that did them.”
At 66 years old, Williams has no current plans to stop singing and performing
in the near future.
“I don’t want to retire. I still enjoy it. I enjoy making music. I enjoy
performing. I’m going to ride the hair off the horse,” he declared and humbly
added, “I had no idea what we started in ’61 that we would be doing this 46
years later.”
Forty-six years and 48 albums later, Otis Williams and the Temptations
are still thrilling music lovers and audiences.
“I’ve been through enough to know that the record business is one of
those things that will forever change. It’s something we’ve been through enough
times already. We’ll just continue doing what we do,” he said. “We work our
fannies off and we’re doing very well in that perspective.”
For more on the new disc and to HEAR samples from the new CD, check out www.thetemptations.com.
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Miles Jaye Spotlights: 'Will Downing –
The Downing Factor'
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(January 30, 2008) If Will Downing had a clothing line it would sell at
Barney’s New York, Saks Fifth Avenue.jpg)
and Neiman Marcus and I’d be one of the
first in line to sport Downing Wear.
If he had an SUV endorsement like Eddie Bauer had with Ford, you might very
well see me behind the wheel of a Will Downing Expedition.
The point is; some names represent a proven standard of quality and excellence
and the name Will Downing is one of them.
When you first hear a Downing CD his velvety smooth baritone and effortless
phrasing are immediately apparent.
What is not so apparent is the standard Will applies to each and every project.
Hours, weeks, months and years of preparation are transparent – he makes it
seem effortless.
We’re not supposed to notice it, we’re supposed to feel it and we do – I call
it the Downing Factor.
When the Downing Factor is applied the result is predictable – excellence.
Someone once said, “Excellence can be obtained if you: care more than others
think is wise; risk more than others think is safe; dream more than other’s
think is practical and expect more than other’s think is possible.” Artists
like Will do care more, risk more, dream more and expect more. Will shared an
experience with me that will underscore my point about the man.
Unknown to many of his fans, he is an accomplished photographer.
I asked how he was introduced to photography and he recalled a photo shoot for
one of his CD covers in which he thought certain aspects of the concept could
be adjusted.
The photographer challenged Will to get behind the lens and try it himself. Not
long after that shoot he purchased his own camera gear and got busy. He says it
took exhaustive trial and error, the patience of Job and many, many rolls of
film before he began to develop the multiple skill sets required to master
photography.
He had a vision.
He had the determination.
He expected to succeed and he did.
Aristotle referred to excellence as habit – it’s one of Will’s.
Excellence becomes formula like great putting or free throw shooting.
Anyone who has done either knows there are at least a dozen elements to
consider for consistent success at what appear to be very simple actions; hit a
small round ball into a hole in the ground ten feet away with a long metal club
or toss a large round ball, unchallenged, into a cylinder ten feet from the
ground and fifteen feet from the baseline.
Catch up with Shaq at the upcoming All-Star game and ask him about free throws.
Physical consistency requires among other things, Muscle Memory. Mental
consistency requires a formula – a mental path to follow each and every time.
Warren Buffet’s ability to “pick” winning stocks time and time again has made
him legend.
He owes it, at least in part, to tried and true formula’s from which he does
not waiver.
Will has a simple but very practical formula for successful recordings: great
songs, perfectly crafted rhythm arrangements with only the best musicians and
top notch production, and of course - that voice.
A Dream Fulfilled was the project that first made me aware of the Downing
Factor.
It was clear to me that he had raised the bar and set a new standard by which
all other vocal projects in similar categories would be measured.
For years I wondered how he did it.
What do I mean by perfect?
I mean as soon as the proverbial needle hits the wax, something good happens to
the space you’re in - not just sonically but psychologically - it’s a vibe
thing.
The mood becomes a wrinkle free zone, like the final smoothing stroke of a hand
on a perfectly made California king.
The tones you hear seem to automatically dim the lights in the room.
Everything around you slows down a beat per minute.
It’s like the Twilight Zone… you no longer control the vertical or horizontal.
He’s got you… you’re absorbed.
You want to hear every lyric and every line – this is Downing Time.
Ironically, Will has another perspective on the so-called perfect record.
He suggests that a recording that is fifty-five minutes of quantized, sonically
correct, mistake free, squeaky clean may, in fact, be too perfect if it lacks
warmth.
He also notes that such productions often lack originality as labels and
producers eager to capture success in a bottle, model successive productions
after the latest radio hits.
It’s the music industry’s version of cloning.
Who can be the next Mary J. or the next Chris Brown?
Simple and to the point Will says; “I just do what I do… I do what I do best.”
Confucius said; “A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his
actions.”
Will expounded; “There are so few of us left it looks like I’m doing something
unique, but I’m not.” “Everyone else is singing tenor today so it makes me
appear unique.”
I appreciate Will’s rare sense of generous humility, but I must insist that
Will Downing is unique.
He says he simply does what he does best, but his artistic range has spanned
dance tracks to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” making it evident to me that
Will Downing’s artistic engine is just getting warmed up and the only place
left for him to go is a place Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley likes to refer to
as beyond excellence.
Where ever beyond excellence is and whatever Will decides to do once he
arrives, you can be sure that he will continue to generously apply the Downing
Factor and the results will continue to be predictable - magical.
Will’s newest release After Tonight is #1 on Billboard’s R&B
chart. Hear the title track here.
Miles Jaye
Davis, like his namesake the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis, is one of music’s
most gifted, distinctive and dynamic artists. Miles laid the groundwork for
excellence with his three highly acclaimed and successful CDs
"Miles," "Irresistible" and "Strong" on Island
Records. Miles is also an accomplished author. He has written a novel called
"Margerette" and frequently pens articles like the one above for
various media outlets including EURweb.com. For MORE on Miles Jaye Davis visit
his website: www.milesjaye.com.
The Arrival Of Mika
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- Ben Rayner, Pop Music Critic
(January 26, 2008) If Life in Cartoon
Motion is, as Mika
claims, his "schoolyard album," then the next should
probably be his "last laugh at the
schoolyard album."
Like many a confident pop peacock before him, the Lebanese-born Londoner
responsible for last year's inescapable hit, "Grace Kelly," had a
decidedly rougher time of it back in the playground days. His school years in
Paris and London's South Kensington neighbourhood saw him "bullied to the
death," he recently told British newspaper The Times, to the point
he suffered a "complete breakdown" before he'd even hit his teenage
years.
Now, at 24, the operatically inclined, decidedly sexually ambiguous singer,
pianist and songwriter born Mica Penniman has spun gold – nay, platinum – from
the very same fantasy world of DayGlo doodles and theatrical music in which he
sought escape during his childhood. His unapologetically garish debut album, Life
in Cartoon Motion, has moved 4.5 million copies worldwide since its release
last February, effectively making him the biggest British pop star of 2007.
It's been a meteoric rise to stardom, then. But Mika assures us he's the last
person anyone will hear bemoaning the agonies of fame.
"Although I'm not like most other people who do this pop thing, I am fully
aware I'm a pop musician and that I always wanted to be a pop star and that I
always wanted to do this job. I wanted to make a pop record that came from a
real place, that came from songwriting and that was true to myself, and I'm
very comfortable with that," he says, kicking back in his London flat
after a week-long vacation at a "totally ridiculous" hotel on a
private South American island.
"I'm not necessarily tabloid fodder. I'm extremely private. The one thing
I respect more than anything else is my privacy, and if that means I lose a few
inches on the tabloid columns, it's fine by me."
The past year's whirlwind, he says, has kept him far too busy to succumb to
"the madness and cliché" that often comes with sudden stardom,
anyway. Indeed, Mika has been on the road steadily since the end of 2006, and
will only wind touring chores for Life in Cartoon Motion down after the
brief North American tour that brings him to Kool Haus on Tuesday night and an
appearance on the Brit Awards – where he's up for Best Male Solo Artist and
Best Album, among other nominations – next month.
"Quite frankly, the whole experience has been defined by 2007 being the
year when I really learned what it was like to be on the road and to tour and
to do gigs night after night with a day off between every three days, and to
just travel around the world, literally working for your supper, getting sick
all the time and having to deal with it," he says. "I've been touring
now for about a year and a half, and that time has really been defined by the
gigs.
"There are perks y'know ... I know now I can do shows in almost any
country. Some of them will obviously be bigger than others, but I know I can do
a show, whether it's to 500 people or 15,000. It's quite an incredible
situation to be in."
A situation largely of Mika's own making, too, as he's the rare contemporary
pop star of his stature and global reach who can take complete credit for his
own art.
This eases the pressure of crafting a worthy follow-up to Life in Cartoon
Motion somewhat, since, "I don't have that idiot syndrome of having to
rebel against my first album because it was someone else's work," he says.
Besides, he was already writing and demo-ing songs for the second album while
he was recording the first, so the prospects of creative exhaustion saddling
him with the dreaded "sophomore jinx" seem slim.
He's musing about doing an acoustic tour at some point. But for now, one gets
the impression his more immodest ambitions will win out. Those same ambitions,
by the way, mean audiences who take in the Canadian and U.S. dates on his
latest tour will still be getting the ridiculous, confetti-splattered
production Mika takes to much larger crowds across the Atlantic.
"I'm making absolutely no adjustments whatsoever and I'm spending an
insane amount of money on the tour. I really couldn't give a f--- because
that's what it's all about," he laughs, proclaiming the show
"completely big and fantastical. I have a responsibility to bring the same
thing over and not compromise or be cheap about it, or otherwise it would be a
disappointment.
"I hate the word `over-the-top.' Nothing's ever over-the-top. There's just
magic creating another world, and I think I have a responsibility with this
show to do that because it's all based on that."
Composer Kenins Held Craft, Tradition In
High Regard
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- William Littler, Special To The Star
(January 26, 2008) Talivaldis Kenins, who died at the beginning of the week at
the age of 88, belongs, along
with such colleagues as Istvan Anhalt, Udo Kasemets and Oscar Morawetz, to a
remarkable generation of foreign-born composers who made Canada their home in
the years following World War II.
In the Latvian-born Kenins' case, home more specifically turned out to be
Toronto, first in 1951, when he became organist and choirmaster at St. Andrew's
Latvian Lutheran Church (where his funeral took place yesterday afternoon), and
shortly thereafter when he joined the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music,
where he taught for more than three decades before retiring as Professor Emeritus
in 1984.
Counterpoint and keyboard harmony were his teaching subjects, along with
composition, and Kenins practised what he preached, producing music guided by a
high level of academic craftsmanship and respect for tradition.
No great innovator, he is quoted in an essay by Lee Hepner in the reference
book Contemporary Canadian Composers declaring that "sound
experiments of the type of piano-lid slamming, amplified gargling, or cello
playing in the bathtub (however beautiful the lady may be) make me sick."
He did experiment with indeterminacy and he did not shy away from dissonance.
All the same, the terms often used to describe him –"contemporary
romanticist" and "conservative modern" – ring true for the most
part.
His musical formation in his native land and in France included work with such
major figures as Joseph Wihtol, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff's successor as
composition teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and Olivier Messiaen,
with whom he studied analysis and aesthetics.
But life proved difficult during and immediately after the war. The young man
from Latvia was forced to dig trenches in Germany in the war's final year and
subsequently found himself playing for dancing classes and in night clubs to
support five years of rigorous training at the Paris Conservatoire.
The training bore fruit when his "Sonata for Cello and Piano" won the
Premier Prix in composition in his graduating year before a formidable jury
including Honegger, Milhard, Poulenc, Enesco and Nadia Boulanger. No less a conductor
than Hermann Scherchen premiered his "Septuor" in Darmstadt the same
year and, had Kenins remained in Europe, who knows how far his career might
have developed?
He did retain strong ties with Latvia, founding the Latvian Concert Association
of Toronto, taking part in numerous song festivals and returning to his
homeland for concerts of his music and to receive an honorary professorship at
the Riga Conservatory.
For the most part, though, he made Canada his base of operations, numbering the
composer Bruce Mather and the pianist Arthur Ozolins among his students and the
presidency of the Canadian League of Composers among his honours.
Although the recipient of many commissions, he did not enjoy so high a profile
in the concert hall as some of his Toronto contemporaries. I personally regret
the small number of performances given his music in recent years – he deserved
better. An urbane, cosmopolitan, thoroughly civilized man, he wrote well,
perhaps more as a citizen of the world than as a self-conscious Canadian, and
left behind a substantial body of vocal, orchestral and chamber music.
Is it too much to hope that more of this music can find its way into our
concert halls? As Shakespeare had Marc Antony say in remembrance of Julius
Caesar, the good men do is "oft interred with their bones."
It would be a pity if the good that is Talivaldis Kenins' music suffered a
similar a fate.
Scarlett Sings The Blues For Tom Waits
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Brad Wheeler
(January 29 2008) As far as her covers go, nothing beats
Scarlett Johansson's Vanity Fair fold-out front from 2006,
when the blond bombshell with fellow starlet Keira Knightley posed elegantly
nude for super-shooter Annie Leibovitz. If her upcoming album of Tom Waits's cover tunes goes over half as well as
that photo spread, Johansson will have a blockbuster on her hands.
