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LE NEWSLETTER
February 25, 2010
I really enjoy Black History Month - from more interesting television
programming to more live music shows that I love. Always a little sad to
wait until next year for such a varied and vast selection. Almost the end of yet another grey month. But here in
Toronto we cannot complain without hardly any snowfall, considering our friends south of the border! So how
many more months of winter? Six?
What a treat I have for you this week with the
announcement of a gospel concert - Crystal Aikin - taking place in both Ottawa and Mississauga. With a
plethora of artists in one night of entertainment, you cannot miss with these
two special nights. Get your tickets now!! Check out under HOT EVENTS below!
So much Olympic coverage on TV and the papers but
hopefully I've chosen some highlights for you below.
So, there's lots of new entertainment news so have a
scroll and a read.
This
newsletter is designed to give you some updated entertainment-related news and
provide you with our upcoming event listings. Welcome to those who
are new members. Want your events listed by date? Check out EVENTS.
::HOT EVENTS::
World Vision Partners with BET’s Sunday Best Winner Crystal
Aikin for First Canadian Mini-Tour - February 26 and February 27
Source: Full Capacity Concerts
(February 2, 2010) Crystal
Aikin, Stellar Award winner (Contemporary
Female of the Year & New Artist of
the Year) and BET’s Sunday Best winner, will be making her debut appearance in
Canada for two special shows.
Celebrating the historic legacy of Black History Month, Aikin kicks off her
mini-Canadian tour in the Nation’s Capital, Ottawa, on Friday, February 26, 2010 at Rhema Christian Centre (1550 Chatelain Avenue). She is joined
by the musical stylings of Echoes of Praise, Rochelle Hanson, Ottawa’s own
Kathy Grant and World-African musical sensations, Krystaal who hail from the
Democratic Republic of Congo. On February 27, 2010, Aikin is slated to appear at Malton Church of God (7050 Bramalea Rd.,
Unit 42-48) in Mississauga, with Toronto’s own gospel greats, Echoes of
Praise, Rochelle Hanson, Londa Larmond, and Latin-inspired Paulis Sanchez.
Aikin was first introduced to the world through BET’s first season of
Sunday Best, a gospel competition with American Idol-esque flair that searched
for gospel music’s next superstar. Originally a native from Tacoma,
WA’s, never envisioned herself standing alongside certified gospel superstars
on BET and hearing Kirk Franklin announce her name as the winner. Awarded
with a Zomba recording contract, Aikin re-releases her self-titled debut album
on Verity Records and develops her call to ministry. Her sound is a mix
of jazzy-neo soul juxtaposed with a traditional gospel contemporary feel.
A nurse by profession, Aikin, has found her niche, using her voice as therapy
to tantalize the ear and to bring healing and restoration to people the world
over. A feat that she claims she knew early on as a choir
director.
Crystal has partnered with World Vision, a development and advocacy
organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to
overcome poverty and injustice. World Vision’s goal is to encourage the Canadian
public to join the work of combating poverty and improving the lives of
children and their families around the world.
You are invited to partner with Aikin, World Vision and friends in a night of
taking social action. A portion of the proceeds for the Crystal Aikin
show will go to the World Vision’s Haitian Emergency Relief Fund.
Sharing her love; bringing a universal message of joy, Aikin plans on helping
to change the world one child at a time.
::TOP STORIES::
Canada Owns Women's Bobsleigh Podium
Source: CTVOlympics.ca - By Kristina
Rutherford
(February 24, 2010) Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse led a one-two punch for Canada in
women's bobsleigh, winning gold on Wednesday at the Whistler Sliding Centre.
Helen Upperton and Shelley-Ann Brown picked up the silver medal in the
Canada 2 sled.
The medals are an historic first for Canada in women's bobsleigh, and come
four years after Upperton and Moyse came within 0.05 seconds of winning
the country's first-ever Olympic medal, but settled for fourth.
The gold medal is Canada's seventh in Vancouver, and ties the country's record
for most-ever at an Olympic Games. Canada also won seven golds in 2002 and
2006.
Humphries, of Calgary, and Moyse, of Summerside, P.E.I., led from
start to finish en route to their gold medal, and broke the track
record three times, finishing 0.91 ahead of their teammates in a four-run
time of three minutes, 32.28 seconds.
Calgary's Upperton and Brown, of Scarborough, Ont., were in fourth heading
into Wednesday's final two heats, but moved into the bronze
medal position with one run to go, just 0.03 seconds ahead of Germany's
Cathleen Martini and Romy Logsch.
The Germany 2 sled was out of contention after a scary crash on its
final run, though both athletes were able to walk away. Upperton
then drove the Canada 2 sled to the fastest time of the final
heat (53.17 seconds), overtaking Americans Erin Pac and Elana Meyers, who
were in second with one run remaining, but settled for bronze.
Canada last won gold and silver in the same event in the men's skeleton in
2006.
It's the first time Canada will occupy two spots on the podium at these
Games.
Ashleigh McIvor Wins Women’s Ski-Cross Gold
Source: www.thestar.com
- Jim Byers, Staff Reporter
(February 23, 2010) WEST VANCOUVER, B.C.—Eleven and still counting.
Canada’s Ashleigh McIvor
picked up a gold medal in the
women’s ski cross event today.
Skiing in thick, heavy snow on Cypress Mountain, McIvor cruised through the
early stages and easily won the final in front of dozens of friends and family
members.
Canada now has six gold, four silver and one bronze medal at the
Vancouver/Whistler Winter Games.
“It’s the most amazing moment of my entire life,” McIvor told CTV. “It worked
out and I can’t believe it.”
The Vancouver native was in the village square in Whistler seven years ago when
she heard her hometown was to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Ski cross wasn’t
in the Olympics at the time, but she once wrote a school paper suggesting the
International Olympic Committee should add it to the winter program.
Sure enough, her sport made its debut here in Vancouver/Whistler and the
26-year-old McIvor took advantage with a tremendous run in front of a wildly
enthusiastic crowd.
The partying also was likely to be going strong in Whistler, which is down the
road from McIvor’s home in Pemberton, B.C.
“I stood there in the start gate and thought, ‘Everything in my life has led me
here. I felt I was made for this event. It’s in my hometown, pretty much. What
else could I ask for?’”
After a slow weekend, Canada has won gold medals on consecutive days. The
London, Ont., duo of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won gold in ice dancing on
Monday, marking the first time a North American couple had copped the top prize
at the Olympics. McIvor, the defending world champ in ski cross, made it
back-to-back golds with her performance under trying conditions.
Her victory ceremony will be held Tuesday night in Vancouver. But McIvor did a
nice little dance from behind the podium before receiving her flowers at a
Cypress Mountain ceremony today, shaking her body to and fro as the
red-and-white crowd cheered her on.
McIvor, the 2009 world champion, wore a huge grin as she climbed to the top of
the podium, snowflakes pelting her black toque as she raised her bouquet high
in the air and fans waved a sign reading, “Go Ash.”
Marion Josserand of France took the bronze, while the silver medal went to
Norway’s Hedda Berntsen.
Canada’s Kelsey Serwa was fifth, while Julia Murray came 12th.
Asked if she felt her win will leave a legacy for kids, McIvor nodded.
“Definitely, and I felt confident that I’d already inspired kids... to get into
sport. Winning the Olympics is icing on the cake.”
McIvor learned to ski early but fell in love with ski cross, in which four
racers slide down the hill at the same time.
“I’m competitive and I get amped about head-to-head combat,” McIvor once said.
Rescued Teens Reunited With Families At Pearson
Source: www.thestar.com - Denise Balkissoon
(February 22, 2010) Cold and shivering, Canadian teenagers kept
their spirits up by singing as they bailed
water from life rafts for the 42 hours they spent adrift in the south Atlantic,
a teacher said today.
“The water was up to our shins and we were constantly bailing,” Mark
Sinker of Trenton, Ont., said after many of the rescued students and teachers
from the sunken S.V. Concordia arrived at Pearson airport before dawn.
“It was raining on and off,” he said, “but the weather was sometimes
beautiful.”
Sinker described how the 64 people on board the floating classroom, run
by West Island College International, jumped into the ocean 300 nautical miles
off the coast of Brazil when the three-masted ship capsized and started to sink
in high winds and swelling seas.
He described filling the day and a half spent in the life rafts as
“trying to keep people warm, keep people hydrated, keep them in the shade.
“There were low points and high points. Certainly when there was water in
the raft and people were shivering, morale was low.”
Sinker said he was in the ship’s mess when the Concordia started to sink.
It took about half an hour to go down, he said.
Like just about everyone on board, he lost all his belongings and
documents.
Students and teachers helped pull each other into the life rafts, he
said.
“The students worked together to make sure everyone was safe and sound,”
a weary Ruth McArthur of Brampton said. Her freckles standing out on her pale
face, the teacher said, “Now I want one of my mom’s chocolate chip muffins”
before boarding a bus away from the airport.
David Aftergood hugged his daughter Olivia in relief. “I’m not letting
her out of my sight until she’s 40,” he said.
Anxious parents had been whisked into a private room at the airport for
their reunion with their children, who arrived on a flight around 5:45 a.m.
They had been rescued by passing merchant ships and taken to Rio de Janeiro on Saturday.
“I saw children jumping up into their parents arms,” school director
Nigel McCarthy said of the reunions.
“Although we were so worried, once we knew she was okay, we just said,
‘Yay!’ “ Shelley Pillar said of her daughter Elisha Pillar, 17.
Elisha’s grandparents and stepbrothers made the trek to Pearson from
Kenilworth, near Guelph. Mom Shelley brought her daughter a pink blanket and
freshly baked peanut butter cookies.
“I knew if there was any girl who could handle that, it would be her,”
Elisha’s proud mother said. “She is smart, cool and adventurous. We’re just
going to love her up and send her back.”
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent was also there to meet
the West Island students. While an investigation continues into the sinking and
the long wait for rescue from the Brazilian navy, Kent said, “I think the
government in Brazil deserves a great deal of credit for what they were able to
do under the circumstances. We can celebrate there was not life lost.”
Several former Class Afloat alumni had come to greet the students bearing
a sign saying, “Welcome home floaties.”
“The captain received a rousing cheer from the parents,” Kent said,
describing the private reunion. “Some kids and crew were obviously showing the
effects. There were a lot of cheers and a lot of joy.”
There were 42 Canadian high school and university students among the 64
people aboard the SV Concordia, which was built in 1992 expressly for the
Lunenberg, N.S.-based school.
The rescued teenagers, crew and teachers spent much of Sunday replacing
items such as clothing and travel documents that went down with the ship. Boxes
of clothing were brought by the Brazilian navy and the ship’s agent, McCarthy
said on the weekend.
“The story that is slowly emerging from our students and staff is one of
the heroic communal efforts that saved all aboard,” he said.
An explosion on board the Concordia in 1996 killed one student as the
ship sailed off the northern coast of Australia. Derek Zavitz was believed to
have been blown overboard.
Olympic Men's Hockey: Canada Stomps Russia 7-3, Moves To Semis
Source: www.thestar.com
- Jim Byers,
(February 24, 2010) People were crowed around television sets in
every coffee shop, restaurant and bar in
Vancouver, watching the Canada-Russia hockey game, as the city
ground to a virtual halt.
At the Waterfront SkyTrain Station, people stopped in their tracks watching the
game, erupting in cheers whenever a goal was scored.
And score they did.
It took barely two minutes for Canada to stamp its authority on the men's 2010 Winter Olympic hockey quarter-finals as Dan Boyle tip-toed through Russia's defense to set up an easy
tap in for Ryan Getzlaf It would be the first of ten goals scored in a feeding
frenzy of a game in which the red-and-whites never looked threatened, but the
Russians never stopped trying.
In the first five minutes of the game, Canada steamrolled the Russians,
dominating play, hitting hard and peppering the goal with shots four shots in
the first four minutes, to a single shot from the other side. Ten minutes in,
Dan Boyle was at it again, this time unloading a monster shot from the blue
line which benefited nicely from a sweet screen by Patrick Marleau on the power
play.
And then there was three; barely a minute later, Jonathan Toews took to the
wing, drew in defenders and offloaded a goal chance on a platter to Rick Nash
who made no mistake slotting it past Evgeny Nabokov's outstretched leg.
Russia finally returned fire with five minutes to go in the first period when,
after calling a 'catch your breath' timeout, Dmitri Kalinin went high and
right, beating the shoulder of Luongo to keep his team in the running.
But their joy was short-lived when, after an extended shift that saw Canada
moving the puck around like they had a man-advantage, Brenden Morrow took it
behind the net and wrapped around to squeeze it past Nabokov for Canada's
fourth.
At the break, Dan Boyle told reporters, "Everybody did their job and
that's why we're here, but we gotta keep going ... It's nice to be a part of it
and we're looking for more stuff ahead."
The second period saw Canada continue to line up to score like a 1980's bread
line.
Corey Perry knocked one home on the back or lead-up work from Getzlaf and
Duncan Keith, then Shea Weber teed one off after Jonathan Toews stole the puck
mid-ice, sneaking it under Nabokov's elbow.
Maxim Afinogenov kept it mildly interesting from a competitive standpoint by
scoring another for Russia after lead-up work from Ilya Kovalchuk.
But that was soon cancelled out as Corey Perry knocked in his second for
Canada, but the Russians got on the score sheet a third time when Sergei
Gonchar beat Luongo for their third.
Eric Staal took a bad fall early in the third when Anton Volchenkov toppled him
as he headed towards the wall. Staal left the ice under his own steam and looks
good to continue.
The rest of the game was score-free, as Canada coasted to a 7-3 victory, lining
up an appearance in the semi-finals.
--
One medal is at stake. Twelve teams have qualified for the men's ice hockey
tournament:
· Group A: Canada, United States, Switzerland, Norway
· Group B: Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia
· Group C: Sweden, Finland, Belarus, Germany
Men's hockey games are being played at Canada Hockey Place (GM
Place).
The full schedule for both men's and
women's ice hockey are: (all times are in Pacific Standard Time
Zone):
· Wed Feb 24, 2010
· 12pm - 2:30pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Quarter-final (QF1)
· 4:30pm - 7pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Quarter-final (QF2)
· 7pm - 9:30pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Quarter-final (QF3)
· 9pm - 11:30pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Quarter-final (QF4)
Thu Feb 25, 2010
· 11am - 1:30pm Ice Hockey - Women's - Bronze medal
· 3:30pm - 6pm Ice Hockey - Women's - Gold medal
Fri Feb 26, 2010
· 12pm - 2:30pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Semifinals (SF1)
· 6:30pm - 9pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Semifinals (SF2)
Sat Feb 27, 2010
· 7pm - 9:30pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Bronze medal
Sun Feb 28, 2010
· 12:15pm - 2:45pm Ice Hockey - Men's - Gold medal
Native Voices Bring Olympics Home
Source: www.thestar.com
- Paul Watson
(February 20, 2010) VANCOUVER–There is no word for seconds in the
Mohawk language, which makes it
especially difficult to call the action in an Olympic ski race live for
television.
Tiorahkwathe Gilbert was the first among his people to broadcast Olympic men's super-G
in his native language Friday afternoon.
A rookie to sports commentary, he has spent months training for the
landmark moment. He's had long discussions with elders in coffee shops and at
kitchen tables to agree on the best way to express things the Mohawk haven't
had much cause to say before.
Gilbert doesn't want to be speechless in his TV debut when it's time to
explain that the only thing separating two skiers' runs is three one hundredths
of a second.
"We have a word for an hour, a minute, but we don't have a word for
a second," Gilbert explains. "So we'll say, 'In the time it will take
you to blink four times, or seven times or nine times.' "
For the first time in Canadian history, the Aboriginal Peoples Television
Network is providing play-by-play commentary of live sports in Cree, Mohawk,
Ojibway, Dene, Inuktitut, Michif and Oji-Cree.
Most of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit broadcasters calling the
Winter Olympics action for APTN are rookies recruited from communities across
the country and trained by veteran sportscaster Jim Van Horne.
Van Horne's dulcet voice is familiar to fans of hockey on TSN. He has
also broadcast from the Calgary, Sydney and Beijing Olympics. During the
Vancouver Games, he's working from APTN's Winnipeg studios, mentoring the
aboriginal broadcasters he coached.
Listening to Cree broadcasters call the action as the U.S. hockey team
beat Switzerland 3-1 on Tuesday, he didn't hear anything that sounded to his
ears like "Americans" or "United States."
When he brought it up, the teacher learned something from his students.
"About halfway through the game, I said, 'You haven't said anything
about the United States,' " Van Horne recalls. "He said, 'Oh yeah,
we're talking about the Long Knives.' Now that's a term that's been used to
describe the United States since before the Civil War.