There's nothing odd about an actress-turned-singer - Minnie Driver recently
flopped at it - but Johansson's choice of material intrigues. Waits is a burly
voiced weirdo genius whose songs have graced the sultry throats of Norah Jones
and Chan Marshall, among others, including Canadian chanteuse Holly Cole, who
acted on the idea of a Waits tribute disc with 1995's Temptation.
But where Cole interpreted Waits in a pensive jazz setting, Johansson's project
is apparently more in the vein of cinematic rock, at least according to Steve
Nails, who co-owns Dockside Studio, the southern Louisiana facility where the
album was recorded last summer. "It's like theatre, big screen,"
Nails told the local Daily Advertiser shortly after the month-long sessions
were completed, "lots of heavy bass tones to it."
According to Nails, the Match Point star sounds similar to Marilyn
Monroe, an assessment that shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Johansson's
credible smoky-voiced take on the Gershwin classic Summertime from the
2006 charity CD Unexpected Dreams: Songs From the Stars.
The new album is scheduled to be released in May, possibly titled Anywhere I
Lay My Head or, more descriptively, Scarlett Sings Tom Waits. With
the dubious history of actors' music-dallying, critics will be wary. Waits
himself is reserved, telling online music site Pitchfork that he didn't know if
he was excited to hear it, but that he was at least curious. "More power
to her," he said, graciously.
Johansson, 23, is busy these days. Upcoming films include next month's The
Other Boleyn Girl, and reports indicate Courtney Love wants the half-Swede
to play her in the Kurt Cobain biopic she's producing. Speculation has Ryan
Gosling as the lead. Speaking of Canadian actors, the pretty Ryan Reynolds
(Johansson's current beau and former flame of Alanis Morissette) dropped by the
rural-retreat recording studio in Maurice, La.
MUSIC TIDBITS
Feist, Cirque Du Soleil Among Grammy
Acts
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - The
Canadian Press
(January 30, 2008) Canadian singer Feist and Quebec-based dance troupe Cirque du Soleil are among the acts set to perform at this
year's Grammy awards. The Canuck stars join previously
announced performers Beyoncé, Foo Fighters, Carrie Underwood, Aretha Franklin
and the Time. The 50th annual Grammy Awards take place Feb. 10 in Los Angeles.
The casts of the Vegas stage show Love by Cirque du Soleil and feature
film Across The Universe will perform as part of a special Beatles
segment. Feist is up for four trophies, in categories including best new artist
and best pop vocal album. Kanye West and Amy Winehouse lead the pack with eight
nominations each, while Canadians Nelly Furtado, Michael Bublé and Joni
Mitchell are also up for trophies.
Lavigne Trademarks Her Name
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - The
Canadian Press
(January 30, 2008) Could there be an "Eau de Avril" in the works?
Pint-sized pop star Avril Lavigne wants to trademark her name in connection with a variety of bath
products, igniting speculation that a fragrance line could be on the way.
Documents filed last month with the United States Patent and Trademark Office
say the singer wants exclusive rights to her own name when it comes to products
including fragrances, aftershave, bath soap, body lotion and talc. The move has
got blogs and fan sites wondering about a possible product line. A spokesman
for Lavigne could not be immediately reached. Musicians including Celine Dion,
Shania Twain and Britney Spears all have their own fragrance.
Norman Granz Presents Improvisation
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Greg Quill
(January 30, 2008) A must for jazz buffs,
this two-disc set features the final-form version, previously unavailable, of
the legendary 1950 jazz film created by veteran jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz and famed photographer Gjon Mili, who had
collaborated on the Oscar-winning short Jammin' The Blues (also
included) in 1944. The movie contains brilliant clips of Charlie Parker,
Lester Young, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald and Coleman Hawkins, among others, at
work in a perfectly jazz-infested environment – stunning performances, all,
with excellent sound and high-grade picture quality. Watching Parker and
Hawkins trade licks and Duke Ellington jamming with his trio in a private
concert for painter Joan Miro at the Cote D'Azur are worth the price of
admission. But the package contains so much more: performances by Oscar
Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis at
the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival, plus a set by Count Basie; Montreux '79 sets
featuring guitarist Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald; additional footage and still
photos of the Miro sessions; interviews about Parker with jazz greats Jay
McShann, Slide Hampton, Phil Woods and others; and an illuminating introduction
by longtime jazz critic and historian Nat Hentoff.
Alicia Keys Launches 'As I Am' Contest
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(January 30, 2008) *Alicia Keys has teamed with Seattle-based online and
mobile community Treemo to
launch the "As I Am" contest, a mobile and web enterprise to support
the Keep A Child Alive (KCA) charity. The contest celebrates the third track on
the album titled "Superwoman" by allowing fans to create a Treemo.com
account at http://alicia.treemo.com
and upload via their mobile phone or web, a photo, video, or text, telling a
story about someone they know who is a "Superwoman." Treemo
will donate $1 to KCA for every user who enters the "As I Am"
contest, up to $10,000. Keys is the Global Ambassador for Keep A Child Alive, a
charity providing an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa.
"This contest and Treemo's support will not only increase our
ability to spread the word about the realities of this pandemic, but also
recruit more potential donors who can easily see they can indeed save the life
of someone who needs their help. It's only $1 a day to sustain a life; it's
time we all start giving a buck," said Leigh Blake, Founder and President
of KCA. KCA provides comprehensive AIDS care to over 20,000 people living
with AIDS; including provision of life-saving AIDS medications, nutritional
support and treatment for AIDS-related illnesses. For more information about
Keep A Child Alive, visit http://www.keepachildalive.org/.
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::FILM NEWS::
Colin Hanks Rises In 'Untraceable'
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- John Hiscock, Special To The Star
(January 26, 2008) SANTA MONICA–For Colin Hanks, being the son of one of the most famous
actors in the
world is something of a double-edged sword.
Yes, it helps to have a father who can give you roles in his films and make
appearances in yours. But it is a disadvantage when it comes to your love life
because girls tend to want to know you because of your famous dad.
At the age of 30, Colin Hanks has developed a finely tuned radar that allows
him to immediately distinguish between those who want to know him for himself
and those who are drawn to his household name.
"It's pretty obvious what their intentions are," he says. "I'm
able to pick them out very quickly. It's an intuitive thing. I'm very careful
who I let into my private life and, needless to say, I never brought a lot of
people home to meet mom and dad. I can count on one hand the number of people
I've introduced to my parents."
His famous name and close resemblance to his dad are partly the reason Hanks
has never gone in for blind
dates or Internet dating.
"It's unfair because people know who I am. I went on a blind date once and
I realized she knew who I was and I was the one who didn't know anything about
her. It's so unfair," he says, laughing.
Colin, who now lives with his girlfriend of three years, was talking about
dating because in his new thriller Untraceable, he plays an FBI agent who is an avid
Internet dater. He and his co-star Diane Lane portray partners on the trail of
a tech-savvy Internet predator who displays his graphic murders on his own
website. The fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands of the
public – the more hits his site gets, the faster his victims die.
"My character has a doubly weird sense of humour, considering he patrols
the Internet for bad guys and it's also his main source for meeting people of
the opposite sex," Hanks says.
Hanks is speaking at a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica during his recent visit
from New York, where he currently lives. Tall and lanky, with friendly
boy-next-door good looks, Hanks is affable and relaxed.
Although his career got a kick start when his father cast him in That Thing
You Do! – a 1960s-set look at a one-hit wonder rock band that marked Hanks
Sr.'s directing debut – Hanks has since established himself as a talented actor
in his own right. He had a regular role in the sci-fi TV series Roswell
and appeared in several teen comedy films, including Whatever It Takes
and Get Over It, before landing his first leading role in Orange
County in 2002. He also appeared in the TV miniseries Band of Brothers
and had a major role in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of the classic King Kong.
Hanks was born in Sacramento, Calif., and was brought up by his mother,
Samantha Lewes, who got divorced from Tom Hanks when Colin was 10 years old.
"Like a lot of kids in this day and age, I'm a product of a divorced
household. But I saw my dad more than some kids do," he says. "He
made every effort to be important in our lives and I'm really grateful for
that. He taught me so much, from how to drive a car to how to pay my taxes to
how to talk to the press – it's all-encompassing. The little bit of acting
advice he gave me was to tell me to show up on time, have my lines memorized
and hit my marks. He said if I did that, I'd be all right and maybe I wouldn't
get fired."
When he was 17, Colin moved to Los Angeles and began acting. But three years
ago he decided to pack up and move to New York. "I needed a change of
pace," he explains. "I sort of got burned out on Los Angeles,
although I'm very lucky to have worked on projects that have taken me on
location to London and New Zealand and different places.
"I wanted to live in more of an urban environment in which I could walk
around and have the world at my disposal whenever I wanted to, rather than
sitting in a pod and driving somewhere. The life of an actor in Los Angeles can
be pretty lonely because the majority of your time is spent in a car driving an
hour-and-a-half to an audition that lasts 15 minutes and then you have maybe a
two-hour drive back, depending on the traffic, to think about the 15 minutes
you wish you could have done a little bit differently."
After this interview, Colin's next stop was the Sundance Film Festival where The
Great Buck Howard is one of the entries. Hanks stars in the film, while his
father has a cameo role and also handled producing duties.
"I play a young man who leaves law school and starts working as an
assistant to a B-level magician. It's a very sweet movie and I've been trying
to get it made for four years now. It's very close to my heart," the
younger Hanks says.
"I've never been to Sundance so I don't know what it's going to be like.
I've made a lot of movies that I thought would get into Sundance and they never
did, so I'm very excited to go there at last. Hopefully, it will be a lot of
fun."
Hanks sees himself as someone who, like his father, can tackle anything that
comes along.
"I'll do whatever's asked of me, it doesn't matter," he says. "I
don't like to label myself. I just like to do good work. I want to be in movies
that I, personally, would want to see, and my tastes are pretty far and wide. I
like comedies as much as I like serious movies and I've done both.
"For me, it's about the work and trying to do the best job I can."
How A Canadian Unknown Directed Sharon
Stone
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Liam Lacey
(January 25, 2008) PARK CITY, UTAH — At the bottom of
the ski lift in downtown Park City is a two-storey-high half-tent,
half-building, which serves as a party centre for the Sundance Film Festival. A couple dozen people in winter clothes
are sipping coffee, slapping each other on the backs and kissing hello. The
event is a casual reunion of the cast and crew of the film The Year of Getting to Know Us, before it premiered last night. In the
crowd are actors Jimmy Fallon, Tom Arnold and Illeana Douglas, three of the
stars of the comic-edged drama. The other stars, Lucy Liu and Sharon Stone,
aren't here yet.
The film's Canadian co-writer and director, Patrick Sisam, is also awaiting friends and family from
Toronto, various parts of the United States and as far away as London and
Dublin for his first feature film, and although he says he's getting nervous,
it doesn't show. He's one of those people who seems to know almost everyone,
but, contrary to the stereotype of a hired gun who has worked it out in the
trenches of commercial advertising for the past few years, he comes across as
low-key and introspective.
As we're sitting on a bench upstairs in the tent building, Fallon comes by to
chat briefly: "This is a very talented guy," he says of Sisam.
Fallon stars in the film as Christopher Rocket, a commitment-phobic 35-year-old
New York journalist who returns to his Florida home when his father (Tom
Arnold), a fanatic golfer, has a massive stroke while enjoying the golf round
of his life. Christopher must also deal with his mentally unbalanced mother
(Sharon Stone) and struggle through his relationship with his girlfriend (Lucy
Liu). This is a high-profile cast for a $5-million film. When Sisam prepared to
start shooting, he remembers, he had a brief attack of nervousness. Then he
told himself: "But this is what you want," and settled down.
The process of directing, he says, is all about empathy and attention. Shooting
Sharon Stone on her first take of a scene, he came over to her and suggested
how he wanted her to adjust the performance. She looked at him in surprise and
said, "You watched."
"And then she did it again, and I felt like I was watching one of the best
actresses in the world, and I came over and told her how good she was. And she
said, 'That's what I do.' "
Sisam grew up in North Toronto, the son of a sports marketing executive, and
growing up around many sports celebrities he made him blasé about fame. He
headed off to study literature at McGill University and spent his summers
working as a writer in the British Airways group at the London offices of
Saatchi & Saatchi. That spurred him to go to New York University's film
school, where his thesis film, in 1996, was a sweet little drama called Love
Child. It starred Dov Tiefenbach (Flower and Garnet, Harold and
Kumar Go To White Castle) as a nine-year-old in love with a hot teenager (a
pre-Scream Neve Campbell). The film aired on HBO and Channel 4 in
England. You can watch it along with a couple of his other films at http://www.atomfilms.com,
the site of a company set up by Sisam's friends.
Since then, Sisam has made his living primarily as a commercial director with
the commercial firm Imported Artists, doing spots for Coors Lite and Mike Weir
and an award-winning short drama to promote BMW, which aired at the 2003
Toronto International Film Festival. He also worked on the crew of Road To
Avonlea, often going to see guest stars in their trailers to bring them to
the set or spending time chatting with them about their work.
A couple of years ago, Sisam came across the short-story collection The Year
of Getting to Know Us by Ethan Canin, a writer who has been compared to
John Cheever for his aesthetic and his preoccupation with suburban life.
Sisam's interest in dysfunctional families isn't directly personal - his
parents have been happily married for almost 50 years - but he grew up watching
the recently divorced parents of friends "desperately trying to show their
children that life was still normal."
For Sisam, The Year of Getting to Know Us is a story about the
continuity between childhood and adult life: "It's like that line in
[director Paul Thomas Anderson's] Magnolia - you may be through with the
past, but the past isn't through with you. The other idea is about children
having anxiety and going through the things you don't expect. I was at a
funeral once for a young person who had committed suicide and the minister said
something I'll never forget: 'The worst thing you can tell a young person is
that this is the best time of their life, because then they have nothing to
look forward to.' "
The first draft of the script blended two of Canin's short stories together;
Sisam wrote the scenes of Christopher as a child while fellow NYU alumnus Rick
Velleu wrote the adult scenes. The script was what sold the film, attracting
the William Morris Agency and the actors. Sisam says there was never any
discussion about his right to direct it. The Hollywood attitude, he says, seems
to be that if you're good enough to write the script, you're good enough to
make the movie. Besides, he already had several years of directing experience.
"I just can't imagine what it would be like to try to direct a movie if
you weren't used to being on sets," Sisam reflects. "The world
doesn't want to be made into a movie. There are people and there's traffic and
weather and they all want to go their own way. You have to cajole and persuade
all the elements, human and not, to be participate in that frame. And you have
this time quotient on top of it - solve this now, solve this now, solve this
now. It's an incredible, intense experience. ... And then it takes great
restraint and confidence to leave it a bit open, to show the rough edges and messiness
that make life interesting."
DAILY REVIEW: BALLAST
This film, made by a first-time director with non-professional actors, has
emerged as the cinephile fave in the American drama competition. Director Lance
Hammer, working in an austere tradition that is more European than American,
appears to have been influenced by Belgium's Dardenne brothers (Rosetta,
The Promise) and France's Bruno Dumont (especially his Life of Jesus).
As with the Dardennes, this is a drama of working-class people struggling
against a harsh landscape and immense social odds. The film is set in winter in
the Mississippi Delta (where, apparently, not much has changed since Robert
Johnson moaned the blues there). This is a desolate environment of treeless
fields and shabby prefab homes with broken cars in the yard.
The story follows three black characters, 13-year-old James (Johnny McPhail),
his mother, Marlee (Tarra Rigs), and a man, Lawrence (Michael J. Smith).
Lawrence is first seen sitting catatonic in front of his television when a
white neighbour knocks on the door. The neighbour enters and finds Lawrence's
twin brother lying dead in his bedroom. Before the neighbour can stop him,
Lawrence picks up a gun and shoots himself, though the wound doesn't prove
fatal. When Lawrence emerges from the hospital, James bangs on the door, holds
the same gun to the older man's head and demands money.
The information unfolds like pieces of a jigsaw dropping into place in what at
first seem isolated scenes: James, who runs drugs to impress older teens, is
now in debt to some local hoods. After a run-in with the gang, his mother takes
him away in the night to a small house on Lawrence's property, where,
eventually we begin to learn the history that has separated the three of them
and which now brings them back together. There are movies that please crowds
and there are films that can affect a roomful of individuals; Ballast is
definitely in the latter group.
SAG Has Starring Role
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- David Germain, The Associated Press
(January 27, 2008) LOS ANGELES–Normally a
small cousin to the Golden Globes and Academy Awards,
Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards could end up being the biggest party of
Hollywood's film-honours season this time.
The swanky Globes were cancelled because of a strike by the Writers Guild of
America, which refused to let its members work on the show, and the fate of the
Oscars on Feb. 24 is in question because of the same labour quarrel.
Not so for the SAG honours. The actors' union has been steadfast in support of
striking writers, who in turn gave their blessing to the SAG ceremony.
Instead of the debacle for the Globes, which were curtailed to a star-free news
conference after actors and filmmakers made it clear they would not cross
writers' picket lines, the SAG ceremony was expected to come off with a full
complement of Hollywood A-listers.
"We're really proud of the solidarity we've built with the Writers
Guild," said Alan Rosenberg, SAG president. "Our members have
understood that and taken it to heart. I was really moved by their decision not
to go to the Golden Globes, our nominees. It's tough times, but it's been
gratifying, as well."
Plans for the SAG Awards included a bit more gloss than usual, with the
ceremony marking the union's 75th anniversary. The show will feature
chandeliers, arches, wallpaper and other decor harking back to the 1930s, when
the guild was founded.
But the event wasn't without its issues – the weather, with a forecast of wind
and rain on the red carpet. Organizers hastily tented the arrivals area,
ensuring that the glamour of what could be the only movie awards of the season
retained its glitter.
Among the evening's nominees were George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom
Wilkinson for the legal thriller Michael Clayton; Angelina Jolie for the
terrorism tale A Mighty Heart; Daniel Day-Lewis for the oil-boom saga There
Will Be Blood; Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones for the crime story No
Country for Old Men; Emile Hirsch, Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook for
the road drama Into the Wild; Julie Christie for the Alzheimer's drama Away
From Her; and Cate Blanchett for both the historical pageant Elizabeth:
The Golden Age and the Bob Dylan chronicle I'm Not There.
Into the Wild and No Country for Old Men also were nominated for
overall cast performance, along with the western 3:10 to Yuma, the crime
tale American Gangster and the musical Hairspray.
No Country for Old Men won top honours Saturday night at the Directors
Guild of America Awards for Joel and Ethan Coen. The winner there almost always
goes on to take home the directing Oscar.
If it also wins the cast prize from the actors guild, No Country for Old Men
could emerge as the favourite to win best-picture at the Oscars.
As with the Golden Globes, the Writers Guild has made it clear that its members
would not be allowed to work on the Oscars. While stars generally have said
they would skip the show rather than cross picket lines, Oscar organizers
insist their telecast will take place as scheduled.
Amy Ryan, a SAG and Oscar supporting-actress nominee for Gone Baby Gone,
said at the Directors Guild awards Saturday that she would not cross a picket line
to attend the Oscars.
"I hope it ends but, more, I hope the writers get their due," Ryan
said. "I think that, at the end of the day, is more important than a
party. But I really hope it works out because I'd like to go to the
party."
Many in Hollywood hope a new contract recently negotiated by the Directors
Guild of America might help jump-start a deal between producers and writers,
who went strike Nov. 5 over their share of revenue from programming on the
Internet and other new media.
The SAG awards generally have been a solid forecast for who wins at the Oscars.
Three of the four guild victors a year ago – Helen Mirren for The Queen,
Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland and Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls
– went on to receive Oscars.
SAG's prize for overall-cast performance, the show's equivalent of a
best-picture honour, has been a less-reliable Oscar barometer, with only
5-of-12 guild winners going on to receive the top Academy Award. Last year's
SAG winner, Little Miss Sunshine, lost for best picture at the Oscars to
The Departed.
This time, only one of the SAG nominees – No Country for Old Men –
scored a best-picture nomination for the Oscars.
Airing live on TNT and TBS, plans for the SAG ceremony included a
life-achievement honour for Charles Durning.
Katrina Doc Played Like Thriller
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Peter
Howell, Movie Critic
(January 28, 2008) PARK CITY, Utah–A
real-life Cloverfield with a different kind of monster took top
documentary honours at the closing of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Trouble the Water, the video diary of a New Orleans couple
caught in the eye of Hurricane Katrina, won the grand jury prize for docs in
Saturday's prize-giving ceremony.
Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal built their film around the home- video
footage of New Orleans rapper Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott,
which the couple shot while struggling to survive rising floodwaters. Their
determination to keep filming despite imminent danger resembles the HandyCam
monster chase of current box-office champ Cloverfield.
The audience award for documentaries went to Josh Tickell's Fields of Fuel,
a tale of one man's battle to curb fossil fuel consumption. In world cinema,
both jury and audience awards for docs went to James Marsh's Man on Wire,
a British film about a French daredevil who walked on a tightrope between the
World Trade Center towers in 1974.
On the dramatic side, Frozen River, Courtney Hunt's tale of two women in
upper New York State attempting to smuggle illegal aliens across the Canadian
border via the St. Lawrence River, took the grand jury prize for U.S.-made
features.
The audience award for U.S. dramatic features went to The Wackness,
Jonathan Levine's quirkfest about a love-struck teen dope dealer who pays his
psychotherapist (Ben Kingsley) with bags of grass.
The world cinema dramatic competition also had two winners. The grand jury
prize went to Swedish director Jens Jonsson's King of Ping Pong for its
moving depiction of a troubled teen ping-pong star, while Jordan's Amin Matalqa
nabbed the audience prize for Captain Abu Raed, the life-affirming fable
of an Amman airport janitor who convinces neighbourhood children that he's
really a pilot.
Nothing, though, could match the true-to-life story of Kimberly Rivers Roberts
and Scott Roberts, who participated in two world premieres at Sundance: the
debut of Trouble the Water and the arrival of daughter Skyy, at a
hospital in nearby Salt Lake City.
Go to sundance.org/festival/ for a complete list of winners.
Species Star Natasha Henstridge's Career
Evolves
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Victoria
Ahearn, The Canadian Press
(January 28, 2008) Natasha Henstridge soared to fame in 1995 as a genetically
altered, comely human-alien
with a deadly urge to breed with a man in the hit sci-fi thriller film Species.
The blond, blue-eyed model-turned-actress also starred in the sequel, Species
II, and had a cameo in the direct-to-video Species III.
Henstridge wasn't in the fourth instalment, Species: The Awakening, last
year, though. And perhaps not surprisingly, she says she doesn't plan on
reprising the role any more.
"I think I'm over it," Henstridge said with a laugh in a recent phone
interview from her office in Los Angeles, where she lives with her spouse,
Scottish musician and actor Darius Danesh, and her two sons, ages 6 and 9.
"It was an amazing part of my life, time of my life, a great vehicle for
me, but I think it's been done to death quite frankly."
Henstridge, who was born in Springdale, Nfld., and raised in Fort McMurray,
Alta., has enjoyed much success since the first Species. Her major film
credits include Dog Park, The Whole Nine Yards and The Whole
Ten Yards, while notable TV roles include The Outer Limits and the
short-lived Commander in Chief.
This month, Henstridge stars in two TV projects: Would Be Kings, a
four-hour Canadian miniseries which began last night and continues tonight on
CTV, and Eli Stone, a buzzed-about dramedy series debuting Thursday on
CTV and ABC.
Would Be Kings, filmed in Hamilton in 2006, stars Currie Graham and Ben
Bass as cousins who work on a police drug squad together and are torn apart by
corruption within the force.
Henstridge plays the depressed and confused wife of Graham's conflicted
character.
"She's a woman who wants everything in life to be the 2.2 kids,
white-picket fence and even though she has a lot of that, it's never going to
be enough because ultimately she's not happy within herself," said
Henstridge, 33.
The story is loosely based on Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part 1. Said
Henstridge:
"It's dark – it's bloody dark, there's no doubt about that."
The mood on Eli Stone is decidedly more uplifting, she said, as it
involves much humour – and singer George Michael.
You see, Michael is part of the hallucinations of the title character, an
ambitious lawyer played by Jonny Lee Miller of Trainspotting fame. Eli's
visions are a result of a brain aneurysm, but he thinks they're a divine
calling.
Henstridge plays his fiancée, who is also a cutthroat lawyer, and Canadian
Victor Garber plays her dad.
Henstridge said Michael was affable on set and even joked around after
suffering an embarrassing fall.
"He took a little trip once on the stage," said Henstridge, who has a
cottage in Triton, Nfld.
"There was a stage built for one of the scenes and he had a little trip.
Everybody else around him ... made such a big deal about him being there and
yet he was the most humble of them all, which is really funny. We had a good
time."
Amy Redford: Sundance Kid’s Daughter
Makes Mark
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- Peter Howell, Movie Critic
(January 26, 2008) PARK CITY, Utah–She has
her father's blue eyes and her mother's wide smile.
But gifts of the genetic sort are enough for Amy Redford, daughter of actor Robert Redford, the
founder of the Sundance Film Festival, and his ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen, an
activist and educator.
Amy Redford insists she isn't looking for special treatment as a filmmaker,
even though many attending Sundance '08 naturally assume family connections
helped her land a primo opening weekend slot for The Guitar, her feature directing debut.
"My dad certainly is not the kind of person who would request that they
take (The Guitar)," she says, accepting the question gracefully.
"It would be against everything that Sundance is, and it's not the way
I've lived my life. I've made my own choices since I was quite young, and it
wouldn't benefit anybody at Sundance for them to take my film if it wasn't
deserving of being here. They don't owe me anything."
Anyone who doubts her sincerity need only look at her résumé. At 37, she's
older than most first-time filmmakers at Sundance. It's not like she rolled out
of bed one morning and announced she wanted to direct feature films.
Redford directed short movies and stage plays in high school growing up in
Utah, when she called herself Amy Hart to avoid the limelight, but her
professional career has been mainly as an actor.
She has appeared in episodes of TV's Sex and the City, Law and Order:
SVU and The Sopranos. Her film work includes small roles in Maid
In Manhattan, The Music Inside and Sunshine Cleaning, the latter
a comedy that just premiered at Sundance.