Aboriginal languages are more descriptive, even poetic, than English.
Words frequently paint mental pictures rather than state cold facts.
Take a chair. In Mohawk, the word for chair, anitskwara, literally
translates as "it's where you place your back upper leg and butt to
alleviate pressure from the floor," says Gilbert, an elder, and former
ironworker, teacher and council chief on the Kahnawake reserve, near Montreal.
Offering someone a seat in Mohawk is a cinch compared to the word Gilbert
and the elders agreed he should say when skiers are racing against the clock.
It's a 44-character tongue-twister.
The effort to get such words just right is more than worth it, says
Tehawennahkwa Miller, 22, Gilbert's partner in the broadcast booth.
When young listeners, some of them future athletes, hear the Winter Games
called in their native tongues, "it's empowering that their own people are
represented at the Olympics, and know that they can do it, too," he says.
Miller is a Mohawk language teacher in Ohsweken, a village on the Six
Nations territory, near Brantford, Ont. One of his favourite Olympic words is wahoya'tarathenste,
which means: "He has ascended to the top."
It's ready, on the tips of the Mohawk broadcasters' tongues, for when an
athlete is headed for the medal podium.
Karliin Aariak, a 31-year-old Inuk designer, broadcaster and filmmaker
from Iqaluit, has a lot of experience covering sports. But she still had to
hone her skills for the opening and closing ceremonies.
She's spent a lifetime listening to non-Inuit mispronounce her name, so
she practised saying the name of each team's flag bearer to make sure she got
them all right.
But that wasn't her proudest moment. It came in the early minutes of the
opening ceremony, when Aariak told her people, in their own language, that they
were also hosts of the Winter Olympic games.
"It's the first time in Olympic history that an aboriginal group has
been a partner, so it was personally satisfying to be able to say that in
Inuktitut," she says.
"I hope this is a beginning and not one-time opportunity," she
adds, "so others have the chance to expose and use our language in
spreading the Inuktitut word."
For months, as Canadian athletes prepared for the Vancouver Games, their
countrymen were asked to believe. Gilbert has the word worked out in Mohawk to
help assure his people know they can.
It is tasetakh, literally "the thing that you take on your journey,"
Miller says.
"We need to bring the pride back into our people and to tutor them
and structure them to believe in themselves," Gilbert says.
Source:Toronto Star
::TRAVEL NEWS::
‘Degrassi’ Cast Members To Lead Tours To India And Ecuador
Source: www.thestar.com
(February 22, 2010) Cast members of the hit TV show “Degrassi: The Next Generation” are planning to help
lead young volunteers on tours to India and Ecuador this summer.
The tours are organized by Me to We Trips, a 10-year-old Toronto-based
organization that supports the work of its charitable partner Free the
Children, and are targeted at people aged 13 to 21, says spokesperson Angie
Gurley.
Sarah Barrable-Tishauer, who plays Liberty on the show, and Evan Williams
(Kelly) will help lead the trip to India’s northern province of Rajasthan. It’s
scheduled to run from July 21 to Aug. 9 and costs C$4,995 including airfare
from Toronto, says Gurley.
Participants will visit Free the Children’s development projects, get
involved in a school building project and join in group discussions about
social issues.
Dalmar Abuzeid (Danny) and Scott Paterson (Johnny) will be leaders on the
trip to Ecuador’s rural province of Chimborazo from Aug. 10 to 28. Highlights
include helping to build a school and participating in leadership workshops.
The cost is C$3,595 including air from Toronto.
Williams said he went on a Me to We Trip to Ecuador in 2007.
“I felt useful. I felt like I was hooked in to some greater movement
among the young people today to take responsibility for the state of the world,
and I found awakened in myself a real desire to be part of the new wave of
change,” he said in a press release.
“I’m excited to have the privilege of leading others through a similar
experience.”
On the web: www.metowe.com/trips/degrassi
::MUSIC NEWS::
K'naan's Song Goes Global
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Marsha Lederman
(February 24, 2010) It was a warm, wet night in Manhattan in 2006, and K’naan was taking a walk
alone,
trying to shake off some disturbing news. It might have been something
immediate, or perhaps something that had happened in Somalia, where he’s from;
he can’t recall what exactly had sent him out into the New York streets. But he
remembers how the air felt, that the rain had stopped, that he was in a T-shirt
and that a melody suddenly came into his head, with the lyrics: “When I get
older, I will be stronger, they’ll call me freedom, just like a waving flag.”
These were the beginnings of the catchy song Wavin’ Flag, which has
truly gone global, first snapped up by Coca-Cola as its anthem for the 2010
FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and now, recorded as a We Are the World-type
fundraiser for earthquake relief in Haiti.
On that night in New York, it took the Somali-Canadian rapper 20 minutes to
produce what he calls the “original sculpture” of the song, which has now gone
double platinum in Canada.
“Most of my songs stem from some kind of a discontent that’s inside, and I’m
somehow humming the discontent without knowing it,” K’naan said this week about
the beginnings of Wavin’ Flag. “I was really in a heavy-hearted thought
and I sang [it] in my head.”
“ Having some experiences that were difficult may give
you maybe a special sensitivity to things, but I think that the humanity’s
that’s built within us is capable of feeling those things with or without
having seen struggle.”
K’naan, 31, comes by his heavy heart honestly. He was born in Mogadishu, where
as a youngster he witnessed terrible violence. He and his family escaped the
civil war there by moving to North America, ultimately settling in Toronto in
1992. His breakthrough album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, released in
2005, dealt with this subject in depth and to great acclaim; it won a Juno Award
for rap recording of the year and was also nominated for the Polaris Music
Prize. He followed it up last year with Troubadour, which included Wavin’
Flag.
K’naan has partially re-written the song twice now, most recently to add
references to Haiti for the fundraising recording. As many as 50 musicians
crammed into a Vancouver studio last weekend to record the song. The idea came
from music producer Bob Ezrin, who brought it to K’naan and Universal Music.
“We wanted to collectively do something that will have a ‘sustain pedal,’ that
will still resonate with people as time goes by and I think that songs do
that,” K’naan says.
“There was a lot of great energy, a good cause, good people coming together.”
He won’t say who, but thanks to the Olympics, there were lots of artists in
town in the days leading up to the recording, including Lou Reed, Feist, Stars,
Our Lady Peace, Hawksley Workman, Corb Lund, Ron Sexsmith, Jully Black, Sam
Roberts, Coeur de Pirate, Jason Collett, Julie Doiron, Tanya Tagaq and Chromeo.
Plus there are some big-name artists based in British Columbia upon whom Ezrin
may have called, including Sarah McLachlan, Michael Bublé, Elvis Costello,
Diana Krall, Nelly Furtado (who has worked with K’naan before) and a horde of
indie bands and singer-songwriters.
The Haiti version of the song is expected to be released in late March.
While K’naan certainly witnessed his share of devastation growing up, he
rejects any suggestion that he feels more of a responsibility to respond to
crises in the world because of his own troubled homeland.
“Having some experiences that were difficult may give you maybe a special
sensitivity to things, but I think that the humanity’s that’s built within us
is capable of feeling those things with or without having seen struggle.”
They may be on the same continent, but it’s a long way from Somalia to South
Africa, at least on this journey. K’naan is now associated with a big corporate
sponsor, after being approached by Coca-Cola with a proposal that he write a
soccer anthem for the World Cup in June. (Coca-Cola is a World Cup sponsor; the
song will be used for Coke’s World Cup branding, including on TV and at FIFA
events.)
K’naan says he had no concerns about hooking up with the soft-drink giant; he
says Coca-Cola wanted a song that was positive and hopeful, a celebration of
humanity. “To me, that’s a beautiful connection rather than a corporate
connection,” he says. “It wasn’t like, ‘Hey guys, pay me and I’ll make you a
jingle.’”
K’naan tried to write something new, but kept coming back to Wavin’ Flag.
He was surprised, though, at a top Coke executive’s response to the proposal.
“He said, ‘You know, I think that Wavin’ Flag is one of those special
songs and I’m afraid that in the end we’re just a brand and I don’t want to
take away from your magic and the beauty of this song by making it some kind of
a product.”
The Coca-Cola version, however, is much cheerier than the original. Gone are
the references to war, hunger and poverty, replaced with lines such as
“Celebration, it surrounds us” and “Let’s rejoice in the beautiful game.”
This was not Coke’s idea; it was K’naan’s. “Every four years [at the World Cup]
the world kind of puts aside their differences and challenges themselves to
love and play and have fun, celebrate each other. This is an amazing time and I
didn’t want to come and kind of rain on everybody’s parade,” he says. “So I had
to find a way to make that song retain its spirit and what it is, but also give
it that thing where everybody feels like they’re celebrating, even though they
still have something to think about.”
When K’naan sings the song tonight at the Orpheum in Vancouver, where he’s
appearing as part of another sporting event – the Winter Games’ Cultural
Olympiad – he will sing the original, darker version, as he always does in
concert. It’s the version that came to him after the rain, when the ground was
still wet.
K’naan plays a sold-out show at the Orpheum in Vancouver Thursday night, in
a double bill with Tinariwen, beginning at 8 p.m. (vancouver2010.com/culturalolympiad).
A Touch Is Too Much For Some, But Not For Dan Hill
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Brad Wheeler
(February 22, 2010) He could have titled his new album Sometimes When We Get Back in
Touch. Toronto
singer-songwriter Dan Hill, so identified by his profoundly emoted 1977 mega-hit Sometimes
When We Touch, has recently popped back into our lives. Last year saw the
release of I Am My Father’s Son, a well-received memoir that chronicled
his career and reconciled his relationship with his late father, Daniel Hill
Sr. Now the musician who has built a solid career in the past 15 years or so
writing hit songs for others – country tunes mostly, but also power ballads for
the Céline Dions of the world – has released a new album of his own. It’s
called Intimate (out March 9) and it includes a fresh version of the
super impassioned song that’s still his calling card.
In your book, you mention a poor review in The Globe and Mail in the 1970s.
Are you past that? Are we good?
[Laughs]. You know, if I was upset over reviews I was getting in the seventies,
I don’t think I would have ever emerged from underneath the rocks. When you put
yourself out there as a performer, that comes with the territory.
You certainly do put yourself out there. Your hit, Sometimes When We
Touch, still has that love-it or hate-it reaction.
Songs sometimes are so connected to the sociology of the time. That song came
out a long time ago, in 1977, and the roles of how men and women were supposed
to behave were quite a bit different than they are now. A lot of the issue was
that guys weren’t supposed to be singing those kind of things. And I sang it in
a very tremulous, very breathy voice. So, the delivery was part of what made it
so connected, but also drove people to such distraction.
I’m not so sure the problem was with the era. I mean, the 1970s gave rise to
the sensitive singer-songwriter, didn’t they?
Well, that’s true – the Jackson Brownes, the James Taylors, the Elton Johns,
the Eagles. That being said, the culture itself, when you step outside the
culture of the songwriters and the artists, had not been Oprah-fied. It just
hadn’t.
How do you deal with the polarizing effect of the song?
I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to
create indifference. I don’t necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I
would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a
song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder.
The older woman who inspired the song wasn’t indifferent.
When I played it for her, she said, ‘For a 19-year-old, you’re way too
intense.’ I thought, ‘I got her now – I nailed her with that song.’ But then
she took a bus to North Carolina. It was the first unintended time consequence
of the song: It drove her right out of the country.
You’ve re-recorded the song with just piano and vocals. Why the stripped
down arrangement?
The original version was very produced. We thought it would be fun to do an
unplugged version and to sing it in an organic, natural way. It was fun to
revisit the song. A part of me said, ‘Okay, a thousand people have covered the
song, so now I’m going to do a cover. Let’s see if my cover stands up to Donny
Osmond’s cover.’
Have you learned to temper your intensity?
I’m an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity.
Also singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps and writing
helps. But, you know, I was wired to be intense. I don’t think that’s ever
going to change.
Tomorrow, Dan Hill performs (with Joe Sealy and Liz Rodrigues) at the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto. 8 p.m., $29. 416-586-5797.
Jazz Sisters Swing In Sync
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- J.D. Considine
(February 22, 2010) As a classic work of feminist theory once observed, sisterhood is
powerful. But it's also
kind of magical, as Ingrid Jensen is regularly reminded.
Jensen and her sister are both Canadian jazz musicians. She plays trumpet,
while Christine performs on
saxophone. Although each has her own career in a separate city - Christine has
both a combo and a big band in Montreal, while Ingrid, based in Manhattan,
works widely as a leader and in-demand soloist - they play together quite
often, either in each others' groups or as part of the international jazz
quintet Nordic Connect.
Whatever the circumstances, the music is amazing. "There's an incredibly
insane amount of psychic conversation going on when we start playing
together," says Ingrid, over the phone from Germany, where she's touring
with teen saxophonist Grace Kelly. "We aren't talking, we aren't using
words, but all of a sudden we're using this energy. ... There's so much trust
there, it's almost like nothing can go wrong."
The Jensens will be showing off that sororal connection on several fronts this
month. Treelines, the debut release by the Christine Jensen Jazz
Orchestra, has just been released, and the group - with, as on the album,
Ingrid as featured soloist - will be playing shows in Montreal and Sherbrooke
this Friday and Saturday.
Then, on Feb. 23, the Ingrid Jensen Quintet (featuring Christine) will perform
at the Glenn Gould Studio in
Toronto.
In some ways, the two ensembles - Christine's orchestra and Ingrid's five-piece
- couldn't be more dissimilar. "With the big band, there's just so much
advance preparation," Christine says in a phone interview from her
Montreal home. "First I have to write the song, then I have to arrange it,
then I have to rehearse it and edit it, then I go back and arrange it some
more. ... It takes three or four months of work for me to do a properly
executed [score]."
With the quintet, by contrast, the writing is generally little more than a
sketch, although Ingrid points out the key to the smaller ensemble is
"knowing that you also have a huge toolbox full of things you can pull
from to create more from that sketch than just the chords and the melody."
Christine, for her part, adds that the brass-heavy sound of her Jazz Orchestra
is, at least in part, a product of her childhood.
"I'm a bit of a trumpet geek, having grown up with my sister," she
says. "Ingrid being older than me, I think I heard more trumpet than
saxophone."
Born in Vancouver, the Jensens spent a fairly idyllic childhood in Nanaimo,
B.C., immersed in the joys of music and nature.
"There was always someone on the piano, because both my mom and Christine
were playing," recalls Ingrid.
"The music I would hear in the house was so incredible. Really swinging.
... It got in my bones, and then I'd go out in nature and I'd be riding my
horse around, and that would be in my head. I don't think every kid gets to
experience that."
The Ingrid Jensen Quintet performs at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto on
Tuesday.
A Personal Look At Superstar Céline Dion
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian
(February 20, 2010) The phone interview is just wrapping up when Céline Dion suddenly asks
about my
developmentally handicapped son, Michael. She met him seven years ago in Las
Vegas when I came to interview her and even dedicated a song to him in the
performance she gave that night.
She wanted to speak to him, so I put him on the line, watching his face
light up as they spend five minutes talking. When I took the receiver back, I
started to thank her for remembering him, but she wouldn't hear it.
"Life is precious," is all she said, "and you don't know
what it's going to hold for you."
That pretty much sums up the past quarter-century for Dion, who has gone
from being one of 14 children born to a poverty-stricken Quebec family to one
of the biggest, most bankable and most beloved stars in the world.
She has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, filled a 4,000-seat
theatre in Las Vegas for nearly five years, and in the process became the
highest-earning entertainer of the past decade, raking in more than $750
million.
It also seems like she's been everywhere over the past two weeks. On TV,
there was Céline with Oprah, talking about the fifth in-vitro fertilization
attempt she was about to undergo. In the papers, there was Céline announcing
her gala return to Las Vegas, with a new three-year contract at Caesars Palace.
On screen, there was Céline: Through the Eyes of the World, the
documentary film about her worldwide 2008-09 "Taking Chances" tour.
And now, here's Céline herself, on the phone from Miami, putting it all
in perspective. "I'm not trying to prove anything about my life," she
replies when asked about the purpose of this wall-to-wall publicity. "I'm
just living it."
It's the morning after the gala premiere of Céline: Through the Eyes
of the World. Actually, it's the afternoon, because – as husband René
Angelil warns in a preparatory conversation – "We had quite a party last
night and Céline is sleeping in for a little bit."
The amiable Angelil may be a uniquely canny businessman, respected in the
showbiz world for the deft way he's handled Dion's career, but like his wife he
wears his heart very much on his sleeve. "What is she like these days?
She's still the girl I met 25 years ago and I love her more than ever."