But she's best known for her extensive stage work, including a well-received
recent run in Daisy Foote's Bhutan at the Cherry Lane Theater in New
York. She has also trod the boards in Toronto, taking the lead role of Evelyn
in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things during a 2002 run at CanStage's
Berkeley Street Theatre.
Redford's first involvement with the Amos Poe screenplay for The Guitar
came while she was wearing her actor's hat.
She was considering playing the lead role of Melody, a women diagnosed with a
terminal illness who seeks to make the most of her final days by embarking on a
frantic whirl of shopping (her purchases include a symbolically meaningful red
electric guitar) and sexual discovery.
But the more Redford considered the project, the more she felt she wanted to be
behind the camera. Part of that came from her keen interest in photography,
another of her artistic passions.
"The story kept revealing itself in my head. Just the imagery and all
that. I kept `firing' myself in the part, thinking about other actors I would
like to see do it. So I said, `Okay, I don't want to be in this story. I want
to tell this story.'"
Doors didn't open immediately for her as a director, even with her famous surname.
For one thing, she wanted to shoot The Guitar in Super 16mm film, an
expensive proposition in the digital era. And she needed to find an actor
capable of portraying a dying person without being maudlin.
Redford also needed an actor amenable to the film's substantial amount of
nudity and sex, both straight and gay. Melody is no shrinking violet, and
clothes for her are definitely optional.
She found her Melody in Saffron Burrows, who also has film, TV and stage roles
to her credit.
In fact, it was really Burrows who found Redford. She loved the script and went
after the role with gusto.
But there were two main obstacles: Burrows is British, and Melody is a New
Yorker. Burrows is also a knockout, and Melody is supposed to be a "mouse
burger supreme" (to use Redford's words). So some persuasion was needed.
"I said to Saffron, `What should I watch of yours that would tell me you
should play this role?' And she said, `Nothing. That's why I want to play the
role.' And I knew at that moment she was straightforward and smart and serious
about it."
If Burrows had no qualms about the nudity and sex, American film censors might.
Redford didn't take the easy way out there, either.
"The only thing the (censors) really have a problem with is that you see
pubic hair. That's the biggest sin. She could have been gang-raped or blown her
head off with a gun in close-up and they wouldn't cut it, but a woman's body is
a big no-no.
"I feel like the sensuality and the nudity in the story is really about
where she's at in her journey. This isn't about exploiting this person; this is
about unfolding this person and her rebirth."
It remains to be seen how much of the nudity and sex will remain when The
Guitar hits theatres sometime this year. Redford will resist any call to
make cuts to the movie, which is very much in keeping with the Sundance ethos
of questioning authority and taking risks.
"I don't think that's such a bad thing to perpetuate."
Redford also has genuine empathy for Melody's situation. She has friends who
have fought serious illness and she's no stranger to troubled times, even for
someone who grew up as part America's cultural royalty.
Amy is the youngest of Redford's four children, but she never knew her older
brother Scott, who died of crib death in 1959.
"I've lived a very simple life. I'm not engaged much in the celebrity
culture and my dad and I sing for our supper. Privileged or not, we all have
our trials and tribulations. I'm as emotionally porous as the next
person."
And even though Robert Redford didn't help her make The Guitar or get it
into Sundance, he was very much the proud father last weekend, sitting in the
audience in the Eccles Theatre watching the world premiere.
He also has something new to talk to his daughter about: They're now both
filmmakers. "He was making Lions for Lambs when I was making The
Guitar, and we swapped a couple of war stories along the way: `How are you?
You slept yet? No?'
"It's great to be able to say, `I actually really know what you're going
through.' I think I've learned from him to tell stories that you really believe
in, because when the chips are down, that will get you through more than
anything else."
::TV NEWS::
Blair Underwood: The Go-To Guy For
Neurotic Women
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com
- Johanna Schneller
(January 26, 2008) Series television has
become a haven for female characters who are stubborn, sexy, clever
and more than a little neurotic. (See:
Mary-Louise Parker, Kyra Sedgwick, Holly Hunter and the entire cast of Private
Practice.) And Blair Underwood is their current go-to guy when they need a little love.
In the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine (with fresh
episodes due back on the air Feb. 4), Underwood plays the dreamiest
grade-school teacher ever. No matter how much single mom Christine (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus) flies around the room - the first time they met, she couldn't
stop saying the word "black" - Underwood's gaze holds her steady. As
a hot doctor on Sex and the City, he was able to melt Miranda (Cynthia
Nixon) like a dish of ice cream. On the night-time soap Dirty Sexy Money,
he battles businessman Tripp Darling (Donald Sutherland) while bedding his
maddening daughter Karen (Natalie Zea).
And starting Monday, on the new series In Treatment (HBO, TMN and Movie
Central), Underwood plays Alex, a U.S. Navy pilot reluctantly undergoing
therapy with sad-eyed shrink Paul (Gabriel Byrne). Soon enough, he's having a
steamy affair with fellow patient Laura (Melissa George), a sex addict with
transference issues.
When we meet in a Toronto screening room, Underwood is blush-inducingly
handsome, with a voice so sonorous it makes listeners reverberate like piano
strings. "The go-to guy for neurotic women in need of love, I haven't
heard that one before," he said, letting loose a long, slow chuckle.
"Well, I do love women."
Underwood's not looking for love, though. He's in it, with his wife of 13
years, Desiree DaCosta, a former assistant to Eddie Murphy. They have two sons,
Paris, 10 and Blake, 6; and a daughter, Brielle, 9. "I love women, but I
love my wife more," he said. "She's the ultimate woman."
In Treatment runs five nights a week, with each 30-minute episode
consisting of a single conversation: Doctor and patient(s) sit in a room
talking. That's it. On Mondays, Paul treats Laura; on Tuesdays, Alex.
Wednesdays, he sees Sophie, a suicidal high-school gymnast; Thursdays, he
contends with a squabbling couple. On Fridays, Paul sees his own shrink (Dianne
Wiest), with whom he has a complicated past. At first, the show feels
disconcertingly spare, but the writing is so vivid, so full of obfuscations,
revelations and alternating points of view, that after a few episodes I was
shouting at my TV set and dialling my old therapist to ask why she didn't
understand me like Paul.
Each episode is shot in two days, in long, 10-minute takes. "I call it an
actor's paradise," Underwood said. "I get to act every minute, really
play a character, opposite a great actor. You're wide open to whatever comes at
you."
As if three current series weren't enough, Underwood also recently directed his
first film, The Bridge to Nowhere, about four blue-collar friends in
Pittsburgh who start a high-end escort service. "I was energized every
day," he said. "Working with great actors, telling a great
story." He grins. "And lots of eye candy." He and two partners
are also writing a series of tongue-in-cheek detective novels: The first, Casanegra,
was published last July; the sequel, In the Night of the Heat, is due
this summer.
In fact, since his breakthrough on L.A. Law, Underwood has only ever
taken one hiatus from work, 18 months about 8 years ago, when no good scripts came
his way. He used that time to, as he puts it, "go into the lab,"
eventually writing and performing a 90-minute, one-man, audience-participation
show called IM4 (as in "I am for...").
"I posed the question to the audience, 'What are you really about?' "
he said. " 'What's your passion, what are your convictions?' Martin Luther
King said, 'If you're not willing to die for something, you're not fit to
live.' "
Here's what Underwood is for: Travelling. "I'm an army brat, so I lived
all over," he said. (His father retired as a full-bird colonel.) "One
of my mandates is to expose our kids to as much of the world as possible, while
we got 'em under our wing and on lockdown. We did the Disney cruise last month
for Christmas. We may go to China in March. We did a safari in Kenya last
summer. So often I found myself just watching them watch whatever it was, the
animals or the villages. I found myself full."
He's also for acting, "becoming different people, because it's
experiencing different lives. As an actor, you have to believe what the
character is saying in order for the audience to believe it. So looking back, I
feel like I've been a fighter pilot, like I've been a marine, a baseball player
in the Negro leagues, a lawyer, a cop. Obviously I haven't, but I feel like I
had a taste of it. It's taking a bite out of life."
He's for "the empowerment of others, for people living their dreams,"
Underwood said. "Part of the reason is biblical, 'To whom much is given
much is expected.' I was raised with that, and I believe that. Now a lot of my
focus is finding ways to give other people those opportunities, by producing my
own films and TV shows and creating employment."
And naturally, Underwood is for love. "I have a great relationship with my
mother. And my father is my hero," he says. "I feel so fortunate to
have had those two examples in my life. My father to teach me by example how to
be a man, and my mother by example how to treat a woman. My father was a black
officer in the 1960s, which was rare then. My mother would say to us, 'Always
be careful how you comport yourself, because when you walk outside this door,
you represent not only you, but this family, your father's rank, and your
country.' And part of how you respect yourself is how you treat women. Little
things - you open the door for your sister. There's no excuse to hit a woman.
And my dad treats my mother like a queen to this day. She has MS, she went
through a depression, but she's great now, she's in a wheelchair. So just
watching their love story, and how my dad takes care of her. He was this
superstar, the officer, the Colonel. And he still is, but he's also committed
part of his life to taking care of her. They're amazing."
Here, his publicist interrupts my swoon to give me the "last
question" signal. Has Underwood ever been in therapy? He laughs. "I
haven't, but I would," he says. "If I felt it necessary, I definitely
would."
For now, he's just fine as the rescuer. And, speaking for neurotic women
everywhere, we're just fine with that.
*****
Notable TV roles
Knight Rider (1985): Potts
The Cosby Show (1985):
Denise's friend
L.A. Law (1987-1994):
Jonathan Rollins
City of Angels (2000):
Ben Turner
Sex and the City (2003-2004): Robert Leeds
LAX (2005): Roger De Souza
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2007): Miles Sennet
Dirty Sexy Money (2007):
Simon Elder
CBC Board Okays Broadcast Rights Sale
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Martin
Knelman, Entertainment Columnist
(January 25, 2008) The CBC's board
of directors has
given its seal of approval to a controversial deal involving a back-room
sell-off of international broadcast rights to shows produced with Canadian
public funds.
At a teleconference session on Wednesday, the CBC board gave the management of
its English-language TV network permission to proceed with the sale of
international distribution rights and assets currently managed by CBC's
international division to Fireworks International, a division of the British
company ContentFilm.
No competing offers were invited or considered.
The CBC's recently appointed new president, Hubert T. Lacroix, made the
announcement.
Through this deal, announced internally at the network five weeks ago,
Fireworks will handle international rights to 700 hours of 135 programs.
"We believe this represents a significant win for CBC, for Canadian
taxpayers and for the producers, actors and others who have a stake in the
programming, which will now have an opportunity for greater exposure,"
Lacroix said.
That is not the way the deal is seen by players in the Canadian film and TV
industry, who have been scathingly critical of the deal, which was negotiated
secretly without allowing other potential buyers, both Canadian and foreign, a
chance to make competing offers.
"What the CBC has done stinks," Ian Morrison of Friends of Public
Broadcasting said yesterday. "It's a betrayal of public trust. It doesn't
withstand scrutiny. It would be improper even in a private company."
Financial details have not been disclosed.
Water-Logged Role Goes Swimmingly For
Zoie Palmer
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Bill
Brioux, The Canadian Press
(January 25, 2008) You might think somebody who nearly
drowned as a child would not want to grow up to play a water rescue specialist
on TV.
Yet there is Zoie
Palmer, taking the plunge every week on The Guard. The Vancouver-lensed drama airs Tuesday
nights on Global.
Palmer plays Carly Greig, part of a crew of daring Canadian Coast Guard saviours who put their lives on the line
to help others even when they can't always save themselves. Steve Bacic (Andromeda),
Jeremy Guilbaut (Edgemont) and Claudette Mink (The Days) play the
other key members of the offshore rescue team. JAG star David James
Elliott has a recurring role as Mink's character's reclusive boyfriend.
Palmer, a native of England who grew up in Toronto (and attended York
University to study drama), says her own real-life rescue occurred when she was
around 9.
She and her older sister were swimming about an hour north of Toronto near
Sutton, Ont. Both had recently taken swimming lessons and were testing their
limits. Palmer panicked when she got in over her head.
"I went under and she rescued me," she says.
How did her parents react? "I don't know if we ever told them."
Palmer emerged with a fear of water. But as she related over lunch last week in
Toronto, her father was in the Royal Air Force in England and she credits him
with her sense of adventure. So when it came time to audition for The Guard,
she wasn't fazed by the swimming requirements. Palmer and co-star Guilbaut are
the two leads most often in the water, and part of the testing for their roles
involved distance swims and retrieving weights from the bottom of pools.
"The show is really character driven as well," she says, "but we
were told up front that, 50 per cent of the time, we would be in the
water."
So far that experience has gone swimmingly, she says. The wet suits help,
especially the thicker, 7-mm ones, and there is usually a hot tub to dunk into
between takes. Professional divers are always on the set, "ready to swim
over with oxygen whenever we need it," she says.
There are action scenes aplenty in the pilot, including a daring nighttime
helicopter search and rescue on a stormy sea. The series opened with Palmer and
Guilbaut diving underwater in an attempt to rescue a young family from a
submerged automobile.
Some of Palmer's most daring scenes, however, occur on dry land. After a failed
rescue bid, a rattled Greig hits a local bar and gets picked up by an eccentric
stranger (Ryan Robbins). The two share a steamy tryst aboard his makeshift
houseboat.
Shooting love scenes in front of a dozen or so crew members is no biggie, says
Palmer.
"They're really not that interested in what we're doing," she says of
the crew. "They were more interested in making sure the prop didn't break
when I opened the door."
The first eight episodes of The Guard were produced last
September-November in and around Squamish, B.C., with the series forced into
hiatus due not to a writers' strike like so many other B.C. productions this
winter, but to colder weather conditions.
Production on this season's final seven episodes is scheduled to resume in
March or April, weather permitting. Judging by the ratings, Global will be
hoping for sooner rather than later.
The Guard premiered Tuesday to an estimated 813,000 viewers, tops among
domestic dramas this season.
Cooking Up Controversy
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Kate Taylor
(January 28, 2008) Two students are late, one dish is burnt,
another is half raw and a third is swimming in fat. Chef Neil Baxter looks deeply, deeply pained.
"You're breaking my heart," he says as he watches one student butcher
an assignment.
Things aren't going so well for the first year class at the Stratford Chefs
School, which means they are going very nicely for Chef School, the new reality-TV series that follows a
class through two years in this prestigious training program for the culinary
arts.
"It shows all the kind of joys and sorrows of students in this program.
It's very true to the experience," observes Eleanor Kane, owner of The Old
Prune restaurant in Stratford, Ont., and co-founder of the school.
Kane and fellow restaurateur James Morris, owner of Rundles, founded the school
in 1983, launching classes in the off-season when both the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival and these high-end restaurants are shut to the public. The
school, the only model of its kind in the country operated by working chefs and
restaurateurs, rapidly gained a reputation for producing graduates ready for
Canada's top kitchens. It has alumni working everywhere from Sooke Harbour
House on Vancouver Island to Scaramouche and Jamie Kennedy Kitchens in Toronto.
With its graduates also opening a range of local eateries including the York
Street Kitchen and Bijou, the school has helped solidify Stratford's reputation
as a culinary destination as much as it is a theatre town. A reality series on
the Food Network? It's the icing on the cake.
Thick, gooey icing as it turns out: The first episode of Chef School
devoted a great deal of time to a dispute over who was to get the best room in
the bed-and-breakfast where six of the students lodge, building the mouthy Alex
Landheer up as the character who is going to be trouble. Then the second
episode included observations from the students about the sexual attractiveness
of the others; this week, Mike Brennan and Kelsey Murray will pair off to much
commentary from their peers.
"Some of what we are seeing we have never seen before," Kane says
with quiet understatement. "As directors of the school, Jim [Morris] and I
are going, oh, my goodness. ... But that's how it should be, the students have
an after-school life."
Last week's episode was much more tightly focused on the trials and
tribulations of cooking as Baxter, who is the chef responsible for the famed
kitchen at Rundles, gave the students their marks on their first exam.
"We found as the series went on, a lot of it came from the food,"
said Rachel Low, executive producer of the series and president of Red Apple
Entertainment. "It wasn't about who is sleeping with who."
On the exam, the cocky David Lingard, who has the most prior restaurant
experience of the bunch, got his comeuppance when he burnt a piece of salmon.
And Landheer was finally reduced to silence when he was caught using the wrong
utensils yet again and got the lowest mark in the class. This week, the students
move to the kitchen at the Old Prune, where chef Bryan Steele will supervise
them as they prepare competing stir-frys to win a day in the kitchen of Rain, a
leading Asian restaurant in Toronto.
The producers of Chef School selected 12 of the 36 students enrolled in
the 2006-07 year as the ones they wanted to follow, and characters are
certainly starting to emerge. There's the inspirational story of Richard
Francis, who grew up on a reserve in the Northwest Territories and wound up in
a drug-and-alcohol rehab program in Toronto: He is now trying to put his life
back together with equal doses of yoga and cooking. The erudite Andrew
Coristine was about to launch into a PhD in physics when he switched career
tracks and readily admits he knows little about cooking. The flirtatious
Allison Jones, a former pastry chef who the producers are setting up as the
class hottie, wound up in tears this week when she discovered she doesn't know
the difference between a fish chowder that is flavourful and one that is tasteless.
"They want to be chefs but they haven't really thought about what it
is," observes Low. "It was dramatic. This wasn't a bunch of super
highbrow candidates. ... We live in a culture where chefs are such celebrities,
but we found such a gap ... and that made it fascinating."
Indeed, the would-be restaurateurs can seem painfully unsophisticated. They
have been shown rolling their eyes at a port-and-Stilton tasting, puzzling over
public-speaking classes and complaining bitterly about Morris's movement
classes. He believes that service in the dining room should be balletic.
Low, who was initially approached by second-year student Crystal Asher with the
idea for the show, said it seemed like a natural for reality TV. Red Apple soon
dismissed the idea that it needed to add any extra element of competition, such
as a prize for the best student.
"If we really trusted our gut feeling about it, the elements were there.
Here are a bunch of people who are basically marooned in a small town, and some
of them are going to live together," Low said. Still, it took Red Apple
1,000 hours of footage from the classroom, the bed-and-breakfast and local bars
to produce their first 13-episode season.
Behind the scenes (and with advance knowledge of what's to come), Kane says
things are going better for everyone as the cameras follow the group into its
second year. The TV crew is faster and less intrusive: It has learned how to
get what it needs, she said. Chef School producers have revealed that
one female student will fail, but the remaining 11 are prospering. If they were
sometimes too immature to seize learning opportunities in Season 1, Kane can
report that a recent parmesan-and-Barolo tasting produced nothing but silent
appreciation as the cheese and wine worked their magic.
Chef School airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. and Sundays at 11 p.m. on the Food
Network.
Canada AM Tries To Cover All Time Zones
With Six-Hour Format
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Rob Salem,
Television Columnist
(January 29, 2008) "Canada AM is going to six hours on
Monday," I was informed by my editor late last week. "I want you to
watch and write about it for Tuesday."
Appalled as I am at the very notion of getting up to "watch" anything
at 6 a.m. – a time of day I am customarily "watching" the insides of
my eyelids – well, duty calls ...
5:30 a.m. That can't be right. It feels like I only just got to sleep. I know
that there are lots of people who leap out of bed at this time every day. I am
not one of them. There is no way I am going to be able to keep my eyes open,
short of prying the lids apart and keeping them there with paper-clips, Clockwork
Orange-style.
6 a.m. And so it begins ... the Canada AM "Early Edition" (no
kidding), leading with the sorry state of the world market and tragic bus crash
in Alberta, both in keeping with my dazed, dark mood. But here's anchor Marci
Ien, looking fabulous and wide-awake. Damn her.
6:06 Riots in Beirut, Suharto's funeral procession, temperatures in B.C. in the
minus 20s, freezing rain in the Maritimes ... despite a partly sunny local
forecast, I am feeling "at one" with the rest of the country, which
is I gather the whole point of this expanded AM. Though perhaps intended
in a broader context.
6:30 Primary AM co-hosts Seamus O'Regan and Bev Thomson take the
hand-off, a tad earlier than usual, to which they have apparently still not
quite adjusted. I can relate.
7:08 A good 10 minutes on the impending testimony of disgraced Ontario
pathologist Charles Smith, including an interview with wrongly accused parent
Sherry Sherrett. When they move on to the MPs' return to Parliament, I must
confess, I start to nod off ...
7:22 The first in-show acknowledgement of the extended six-hour running time,
accompanied by the first of several clips from AMs past, including
Pamela Wallin's first day on the job – the then two-hour show's 10th
anniversary – suggesting that, perhaps one day, it could run "all around
the clock" (Note to editor: if this ever happens, get someone else to
cover it).
7:49 More AM nostalgia: Ex-host Sandie Rinaldo recalls going into false
labour on air in 1980, and 35-year veteran Craig Oliver reveals that when he
left the CBC to launch the show his boss Knowlton Nash assured him "it
won't last six months."
Perhaps a sign of growing pains, these affectionately amusing anecdotes are cut
off mid-sentence by a commercial break.
8:01 Breaking news out of Pakistan of a high-school hostage incident. Pretty
much everything else is recycled from the previous hour.
8:46 Corner Gas star Brent Butt checks in live from Vancouver.
8:49 As we approach the old sign-off time, O'Regan and expert Libby Norris
discuss failed fitness resolutions.
9:01 Wait a minute ... that's Regis and Kelly. Frantically flipping, I discover
that the extended AM only applies to the West Coast and CTV Newsnet.
9:02 Over on Newsnet, there's an encouraging update, a resolution to the
Pakistani hostage crisis. There is also a fresh report out of St. Catharines
about starling overpopulation and the resulting plague of bird poop. West
Coasters will no doubt find this hilarious.
9:48 A live musical performance from Toronto by Katie Melua.
10 a.m. Charles Smith arrives at his inquest. Vancouver-born news newbie Omar
Sachedina makes his debut from Toronto. Dashing fellow: think Eric McCormack
with a tan. He is very shortly joined electronically by West Coast co-host
Mi-Jung Lee and weather person Rena Heer.
In stark contrast to the clearly bleary first-half hosts, these three seem so
gosh-darned happy to be there my teeth are starting to hurt.
10:13 Lee leads with an Edmonton interview with the parents of
plane-crash-surviving 4-year-old Kate Williams.
10:25 The pooping starlings again. Already.
10:42 Lee sits down to talk environmental issues with B.C. Premier Gordon
Campbell.
10:50 Brent Butt's back, for an in-studio interview ... when does the man have
time to shoot Corner Gas?
10:57 An awkward transition bids farewell to Alberta. I can't fight it any
longer and finally fall asleep.
11:39 I wake up just in time to catch original AM co-host and now B.C.
finance minister – and still absolutely stunning – Carole Taylor.
11:36 More awkwardness introducing a new Pamela Wallin clip; like Taylor, still
very much the stunner she was back in the day.
11:49 It's possible I'm only dreaming, but isn't this the exact same Libby
Norris interview, on the exact same set, with Sachedina instead of O'Regan?
Noon As Canada AM finally fades into the PM, my final thoughts before
falling back into bed: six hours of anything is just too much TV.
Leave it to the professionals. Do not try this at home.
New CTV Show To Air On CBS
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Bruce
Demara, Entertainment Reporter
(January 30, 2008) CTV has scored a major
coup with its upcoming new series Flashpoint, which will air on a
major U.S. network – CBS – at the same time it runs on a Canadian network.
"It's very exciting for the production community and for CTV," said
Susanne Boyce, CTV's president of creative content and channels.
"This is the first time since 1994 that a Canadian-produced and owned
series is on a main American network. I call it great news on a dull January
day," Boyce said, referring to the CTV series, Due South, which
starred Paul Gross as a Mountie working in Chicago.
The network has previously scored similar successes on smaller U.S. networks
with shows, notably Degrassi: The Next Generation and Corner Gas.
Even more exciting for executive producers Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill
Mustos is that the series will be set in Toronto – an unusual move for a U.S.
network – and a "sexy" Toronto at that.
"This is something that we have been working our whole careers to
accomplish. So it feels really amazing," Mustos said.
"I think Toronto looks beautiful and it's also an incredibly sexy location
the way we've shot it. I think (CBS executives) really, really responded to the
aesthetics of the show and to the fact that Toronto is, yes, a sexy, beautiful
city," La Traverse said, referring to the pilot, which was filmed here
last summer.
Production ramps up in Toronto in April for a 13-episode run of the series,
which stars Enrico Colantoni (of Veronica Mars, Just Shoot Me),
Hugh Dillon (Durham County) and David Paetkau (Whistler).
While Canadian series and movies shown in the U.S. are rarely identified as taking
place north of the border, La Traverse and Mustos said CBS executives welcomed
the idea.
"When Anne Marie and I were in the meeting in L.A. with the CBS execs,
they thought that it would be really interesting for their audience to see
Toronto. For their audience, having the opportunity to see a kind of fresh
location like Toronto – not Toronto disguised as Chicago but Toronto as Toronto
– would actually make for a fresh way into a dramatic series," Mustos
said.
Boyce agreed that kind of U.S.-centric thinking is disappearing. "I think
we've grown up a bit about that stuff. They bought this series on the basis
that they liked the scripts and the pilot."
The series – written by newcomers Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern as part
of the network's Writer Only drama development program – is inspired by the
real-life exploits of the Toronto Police Service Emergency Task Force dealing
with high-risk situations involving firearms and hostages.
Unlike most cop shows, Flashpoint will have a stronger "emotional"
heart, La Traverse said.
"What we wanted to examine in a really compelling way is what happens to
those people who are heroes and what is the personal cost of what they do? What
is the human cost of heroism?"
Nina Tassler, CBS president of entertainment, said that pitch is what hooked
the network.
"The particular theme ... which we thought was so extraordinary and really
appealing, was that the show would explore the human cost of heroism. That
really resonated with us," Tassler said.
Tassler expressed confidence that U.S. audiences will be comfortable with a
series set outside their borders.