He apologizes for the fact that the interview is taking place over the
phone, and extends an invitation "to visit us in our place in Las Vegas.
Actually, it's 30 minutes away in the desert, on the shores of Lake Mead, but
it's so beautiful there. A simple house. No trophies. A place where Céline can
be a mom. And it's so quiet. I love that. You hear nothing." He pauses,
savouring the notion. "Nothing."
You understand his feeling. There's always a great deal of buzz
surrounding Dion, and lately, it's been centred on her non-appearance at last
week's opening ceremonies for the 2010 Olympic Games.
Some people claimed she was unhappy with the placement she was being
offered on the program. Others claimed she refused to go along with VANOC's
"no live performance, all lip-synch" edict, while a third group
insisted she was displeased with the choice of songs she was asked to perform.
But Dion is eager to lay all those rumours to rest. "I was invited,
it was true, but I couldn't come because that was the exact day they had set
for my in-vitro surgery. When you engage yourself clinically to have a baby,
the body decides when you're ready. My body was being monitored. I had to be
very careful.
"But if I had been able, I would have been there gladly. And I would
have sung any song at any place at any time that they wanted me to. You don't
go to the Olympics and say, `I want to do my song.' Everybody is there on a
mission."
As frequently happens when Dion gets emotional, her words keep tumbling
out. "Some people don't realize that the Olympics are not a show. We're
supposed to be there to celebrate the achievements of young kids from around
the world who are sometimes even giving their lives for the honour of their
countries."
You can hear the tears welling up in her voice as you speak. "You
have to understand, last Friday, the day of the opening ceremonies, was also
the day of my surgery. I was under anaesthesia, moving in and out of
consciousness the whole time. ...
"I guess that is one reason I was emotionally very involved. The
tragedy of that young man." She's speaking of Georgian athlete Nodar
Kumaritashvili, who died during a trial luge run. "How can you not be
touched?"
Dion has never made any secret of the fact that she and Angelil had
trouble conceiving children, and that in-vitro fertilization was necessary for
the birth of her son, René-Charles.
But now, in her quest for a second child, four prior attempts had failed,
and it seemed more than slightly strange for Dion to announce in advance that
she was attempting a fifth procedure, putting an extraordinary amount of
pressure and expectation on the event.
"It's not strange, Richard, not at all," she disagrees.
"Look, you know me, I always talk about everything openly. I want people
to know my life, my story. I don't just want to sing for them. We talk about it
openly because it's a beautiful thing to try to conceive. Some people may think
we have everything and we are very, very fortunate. But for some parents, like
us, it's not easy to have children. I want those people to know they are just
like us, they are not alone."
Dion's empathy is one of the things that most attracts her supporters and
incites the scorn of her detractors. It can't be real, they insist. Nobody can
care that much.
But the strongest proof supporting her case is in Céline: Through the
Eyes of the World. Ostensibly a documentary about her massive Taking
Chances tour between February 2008 and February 2009, the movie also reveals
two very interesting things about Dion.
First, it shows the nerves of steel and Olympian stamina necessary to
carry off such an engagement. Those who call Dion "the Iron
Butterfly" should do so with admiration, because the woman is one tough
cookie.
"I know, people have this crazy idea of what it's like on
tour," she laughs. "It's all private planes, limousines, room
service. But there is stress, struggle, times when you're not feeling that
great. When I have to cancel a show, I change the lives of thousands and
thousands of people."
And that's what the film documents. A severe throat disorder caused her
to shut the tour down for several weeks and undergo treatment during which she
had to face the possibility of never singing again. "Would that have
destroyed me? No, Richard. I love to sing. I cherish the gift that God has
given me. But there is more to my life than that."
Her voice picks up that hint of self-mockery she's always willing to
exploit. "Hey, what do I always say? `My Heart Will Go On.'" A quick
sample of the Dion classic, belted out over the phone.
Then she gets serious again. "But I mean it. I have been given so
much more than a voice. I have my husband, I have my son, I have my family, I
have my friends."
The second thing the film shows is how widespread the love Dion generates
– and returns – can be. From the South African children she impulsively
embraces to a Korean dancer in her troupe who she makes front and centre on
opening night in Seoul, from a Belgian woman who gave up her kidney so that her
son could live to an Italian fan who is definitely unhinged (but undoubtedly
devoted), Dion opens up her heart to them all.
Even a cynic would have to admit that those moments weren't staged. The
sincerity of the ugly duckling from Charlemagne, Que., who became a radiant
international diva always shines through.
"You couldn't have been surprised by that?" Dion scolds.
"You know me, Richard, my life has always been an open book. And that
movie is a piece of my life, a piece of my heart. I didn't want to create
magic. I wanted to capture the magic that exists. I wanted to show people the
other side of the coin. They know the Céline who sings. I wanted them to meet
the Céline who laughs and cries and loves."
And though that love gets spread around generously, the lion's share of
it is saved for her husband and her son. Her devotion to both of them is
intense. I still recall the moment in a 2003 interview when I asked her if she
was worried about her husband, a known gambler, setting up house with her in
Las Vegas and, eyes blazing, she set the record straight. "I'm glad René
is a gambler, because he gambled on me, that was the biggest gamble of his
life, and I will always be grateful to him for it."
The years haven't diminished that passion, and the most quietly moving
moment in the film is when their private jet takes off in turbulence and she
holds out her hands to René for comfort. He clasps them and the fear leaves her
face.
Then there's her son. René-Charles is 9 now, still sporting the
shoulder-length tresses that make him look like the offspring of the Bourbon
dynasty rather than a contemporary kid. But on screen, he's spontaneously charming
and unaffected, qualities he's picked up from both parents, although his mother
revealed a story that indicates show business may be percolating through his
DNA.
"When he saw the movie, he laughed and enjoyed it," Dion
relates. "But then, the credits rolled at the end, he looked very
intensely and he said, `Mama, where's my name? Where's my name?"
She roars with laughter. "Oh God, I don't think I'll ever let him
near a movie again."
If anybody questions Dion's devotion to her son, they need only look at
the upcoming performance schedule for her return to Caesars Palace in 2011. The
dates she's appearing may seem randomly placed, with the lion's share of the
shows taking place in the summer, which is a slow season in Vegas.
But that doesn't matter to Dion. "I wanted René-Charles to be able
to go to school back east with all his friends, and I wanted him to spend as
much time as possible with me. So I'm doing most of my performances around
Christmas break, spring break and summer break. Vegas wanted me back? Those
were my terms."
The new show, which premieres during spring break, 2011, will be Dion, a
31-piece orchestra and a program filled with songs from Hollywood movies.
"Oh yes, it's `Over the Rainbow' time, baby," she exults, "and
I'm going to love it."
But then, Dion seems to be loving everything about her life these days,
including her age: she turns 42 on March 30. "Look, being a child is
innocent and beautiful, your teenage years are wild, in your 20s you don't know
what you're doing, but maturity, it's like a fusion between the brain, the body
and the soul. It's the greatest thing."
Joanna Newsom’s Intimate Letters Have A Rugged Side
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Robert
Everett-Green
Have One on Me
Joanna Newsom
Drag City
(February 22, 2010) Joanna Newsom’s new three-disc album has a persistent epistolary quality, as if
most of these songs began as allusive, intimate letters written from a somewhat
remote location. After a while, you can’t help visualizing the spot: a rural
house, with a garden, near a river, with jackrabbits springing by and
kingfishers on the hunt. “When you come see me in California, you cross the
border of my heart,” she sings, in a way that assumes the heart’s border to be
just as tangible as the state line.
As letters will do, these songs often ramble, sometimes even melodically,
as if Newsom were thinking aloud while pacing the property, checking the garden
but also peeking in at the big spider that sometimes won’t let her leave her
room. Or maybe she’s singing about last night’s dream, but in such a way as to
affirm that all the things she experienced there can be touched and felt in her
waking life.
The heart is a particularly vivid item in these songs, to be opened and
examined frequently, whether as treasure chest or tomb. She sings about it the
way ancient balladeers might, with tunes that often sound antique, while her
harp and her bright, childlike voice imply that this fair lady’s unicorn may
arrive soon. But she also has a more rugged side, which comes out when the
gentle motion that launches many of these tunes (the ballad-like Baby Birch,
for instance) toughens up with drums and distorted guitar, and starts to swing.
Her vocal tone can harden suddenly and maybe not intentionally, and after two
albums she still hits some high notes with a pronounced click.
No Provenance begins like an elfin love-song, but then a habanera
rhythm creeps in, and the feeling of that delayed second beat is too knowing
and carnal for fairy trysts. That beat is one of Newsom’s favourites: She uses
it again and again, along with the trick of starting a song small and blowing
it up later (with help from arranger Ryan Francesconi).
“Mercy me,” she sings at the start of Occident, and her voice
somehow justifies the antiquated speech. Unlike some current rootsy musicians
who want us to believe they’re hopping freights, Newsom doesn’t require us to
teleport to the thirties. Her old-time sounds and language seem to be focused
on present situations. It’s a risky thing to attempt, and she often succeeds.
But her songwriting strategies aren’t really varied enough to keep this project
lively for two full hours.
White Stripes: Red, White And New
Source: www.thestar.com - Ben Rayner
(February 21, 2010) Outside of Hard Core Logo, there
haven't really been many attempts to bring a
Canadian rock `n' roll travelogue to the screen – which makes it deliciously
perverse that it's taken an American band to do it again.
Emmett Malloy's ripping Under Great White Northern Lights is
ostensibly a concert film about the White Stripes' 2007 tour of our
fair nation and the inscrutable relationship between ex-lovers Jack and Meg
White that lends the band so much of its mystique. But always shrewd Jack had a
novel idea for this particular jaunt – to take the Stripes scorching
garage-blues to such neglected Canadian outports as Glace Bay, Whitehorse and
Iqaluit.
That move has added a couple of extra layers to what could have been just
another documentary about a band on the road. (Albeit a band as riveting to
watch onstage and unendingly conscious of crafting its own mythology as the
White Stripes, so that wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing, either.)
Still, Under Great White Northern Lights takes it one better, and
in large part due to the unfamiliar environments in which Jack – who was
inspired to do the tour when he learned he had family roots in Nova Scotia –
and Meg find themselves.
"That was the cool part of it," says Malloy, who's forged his
friendship with the Stripes by directing several of their videos over the
years. "And that's where I really applaud Jack and his ideas. Every band
gets this opportunity and I think most bands are just interested in going to
where it'll all work out logistically and the money's good. And you can't blame
them – they have a limited opportunity to tour or they're getting advice that
this is where they need to be.
"But I've noticed that, with Jack on tour, he always kicks it off
somewhere really interesting, somewhere more from a young kid's perspective of
`I just wanna go somewhere cool in the world. I wanna go play for some people
who've never even heard us.'"
Jack White is too smart a fellow to not realize the effect playing in
front of unfamiliar crowds would have on the performances, which are almost
universally feral in Northern Lights.
Indeed, Malloy concurs that he was blessed to catch so much fresh
electricity feeding both ways onscreen. He was working with rooms that were, in
some cases, half-full of people who had no idea who the White Stripes were and
a 10-year-old band that's never been a slouch in the live department suddenly
playing like hell to win them over.
"In going up to these places, a lot of people knew that something
big was going on in their town and really didn't know much more than
that," says Malloy. "And they showed up and got their minds blown.
"So the band got to go back to that feeling they had when they first
started playing music: `I'm gonna give these people a night they'll never
forget.' And I feel like that was the energy that was captured. It wasn't like
playing Utah at The Shed."
Under Great White Northern Lights really gets its glimmer, though,
from the arty, black-and-white interstitial bits – Jack and Meg frolicking on the
shores of Frobisher Bay, for instance – and concert footage from secret shows
conducted across Canada in weird spots like the back of a Winnipeg bus and an
elementary-school classroom in Toronto that break up the interview and
performance sequences. That and the genuinely poignant and unforgettable final
scene where Meg suddenly collapses in tears on Jack's shoulder after he
serenades her with "White Moon" on the piano, but that's another
story and you should just see that for yourself.
"I could have gotten the soundbites and the performances and the
interviews anywhere, but this became as much about where we were and who we
were around as it (was about) the music itself," says Malloy, who aspired
to "romance" Canada a little onscreen.
"Two people on a stage, no matter what the venue, it starts looking
the same. So I'm really glad we got to move around with this band and document
all that stuff and get the secret shows and get all that stuff down. That's
what made this film. The people and the places made this film as much as the
music, and I think they're going to end up being the stars of the show."
Out of deference to these stars, Under Great White Northern Lights had
its premiere last September at the Toronto International Film Festival – it was
a "necessity" that it debut in Canada, says Malloy – and is now
making a return to our city for a week-long run at the Royal starting Feb. 26.
The Royal, it turns out, is only the third theatre to exhibit the film.
The other was in Denmark. The U.S. won't even get a look at it until the South
by Southwest Festival in Austin next month. A DVD and live album follow on
March 16, both also available to super-fans in a $259.99 box set with a
mountain of other goodies on the White Stripes' website.
"I feel like we're finally putting this thing out for real. What I
forget is that very few people have seen it," says Malloy. "We kind
of felt like (Toronto) was our big moment. That premiere up there was so
exciting, and with Jack and Meg both there it felt really great to show it. It
felt like a hometown crowd.
"An all-time night, for sure. That really felt like the proper way
to kick this thing off."
Eric Clapton No Match For Jeff Beck
Source: www.thestar.com - Ben Rayner
(February 22, 2010) This was supposed to be a guitar battle, not a
complete capitulation.
Oh, well, we knew going in who the cool kid was gonna be on this Eric Clapton/Jeff Beck co-headlining tour. So I guess the major disappointment stemming
from Sunday night's Air Canada Centre gig by the two aged British guitar heroes
– one set by Beck, one set by Clapton, one anticlimactic six-string duel
between the two – was that Clapton didn't even bother showing up to prove us
wrong.
It's not like Beck, who famously succeeded Clapton in the Yardbirds back
in 1965, was up there throwing it in his old friend/foe's face, either.
His opening set, while spiked with the kind of artful white-noise
fireworks and jazzbo '70s-fusion quirks that everyone kind of anticipates from
Jeff Beck, was still a pretty mild-mannered one. He brought a 12-piece
orchestra along with his ace bass/drums/keys backing band and kept the
all-instrumental vibe soft and cinematic, almost – dare I say it? –
Knopfler-esque in its blues-derived inoffensiveness.
During most of his time onstage, he leaned heavily on drowsy material
such as Jeff Buckley's "Corpus Christi Carol" and Puccini's
"Nessun Dorma" rather than fully uncorking the mindbending,
high-volume Strat theatrics he reserved for moments like an awe-inspiring
assault on the freaky latter half of The Beatles' "A Day in the
Life."
You'd think the prospect of being mildly shown up by Jeff Beck at
half-power would have moved Clapton to rally beyond the usual, rote white-blues
sleepwalk. But no, the guy might as well have strolled out in his jammies for
his set, kicking it off with lackadaisical, seated acoustic versions of
"Driftin' Blues" and "Layla," and then failing to inject
any electricity into what should have been an electric set of can't-miss crowd
pleasers, including a lifeless run at the Dominos' "Tell the Truth,"
the world's longest and lamest "I Shot the Sheriff," and a
perfunctory, groove-deficient "Cocaine" that should have been
retitled "Thorazine."
Seriously, this was one of the laziest big-venue performances I've seen
in years. Dude didn't bother to break a sweat. Beck came out to inject a little
fire into the proceedings an hour later – consistently stepping back from his
incendiary lightning bursts of blurred fretwork to let Clapton step in, only to
watch Clapton dole out a few rote blues licks and return to the mike for
another verse of "Shake Your Money Maker" or "Little Brown
Bird." And what was one of the first tunes they turned all those years of
honing their era-defining rock 'n' roll axe-craft to covering? Henry Mancini's
"Moon River." Say no more.
JD’s ‘Secret Garden’ Remake Features Usher, Songz, Thicke,
Tyrese and Barry!
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 18, 2010) *Jermaine
JD Dupri has come up with what could turn out to be a pretty good idea. He’s
recruited Usher, Robin Thicke, Tyrese and Trey Songz for a cover version of
Quincy Jones’ classic 1989 smash hit “The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction
Suite).”
The original of course featured James Ingram, Al B. Sure, El DeBarge and
the late, great Barry White.
Dupri recently elaborated on how he approached the song:
“It took a minute for me to even think about touching it,” Dupri told
MTV’s Shaheem Reid. “It’s a couple of components in that record that you don’t
wanna touch – Barry White being one of the main components. I had to leave him
[on the song]. There’s nobody out there in the world that’s got a voice like
his or even sounded the way he sounded. So I had to make sure I could leave
that. It’s gonna be interesting for y’all to hear how these young guys sound
mixed in with him.”