She added that the strike by the Writers Guild of America played no part in the
network's decision to greenlight the series.
CBS has been "aggressively combing the world" for new formats and
ideas and is developing projects from other countries, including the U.K. and
Israel. "It was about exploring and looking for new business models. We
said that this was the year that we were really going to focus on finding new
methods, new ideas, and this is what turned up," Tassler said.
TV TIDBITS
Keith David Books TV Pilot
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(January 28, 2008) *Actor Keith David has been cast in the two-hour Spike TV pilot "S.I.S.," or
Special Investigation Squad. The unit is housed within the Los Angeles
Police Department and takes on cases involving major crimes and major
criminals. David, whose credits include the feature "First
Sunday" and recurring roles in the series "7th Heaven" and
"ER," will play assistant chief Joseph Armstrong, head of the squad.
Omari Hardwick, last seen on the small screen in TNT's "Saved," will
play a member of the S.I.S. unit. Matt Nable, Peter Stebbings and
Colleen Porch round out the cast as other members of the squad.
.jpg){kind=link}
Schieffer Plans To Step Down From 'Face
The Nation'
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - The
Associated Press
(January 30, 2008) NEW YORK–Veteran CBS
Washington hand Bob
Schieffer, who has anchored Face the Nation
since 1991, said Tuesday he plans to step down from the Sunday morning
political talk show with the inauguration of a new president. The start of a
new administration next January provides a natural transition, he said.
"That's when I'll stop doing what I'm doing now," said Schieffer, who
turns 71 next month. "But I'll still have some relationship with CBS, at
least I hope so." Schieffer has talked retirement before. The bladder
cancer survivor once planned to step down when he reached 70, but he spent a
year and a half filling in as CBS Evening News anchor between the exit
of Dan Rather and entrance of Katie Couric. He helped improve the ratings, got
good reviews and enjoyed a chance at the top job that he never thought he'd
have. Since Couric's arrival in the fall of 2005, Schieffer has stopped
commuting to New York and concentrated on Face the Nation. There's no
obvious successor in place at CBS News. Jim Axelrod and Scott Pelley have both
filled in during a rare circumstance when Schieffer was absent. Schieffer said
he hoped to keep an office at CBS and contribute occasionally, the way Tom
Brokaw has at NBC News with documentaries and some primary night commentary.
"Bob can work at CBS News as long as he wants to and I hope that's a long
time," said CBS News president Sean McManus. There's always the chance of
a second career: Schieffer plays guitar in the country band Honky Tonk
Confidential and recently played a party at New York's "21" club.
"If I ever get to the Grand Ole Opry, I'll move right into country
music," he said.
Haggis's Crash Set To Land On TV Screens
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Associated Press
(January 30, 2008) NEW YORK — Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning film Crash is being turned into a TV show this
year. The 13-episode, one-hour series will air on the cable channel Starz in
the United States as its first original dramatic series, the network announced
late Monday. Key members of the feature's production team will be back for the
series, including London, Ont., native Haggis, its director, co-writer and
producer; co-writer and producer Bobby Moresco; producer Bob Yari; producer Don Cheadle; producer Mark R. Harris and executive
producer Tom Nunan. Lionsgate, which distributed the film, is co-producing the
series with Starz. Revenues from the show will be shared by the two companies.
In addition to Best Picture, the 2004 film also won the Academy Award for best
original screenplay and for editing. An examination of the complexities of
racial tolerance set in Los Angeles, its ensemble cast included Cheadle, Sandra
Bullock, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris
(Ludacris) Bridges, Thandie Newton and Ryan Philippe. No casting decisions or
shooting locations have been announced for the series, which is scheduled to
begin production this spring. "This is a big step up financially for
us," Stephan Shelanski, executive vice-president of programming for Starz,
told Variety.com. An average production cost for a broadcast-network hour is
about $2.5-million (U.S.) an episode and Crash is unlikely to cost any
less than that. "We'll use the style of storytelling from the movie,"
Variety quoted Kevin Beggs, president of programming and production for
Lionsgate, as saying, "but there'll be new characters and new stories to
get into the subjects of race and class, and the bigotry that's simmering under
the skin of a city like Los Angeles." With 30 million subscribers, Starz
is one of 16 premium channels owned by Starz Entertainment LLC.
Mike Wallace Recovering From Bypass
Surgery
Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com -
Associated Press
(January 30, 2008) New York — Veteran TV
news correspondent Mike Wallace is recovering from triple heart bypass surgery that was performed last
week, CBS News said yesterday. Wallace, who turns 90 this spring, is already
walking after the surgery Friday to bypass blockages near his heart. Doctors
are calling the operation "a great success," the network said. Recovery
from heart bypass surgery generally runs about six weeks. Wallace, who is
essentially retired from current-affairs show 60 Minutes, recently
interviewed baseball player Roger Clemens about allegations of steroid abuse.
::THEATRE NEWS::
Contestants Drawn By The Sound Of Music
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Richard
Ouzounian, Theatre Critic
(January 25, 2008) The hills were alive on Friday morning.
We're not talking about the Swiss alps here, but the somewhat more forbidding
landscape of the CBC Atrium, where close to 400 young women lined up for their
chance to play Maria von Trapp in the production of The Sound of the Music scheduled to open in Toronto this
October.
It's a repeat of the British process where a nationwide search for the right
star was the basis of a highly popular television program called How Do You
Solve a Problem Like Maria?
The same thing will happen here in Canada, where an eight-week CBC-TV series
will culminate in the viewers voting for their favourite candidate.
And so the eager hopefuls started lining up at 6:00 a.m., waiting for a chance
at fame, fortune, or at least a few minutes on television.
They came from as close as down the street, or as far away as Arlington,
Virginia.
Some were so young they brought their mothers along as chaperones. Others had
husbands staying home to babysit their own children.
Everyone got a chance to sing a bit of their chosen tune a cappella. After
that, most were politely thanked and sent back out into the sub-zero weather to
shed their tears privately, while others were told they could advance to the
next round of auditions.
One of the lucky ones was Riley Raymer from Markham, a vivacious 22 year-old
who looked around the room and said "Every single girl here has dreams of
making it ... but only one us can."
The process will continue across Canada over the next two weeks where thousands
of candidates are expected to try out. Then come more auditions, more judging
and a session at "Maria School" for a chosen 50, from whom 10 will be
selected to go on air and face the judgement of the Canadian viewers this
summer.
Climb every mountain, as the song says, until you find your dream.
Performing Arts Pulse Is Strong
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Martin
Knelman
(January 28, 2008) Toronto performing arts groups sold a healthy 2.5 million tickets
worth $169.3 million
during the 2005/2006 season, according to
a detailed survey to be unveiled at a media conference today.
Moreover, those numbers represent an impressive increase over comparable
figures for the previous year (2004/2005) when 1.2 million tickets worth $148.8
million were sold.
The survey – first of its kind conducted in this city – was conducted by the
Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts.
The organization has 117 members, but the results are based on the
participation of 86; 19 members were unable to take part, and all but 12 of
those who could provide information chose to do so.
The report was a pet project of Jacoba Knaapen, executive director of the alliance,
who hopes it will be a benchmark and become an annual tradition. Information
was gathered in early 2007, but it took months to analyze the data.
"What the report shows is that we have a massive opportunity for
growth," Knaapen told me Friday. She would like to see more awareness of
the role alliance members played in making Toronto a creative capital. "We
need to recognize showbiz is big business so that we can capitalize on the
potential."
She refused to reveal any numbers, but my spies obtained a copy of the report,
which has been circulated among arts insiders.
It's clear her agenda is to paint a rosy picture that can be used to secure
more financial support from government and private donors.
Among the stats:
These 87 member organizations employ 7,700 workers (including 1,600 full-time
ones).
The 13,000 performing arts workers who live in Toronto represent about 1 per
cent of the labour force.
More than 60 per cent of member organizations are involved in partnerships or
cross-promotion.
Ticket sales represented about 77 per cent of total combined revenue for all
the groups participating in the survey, which came to about $2.8 million in
05/06, up $400,000 from the year before.
The 86 participating groups staged 875 productions in 05/06 (compared to 762
the year before), with a total of 8,752 performances (compared to 8,275 in
04/05).
Among those 86 groups, 70 per cent said theatre was their main focus; 14 per
cent dance; 3 per cent opera and 13 per cent other.
Just under one-third of them (31 per cent) operated at least one theatre of
their own, while 69 per cent staged their work in rented spaces.
There's a wide range between smaller groups, which may put on one or two shows
a year in a 100-seat space, and big players like Mirvish Produtions, the
Canadian Opera Company and the Canadian Stage Company. But these numbers do not
include shows presented by non-members, such as most offerings at the
Hummingbird Centre. And it excludes the Stratford and Shaw festivals.
The survey makes no attempt to compare Toronto's statistics with those of other
cities. But according to Knaapen, the city that is Toronto's twin in terms of
the size and range of performing arts activity is Boston.
One thing she would like to learn is why Boston's half-price ticket booth is
booming while Toronto's (in Yonge-Dundas Square) is overlooked.
In the 1990s, at the peak of the Broadway North period when Toronto had many
long-run musicals playing at once, we claimed to be the No. 3 theatre city in
the English-speaking world, after London and New York. That is no longer true,
if it ever was. Chicago has a lock on that claim. According to Knaapen, it not
only has far more performing arts activity; it also sells close to twice as
many tickets.
Nevertheless, Toronto's performing arts scene is a rich, varied canvas that
compares favourably with almost every other competitor city in North America.
It would be foolish to take that for granted. It's something that needs to be
appreciated and nurtured.
::OTHER NEWS::
Canada Needs To Stand Up For Its
Artists, Industry Says
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Brett
Popplewell, Staff Reporter
(January 25, 2008) Is Canada a virtual pirates' cove?
According to representatives from the Canadian publishing, music, television
and film industries, Canada is far too lenient when it comes to protecting the intellectual
property of its artists.
"Canada has what amounts to a culture of piracy; we have one of the
highest online piracy rates in the world," said Graham Henderson,
president of the Canadian
Recording Industry Association.
As the federal government stands poised to introduce new copyright legislation,
many detractors argue it's readying to sell out to the demands of lobbyists and
the U.S. government.
However, Henderson, along with leaders from performers' union ACTRA, the
Canadian Publishers' Council, the American Federation of Musicians and the
Canadian Film & Television Production Association, is asking the government
to strengthen Canada's copyright laws and crack down on piracy.
Canada and other countries negotiated the World Intellectual Property
Organization Internet treaties in 1996 to set rules for the protection of
intellectual property online. Canada has yet to ratify them.
Jacqueline Hushion of the publishers' council and Alan Willaert from the U.S.
musicians' federation said Canadian musicians and authors have had difficulty
negotiating marketing rights outside Canada because the government can't
guarantee appropriate rights for foreign artists whose work is published and
distributed in Canada.
Henderson said the prevalence of piracy in Canada has cost many Canadian
artists their livelihood. "We have fantastically popular musicians,
filmmakers, authors and actors ... they're all seeing their livelihood just
shut down."
Henderson and the others challenge those who argue that copyright is dead and
that even if new legislation is passed, piracy will prevail. "You have to
operate on the presumption that when you pass a law, people, more often than
not, are going to obey it," he said.
In the absence of strong copyright laws and with a surplus in Internet piracy,
the $1.4 billion recording industry has virtually been cut in half, while
royalties for our authors and revenues from home-grown films have also dropped,
Henderson said.
John Barrack of the Canadian Film & Television Production Association said
Canadian content can't survive if rules aren't put in place to support the
intellectual property of Canadian artists.
The representatives met with the Star's editorial board yesterday.
Anne Of Green Gables Turns 100
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- Daphne Gordon, Staff Reporter
(January 26, 2008) Anne Shirley may be getting on in years but she hasn't
lost her spark.
"She's mischievous, which I sort of like," says Greta Whipple, an
11-year-old who recently read Anne of Green Gables, the classic Canadian novel about an
orphan who gets adopted by a farm family in Prince Edward Island.
"I was always wondering what she was going to do next."
Anne, who's about to celebrate her centennial birthday, has been captivating
readers since June 13, 1908, when the Page Company of Boston, Mass., published
her story, a first novel by Canada's Lucy Maud Montgomery.
The book was an immediate bestseller, with more than 19,000 copies sold in the
first five months. Since then, an estimated 50 million copies have been sold
worldwide.
These days, it's an enthusiastic reader who would be willing to take the time
to decode the book's old-fashioned language, notes Eleanor LeFave, owner of the
Toronto kid's bookstore Mabel's Fables.
"It takes a well-read child to be able to take that on," she says,
admitting the novel is not a huge seller in her store. Still, many kids know
Anne because they've read other versions of the novel, including abridgements,
adaptations and picture books, which tell the story in simpler language.
But some young readers still eat up Montgomery's version.
"I think it's just intriguing how life was back then," says Greta, a
student at Forest Hill's North Preparatory Junior Public School. "Life was
a lot different and the problems they had back then were different. But in
terms of the lives of the characters, it's easy to relate to. Like, with the
dress code, it's not that different. We're not supposed to be all ... wild and
stuff."
So it's no surprise even after 100 years, Anne's status has reached that of an
international celebrity. Trappings of Anne's stardom include a literary
reputation that stretches across oceans (thanks to the publication of the novel
and its seven sequels in more than a dozen languages), a burgeoning field of
academic study, online fan communities, two musical plays about her life,
several television adaptations, a booming tourism industry in her homeland,
annual festivals, frequent academic conferences, plus museums, theme parks, and
a growing collection of paraphernalia based on her likeness.
The parties to celebrate her birthday will begin next month with Penguin
Canada's publication of a collector's edition of Anne of Green Gables
and a new prequel, Before Green Gables, by Nova Scotia author Budge
Wilson, which recounts the first 10 years of Anne's life. The book was
commissioned with the permission of Montgomery's heirs.
There's also a prequel movie, Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, set
to air on CTV this spring. With no connection to the prequel book, the film was
created by Toronto-based film company Sullivan Entertainment and will star
Barbara Hershey, Shirley MacLaine and Toronto native Hannah Endicott-Douglas as
a young Anne Shirley.
It's rare for a Canadian children's literary character to achieve such global
glory. So why has Anne's reputation endured? Her early success had to do with
Montgomery's depiction of an independent heroine – a revelation for young
readers at the start of the 20th century.
"Before (Anne), you'd have to say that many children's stories were moral
tales," says Leslie McGrath, head of the Osborne Collection of Early
Children's Books at the Toronto Public Library.
"They had characters that were invented to serve the plot. They were
cardboard figures with little personality. They didn't grow and develop,"
she adds, pointing to the character Elsie Dinsmore, one of Anne's predecessors,
as an example.
"Elsie was famous for her pietistic priggishness. She was born good, lives
a good life and never changes ... She had conventional good looks, an angelic
face.
"If you look at Anne in contrast, she's quite a departure. She's a skinny,
angular child. She was freckled at a time when ladies tried to keep a porcelain
complexion and red hair wasn't admired. It was seen as a mark of a flaring
temper."
Anne certainly had a temper, notes McGrath. But she was also intelligent and
well-read. She loved to learn and went on become a teacher, which made her a
strong role model.
Though Anne wasn't the first defiant heroine of children's lit – Jo March of Little
Women and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm's Rebecca both preceded her –
she was a leader in the clique of young women who ushered in a more realistic
kind of children's literature, one that entertained as much as it educated.
But kids these days fully expect books to be fun, and female characters to have
minds of their own, so Anne's strong character doesn't fully account for her
enduring popularity.
Kevin Sullivan, founder of Sullivan Entertainment and writer and director of a
trilogy of television adaptations based on the Anne series, says
contemporary audiences love Anne because she and her friends act as an antidote
to the modern world. "There's a sense of forgiveness and strength of
community, and that's what people are looking for now," he says.
By placing Anne in Prince Edward Island, Montgomery brought the Canadian
countryside to life for young readers around the world, most notably in Sweden,
Poland and Japan, where Anne is practically a national obsession.
"What makes the book stand out is not just the heroine, but also Prince
Edward Island," says Elizabeth Epperly, a professor at the University of
Prince Edward Island and one of the world's foremost Montgomery scholars.
"It's as prominent a character as Anne. The descriptive passages, the
number of sunsets and sunrises – you find that passion for landscape that is
the basis for Prince Edward Island tourism."
Anne's international fame was also boosted by Sullivan Entertainment. The Anne
of Green Gables miniseries first hit the screen in 1985 and has since been
translated into 30 languages and broadcast in more than 140 countries.
Wherever Sullivan's adaptations are aired, an upsurge of interest in the book
often follows.
As the 100th anniversary of the publication of Montgomery's first novel
approaches, there is renewed interest in the author's life.
A series of anniversary events in Prince Edward Island this summer will
highlight Montgomery's personal story and her literary contribution. (See
details at www.anne2008.com.)
As well, Montgomery scholar Mary Rubio will publish a comprehensive biography
of the author this year, and Sullivan notes his television prequel is really
about the intimate connection between Montgomery and her most famous character.
The connection is also deeply explored in Imagining Anne: The Island
Scrapbooks, which will hit shelves next month.
"The P.E.I. scrapbooks start in her teens," explains scholar Epperly
who, in the book, illuminates the personal mysteries contained within
Montgomery's colourful collages by annotating full-colour reproductions of
selected pages.
"They have cat's fur, pressed flowers, souvenirs from parties, memorabilia
of all kinds. When she was writing, she was constantly going back to those
scrapbooks and was inspired by the poems and pictures she collected."
The scrapbooks exhibit the author's greatest literary gift to her readers,
explains Epperly, who read Anne as a girl in Virginia and later moved to
Charlottetown to study literature in her heroine's homeland.
"What's unique about Montgomery's contribution," she says, "is a
consistent and powerful way of teaching others to create metaphor for
themselves, to find the larger patterns in their lives and learn from them,
just as Anne did."
A Brief Biography Of L.M. Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton, Prince Edward
Island, in 1874.
Her mother died two years later and her father moved west, leaving Maud, as she
was known in girlhood, to be cared for by her grandparents in Cavendish, P.E.I.
An enthusiastic student and an avid writer, Montgomery published her first poem
when she was 17, went on to become a teacher, and studied for a year at
Dalhousie University – a rare achievement for a woman of her era.
In 1898, Montgomery returned to Cavendish to care for her ailing grandmother.
Inspired by her own childhood, she began writing Anne of Green Gables.
Five publishers rejected it before the Boston-based Page Co. published it in
1908. A year later, Page published Anne of Avonlea, the first of seven Anne
sequels.
Montgomery's grandmother died in 1911. Later that year, she married Ewan
Macdonald, a Protestant minister, and moved with him to Leaskdale, Ont., where
he had accepted a ministry.
After the wedding, Montgomery learned her husband suffered from "religious
melancholia," an affliction that would now probably be called bipolar
disorder.
She gave birth to three boys, though one was stillborn, an experience that
affected her deeply. She grieved also over the death of her cousin and closest
friend, Frederica Campbell, in 1919. Her husband suffered a nervous breakdown
that same year.
In the small community of Leaskdale, Montgomery covered for her husband's
mental illness, which sometimes left him unable to minister. He spent time in a
mental institution in 1934, and as Montgomery's children reached maturity, she
supported the family through her writing.
Economic pressure motivated Montgomery to write, and she admitted in her
journals that she wasn't always proud of her books. Critics and readers agree
many of her later works did not approach the greatness of Anne of Green
Gables. As World War II began, Montgomery suffered from depression.
When she died in Toronto in 1942, she left 22 fiction books, many poems and
short stories, plus personal scrapbooks, photographs and journals.
Robert Weaver, 87: Godfather of CanLit
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Bruce
Demara, Entertainment Reporter
(January 29, 2008) Robert Weaver was a behind-the-scenes
giant of the Canadian literary scene, nurturing generations of authors – among
them Alice Munro, Timothy Findley and Mordecai Richler – through radio, print
and anthologies.
But if you've never heard of Weaver, who died this past Saturday at the age of
87 after a brief illness, it was because he was Canadian to the core – and that
meant being modest to his roots.
"He (Weaver) was just an amazing human being," said Elaine Kalman
Naves, who created a two-part series (set to air on CBC Radio One's Ideas
on Feb. 12 and 13) on his life and authored Robert Weaver: Godfather of
Canadian Literature, a book set to be launched tomorrow at an event that
will instead become a memorial to him.
Among the speakers is Margaret Atwood.
"Perhaps the most salient thing about him was his modesty. He was a
gregarious man, a sociable man who did not like talking about himself. So it
was very hard to interview him ... and eventually I gave up trying to get him
to admit that he'd done anything extraordinary," Kalman Naves said.
"Instead, I switched to interviewing Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro and
Robert Fulford and Alastair MacLeod, who talked about how amazing he was."
Filmmaker David Weaver recalled how his father turned down the Order of Canada
several times before accepting the honour in 2000.
"He (Weaver) was just a very modest man who really loved good writing, all
sorts of writing, and all sorts of different sorts of writers, poets as much as
short-story writers," Weaver said.
Born in Niagara Falls, Robert (Bob) Weaver served in the Canadian army during
the World War II, got his education at the University of Toronto and joined the
CBC in 1948.
Weaver became a quietly effective promoter of Canadian literature and talent
spotter for a new generation of authors, first through a show called Canadian
Short Stories and, over a 40-year career at the public broadcaster, on
shows such as the long-running Anthology.
In 1979, shortly before his retirement, he created the CBC Literary Awards,
which in the past seven years has been expanded to include French-language
literature.
In 1956, he and others founded Tamarack Review – which kept publishing
until 1982 – which featured the works of fledgling Canadian writers like
Timothy Findley, whose first published short story appeared in the magazine's
first issue.
On Anthology, Weaver persuaded Leonard Cohen to sing his poetry on air
for the first time, "years before Leonard Cohen ever cut a record,"
Kalman Naves said.
Weaver also edited collections of short stories for the Oxford University Press
and co-edited, along with William Toye, The Oxford Anthology of Canadian
Literature.
"He really was an editor and that's what editors do, their work is
invisible. I think he felt it was more appropriate the writers themselves take
centre stage," David Weaver said.
Author/broadcaster Robert Fulford called Weaver "the most influential
editor in Canadian literature in the 20th century. He had a large part to play
in the lives of Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler and about six or
eight important figures. He also did a lot for many minor figures, such as
myself."
Fulford added, "He was smart, aggressive and patient. If he thought a
writer was good, he'd wait five or 10 years."
Weaver also wrote for the Toronto Star, making his first contribution in
1969 and writing a regular column reviewing murder mysteries from 1972 to 1979.
Besides his son David, Weaver leaves his wife Audrey and daughter Janice, a
children's book author.
::SPORTS NEWS::
Take Heart, Golf Lovers: Simulator On
The Way
Excerpt from www.thestar.com
- Marc Saltzman, Special To The Star
(January 26, 2008) You don't have to ask a
golf lover how painful Toronto is in January. And
while a sunny
fairway might only be a three-hour flight away, not everyone has the time or money
to indulge in their favourite pastime during Canadian winters.
There is, however, another solution for golf nuts to get a quick fix at home or
at the office.
Unveiled earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las
Vegas, Woodbridge, Ont.-based Electric~Spin showed off its new Golf Launchpad
Tour simulator (www.golflaunchpad.com), delivering an authentic golf
experience when paired with a compatible game, such as EA Sports' Tiger
Woods PGA Tour 08 (sold separately).
Due out this spring for $199, the new and improved Golf Launchpad is a
USB-based accessory that plugs into your Windows or Mac computer or PlayStation
3 console, and lets you use your golf clubs to drive, chip and putt a tethered
Surlyn golf ball. Eight sensors read and process the impact in real-time – such
as clubhead speed, path, angle, and so on – and the result is seen onscreen
inside the video game. Needless to say, a real swing, followed by a thwack,
is a lot more gratifying than using a mouse or gamepad.
This upcoming golf game accessory is smaller and lighter than its predecessor,
making it easier to transport, and is faster and more accurate thanks to
additional sensors and an onboard processor. The Golf Launchpad Tour will also
include a wireless Remote Caddy (with belt clip) to easily set up for the next
shot instead of reaching for the mouse or controller.
"Ultimately, this product will enhance the overall user experience and
change the way golfers and gamers interact with their televisions," says
Electric~Spin president Anees Munshi.
Electric~Spin says this new model is also compatible with XTVReady, a software
module embedded within some TV set-top boxes that allows for interactive
multiplayer golf matches on the same courses the pros are playing on during televised
events. More info is available at NDS.com. Munshi says Golf Launchpad Tour will
be available in April nationwide at leading golf retailers, such as Golf Town.
Elite Canadian Basketball Grads Show
Promise
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Lori Ewing,
The Canadian Press
(January 28, 2008) Kalisha Keane has just
finished a long day of classes followed by a gruelling practice on the
basketball court at Michigan State. She's
on a bus rushing to the airport to catch a flight to Champaign, Ill., where her
team will face the Fighting Illini the following night.
The schedule is a grind, but it's nothing Keane hasn't seen before.
The rookie forward from Oshawa, Ont., is part of the first-ever grad class of
NEDA – the National Elite Development Academy – which brings together Canada's top high
school basketball players to train year-round at McMaster University in
Hamilton.
The program, with its rigorous training schedule and attention to academics,
isn't unlike what the players face when they arrive at university.
"I've spoken to a lot of (college) coaches over the last six months,
they've all commented on how the girls coming from the NEDA program were
prepared as if they've already played their freshman year," says Christine
Stapleton, head coach of NEDA's girls program.
The NEDA boys program is in its inaugural year.
Keane has shone in her rookie season, fitting in seamlessly in the Spartans
starting line-up. She's the team's second-leading scorer (13.2 points a game)
and rebounder (6.6), and earlier this month poured in a career-high 23 points
to lead Michigan State over Northwestern.
When she arrived in East Lansing, Mich., this past fall, she discovered she was
well-prepared for what lay ahead.
"The (NEDA) training was really intense, and I would say the biggest thing
would be the whole living away from home. I don't get homesick at all, because
I already lived a year on my own," said Keane, whose younger sister Takima
is currently in the NEDA program.