On the original "Secret Garden" each vocalist had a verse and
an opportunity to sing to the ladies. Obviously it would be crazy to not do the
same thing in the remake.
On the original “Secret Garden” each vocalist had a verse and an
opportunity to sing to the ladies. Obviously it would be crazy to not do the
same thing in the remake.
“Luckily, it’s a record that hip-hop really embraced as a ballad,” JD
said. “It was a record I lived with so much. I kinda felt it was a record that
was a part of my life. So it wasn’t that hard for me to get into it. But I just
had to figure out all the ways and who to put on the song. I feel that at the
time [Quincy] made the record, each one of the guys had a certain thing for the
ladies.”
And here’s something just as interesting. Dupri told MTV that the “Secret
Garden” redo will appear on a new Quincy Jones album! But no release date has
been announced.
Thanks to Lady GaGa, Akon Is Considering Retirement
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 20, 2010) *Who knew Akon had it going on the way he does? The Senegalese born singer is
supposedly considering an early retirement thanks to Lady GaGa.
The attention getting pop star is signed to his label and with her mega
success, he’s sitting pretty, financially.
Akon signed the singer to his KonLive label at Interscope Records in 2007 after
she was dropped by another of the company’s imprints.
GaGa’s Grammy-winning hits have gone on to dominate music charts across the
globe, and Akon admits he could quit his own career for good and continue to
live in luxury thanks to the lucrative deal.
Speaking about his agreement with Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine, Akon told
the Associated Press:
“I was like, ‘Yo, I want to sign that right there. She needs to be under my
umbrella. Jimmy was like, ‘Yeah, whatever you want. Take her. Let’s get it
done.’ And she just blossomed into a super megastar, man.”
“She’s pretty much retired me. She was definitely a blessing. She came at the
right moment. I’m glad I believed in her, boy. That goes to show you, if you
believe in something strong enough, it will pay off.”
Musicians Meet Secretly In Vancouver For Haiti Benefit Single
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Alexandra Gill
(February 18, 2010) Vancouver, BC — Canadian musicians are waving the Maple Leaf for Haiti, secretly
recording a benefit single for the earthquake-ravaged country.
Famed Canadian music producer Bob Ezrin is spearheading the project,
which will include Somalian-born Canadian rapper K'naan, performing the
K'naan hit song Wavin' Flag .
The recording is taking place Thursday at The Warehouse Studio in
Vancouver, which was founded by Bryan Adams.
The new Olympic anthem-in-the-making was recorded on the fly amidst all
the excitement of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
“They've pulled this together so quickly,” Adrienne Kakoullis of Holmes
Creative Communications said Thursday afternoon. “They're in the studio right
now.”
Although details are still sketchy, she confirmed that about 40 Canadian
vocalists and performers had gathered to record a new version of the song Wavin'
Flag .
Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Feist, Nickleback, Emily Haines, Ron Sexsmith
and Colin James are just a few of the Canadian performing artists currently in
Vancouver for the Olympic Gameswho may have
lent their voices to the super-group recording which sounds similar to We
Are the World , the 1985 charity single for African famine relief. Diana
Krall is also in town, as is Broken Social Scene.
“All of Canada's best to record @iamknaan's Wavin' Flag for Haiti in Van
City tomorrow!” reads a post that went out on Twitter yesterday.
Mr. Ezrin, who is producing the Wavin' Flag project, worked on
Pink Floyd's album The Wall . He recently made a new album with Peter
Gabriel and owns the Nimbus School of Recording Arts in Vancouver.
The afternoon session was videotaped for a possible future television
broadcast by John Brunton of Insight Productions, the Toronto production
company behind Canadian Idol and Battle of the Blades .
“I'm not at liberty to discuss it at the moment,” said Mr. Brunton said
by phone on Wednesday, confirming that he was indeed in Vancouver to film a
major project.
“I'll probably have a better opportunity to talk about it tomorrow,” he
added. “I'm muzzled.”
Wavin' Flag will also be featured as the anthem for this year's
World Cup in South Africa. K'Naan sang
the same song at Canada For Haiti , a broadcast telethon that raised
$13.5-million for Haitian quake victims last month.
A similar broadcast telethon, Hope For Haiti , brought Madonna,
Coldplay, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and U2's Bono together in live performances
from London, New York and Los Angeles.
In Vancouver, two local radio stations, Red FM and Radio India, have
raised more than $1.5-million through individual listeners who came out in
droves to pledge donations for quake-torn Haiti.
Rumours of the project began swirling last week when K'naan posted this
message on Twitter: “Coming soon: Me & Bob Ezrin (producer of Pink Floyd's
The Wall) are working on something epic! But u didn't hear from me ok?”
The Toronto-based hip-hop musician wrote: “Sadly, leaving Peru already
but heading to Vancouver to do something that'll hopefully help some lives in
need.”
Proceeds are to go to Free The Children, War Child Canada and World
Vision.
Former Bros star Matt Goss Brings Old-School Cool Back To Las
Vegas
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian
(February 20, 2010) LAS VEGAS–"Back in the day..." is
how singer Matt Goss currently begins
many of his
sentences.
But it's not because the guy once best known for his performances with
the British pop group Bros is dwelling on his yesterdays.
Far from it.
No, it's more because of the heady air of nostalgia that hangs over
Goss's new assignment.
Starting on March 12, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas is scrapping that piece
of Egyptian high camp called Cleopatra's Barge – its piano lounge for many
years – and replacing it with "The Gossy Room," a hip, happening
hangout for the new, 21st century-styled Matt Goss and his ever-expanding group
of followers.
How do you describe "Le Nouveau Goss"? In many ways he sounds
just like he always did, with a voice that manages to be erotic yet cajoling,
producing a sound that seduces the ladies and enthrals the men who wish they
could be seducing those ladies with similar ease.
But the style is harder to pin down. The swagger of Harry Connick Jr.?
The bedroom eyes of Michael Bublé? The world-weariness of Randy Newman? The
musicianship of John Pizarelli?
Goss has all of these qualities, but there's also something uniquely,
well, Gossy about the finished product. The almost dandyish wardrobe, the
rakishly tilted porkpie hat, the blazing blue eyes, the carefully cultivated
facial stubble. It all radiates a long-forgotten concept of style, fallen into
disfavour for so long that it needs someone as forceful as Goss to effect its
rehabilitation.
Goss is cool the way Sammy Davis Jr. was, the way Dean Martin was and –
most of all – the way Frank Sinatra was.
"Yes, it's Sinatra I think of a lot. I can't help it," says
Goss, unwinding over a Spartan feed of bread sticks and mineral water at Rao's,
the straight-from-Manhattan transplanted Italian restaurant that looks like a
whole crew of '50s wise guys should be sitting at the bar and the Chairman of
the Board himself, Old Blue Eyes, Francis Albert Sinatra, might be holding down
a corner table.
"For any of us who love Las Vegas, who love music, who love class,
Sinatra was the man," enthuses Goss. He speaks with the same intense, raspy
whisper that Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer uses to intimidate terrorists on 24,
but in Goss's hands, the effect is far more pleasant.
"I'd never imitate Frank," insists Goss, "that would
actually be an insult. Nobody really wants to hear somebody pretend to be
somebody else. But I would like to emulate him, to revive all the things he
stood for back in the day."
There's that phrase again: "Back in the day." It's something
you're hearing a lot around Las Vegas as this most malleable of cities looks
for its latest personality makeover.
Having gone through "Vegas the Family Playground" and
"Vegas the Hedonists' Hideaway," the time seems ripe for a return to
what Sin City represented back in the days of The Rat Pack: "Vegas the
Home of Cool."
These days, Goss certainly seems like the coolest of dudes, in the very
best sense of the word. Gone are the days of 1980s pop-star hysteria, done are
the years of 1990s touring in search of an image, forgotten, too, is that 2003
British comeback where the fans of a whole new generation discovered the power
of Goss.
Nowadays, he radiates the mellow but potent charm of a 20-year-old Scotch
that's been resting in its keg, waiting for the right moment to arrive.
"I feel comfortable with myself now, I guess that's the big
difference," reasons Goss as he looks back at the past. "A man has to
wait for his moment and know when that moment has come."
That moment came in 2006, when Goss's song "It's the End of the
Road" became the theme of the U.S. version of "So You Think You Can
Dance," and brought him to the attention of American audiences. A new
recording contract, some gigs with David Foster and a variety of TV appearances
made the new Matt Goss a very popular fellow indeed.
Then he discovered Vegas (and vice versa), making the synergy complete. A
smash run at The Palms, starting in 2009, put the frame around the picture, and
the savvy folks at Caesars Palace realized Goss was what they had been seeking
to provide hip-smaller-club contrast to the big spectacle of the Colosseum,
where Céline Dion is returning next year.
"You have to be humble, you have to be fearless and you have to give
your all to your music. That's all it takes," Goss concludes.
MUSIC TIDBITS
Video: Erykah Badu’s Jump Up in the Air
(Stay There)
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 18, 2010) *Erykah Badu’s new music video for her “leaked” track
“Jump in the Air (Stay There)”
feat. Lil Wayne just hit the Internet. The single comes ahead of the March 30
release of her new album “New Amerykah Part II: Return of the Ankh,” due Mar.
30. Because “Jump in the Air” is considered a “leaked” track, it won’t appear
on the album in original form (a remix is in the works, instead, according to
Billboard.com), but Badu still gave her fans the below visuals to go along with
the song.
Place To Be: Hiromi
Source: www.thestar.com
- Ashante Infantry
(Telarc)
(out of 4)
(February 23, 2010) Discovering New York-based, Japanese-born jazz pianist Hiromi through her first solo
piano recording would be befuddling. How does she get all those sounds? Surely
there's lots of overdubbing involved? However, if you're familiar with the
pint-sized performer's five previous albums, or caught her at the TD Canada
Trust Toronto Jazz Festival last summer you know that she's simply bedazzling
and apt to employ an elbow or fist on the keys, or reach inside to pluck the
strings. Still, I can't figure out how she gets that harpsichord sound on this
disc's "Pachelbel's Canon." Though noted for her eye-catching outfits
(courtesy of fashion designer husband Mihara Yasuhiro), technical expertise, as
well as electric and acoustic fluency, what makes the classically trained
Hiromi particularly delightful is the enthusiasm she brings. That verve is
underscored with song titles like "Cape Cod Chips" and "Berne,
Baby, Berne!" on this album about her travels. The 30-year-old doesn't
incorporate the usual amount of pop and rock on this album, but it's still
fairly progressive. And it's nice hear her subtler side on the ballads "Sicilian
Blue" and "Somewhere." There's still that ceaseless volley of
notes, but, as in the Art Tatum tradition, never ineffective. Top Track:
It's easy to envision Hiromi kicking her heels down a Parisian boulevard on the
spirited blues "Choux A La Crème," about the French pastry.
The Good Girl: Kellylee
Evans
Source: www.thestar.com
- Ashante Infantry
(Enliven!)
(out of 4)
(February 23, 2010) Anyone startled by this Ottawa-based singer/songwriter's
transition from jazz to self-described
"alternative-soul pop" in the four years since her debut album wasn't
listening closely. Though Evans placed second in the prestigious Thelonious
Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition in 2004 and used some jazz musicians
and arrangements on Fight or Flight? there were many hints of the
eclectic world she would fully inhabit on her sophomore effort. The title
track, the disc's top tune, is a rocking Pat Benatar groove about refusing to
play by the rules; "Lost" is a bass-heavy groove with reggae
undertones and Sade-style vulnerability; and the electro-pinging "I'm Not
My Own" showcases a yearning that's all hers. There's not as much variety
in tempo and instrumentation as the project augured, but these original tunes
about love and personal evolution are well served by Evans's rich, buoyant
vocals. Under the jazz umbrella, she was a crowd favourite who racked up Juno
nominations. This music isn't a huge departure; interesting to see how she
fares in the big bad pop world.
JLo Splits from Sony Record Label
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 23, 2010) *It’s the end of the road for Jennifer Lopez at Sony. Nikke Finke of
DeadlineHollywood.com is reporting that the singer is no longer recording for
Sony Music’s Epic Records. However, there are conflicting stories as to how it
all went down. Version 1: Lopez’s contract was up and since she fulfilled her
obligation with her last two singles, it wasn’t renewed. A mutual decision was
made not to go ahead with an album. Version 2: Lopez was dropped by Sony because
of low record sales. Either way, JLo’s forthcoming studio album, “Love?” is now
in limbo. Some Internet reports say that “Love?” — which featured a pre-release
dance hit “Fresh Out the Oven” and a pre-release dance dud “Louboutins” — was
nearly finished and set to come out in April. But Lopez’s camp told Finke that
“Love?” was still a work in progress and “by no means done” and that record
release dates tend to be flexible. Lopez’s manager, Benny Medina, confirmed the
split between his client and Sony. “Jennifer had a wonderful relationship with
the Sony Music group,” he noted, “and they have shared many successes together,
but the time was right to make a change that best serves the direction her
career as an actress and recording artist.” In the meantime, JLo’s new romantic
comedy “The Back-Up Plan” is set to come out on April 23, when it will go up
against “Wall Street 2″ and “MacGruber.” The entertainer is also slated
to host the show next weekend.
Wyclef Tapped to Present at Rock Hall
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 23, 2010) *Musician Wyclef Jean has been selected to induct reggae icon
Jimmy Cliff into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. The presenters were
announced Tuesday by the hall, which is based in Cleveland. Phish guitarist
Trey Anastasio will induct rock group Genesis, Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee
Gees will induct ABBA, and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong is set to honour
The Stooges. Also, Jackson Browne will induct David Geffen. The induction
ceremony takes place March 15 in New York and will air live on Fuse TV at 8:30
p.m. EST.
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Idol Fans Like Ellen Degeneres, Miss
Paula Abdul
Source: www.thestar.com
- Reuters
(February 24, 2010) LOS ANGELES–Ellen DeGeneres is proving a hit with American Idol fans
as a new
judge, although Paula Abdul is very much missed, according to an AOL Television
poll released on Tuesday. As the public gets its first chance this week to vote
for performers on the top-rated TV talent contest, guitar-playing Andrew Garcia
and young mom Crystal Bowersox are emerging as early fan favourites among the
top 24. Garcia, 24, of California, and Bowersox, 24, who plays guitar and mouth
organ, won a leading 26.2 and 25.2 per cent of votes in the AOL Television poll
over the weekend. Michael "Big Mike" Lynche, whose wife had their
first baby while he was competing, was third favourite. But Lynche was also
voted the most overhyped, as fans decided by an overwhelming 78.3 per cent that
highlighting personal stories such as his gave contestants an unfair advantage.
Just over 58 per cent of those polled said DeGeneres was doing an
"awesome" job in her new role, with just 7.4 per cent judging her
"awful." But plenty of Idol fans are missing Abdul, who quit
last summer in a dispute over her contract renewal. Some 46 per cent said the
singing competition was not the same without her, while 41 per cent said they
did not miss her and a surprising 12 per cent appeared not to have realized she
has left.
Dave Matthews coming, Mos Def isn’t,
DOOM probably will
Source: www.thestar.com
- Robert Cribb
(February 24, 2010) Rap fans will be
disappointed to hear that Mos Def has
cancelled his Kool Haus
concert, scheduled for Thursday. However, the promoters at REMG Entertainment
say they’re doing everything they can to guarantee that the co-headliner, the
masked rapper known as DOOM, will actually perform in the flesh. Talk has
persisted over several years that DOOM, as Daniel Dumile is known, gets an
impostor to masquerade as him during some live shows. Last week after a Chicago
concert, fans reported the performer onstage had a different body type than DOOM,
lip-synched in lieu of rapping and left after 20 only minutes. REMG says it
will demand photo ID from the artist before he takes the stage for the show,
which was originally scheduled for Jan. 27.
Brian McKnight Continues ‘Evolution’
Tour
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 24, 2010) *Brian McKnight has set aside some dates for a North
American tour as he continues
supporting last year’s “Evolution of a Man,” which hit stores in October and
features collaborations with Jill Scott and Stevie Wonder. The crooner
begins Friday (2/26) in Oakland, CA, with a trio of March shows to follow.
After a three-month break, the performer/producer will return to the tour for a
handful of June and July casino performances throughout the Midwest before
wrapping up Aug. 13 in Biloxi, MS. The full schedule is listed below.
February 2010
26 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
March 2010
6 – Windsor, Ontario – Caesars Windsor The Colosseum
12 – Englewood, NJ – Bergen Performing Arts Center
13 – Atlantic City, NJ – Resorts Atlantic City
June 2010
13 – Detroit, MI – TBA
26 – Dover Downs, DE – TBA
July 2010
8 – Dallas, TX – TBA
9 – Houston, TX – TBA
10 – Norman, OK – Riverwind Casino
11 – Thackerville, OK – Winstar Casino
August 2010
13 – Biloxi, MS – Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Biloxi
:FILM NEWS::
Sixty 'Just Another Year' For Richard Gere
Source: www.thestar.com
- Linda Barnard
(February 23, 2010) Richard
Gere may be one of the screen's most enduring sex symbols, working in
an
industry that worships the cult of youth, but he's not bothered about aging. In
fact, he approached turning 60 in August as marking "just another year.''
"It meant nothing, if you want me to be honest with you," said Gere
from New York, a shrug in his voice, as he talked to the Star in a Canadian
exclusive while promoting his latest movie, Brooklyn's Finest.
When pressed, he admits turning 50 was a jolt, "only because of the
roundness of the number; the inability to be able to think you're 22.
"You do start to forget things a bit," he says, "and you don't
recover with injuries as quickly."
Silver-haired Gere hasn't succumbed to vanity: still handsome, his features
have changed and he looks his age onscreen as he plays Eddie Dugan, a recently
divorced, burned-out career cop working his last week on the beat in Brooklyn's
most dangerous neighbourhood.
Eddie's story is one of three separate police tales that eventually knit
together in Brooklyn's Finest: Don Cheadle is an undercover drug squad
cop desperate to get out, and Ethan Hawke has to deal with temptation and
rising panic as his lousy paycheque can't stretch to care for his expanding
family and ailing wife. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), Brooklyn's
Finest opens March 5.
"This is literally the last seven days of his life as a cop and all those
forces that play into memory and projection and what am I going to do; it's all
quietly intense for him," Gere explains, adding that he sees each cop's
onscreen tale as "a short story, a small novella."
Gere describes Eddie's role as "the quiet part of the story." But the
part still called for him to do some physically demanding work. "The
hardest ones are the fight scenes, because they end up being quite
technical," says Gere.
Just trying to hang on for one more week, Eddie refuses to rise to the bait as
young Turks on the force taunt him as a has-been with a booze problem. He
bristles at having to take raw recruits as ride-alongs in his squad car. He
just wants to be left alone to finish his shift. "He doesn't want to get
involved," says Gere. "He wants the windows up and the radio
off."
But Eddie does get involved in ways he couldn't foresee, and that leads to
self-doubt and despair, feelings he tries to soothe through his relationship
with a sympathetic young hooker (Shannon Kane).
"Shannon and I got to know each other quite well," says Gere, who
shares a bedroom scene with the actress. "Over the process of working on
the scenes, she and I got very comfortable with one another, very comfortable
and very trusting.
"It's never easy (to film a sex scene)," Gere points out, but he adds
building trust between actors "makes it very possible."
Gere has sizzled as a leading man over the years, first catching moviegoers
attention as street punk Tony in Looking for Mr. Goodbar with Diane
Keaton in 1977 and then as swaggering male prostitute Julian in American
Gigolo (1980), which included Gere in a very controversial (for the time)
full-frontal nude scene. And he set the bar high for romantic moments as he
swept Deborah Winger off her feet in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982).
Then there was Pretty Woman. Released 20 years ago next month, Garry
Marshall's rom-com is about a businessman (Gere) who falls for a call girl with
a heart of gold whom he hires to accompany him to business events. It propelled
Julia Roberts to superstardom.
"Yeah, we had a great time," Gere says of making Pretty Woman.
"Garry is someone I talk to, and I talk to Julia quite a bit. Julia was
the youngest, but in many ways we were all very young then."
Gere may be teaming up with Marshall again. He's touted to star in Marshall's
remake of the 1948 Frank Capra classic State of the Union, which starred
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. (Annette Bening is rumoured to play the
Hepburn role.) Gere confirms he's had discussions, but nothing has been signed
yet.
An accomplished musician who played Danny Zucco in the 1973 London production
of Grease in 1973 (the part that later helped launch John Travolta's
screen career), his work in the Oscar-winning, made-in-Toronto musical Chicago
earned Gere a Golden Globe as tap-dancing shyster lawyer Billy Flynn.
"We had a great time in Toronto on Chicago," Gere says.
"The U.S. has decided they can do tax rebates too, so we don't get up
there much now," he adds with a chuckle. "As much as I like shooting
in Toronto, I like to be home."
Home for Gere, his wife, Law & Order actress Carey Lowell, and their
10-year-old son, Homer, is about 70 km north of New York City in exclusive
Westchester. Last year, they opened the eight-room Bedford Post Inn, offering
luxurious lodgings in a renovated 18th-century house.
Gere bristles at the suggestion he's becoming a hotelier. "This is not a
career for me," he says coolly. He says he and Lowell opened the inn as a
place for a first-class restaurant in the area. And they've achieved that. Gere
proudly says the Farmhouse dining room made Esquire's list of best new
American restaurants last year.
"I enjoy food," says Gere, adding his preference is for
"anything Mediterranean," and he's pleased with chef Brian Lewis's
"Mediterranean filtered through an American sensibility" approach.
Gere rarely makes more than one or two movies a year, which gives him time to
devote to humanitarian causes. A Buddhist since the late 1970s, he's a
dedicated follower of the teachings of Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and an
outspoken advocate of human rights in Tibet.
As selective as he is about work, what made him sign on for Brooklyn's
Finest, a small-budget movie that has taken more than a year to get into
theatres since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival? "I liked the
script a lot," Gere says. "Antoine and I worked on the character and
we were on the same wavelength about what to do with it."
The movie was written by Michael C. Martin, a Brooklyn transit worker in his
mid-20s who penned the screenplay as part of a scriptwriting contest he entered
five years ago to raise some cash to cover car repairs. Martin didn't win, but
the script eventually sold.
Gere is full of praise for the neophyte writer: "How would you think it
was possible to write something this sophisticated out of nowhere?"
Marlon Wayans Is Ready to Play Richard Pryor
Source: www.eurweb.com - From
the LA Times
(February 22, 2010) *When it was announced
that Marlon Wayans and not Eddie
Murphy would be
portraying Richard Pryor in the
long-discussed biopic of the comedy giant, the news was greeted with Internet
jeering.
Wayans wasn’t surprised when he read the disparaging comments — you can’t hang
your star on films like “White Chicks” and “Little Man” without consequences.
“Look, I want to be able to make the stupidest movies ever, because they make
people laugh and they make money,” Wayans recently said with a smirk. “But
that’s not all I want to do. And I think I’ve proven to some people — the ones
paying attention — that I can do more. Everybody else, well, they can wait and
see and make up their mind.”
Wayans believes he is on the verge of winning over sceptics and just
maybe establishing a name for himself that goes beyond his status as “the other
Wayans” — or maybe even “the other-other-Wayans.” The 37-year-old is the
youngest of 10 children in the show-business brood that came to fame on “In
Living Color,” the 1990s television show created and written by Keenen Ivory
Wayans and Damon Wayans. His position in the family photo has given Marlon
Wayans plenty of opportunity — he and sibling Shawn got their own show, “The
Wayans Brothers,” for four seasons on Fox beginning in 1995 — but also an
ongoing challenge in establishing anything resembling an individual identity.
“I have no complaints,” Wayans said, “but I do have a plan. I love doing comedy,
but I also love to do drama.”
Read MORE of this LA Times article HERE.
‘Hurt Locker’ The Big Winner At British Film Awards
Source: www.thestar.com - Jill Lawless
(February 22, 2010) LONDON—Britain’s love of the underdog
triumphed Sunday as intimate war drama “The
Hurt Locker” beat 3D spectacular “Avatar”
to take six prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards.
Kathryn Bigelow won the best-director battle with “Avatar’s James
Cameron, her ex-husband who grew up near Niagara Falls, Ont., for her intense
depiction of a bomb-disposal squad in Iraq.
“It means so much that this film seems to be touching people’s hearts and
minds,” Bigelow said.
Bigelow also beat out Vancouver-based director Neill Blomkamp, who was
nominated for “District 9.”
Both films had eight nominations for the British awards, considered an
indicator of possible success at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles next month.
“Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” each has nine Oscar nominations.
“The Hurt Locker” also took British prizes for original screenplay
cinematography, editing and sound.
“Avatar” won awards for production design and visual effects for its
vivid vision of a distant moon populated by a blue-skinned species called the
Na’vi.
“Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal dedicated the best-film prize to the
hope of peace “and bringing the boys and girls back home.”
Bigelow also paid tribute to soldiers serving in Iraq, and said the goal
of the film was “putting a bit of a spotlight on a very, very difficult
situation.”
“I hope that in some small way this film can begin a debate ... and bring
closure to this conflict,” she said.
The “Avatar”/”Hurt Locker” battle initially seemed like a
David-and-Goliath story. Cameron’s last feature, “Titanic,” won 11 Oscars,
including picture and director. “Avatar” is a global phenomenon that has taken
more than $2 billion (U.S.) at the box office.
“Hurt Locker” has made about a hundredth that much.
“It did not seem like a slam-dunk commercial proposition,” said Boal, who
thanked Bigelow and the cast for making “an unpopular story about an unpopular
war.”
Montreal-born Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won the Adapted Screenplay
award for “Up in the Air.”
Homegrown British talent did not go home empty-handed. Rising star Carey
Mulligan was named best actress for playing a precocious teenager in 1960s
London in “An Education.”
Colin Firth was named best actor for his performance as a bereaved
Englishman in California in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.”
Firth said he almost declined the award-winning role, which has also
earned him an Oscar nomination. He said he had been about to turn it down by
email “when someone came to repair my fridge.” He never sent the email.
“I would like to thank the fridge guy,” Firth said.
Firth said he had emerged from working with fashion
designer-turned-director Ford “better groomed, more fragrant and more nominated
than one has ever been before.”
Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, already a hot Oscar favourite, won the
supporting actor prize for his turn as a chilling, charming Nazi colonel in
“Inglourious Basterds.” The supporting actress award went to Mo’nique for
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”
Director Duncan Jones took the award for best British debut for his
lost-in-space drama “Moon.”
A tearful Jones, whose father is musician David Bowie, said it had taken
him a long time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.
“Finally, I think I’ve found what I love doing,” he said.
Earlier, Kate Winslet, Audrey Tautou, Quentin Tarantino, Vanessa Redgrave
and “Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart all walked the red
carpet before the ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House, with Prince William
on hand to add real royalty to showbiz aristocracy.
Mulligan turned heads in a sweeping monochrome floral dress by Vionnet.
She described the experience of being nominated as “like being punched —
nicely.”
Prince William, wearing a traditional Saville Row suit, received huge
cheers and stopped to chat with waiting fans and have his picture snapped
outside the opera house.
William presented a lifetime achievement award to Redgrave, and also was
announced as the new president of the British Academy of Film and Television
Arts, which presents the awards — a role once held by his grandfather, Prince
Philip.
“Fish Tank,” Andrea Arnold’s drama about a feisty London teenager, was
named best British film. The award for best animated feature went to Pixar’s
soaring 3D adventure “Up,” and Jacques Audiard’s prison thriller “A Prophet”
was named best foreign-language film.
“Twilight” actress Kristen Stewart won the rising star award, decided by
the public.
Stewart was cheered loudly by hundreds of film fans when she arrived at
the opera house — but even she admitted to being star-struck.
“I’m sitting right behind Kate Winslet, and every time she turns around I
wish I didn’t exist,” Stewart said. “I love her.”
Nate Parker As Ben Chavis: New Film ‘Blood Done Sign My Name’
Puts Justice On Screen
Source: www.eurweb.com
- By Kenya M. Yarbrough
(February 19, 2010) *The new film, “Blood Done Sign My Name” is based on the true story of the role of
local high school teacher Ben Chavis in the civil unrest created by the 1970 racially motivated murder
of a black Vietnam veteran and the acquittal of the white businessman who was
charged.
Nate Parker, who stars in the film as young activist Ben Chavis, is known
for his roles in a number of other civil rights-focused period pieces including
“Pride,” “The Great Debaters,” and “The Secret Life of Bees, but the young star
told reporters that he looks for roles that take on the historical plights of
his community because they very often mirror the same struggles the community
deals with today.
“My attraction is that I see such similarities in the projects of the
period as I do in the now – 2010. Dr. King said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere.’ So it’s my duty as an artist and as a person of
the community to posture against injustice,” he said.
“When these projects come along, what it gives to me is a model or a
blueprint of solution that I can take into 2010. I can say, ‘This is how we
deal with incarceration in the black community. This is how we deal with HIV
and disease.’”
Parker said that he looks to heroes like Dr. Ben Chavis in his work and
in his personal life.
“I see the path that he’s taken and the sacrifices that he’s made,
whether it’s been going to prison or being shot at standing as a pillar in the
community and I say, that’s what I want to do,” the actor stated. “If it means
me using my platform as an actor and getting in the position of using the media,
so be it.”
He confessed that he does often choose projects like “Blood Done Sign My
Name” because if he’s going to be typecast, he wants to be typecast as someone
who wants to be a leader and wants to fight the injustices in the community. He
added that the chose this film in particular because it steps a little bit
outside of the familiar civil rights journeys that are often refreshed in the
media.
“I chose this one for two reasons,” he began. “One, because it deals with
civil rights, but not civil rights as we’re used to it in 1964-65, but in 1970
this brother was killed. I read the book after (director) Jeb Stuart came to
me, and I looked at Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo police brutality [cases] and
the young brother that just got killed in Chicago and I said, ‘There are so
many similarities in the protecting and the paternalism, and the sweeping under
the rug that I can use this to go out and speak.”
Parker has been noted for committing to working to provide educational
opportunities for young males via Wiley College, the Marshall, TX school
brought to fame by “The Great Debaters.”
“I often speak at Wiley College and I just did a keynote [address]
there,” he said. “So to be able to go out and talk about this film as a tool
for education of what we can be doing for even things that are plaguing that
campus, I think there is power in that.”
Dr. Chavis, now 62 years old, was quite pleased with the final cut of the
film, calling it “phenomenal” in its accuracy even though he was not directly
involved in the making of the film.
“Tim Tyson wrote the book, and the screenplay was based on the book. The
book, however, is an adaptation of Tyson’s PhD dissertation. When he was a
student in graduate school working on his dissertation, I gave him extensive
interviews,” Chavis clarified. “In a sense it was probably better that I didn’t
get involved with the movie because truth doesn’t need an arbiter.”
“So I wasn’t on the set,” he continued. “I didn’t have to coach him. When
I saw the first rough cut, I had to reach over and shake the hand of [director]
Jeb Stuart. This is not your average Hollywood film. The degree of accuracy is
phenomenal. Most times, to sensationalize this or to sensationalize that, you
take away from what really happened. This is one of the most accurate movies
I’ve ever seen.”
“To capture all of this in film was a bold effort,” Chavis declared.
“There have been a lot of movies about the Ku Klux Klan. This is the only movie
I know that shows that the Ku Klux Klan has a theology; they have a perverted
sense of religion – they’re burning crosses in the name of Jesus.”
Chavis was equally impressed with the portrayal by Parker.
“He captured the tension – you could see it in his face – the passion,
but also the responsibility of leadership. When you made a speech back in those
days and people followed you, you were accountable for what you said, for how
you say it, where you say it and you have to look around to see who’s behind
you.”
Chavis recalled that looking behind him during that march referred to
both keeping watch and protection over those following you, but also looking
out for those in opposition.
“That march from Oxford (North Carolina) to Raleigh took us three days.
We were shot at on the way. My biggest concern wasn’t just to make it to meet
with the Governor, but to make sure nobody got hurt. It was clear this was a
pivotal moment in Oxford,” he said.
“Dr. King had just been killed two years earlier in ‘68, so there was
already a fear among adults,” he recalled. “When I led those students out of
the class to the courthouse, it was to teach them something about life in real
time and the film captured that.”
Chavis reflected on the fact that two Southern states voted for a black
candidate for US President in the 2008 election and related that to the youth
movement more than 38 years before.
“It was the youth vote. To some extent, young people’s consciousness is
beginning to transcend the racist and racial stereotypes that were commonplace
in 1970. The school that I led the students out of was a segregated school even
in 1970, even though the Brown decision was in 1954,” he said, “but there were
young people pushing that envelope and I think it was captured very well in
this film.”
“It happened in 1970 post civil rights movement, post King being
assassinated, and this young brother Henry Marrow was killed,” Parker added.
“Not only was there no justice, but the Chamber of Commerce paid the bail of
the people that actually did it, who were admittedly a part of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“I had to go after the mindset of black people,” Chavis recalled. “I
thought, ‘How am I going to get these brothers and sisters to stand up when
they are used to these kinds of things?’ While we were focused on Henry
Marrow’s murder, there were many murders. This was commonplace. What made it
distinctive was that we stood up about it.”
Chavis agreed that progress has been made throughout the nation as well
as in his hometown of Oxford, there is much more progress to be made.
“This movie cannot be shown in Oxford,” he said, “because instead of
desegregating the theatre they just closed it. People that live in my hometown
are going to have to drive 30 miles to see this movie. Has there been progress
in Oxford? Yes. Has Oxford become a racial Utopia? No.”
“Blood Done Sign My Name,” also starring Lela Rochon, Darrin Henson, and
Rick Schroeder, is in theatres nationwide.
Indie Goes 3-D
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Guy Dixon
(February 19, 2010) The young women
snarl and sneer and do battle like street fighters, if stylized ones in
blue lipstick and black leggings. Behind them is a special-effects green screen
for overlaying movie backgrounds, riffing off 1970s kung fu, The Matrix
and a version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
In front of the action, the cameraman dons strange, Blade Runner-like
glasses. And at one point, a technician covered head to toe in green holds a
metal rod in front of the camera. Once he’s digitally removed from the picture,
the rod will become a projectile hurtling toward the audience.
The fighters are in fact models wearing clothes made by Toronto-based
designer Nada Shepherd, and the film shoot is just one example of the growing
use of 3-D among lower-budget productions, particularly in creative hubs such
as Toronto and Montreal. No longer the purview of just IMAX and Hollywood
blockbusters, 3-D is exploding and hurling toward audiences from all levels of
film and video making like never before.
Shepherd had been looking for a new way to show off her designs and grab
people’s attention. For months, she had been batting around ideas for a fashionvideo with Toronto
director Grant Padley. Then she saw Avatar.
“I’ve never had a project go to fourth gear so ridiculously quickly. Once
we had a 3-D cinematographer, we had a concept within days,” Padley says. The
video for Nada Designs is billed as the first 3-D fashion presentation of its
kind and will be shown prior to Toronto’s Fashion Weekat the end of
March. At first, the idea was to keep the film hush-hush to heighten
anticipation, but now they’re talking about it because of another fashion 3-D
film due next week: U.K. fashion powerhouse Burberry will be shooting its
runway show in 3-D and screening it to fashion insiders in various fashion
centres from Paris to Tokyo.
“ Colour is best used when it is designed
properly, and that’s even truer of 3-D. If you have a very pedestrian treatment
of 3-D, it’s like a [garden-variety] treatment of colour. ”— Sean MacLeod Phillips
Driving 3-D’s spread is new and cheaper Hollywood-grade 3-D technology,
such as the $21,000 (U.S.) stereoscopic camera from Panasonic. And with this
accessibility, the prediction is that it’s only a matter of time before someone
makes the Citizen Kane of 3-D, creating an entirely new 3-D cinematic
language far surpassing director James Cameron’s alien landscapes in Avatar.
No one is happier than Tim Dashwood. The Toronto-based specialist in 3-D
and the cinematographer for the Nada Designs video, says, “We’ve been speaking
to people for about a year and half now, bringing them into the office and
talking to them about 3-D and saying that 3-D is the future. No one really got
back to us until Avatar started winning the weekends [at the box office,
where it has now made $670-million]. By that second weekend, everyone started
calling. The floodgates opened.”
Dashwood says he has since signed a deal with a Canadian director – he
couldn’t specify who due to a confidentiality agreement – to shoot a 3-D
feature film with a budget of only around $1-million, tiny by 3-D standards. Avatar
reportedly cost roughly $230-million (U.S.) to shoot. It’s also a tiny
fraction of the $170-million budget for Robert Zemeckis’s 2004 animated film The
Polar Express, also released in 3-D. However, short IMAX documentaries and
concert films are typically made for under $10-million, although some estimates
pegged 2008’s U2 3D as having cost around $15-million.
Toronto-based cinematographer Tim Dashwood says it took the Avatar
phenomenon to ignite interest in 3-D.
“The perception is that you can’t do a [feature-length] 3-D movie for
less than $10-million. With our technology … we’re proving otherwise,” Dashwood
says, adding that he can shoot in 3-D for as little as 12 to 15 per cent added
to the total budget.
The 3-D community still has that old Creature From The Black Lagoon
gumption. Dashwood and other cinematographers often custom-make 3-D camera rigs
for shoots, for example. Dashwood is also selling 3-D editing software he’s
developed for $389 (U.S.), far less than the cost of a professional editing
suite. The software is a plug-in for Final Cut, the popular editing software
that helped transform indie filmmaking by giving home computers the
capabilities of a professional editing suite. Dashwood’s plug-in allows users
to adjust disparities between the two streams of footage that combine to create
a 3-D effect. Film editors can now perform the complicated synchronizing of
left-eye and right-eye images on a laptop.
As Munro Ferguson, an animation director heavily involved in 3-D
animation at the National Film Board of Canada’s StereoLab project in Montreal,
says, “What’s great for people interested in 3-D as an art form is that there are
so many new tools becoming available. ... It’s becoming really accessible to
independent filmmakers and artists from all kinds of different fields.”
The NFB’s StereoLab uses a computer drawing system developed by another
Canadian pioneer, Mississauga-based IMAX and called SANDDE, for Stereoscopic
Animation Drawing Device. An animator wearing 3-D polarizing glasses holds a
wand and draws in the air while watching the results in simulated 3-D on a
screen. Although it takes many layers of technology to create a 3-D animated
landscape, including steps such as digitalizing simple hand drawings if
necessary, SANDDE then allows the animator to draw in the environment itself.
The glasses are key. They aren’t the flimsy red and cyan kind, which made
a comeback in the 1980s. That technology is still used to create cheap 3-D
effects on Internet videos. But the current wave is based on polarizing lenses,
the kind worn to watch Avatar and used back in the 1950s, which separate
and direct two slightly different versions of an image to each eye, creating
the stereoscopic effect.
But the biggest, new development, say those in the industry, is the
ability to do away the complicated synchronization that used to be necessary in
the projection booth. The slightly different left-eye, right-eye images now
both come out of the same lens on the projector, rather than two. They flicker
too quickly to notice, and all the viewer sees is the 3-D. What theatre owners
and distributors see is the wider profit margin of the simplified equipment.
Still, 3-D has one image problem: the hangover from its sensationalist
past, like the looming claw rising from the black lagoon in the 1950s. Much of
the current wave still plays up the wow factor – from the Art Gallery of
Ontario’s screenings of Egypt 3D: Secrets of the Mummies at one end of
the spectrum to Tinto Brass (Caligula) and other porn directors
announcing 3-D projects at the other. Meanwhile, YouTube is introducing 3-D
video capabilities. And electronics companies such as Sony are pushing hard
into 3-D televisions and home video.
But Sean MacLeod Phillips, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based director of
photography who is pioneering new camera set-ups and other 3-D technologies,
warns that the creativity now has to match the tools. He stresses that 3-D has
to be seen as its own art form, rather than an add-on to 2-D. He makes the
comparison to the use of colour film.
“Colour is best used when it is designed properly, and that’s even truer
of 3-D. If you have a very pedestrian treatment of 3-D, it’s like a
[garden-variety] treatment of colour. It definitely adds some sizzle, but it
doesn’t really help the drama unless the person actually takes charge of it and
designs it, the way an art director uses colour in a film, or a cinematographer
uses light and composition. Those are all design elements. It’s not something
where you flip a button and suddenly it becomes 3-D.”
Some predict that 3-D will find its true, artistic fulfilment in the
lower-budget indie works. The NFB’s Ferguson notes that now even the latest
films by emerging filmmakers working for the film board’s Hothouse
apprenticeship will be in 3-D.
“3-D filmmaking was pioneered by a bunch of amateurs working in their
basements all over the world. And even a lot of the people who are big
Hollywood filmmakers like Cameron and Zemeckis, they started off as 3-D
enthusiasts when they were kids. So it’s not top-down, it’s bottom-up,”
Ferguson says.
Cree Director Neil Diamond's Real Look At Reel Indians
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Geoff Pevere
(February 19, 2010) When Neil Diamond was a boy growing
up on a James Bay Cree reserve, he loved
spending Saturday nights in church basements watching movies. Some of his
favourites were Westerns. Still, there was always something wrong with the
picture.
"I didn't even really think about it much until I left the
reserve," the director of the documentary Reel Injun said over a
sandwich during the Toronto International Film Festival last September. ``They
were just movies. But then people started asking me these questions, like `Do
you still live in teepees?' `Do you still ride horses?' `Why isn't your hair
long?' And, `why is it curly?'"
He shakes that curly hair and laughs.
"I began to realize that people had a very fixed idea of what my
people were, and I wanted to find out just where that idea came from."
The result is Reel Injun, a feature-length documentary
investigation of a century-plus of popular images of aboriginal North
Americans.
It's a journey that takes Diamond literally across a continent to
California (where, among other commentators, he queries Marlon Brando's
notorious Oscar-night proxy Sacheen Littlefeather).
Figuratively, it's a trip across a much vaster terrain: to the constantly
shifting landscapes of stereotypes and symbology, from romantic reverence to
racist misrepresentation, and from pro-native anti-capitalist Soviet Cold War
propaganda to the Inuit-generated triumph of Atanarjuat.
And what's with all these white people – such as the Hollywood Indian
icon Iron Eyes Cody – who pretended to be native American even when they
weren't on camera?
"I had no idea it was going to turn out like this," says
Diamond, who grew up on the Waskaganish First Nation in western Quebec and
opted to appear in his own movie to drive home the theme of first-person
discovery.
"It started with seeing people like Burt Lancaster playing Indians
in movies, and I thought I'd make a funny half-hour movie about white people in
native drag. It was going to be called I'm Not Indian But I Play One on TV.
"But then our research started and it just grew into this massive
idea. All these different elements started to come into it. Like stereotypes.
Where do they come from? Do they come from film? Literature? TV? The German
fascination with natives. The American love-hate fascination with native
Americans. And ultimately, the attempt by us to make our own images. It was so
rich it just kept on growing."
Fish Tank: Newcomer Katie Jarvis Shines In Off-Beat Coming Of
Age Tale
Source: www.thestar.com
- Peter Howell
Fish Tank
(out of four)
Starring Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender and Kierston Wareing. Written and
directed by Andrea Arnold. 124 minutes. At the Cumberland. 18A
(February 19, 2010) In a year less crowded with new young talent, Katie Jarvis
might now be getting fittings
for her Oscar nomination dress.
She's the 19-year-old star of Fish Tank, the new Andrea
Arnold film belatedly arriving in Toronto theatres following its award-winning
bow at Cannes 2009.
Jarvis has been overshadowed by the success of Carey Mulligan in An
Education and Gabourey Sidibe in Precious: Based On the Novel
"Push" by Sapphire. It's almost as if there's an unwritten law
that the spotlight can shine on only so many new faces at one time.
Too bad, because Jarvis excels in the role of Mia, a terse 15-year-old
living in British council flat hell who is a study in repressed rage – at least
until the arrival of her mother's new boyfriend .
The aptly titled Fish Tank has the contours of a coming-of-age
saga, although it's not a conventional one by any means. Arnold's follow-up to Red
Road, her harrowing surveillance drama, further demonstrates the British
writer/director's late-reveal style of filmmaking that's grounded in strong character
development.
The final act of Fish Tank is impossible to predict, and it might
be dismissed as improbable and even preposterous, if not for the careful
layering of personalities and motivation that precedes it.
Much of this has to do with the performance by Jarvis, who defines the
concept of naturalistic acting. Word has it that this unschooled actor was cast
after Arnold spotted her arguing with her boyfriend at a train station. A
station that is actually seen in the film, part of the dreary urban landscape
that is much of modern Britain.
Mia lives with blousy mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) and younger sister
Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) in a crowded public housing flat that is emblematic
of shattered dreams.
Much of what has gone before in Mia's life and much that we witness is
understood rather than explained.
She isn't attending school, for whatever reason, and she has a substance
abuse problem that hasn't yet completely consumed her – although you know it
eventually will.
Other teens treat her with both scorn and wariness, because they never
know when she might explode. She is capable of warmth, but her instincts
invariably lead her to trouble – as when she takes pity on a chained horse
whose owners object to her meddling.
The only thing motivating Mia is thoughts of a career as a hip-hop
dancer.
She has a talent for dancing and a hunger to get better – but money and
inspiration are in shorter supply than compassion and caring.
Then mom brings home new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), a hunk
with a ready smile and a roving eye.
Without warning, Mia finds herself both attracting and reciprocating
feelings of desire.
There will be a temptation to judge Fassbender's character, since Mia is
a year younger than the British age of sexual consent.
But Connor is more horndog than pedophile, and he's not completely
without conscience, as he shows in an interlude where he takes the entire
family on a Sunday drive. He is as caught up in the moment as Mia is, and he
lives in a neighbourhood where rough justice is the only law that anybody
knows.
Fish Tank attains aspects of a thriller as it proceeds towards its
unforeseen conclusion. But at all times it remains a solid character study
about lonely and desperate people, who seek only to escape the invisible glass
walls that surround them.
Defendor: Woody Harrelson Shines As Saviour Of Steeltown
Source: www.thestar.com
- Linda Barnard
Defendor
(out of four)
Starring Woody Harrelson, Kat Dennings, Elias Koteas and Sandra Oh. Written and
directed by Peter Stebbings. 95 minutes. At AMC Yonge-Dundas. 14A
(February 19, 2010) The antidote for all those brooding comic-book superheroes
wrestling with inner torment
and battling computer-generated baddies can be found in a seriously dedicated
dude with a duct-tape D on his sweater and a jar of marbles as his secret
weapon.
First-time Canadian director Peter Stebbings presents a sweetly engaging
and very watchable take on an unlikely hero tale with Defendor, which premiered
at the Toronto film festival last year.
Woody Harrelson is superb
as Arthur Poppington, a 40-something man-child who truly believes he is
Defendor, self-appointed protector of the citizens of Hamilton from
"punks." (There's no attempt to hide Steeltown's gritty, wintry
identity; the radio call-in show signs in from "the Hammer" and
locals thumb tabloid-size copies of The Spectator.)
We first meet Arthur as he undergoes a psychiatric assessment with a
sympathetic court-appointed shrink (Sandra Oh) after his arrest for dumping a
local drycleaner head-first into a garbage can. Arthur has his reasons for
doing it, but he's not telling. "It's classified," he says evenly.
A flagman for the city, he's been squatting in the municipal works yard,
perfecting his arsenal of homemade punk-busting weaponry. At night, Arthur dons
his "uniform" of bike helmet, utility belt and face-paint mask to
take to the streets as Defendor. In between stopping crime, he's on the lookout
for Capt. Industry, the mythic "evil mastermind" he is sure is behind
the town's ills.
Stuck in the mindset of a comic-book-loving kid, steely-eyed Arthur is fond
of using hero-speak: "Trouble has a way of following me." So when he
"rescues" lippy Katarina (Kat Dennings), a crack-smoking teen hooker,
Arthur sees it as a civic duty and a chance to set her on the straight and
narrow. She sees it as a free place to crash and a gullible guy to rip off.
Dennings makes Katarina both tough and reluctantly tender, a trope that
could be an annoying stereotype in less-skilled hands. But Stebbings has given
her a lot to work with, and there's plenty of onscreen chemistry with
Harrelson's Arthur that makes us genuinely care about these characters.
Rhetorical questions have no place in Arthur's world. "Who writes
your dialogue, Spider-Man?" sneers Kat. "I write it myself," he
replies, slightly hurt.
Montreal actor Elias Koteas plays crooked cop Dooney with malevolent
glee. He's especially good when going toe-to-toe with Defendor/Arthur, who
tries to elicit information by squirting lime juice in his eyes. Take that!
Stebbings fills Defendor was humorous bits, comic treats dropped
in quickly and without fanfare. It gives the movie a proper pace, well
punctuated with laughs at the right time, and outrage and sympathy at others.
What makes the film work so well is Arthur's unrelenting seriousness and
dedication to the literal truth. He is a superhero; bullets cannot harm him. If
it happened on The Rockford Files, it must be true. This isn't a game to
Arthur and while others may find his mission hilarious, he will not waver.
"I can't relax," he protests. "Not while there are people
out there who need me."
John Rowley's score marches along nicely in the early scenes, sounding
like a vintage episode of TV's Superman as Defendor heads out to make
the gritty streets safe again in a utility bucket truck, the Mack bulldog hood
ornament similarly masked and labelled "Defendog."
There's another dimension of the superhero at work in Defendor and
a suggestion that this kind of work can be the business of mere mortals, too.
Taking on the mantel of protector is perhaps the most heroic deed of all.
Meet The New Muppet Master
Source: www.thestar.com
- Michael Cavna
(February 23, 2010) If the thought of watching Kermit the Frog on The Muppet Show in the 1970s leaves
you feeling warm and fuzzy, then you're a prime target for Kirk
Thatcher and his YouTube Muppet videos.
Thatcher is the Los Angeles-based creative talent who directed "Beaker's
Ballad," the latest official video to go viral with one million views.
Thatcher, then an effects supervisor, first met Jim Henson in 1987 – after
finishing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, he recalls – and by the next
year was working full-time for the Father of the Muppets.
"He was warm and fuzzy. He was genuinely above and beyond what you would
consider `nice,'" Thatcher says of Henson, who died in 1990.
Now, decades later, it is the 40-something Thatcher who helps bring such warmth
to Kermit and Miss Piggy. And in doing so, he is directing the Muppets to fuzzy
viral-video success.
Thatcher and his fellow puppeteers just released "Beaker's Ballad," which features the
"meeping" scientist Beaker – he of the bulging eyes and shock of
Day-Glo orange hair – straining to strum the '70s Kansas chestnut "Dust in
the Wind" before being barraged by labels signalling his "epic
fail."
With recent videos, "The Muppets are capturing people's attention again....
We do Muppet TV movies, but they don't ignite around the world like the
videos," says Thatcher, who won an Emmy in 1998 for the children's program
Muppets Tonight.
Last Thanksgiving, director and crew had their most popular video yet, with the
Muppets – including Gonzo and the frantic Animal on the drum kit – parodying
Queen's classic "Bohemian Rhapsody."
The official video on the studio's YouTube channel has been viewed more than 13
million times.
Nostalgia "is definitely part of it," Thatcher says of the videos'
virulence as they tap into '70s pop culture. "We had a list of 50, 60
songs – `American Pie,' big ballads that everyone sings along to – but
`Bohemian Rhapsody' rose to the top. It lent itself well to filming 60 to 70
characters."
The videos "are very much a group effort," notes Thatcher, who grew
up on the Sesame Street Muppets and The Muppet Show. The core
troupe of about 20 people, he says, shot the "Bohemian" video in one
day on a small sound stage in North Hollywood. He also notes that 70 Muppets in
a scene – as opposed to roughly a half-dozen in a scene – is "epic in
scale" for Muppeteers.
"It's fun, it's happy, it's nostalgic, it's safe – and it's like an homage,"
says Thatcher, who early in his career worked on creatures for such '80s
projects as Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi and Gremlins.
"It's light, fun and in keeping with the spirit of the Muppets."
So what nostalgic song or film scene might the Muppets tackle next? Thatcher
says he and in-house Muppets writer Jim Lewis joked to themselves about
spoofing Quentin Tarantino. With Kermit-esque characters.
The title, naturally: "Reservoir Frogs."
Sing A Song Of Power
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- R.M. Vaughan
(February 18, 2010) Now that the
United States has an African-American president and we have a Haitian-Canadian
Governor General, it’s easy to forget that only a generation ago many people of
colour in North America lived separate and unequal lives – lives distorted by
strict and openly racist regulations. When we watch footage of segregated
restaurants, swimming pools, movie
theatres and even water fountains, we can’t believe our eyes (and, yes, my
fellow Canadians, such things went on here too).
A moving new documentary, Soundtrack for a
Revolution, looks at the anti-segregation
protests in the United States through the era’s protest music – a key component
of the struggle that has been largely overlooked, or, worse, smothered in self
congratulatory nostalgia. As co-director Bill Guttentag notes, the songs sung
by protesters and activists, while beloved today, are rarely studied within
their full historical context (and are not given their due as powerful social
tools). Blending together blunt interviews with former activists,
still-shocking archival newscasts and subtle animation, the Oscar-winning
director brings the stifled segregationist epoch back to unhappy life.
“ People have trouble believing that this happened,
that it happened in the United States, and that it happened not that long ago.”
But Soundtrack For A Revolution is not all gloomy remembrance – the film
turns the tables by asking prominent musicians (the Roots, Wyclef Jean, Angie
Stone and John Legend, to name a few) to lovingly perform the very songs once
shouted out by angry school children, bus boycotters, striking garbage workers
and Martin Luther King Jr.
The result is a documentary that literally sings.
I’m not a big fan of the “cultural appropriation” debate, but, did the fact
that you are not African American become problematic while you were making the
film?
Well, you know, I think it’s an interesting question. I think the story, in a
way, belongs to everybody. In the same way that you would never want to say to
an African-American or Asian actor, “you can’t play Hamlet,” it’s the same idea
with making a film. Of course, you have to be sensitive to peoples’ stories,
but the storyteller can be of any ethnicity. You just have to try to tell the
best story that you can. It’s something I’ve thought about, for sure.
Fair enough. Why does popular music today not have the same social power
that it did then, or even during the punk era?
Well, as has been said in the film, the music gave people the ability to say
things, in song, that they couldn’t otherwise. I think it empowered people. The
interesting thing was that virtually everyone we interviewed started singing at
some point. Songs were completely part of the DNA of the movement. It’s a
different time now – what are the movements today? And what is fuelling them?
How important is the music, and how much of the importance is fuelled by
nostalgia?
I think people definitely thought about the music back then, all the time.
That’s why people sang to us. If you look at historical footage from the
movement, people were singing in churches, singing as they marched – singing
was a continual part of the movement. So, when they’re looking back at that
time now, I think it’s something they remember fondly, certainly, but it’s also
just true.
Do young African-Americans know about the civil rights movement?
I actually don’t think the question is about young African-Americans, I think
it’s about young people in general. I’ve had the chance to show the film in
schools, elementary schools to colleges and people just don’t know the story.
It’s not that they’re poor students, it’s that they haven’t been taught it.
The footage of segregated spaces is almost impossible to process.
It’s crazy, isn’t it? People have trouble believing that this happened, that it
happened in the United States, and that it happened not that long ago. A lot of
the people we interviewed said, “People say things haven’t changed, and they’re
wrong.” Things have changed a lot in their lifetimes – they remember the
“coloured” water fountains, they remember not being able to vote.
Some of the people who supported segregation, and there were many, must
still be around, or have descendents. Did you consider speaking to them?
We did consider that, and, like any film, you make choices about what you
include and what you don’t include. But I think there’s a film to be made from
that, you know, to find out where their heads were at. In fact, one of the
activists we interviewed recently reconciled with somebody who had attacked him
at a sit-in. The guy apologized and felt really bad about what he had done.
Let’s talk about We Shall Overcome. I keep expecting that song to
turn up in a car commercial.
Ha! Really? It probably won’t turn up in a commercial, because there’s somebody
who owns the copyright, and they’re pretty protective of it. But, is it
overused? Well, you have to ask yourself, why does a song have everlasting
power? Why is that song sung in liberation movements all over the world? It’s
sung as much today as it ever was. But you can’t explain it – what makes
anything iconic? I think the song speaks to hope.
Soundtrack for a Revolution opens Friday in Toronto.
FILM TIDBITS
Polanski Wins Prize In Berlin
Source: www.thestar.com
(February 20, 2010) BERLIN—Filmmaker Roman Polanski, still under house arrest in Switzerland,
won the
award for best director Saturday at this
year’s Berlin film festival for The Ghost Writer. The film’s producers accepted
the Silver Bear award on behalf of Polanski. Producer Alain Sarde said Polanski
told him he would not have attended the festival had he been free because the
last time he travelled to accept an award he “landed in jail.” Polanski is
under house arrest at his chalet in Gstaad, awaiting a Swiss decision on
whether to extradite him to the U.S. to face possible further sentencing in a
32-year-old sex case. The Turkish film Bal (“Honey”), about a 6-year-old
boy who stops speaking when his father disappears, won the top honour, the
Golden Bear for best film.
Brian White in Film About Love During
Obama Campaign
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 23, 2010) *Actor Brian
White has been cast in the romantic comedy
“Politics of Love,” a film
inspired by the real-life romances that blossomed during Sen. Barack Obama’s
presidential campaign. White will play a black volunteer coordinator working
for the local John McCain office who strikes unexpected sparks with the devoted
Indian Obama volunteer coordinator portrayed by Mallika Sherawat. Ruby Dee,
Gerry Bednob and Loretta Devine co-star in the film from director William Dear
(“The Perfect Game”). The screenplay was written by Gary Goldstein (“If You
Only Knew”). White currently has a recurring role on the TNT series “Men of a
Certain Age.” He next appears on the big screen in MGM’s 3D thriller “The Cabin
in the Woods,” hitting theatres in January. He most recently appeared in the
features “I Can Do Bad All by Myself,” “Twelve Rounds” and “Fighting.”
Albertans Helped Give Life To Na'vi
Source: www.thestar.com
- Lana Michelin
(February 24, 2010) RED DEER, Alta.–From
the blue-skinned Na'vi aliens to the mystical Tree of Souls,
some of the most jaw-dropping effects in the blockbuster movie Avatar were
made with the help of two Albertans. Ron Miller, a native of Innisfail, south
of Red Deer, is a facial technical director with Weta Digital who worked on
bringing the blue, three-metre-tall alien Na'vi to life on screen – along with
a host of scarier creatures from the plant Pandora. His colleague, Mark
Pullyblank from the Red Deer area, is a senior layout technical director at
Weta. He helped create the enormous tree in the movie that links all life forms
on the alien planet. Both Miller and Pullyblank work in New Zealand for Peter
Jackson's digital animation company that also helped create Lord of the
Rings and King Kong movie effects. But they started out half a world
away as Alberta kids who liked to draw and watch movies. "I can remember
in the dead of winter, lying in my bed in our little farmhouse (outside Red
Deer) and dreaming of working in the movies someday," recalled Pullyblank.
Today, he has not only contributed to Avatar, the biggest-grossing movie
ever made, he has also helped create films like Night at the Museum, Journey
to the Center of the Earth and Watchmen. "I occasionally find
myself sitting in a dark theatre watching the end credits.”If I'm patient
enough, I can catch my name scrolling by on the screen. I know no one else is
watching, but it still tickles," Pullyblank said. Miller's early
creativity was encouraged by his artistic mother. "As a child, I was
always drawing, watching movies and playing video games," recalled Miller,
who spent two years in the visual arts program at Red Deer College,
specializing in painting and printmaking. He eventually took 3-D animation at a
Calgary school, and began working at a series of different studios in Calgary,
Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton. Miller, whose film credits
include The Day the Earth Stood Still, was surprised when he first met
Pullyblank. "I couldn't believe there was someone else here at Weta that
was from the same area in Canada that I was from," Miller said.
::TV NEWS::
TV Organized By Content
Source: www.thestar.com
- Robert Cribb
(February 24, 2010) It’s the daily thumb workout: Scrolling
through hundreds of television
channels
splayed across the onscreen guide in a needle-and-haystack quest for some
worthy time-wasting.
There’s a better way. Rogers’ new launch guide service I’ve been playing with
applies some basic human editing to the channel guide, lumping together
channels according to content. So, instead of having to hunt for which station
is carrying the Leafs’ game, the entire sports broadcasting feast is laid out
for your viewing pleasure. There’s no better time to appreciate such luxury
than during the Olympics — the big daddy of all winter sporting television
events. There are a dozen or more channels showing regular Olympic content at
any given time.
And figuring out which is airing what is anyone’s guess. Let’s face it, we’re
not all entranced by the scintillation of televised curling. And while
cross-country skiing and shooting rifles at things may both be worthy
endeavours on their own, there remain some among us who don’t quite understand
their seamless integration into an Olympic-worthy sporting event. And so, a
single press of the “Guide” button on the remote convenes a menu of about 20
stations airing at least some Games coverage — all in one place. For even
greater precision, a single “mix” screen reveals live views of six common
Olympic stations including CTV, Sportsnet, OMNI 1, OLN and RDS. It’s not,
perhaps, the best list.
CBC and NBC far outdo many of those stations in their Olympic coverage, yet
appear nowhere on the “mix” list. But any time there’s human mediation, there
will be inexplicable decisions.
There are plenty of other content-focused applications here. Rogers’ “Daily
Essentials” option provides the same six pre-screenings of current kid shows,
news and weather stations. As the father of a 5-year-old, I can attest to the
overwhelming advantage of having six stations and their content displayed in
one place for speeding up the decision-making process of a young mind. It will
save you 19 minutes of channel surfing between stations spread across the
programming guide every afternoon.
Representing nothing less than a breakthrough television achievement,
Treehouse, Family Channel East and West, Nickelodeon, Teletoon and YTV are all
right there on one screen going head to head in a grudge match over your
child’s mosquito-like attention span.
Here’s the thing: It works.
Displaying the universe of choices brings unprecedented focus to the crucial
decision between Spiderman or My Friend Rabbit. There’s also a
launch guide option for On Demand programming, from movies and TV shows on The
Movie Network and specialty programming including NFL Network, Howard Stern and
Anime. We all still have our instinctive go-to channels, of course, for which
we require no guidance.
Mine is HBO Canada or the Movie Network, as it should be for all of you. But
for those all-too-common moments when our habitual stations fail us with
eyeball-offending litter, themed programming offers tender respite. It could be
better, of course, with more targeted content, such as a listing of all movie
dramas or comedies on right now. And I want to be able to type the word
“hockey” or “Up In The Air” and get a listing of every time programming with
those words is being aired.
If none of it is on now, I want to be able to find listings for future airings
so I can record it.
In other words, I want it to think more like the way I do. But this is a good
start.
Jill Scott Stars in Lifetime’s ‘Sins of the Mother’
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 20, 2010) *R&B singer and
actress Jill Scott (The No. 1
Ladies’ Detective Agency) headlines the
Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) original film “Sins of the Mother,” a
touching story about the harsh realities of love, forgiveness and the closest
of bonds between mother and daughter.
Based on author Carleen Brice’s moving novel, Orange Mint and Honey, the
movie features Scott as reformed alcoholic Nona, Nicole Beharie (“American
Violet”) as her daughter Shay and Mimi Rogers (“The Door in the Floor”) as
Nona’s sponsor Lois.
About ‘Sins of the Mother’
Graduate student Shay Dixon (Beharie) reaches a crossroad in her life
when she finds herself broke, burned out and unable to cope with the stress of
school.
With nowhere else to go, she embarks on a journey home to Tacoma,
Washington, to face her abusive, alcoholic, estranged mother, Nona (Scott).
When she returns home, Shay finds Nona living life as a recovered
alcoholic, with a new daughter and completely transformed.
Thrown by her mother’s new path, Shay must now accept Nona’s changes and
influences, including her sponsor Lois (Rogers) — all forcing Shay to move past
her pent-up anger and awaken her own relationships.
“Sins of the Mother” premiered Sunday, February 21 on Lifetime Movie
Network. Look for encore presentations on Wednesday 2/24 and Saturday 2/27 (at
8 PM & 12 AM).
Funny or Die Presents: Comedy Website Spawns TV Show
Source: www.thestar.com
- Jake Coyle
(February 19, 2010) NEW YORK–Will Ferrell and Adam McKay forged
their partnership years ago on
Saturday Night Live. Now, in a much different way, the two
are back on TV with a sketch comedy show.
On Friday at midnight, HBO Canada will premiere Funny or Die Presents, a new half-hour series that compiles clips from the comedy video
website that McKay and Ferrell co-created in 2007.
The show arrives as part of a new batch of HBO comedy. The Friday slate
also includes the premiere of The Ricky Gervais Show, the start of
Season 8 of Real Time With Bill Maher and Season 2 of The Life and
Times of Tim.
Funny or Die Presents is the fruition of a deal hatched in 2008
between the site and HBO, which purchased a piece of FunnyOrDie.com reportedly
for a price in the neighbourhood of $10 million (U.S.). There's further overlap
in that HBO airs the McKay and Ferrell-produced hit Eastbound & Down,
which is prepping a second season.
Funny or Die Presents represents an increasingly common fusion
between web-created content and television. When the series was announced,
Ferrell sarcastically asserted the deal was "the missing link moment where
TV and Internet finally merge."
The show is introduced by a 1950s-style TV host who intones: "Funny
or Die is at the forefront of computer technology, leading the way in
computer comedy programming. Tonight marks a departure from our usual business
model as we join the ever declining world of broadcast television."
McKay, best known as the director of comedies such as Anchorman: The
Legend of Ron Burgundy and Step Brothers, says "that joke is 70
per cent true and 30 per cent joking."
When FunnyOrDie.com was launched, it was rare in its combination of
professionally created content (from Ferrell, McKay and their Hollywood
friends) and user-generated videos that, if deemed funny enough by viewers,
could compete with the pros.
It has had some mammoth hits, such as "The Landlord" (nearly 70
million views) and the beloved series Between Two Ferns With Zach
Galifianakis. It has often capitalized on the news cycle by rapidly
creating timely videos. Videos submitted by users have been far less likely to
find viral success, but McKay believes the contributions have gotten "way
better."
Funny or Die Presents isn't the next Saturday Night Live –
it's somewhat slight, unabashedly cheap programming. McKay describes it as
"the least noted or developed TV show that's maybe ever been put on.''
"The whole concept of Funny or Die ... was the idea that
people could have a place to put up whatever they wanted to put up with no
notes and no filter. The TV show came out of that same spirit."
McKay was a writer at Saturday Night Live in the late 1990s. He
has occasionally written sketches, including one performed by Tina Fey as Sarah
Palin. In Funny or Die Presents, he sees an unfiltered sketch show not
beholden to network demands or audience expectations.
For frequent visitors to FunnyOrDie.com, the material on the HBO show
will look familiar: Will Ferrell as Abraham Lincoln with Don Cheadle as
Frederick Douglas in "Drunk History"; Rob Riggle and Paul Scheer in
"Designated Driver"; Fred Willard in "Space Cats."
"It has an energy to it," McKay says. "There are some
pieces that are brilliant and some that are kind of a mess. It feels really
kind of free."
The show, produced by FunnyOrDie.com creative head Andrew Steele, is a
step toward longer-form material. McKay's goal is to transition the site
further into TV and low-budget movies.
"That's probably the next big step for Funny or Die: to
continue to sort of blend the two," says McKay.
Native Voices Bring Olympics Home
Source: www.thestar.com
- Paul Watson
(February 20, 2010) VANCOUVER–There is no word for seconds in the
Mohawk language, which makes it
especially difficult to call the action in an Olympic ski race live for
television.
Tiorahkwathe Gilbert was the first among his people to broadcast Olympic men's super-G
in his native language Friday afternoon.
A rookie to sports commentary, he has spent months training for the
landmark moment. He's had long discussions with elders in coffee shops and at
kitchen tables to agree on the best way to express things the Mohawk haven't
had much cause to say before.
Gilbert doesn't want to be speechless in his TV debut when it's time to
explain that the only thing separating two skiers' runs is three one hundredths
of a second.
"We have a word for an hour, a minute, but we don't have a word for
a second," Gilbert explains. "So we'll say, 'In the time it will take
you to blink four times, or seven times or nine times.' "
For the first time in Canadian history, the Aboriginal Peoples Television
Network is providing play-by-play commentary of live sports in Cree, Mohawk,
Ojibway, Dene, Inuktitut, Michif and Oji-Cree.
Most of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit broadcasters calling the
Winter Olympics action for APTN are rookies recruited from communities across
the country and trained by veteran sportscaster Jim Van Horne.
Van Horne's dulcet voice is familiar to fans of hockey on TSN. He has
also broadcast from the Calgary, Sydney and Beijing Olympics. During the
Vancouver Games, he's working from APTN's Winnipeg studios, mentoring the aboriginal
broadcasters he coached.
Listening to Cree broadcasters call the action as the U.S. hockey team
beat Switzerland 3-1 on Tuesday, he didn't hear anything that sounded to his
ears like "Americans" or "United States."
When he brought it up, the teacher learned something from his students.
"About halfway through the game, I said, 'You haven't said anything
about the United States,' " Van Horne recalls. "He said, 'Oh yeah,
we're talking about the Long Knives.' Now that's a term that's been used to describe
the United States since before the Civil War.
Aboriginal languages are more descriptive, even poetic, than English.
Words frequently paint mental pictures rather than state cold facts.
Take a chair. In Mohawk, the word for chair, anitskwara, literally
translates as "it's where you place your back upper leg and butt to
alleviate pressure from the floor," says Gilbert, an elder, and former
ironworker, teacher and council chief on the Kahnawake reserve, near Montreal.
Offering someone a seat in Mohawk is a cinch compared to the word Gilbert
and the elders agreed he should say when skiers are racing against the clock.
It's a 44-character tongue-twister.
The effort to get such words just right is more than worth it, says
Tehawennahkwa Miller, 22, Gilbert's partner in the broadcast booth.
When young listeners, some of them future athletes, hear the Winter Games
called in their native tongues, "it's empowering that their own people are
represented at the Olympics, and know that they can do it, too," he says.
Miller is a Mohawk language teacher in Ohsweken, a village on the Six
Nations territory, near Brantford, Ont. One of his favourite Olympic words is wahoya'tarathenste,
which means: "He has ascended to the top."
It's ready, on the tips of the Mohawk broadcasters' tongues, for when an
athlete is headed for the medal podium.
Karliin Aariak, a 31-year-old Inuk designer, broadcaster and filmmaker
from Iqaluit, has a lot of experience covering sports. But she still had to
hone her skills for the opening and closing ceremonies.
She's spent a lifetime listening to non-Inuit mispronounce her name, so
she practised saying the name of each team's flag bearer to make sure she got
them all right.
But that wasn't her proudest moment. It came in the early minutes of the
opening ceremony, when Aariak told her people, in their own language, that they
were also hosts of the Winter Olympic games.
"It's the first time in Olympic history that an aboriginal group has
been a partner, so it was personally satisfying to be able to say that in
Inuktitut," she says.
"I hope this is a beginning and not one-time opportunity," she
adds, "so others have the chance to expose and use our language in
spreading the Inuktitut word."
For months, as Canadian athletes prepared for the Vancouver Games, their
countrymen were asked to believe. Gilbert has the word worked out in Mohawk to
help assure his people know they can.
It is tasetakh, literally "the thing that you take on your
journey," Miller says.
"We need to bring the pride back into our people and to tutor them
and structure them to believe in themselves," Gilbert says.
Source:Toronto Star
Dan Is No Hank, Fred Ewanuick Says
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Andrew Ryan
(February 24, 2010) In keeping
with modern political times, Fred Ewanuick is on a campaign of sweeping
change.
In his own unique, unforceful way, Ewanuick says there are absolutely no
similarities between his beloved Corner Gas character, Hank, and his
title role on Dan for Mayor (premiering Monday on CTV). And he really
means it.
“For one thing, right from the beginning, we decided Dan would never wear a
hat. And so far, so good,” says Ewanuick, speaking over the phone from
Whistler, B.C., amid the Olympic Games.
And, this time, Ewanuick is the star of the show. Paired with Hiccups,
which stars his former Gas castmate Nancy Robertson, on Monday nights, Dan
for Mayor spins off Ewanuick’s TV persona, albeit from a different
perspective. On the new show, the good-natured comic actor is smarter, funnier
and actually connected to the world around him.
Perhaps fittingly, the career path leading Ewanuick, 38, to his own TV series
reads like a Canadian slacker success story. Of Italian-Ukrainian lineage, his
family ran a trucking business in his hometown of Port Moody, B.C. While in
high school, he took theatre arts, “but I came up with every excuse in the book
not to have to do the plays because I was so nervous and shy,” he recalls.
Ewanuick eventually enrolled in a local college to study English, women’s
studies and theatre. . He failed all three. He then auditioned and was accepted
into the college’s two-year theatre intensive program. He lasted one year. “I
actually got asked to leave the theatre program,” he says sheepishly.
But providence arrived from, of all people, his godmother, who worked at
Science World in Vancouver. “She told me they needed show people,” Ewanuick
says, “and since I had theatre on my résumé, they hired me. I got paid to do
these little theatre shows and science demonstrations for kids. I loved it.”
Thereafter, Ewanuick applied his energies to acting full-time. He studied intensively
with revered Vancouver acting coach Shea Hampton.
He made his small-screen debut – playing a gnome – on The Addams Family
in 1998. Next came a succession of guest shots, on both Canadian shows,
including Cold Squad and Da Vinci’s Inquest, and U.S. network
series, such as Dark Angel, Monk and Tru Calling, that
were filming in town.
All Ewanuick’s legwork and training coalesced in early 2004 with the arrival of
an unassuming little Canadian sitcom called Corner Gas. Series creator
and executive producer Brent Butt took the central role of genial Brent Leroy,
who ran a gas station in fictional Dog River, Sask. Ewanuick was an immediate
fit as Brent’s childhood, and childlike, best buddy Hank, a genuine prairie dog
who loved the Saskatchewan Roughriders and always wore a hat; every day was a
bad-hair day for Hank.
The job lasted six seasons, with Corner Gas regularly pulling in a
viewing audience of a million-plus weekly. By Ewanuick’s account, the show hit
a groove by the second or third season, by which point all the actors stopped
acting and simply became the characters.
“It didn’t feel like work and everyone couldn’t wait to get on set every day. I
learned a lot from Corner Gas.”
Those lessons transferred over to Dan for Mayor, which is set in the
fictional burg of Wessex, Ont., and casts Ewanuick as easy-going barkeep Dan
Phillips, who exhibits some very un-Hank-like brash behaviour in the opening
episode: When Dan’s ex-girlfriend, Claire (Mary Ashton), announces that she has
recently become engaged, his immediate response is to blurt out that he’s
running for mayor. “Hank would probably go burn down her shed or something,”
Ewanuick says.
Booked for a 13-episode run, Dan for Mayor was created and written by Corner
Gas veterans Mark Farrell, Paul Mather and Kevin White, who devised the
title character with Ewanuick in mind.
For Ewanuick, the big change is longer work days. “I’m sort of doing Brent’s
job now, acting-wise,” he says. “On Corner Gas, I was only in a few
scenes each episode; now I’m in every scene, every day, which was an
adjustment. I really underestimated the workload.”
But the everyman is not complaining. There are few homegrown actors who can
jump from one prime-time series to another one and Ewanuick is wise enough to
appreciate the difference. “Oh, it’s rare, and I’m pretty grateful,” he says.
“In the Canadian TV industry, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around or
being choosy. I know I was really lucky to go right from Corner Gas into
this new show. It wouldn’t have been much longer before you would have seen me
doing commercials for the local audio-video store.”
Dan for Mayor launches on March 1 at 8:30 p.m. ET on CTV. Dan Is No Hank, Fred Ewanuick Says
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Andrew Ryan
(February 24, 2010) In keeping
with modern political times, Fred Ewanuick is on a campaign of sweeping
change.
In his own unique, unforceful way, Ewanuick says there are absolutely no
similarities between his beloved Corner Gas character, Hank, and his
title role on Dan for Mayor (premiering Monday on CTV). And he really
means it.
“For one thing, right from the beginning, we decided Dan would never wear a
hat. And so far, so good,” says Ewanuick, speaking over the phone from
Whistler, B.C., amid the Olympic Games.
And, this time, Ewanuick is the star of the show. Paired with Hiccups,
which stars his former Gas castmate Nancy Robertson, on Monday nights, Dan
for Mayor spins off Ewanuick’s TV persona, albeit from a different
perspective. On the new show, the good-natured comic actor is smarter, funnier
and actually connected to the world around him.
Perhaps fittingly, the career path leading Ewanuick, 38, to his own TV series
reads like a Canadian slacker success story. Of Italian-Ukrainian lineage, his
family ran a trucking business in his hometown of Port Moody, B.C. While in
high school, he took theatre arts, “but I came up with every excuse in the book
not to have to do the plays because I was so nervous and shy,” he recalls.
Ewanuick eventually enrolled in a local college to study English, women’s
studies and theatre. . He failed all three. He then auditioned and was accepted
into the college’s two-year theatre intensive program. He lasted one year. “I
actually got asked to leave the theatre program,” he says sheepishly.
But providence arrived from, of all people, his godmother, who worked at
Science World in Vancouver. “She told me they needed show people,” Ewanuick
says, “and since I had theatre on my résumé, they hired me. I got paid to do
these little theatre shows and science demonstrations for kids. I loved it.”
Thereafter, Ewanuick applied his energies to acting full-time. He studied
intensively with revered Vancouver acting coach Shea Hampton.
He made his small-screen debut – playing a gnome – on The Addams Family
in 1998. Next came a succession of guest shots, on both Canadian shows,
including Cold Squad and Da Vinci’s Inquest, and U.S. network
series, such as Dark Angel, Monk and Tru Calling, that
were filming in town.
All Ewanuick’s legwork and training coalesced in early 2004 with the arrival of
an unassuming little Canadian sitcom called Corner Gas. Series creator and
executive producer Brent Butt took the central role of genial Brent Leroy, who
ran a gas station in fictional Dog River, Sask. Ewanuick was an immediate fit
as Brent’s childhood, and childlike, best buddy Hank, a genuine prairie dog who
loved the Saskatchewan Roughriders and always wore a hat; every day was a
bad-hair day for Hank.
The job lasted six seasons, with Corner Gas regularly pulling in a
viewing audience of a million-plus weekly. By Ewanuick’s account, the show hit
a groove by the second or third season, by which point all the actors stopped
acting and simply became the characters.
“It didn’t feel like work and everyone couldn’t wait to get on set every day. I
learned a lot from Corner Gas.”
Those lessons transferred over to Dan for Mayor, which is set in the
fictional burg of Wessex, Ont., and casts Ewanuick as easy-going barkeep Dan
Phillips, who exhibits some very un-Hank-like brash behaviour in the opening
episode: When Dan’s ex-girlfriend, Claire (Mary Ashton), announces that she has
recently become engaged, his immediate response is to blurt out that he’s
running for mayor. “Hank would probably go burn down her shed or something,”
Ewanuick says.
Booked for a 13-episode run, Dan for Mayor was created and written by Corner
Gas veterans Mark Farrell, Paul Mather and Kevin White, who devised the
title character with Ewanuick in mind.
For Ewanuick, the big change is longer work days. “I’m sort of doing Brent’s
job now, acting-wise,” he says. “On Corner Gas, I was only in a few
scenes each episode; now I’m in every scene, every day, which was an
adjustment. I really underestimated the workload.”
But the everyman is not complaining. There are few homegrown actors who can
jump from one prime-time series to another one and Ewanuick is wise enough to
appreciate the difference. “Oh, it’s rare, and I’m pretty grateful,” he says.
“In the Canadian TV industry, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around or
being choosy. I know I was really lucky to go right from Corner Gas into
this new show. It wouldn’t have been much longer before you would have seen me
doing commercials for the local audio-video store.”
Dan for Mayor launches on March 1 at 8:30 p.m. ET on CTV.
The Shat To Star In Twitter-Based Pilot
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Brad Wheeler
(February 24, 2010) Hold on to
your hat -- an excrement-based television pilot is in the future for the man
called the Shat.
The straight poop, the Hollywood Reporter website says, is that William Shatner will star
in a CBS comedy project based on a popular profanity-laced but very funny
Twitter account, Shit My Dad Says.
That tweet trough, which boasts nearly 1.2 million followers, is the online
outlet for the irreverent musings of a hilarious old man who sees life through
kaka-coloured glasses.
The Twitter feed was created and is maintained by Justin Halpern, now an
Internet celebrity who describes himself thus: “I'm 29. I live with my
74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.”
The role – Shatner as the eponymous pappy – is a natural fit for the
78-year-old pop-culture icon. He most recently starred on ABC's legal dramedy Boston
Legal, winning an Emmy for his whimsical portrayal of the zinger-firing,
legend-in-his-own mind litigator Denny Crane.
The Montreal-born bon vivant is no stranger to Twitter ruminations; his own
account regularly updates fans on such things as his horse hobby and, recently,
his support for the U.S. hockey squad over our own boys.
The turncoat’s tweets are rarely funny, though, or even interesting. The Shat’s
latest cybercough: “So many priorities, so little time. Sometimes I wish I
could take a break and just ride my horses. What's your escape? My best, Bill.”
Well, Bill, some people’s idea of escape involves reading a funky tweet.
Whereas the Priceline.com pitchman's quotes are polite and fan-friendly, the
rough-cut philosophy of Halpern’s dad is priceless. One recent quip: “The baby
will talk when he talks, relax. It ain't like he knows the cure for cancer and
he just ain't spitting it out.”
With thoughts like that, the as-yet-untitled new show will write itself –
Twitter boldly goes where no microblogging has gone before.
TV TIDBITS
Donald Faison Likes ‘The Odds’ at CBS
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 19, 2010) *”Scrubs” alum Donald Faison has just been cast in the CBS pilot “The
Odds,” a move that has sparked rumours that his current series, “Scrubs,” may
soon be a done deal at ABC. The buddy-cop show from WBTV is set in Las Vegas,
“where the cops are as outrageous as the crimes they solve.” Faison will play
Tyler, the new lead homicide detective who took over for the recently demoted
Wade (Sullivan Stapleton).
Wanda Sykes to Receive GLAAD Media Award
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 19, 2010) *Wanda Sykes will join Drew Barrymore as honourees at