"The practice schedule, because we would practise from 7:30 to 9 every
morning, then go to class, then come back and practise again. It was really
hectic days, and just the strain on your body. . . it was like what we go
through at university."
All seven players from NEDA's class of 2007 are playing significant roles on
their new teams. Krysten Boogaard (Kansas Jayhawks), Vanessa Kabongo
(University of Delaware), and Yinka Olorunnife (University of Idaho) are
starters; Kelsey Adrian (No. 10-ranked Cal-Berkeley Golden Bears) and Kaitlyn
Burke (Nebraska Cornhuskers) are usually the first off the bench; while Zara
Huntley is playing solid minutes with the UBC Thunderbirds.
These women, says Stapleton, hold the promise of a bright future for Canadian
basketball.
But Canada Basketball officials find themselves scrambling for a sponsor after
NEDA's funding from Sport Canada – which provides the lion's share of money for
the program – was axed earlier this month. NEDA received $250,000 from the Road
to Excellence program, the summer equivalent of Own the Podium, which aims to
propel athletes to the top of the Olympic podium.
Canada's women's basketball team failed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Games,
after the No. 11-ranked Canadians landed on the wrong side of a bad draw at the
Olympic qualifying tournament. The men still have a hope – they'll play in a
last-chance tournament in Greece in June.
The funding cut from Sport Canada has Stapleton shaking her head.
"With a team sport, you have to invest at this age with a group," she
says. "It's very important to have the finest athletes all in one place,
working with a national level coach, in an environment where you can create
that world-class experience.
"This is the perfect age to really tough them and shape them and then set
them on their way."
The current crop of NEDA players is as strong as the class of 2007. Kayla
Alexander, a six-foot-four forward and Grade 11 student from Milton, Ont., has
garnered interest from over 100 NCAA schools.
"She's that good," Stapleton says. "She's very, very good."
The NEDA staff counsels their players through the process of picking the right
school.
"It's overwhelming for Kayla and her family," Stapleton says. ``One
of our staff here put together a huge spreadsheet of who the college coaches
are, how many years they've been at their schools, the type of performance the
team's had, what their roster looks like. . . we do all that work for the
girls, so that now the players and their families can make an educated
choice."
With Canada's best all on one team, the NEDA program is one-stop shopping for
college coaches. NCAA rules prohibit scouts from attending NEDA practices, so
the team regularly travels to tournaments abroad. The team played at
tournaments this past fall in Ohio and Rochester, N.Y., and drew
clipboard-toting scouts from over 50 NCAA schools.
"The coaches know they're getting a quality-trained athlete,"
Stapleton says. "When we recruit to the NEDA program (we ask) `What's her
character like? Is she going to be able to maintain the rigorous schedule, can
she train on her own, will she manage her time appropriately, does she have the
strength of character to move away from home?'
"The coaches know they're getting an athlete who's been through that
filtering system, there's a higher percentage of retaining the athlete, and
achieving excellence with that particular player."
Keane is a prime example.
The Spartans would go on to edge Illinois 65-62 in their Big 10 matchup, the
Canadian playing a substantial role in the victory. Keane stole an Illinois
inbounds pass with three seconds on the clock to secure the win, en route to a
10-point, 10-rebound performance.
And she's only just begun.
"I always think there's everything I have to work on, just continuing to
rebound and stay positive, because it's a very long season," Keane says.
"I have to work on keeping my focus game to game, and not looking too far
ahead and not dwelling on the past . . . just trying to improve every
night."
Middaugh Crowned Ontario Curling
Champion
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Brian
Mcandrew, Staff Reporter
(January 28, 2008) Sherry Middaugh felt relaxed going up against defending
titleholder Krista McCarville yesterday
in the final of the Ontario women's curling championship.
Middaugh's 7-6 victory in an extra end over McCarville, who won the past two
provincial championships as Krista Scharf before her marriage last August, was
especially satisfying, since the two met in the final last year.
Middaugh, one of the biggest names in women's curling despite never achieving a
national championship, had a chance to win last year but couldn't put away the
Thunder Bay skip, who has not played regularly on the cash bonspiel circuit.
"That was a heartbreaker," Middaugh recalled moments after winning
her fourth provincial title as skip in Espanola. "There's nothing I'm
looking forward to more than going to Regina in the middle of February."
The Saskatchewan native will play for the national championship in the
Tournament of Hearts in Regina starting Feb.16. She has reached the semi-final
in all three previous appearances.
"I don't know if it was revenge, but I felt pretty comfortable playing her
again," said Middaugh, who finished first in the round-robin preliminary
but lost a playoff game to McCarville.
That meant Middaugh had to play an extra playoff game, beating Toronto's Alison
Goring on Saturday, to get a rematch in the final.
"I felt more comfortable playing in the final after playing well against
Alison," Middaugh said. "They (the McCarville team) had curled well
all week and they were watching that game, so they knew what we could do."
Even being forced into an extra end to settle the championship didn't bother
Middaugh, who held the lead and controlled the game all the way up until
McCarville stole a point in the 10th end for the tie.
"The fact she stole that point didn't faze me," said Middaugh, who
has reunited with third Kirsten Wall from their 2004 championship team.
"We missed her last year, so it was really nice to have her back,"
said Middaugh, who has last year's teammates Kim Moore at second and Andra
Harmark playing lead.
Middaugh had last rock in the 10th end after giving up a pair in the eighth and
playing a scoreless ninth, but a McCarville stone was nearly covering the
button and behind a guard.
Middaugh was able to bring a rock around the guard, but it curled to the far
side of the shot rock. Despite making contact, her own rock rolled just inches
away from scoring. Middaugh kept the game wide open in the eleventh end by
removing opponent rocks from the front of the house.
That left her with an easy draw that needed to only reach the eight-foot ring
for the win.
NHL's East Wins All-Star Game
Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Kevin
Mcgran, Sports Reporter
(January 28, 2008) ATLANTA–The answer was
an easy one for Jamey Ducros, a Leaf fan from Ottawa
celebrating his 13th birthday with a trip to the NHL's all-star weekend.
Decked out in his blue-and-white No.15 Tomas Kaberle jersey, Ducros was asked
what the best part of the weekend was.
"Tomas Kaberle winning the most accurate shot," said a smiling
Ducros, an admitted outcast in his own family of Senator fans.
Ducros, his family and the rest of the fans who attended the all-star
festivities – card shows, Stanley Cup photo shoots, the skills event and the
practices – all seemed to enjoy themselves.
The players did, too.
Especially Marc Savard, who scored the winner in last night's 8-7 Eastern
Conference victory.
And Ilya Kovalchuk, who hammed it up for the hometown crowd.
And Rick Nash, who notched the 15th hat trick in all-star history.
And Eric Staal, who was named the game's MVP for his two-goal, one-assist
performance. His second goal tied the game 7-7, while his assist set up
Savard's winner.
The irony of the moment was not lost on Savard. The former Thrasher was the
only Eastern Conference star regularly booed, but he managed to get the fans
back on side with the winner.
"It felt great, especially after getting booed all weekend," said
Savard.
Nash was truly magical, stealing the puck to score on a breakaway just 12
seconds into the game and scoring while skating backwards on a breakaway in the
second period.
For his part, Kovalchuk revved up the crowd whenever he could.
"He loves that stuff, it's good to see," said Savard. "He's one
of those guys who enjoys the spotlight and the crowd loves it."
In the absence of any physical play whatsoever there was drama, as the West
rebounded from a 5-1 deficit to take a short-lived 7-6 lead at the midway point
of the third.
Overall, the all-star weekend was a successful and entertaining event. The
Willie O'Ree tribute on Friday brought out Atlanta's movers and shakers, trying
to sell the game to the African-American community.
"This event will help build the brand of the Thrashers locally and hockey
in general," said Gary Stokan, president of the Atlanta Sports Council.
Whether this event actually aids the Thrashers in selling tickets in the short
term – the team is struggling and ownership is in a shambles – is anybody's
guess.
This was about helping to build a fan base, and for its efforts the NHL gets a
passing grade.
The Philips Arena was sold out for both the skills competition and the game
last night, no mean feat in this city. The Thrashers never sell out.
"When you come to an event like this you're here to see the best players
in the world play their best, see some creativity," said Guelph's George
Kouvalis. "I've had a blast. I was at the all-star game in Toronto in 2000
and this weekend was way better."
But Kouvalis quickly found out that the local's knowledge of the game is
limited.
"We were in a mall and we were telling people we were here for the all-star
game, and they were like, `the NBA?' " said Kouvalis.
The NHL knows it has its work cut out for it to continue to try to sell the
game in the Sun Belt. The Thrashers are 21st in NHL attendance and the number
of homes in Atlanta that watch a Thrashers game on TV is about 2,300.
"There's a core following for the Thrashers here in Atlanta," said
Stokan. "Not being as old as a Toronto, it takes time to grow. Events like
an NHL all-star game are one of the facets to help that growth."
::FITNESS::
Super
20-Minute Home Workout!
Raphael Calzadilla, BA, ACE, RTS1, eDiets Chief Fitness Pro
If you've suddenly been hit with a busy
schedule or just need something quick, I have the workout for you.
The workout is simple, quick and absolutely effective. No hour-long sessions in
the gym or long bouts of cardio, and no dreading the thought of exercise. Just
a realistic alternative to all the noise in the world of fitness that makes
us hate exercising. No anatomy lessons today, simply something you can do
in your living room or office. The only weight you'll need is your own body.
This series of movements will take about 20 minutes or less. Yep, you're
reading correctly -- just 20 minutes. You can do them 3-4 times per week. Your
entire body will be stimulated, and you'll feel rejuvenated without all the
added stress of having to go to the gym.
I've designed this routine so that one exercise stimulates multiple muscle
groups. This way, you'll get the best bang for your buck in the least amount of
time. Perform each exercise in succession. After completing one movement,
immediately continue to the next one. After you've completed all the movements,
perform them one more time. Attempt 20-25 repetitions of each movement. Don't
worry if you can't perform all the reps -- it will come. If you're a beginner,
take your time and go at your own pace.
1. BENT KNEE PUSH UPS 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. Maintain a slight
bend in the elbows. Lower your upper body by bending your elbows outward and
stopping before your chest touches the floor. Contracting the chest muscles,
slowly return to the starting position. Inhale while lowering your body. Exhale
while returning to the starting position. After mastering this exercise, you
may wish to try the full push-up.
2. LUNGE (with household cans) Stand straight with your feet together.
Hold a can in each hand and keep your arms down at your sides. Step forward
with the right leg and lower the left leg until the knee almost touches the
floor. Contracting the quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh), push off your
right foot slowly, returning to the starting position. Alternate the motion
with the left leg to complete the set. Inhale while stepping forward. Exhale
while returning to the starting position.
The step should be long enough that your left leg is nearly straight. Do not
let your knee touch the floor. Make sure your head is up and your back is
straight. Your chest should be lifted, and your front leg should form a
90-degree angle at the bottom of the movement. Your right knee should not pass
your right foot, and you should be able to see your toes at all times. If you
have one leg that is more dominant than the other, start out with the
less-dominant leg first. Discontinue this exercise if you feel any discomfort
in your knees.
3. ABDOMINAL BICYCLE MANEUVER Lie on a mat with your lower back in a
comfortable position. Put your hands on either side of your head by your ears.
Bring your knees up to about a 45-degree angle. Slowly go through a bicycle
pedaling motion, alternating your left elbow to your right knee, then your
right elbow to your left knee. This is a more advanced exercise, so don't worry
if you can't perform a lot of them. Do not perform this activity if it puts any
strain on your lower back. Also, don't pull on your head and neck during this
exercise. The lower to the ground your legs bicycle, the harder your abs have
to work.
4. BENCH DIPS Using two benches or chairs, sit on one. Place palms on
the bench with fingers wrapped around the edge. Place both feet on the other
chair. Slide your upper body off the chair with your elbows nearly but not
completely locked. Lower your upper body slowly toward the floor until your
elbows are bent slightly more than 90 degrees. Contracting your triceps (back
of the arm), extend your elbows and return to the starting position (stopping
just short of the elbows fully extending). Inhale while lowering your body and
exhale while returning to the starting position. Beginners should start with
their feet on the floor and knees at a 90-degree angle. As you progress, move
your feet out further until your legs are straight with a slight bend in the
knees.
5. ABDOMINAL DOUBLE CRUNCH Lie on the floor face up. Bend your knees
until your legs are at a 45-degree angle with both feet on the floor. Your back
should be comfortably relaxed on the floor. Place both hands crossed on your
chest. Contracting your abdominals, raise your head and legs off the floor
toward one another. Slowly return to the starting position (stopping just short
of your shoulders and feet touching the floor).
Exhale while rising up and inhale while returning to the starting position.
Keep your eyes on the ceiling to avoid pulling with your neck. Your hands
should not be used to lift the head or assist in the movement.
Bonus! Get more great ab exercises here.
There you have it! Five exercises performed for two cycles in just 20 minutes.
You'll begin to notice a tighter feel in your muscles in a few weeks, and you
will naturally perform more reps as time progresses -- all in 20 minutes or
less.
::MOTIVATION::
Motivational Note
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author and philosopher
"Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through
these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded."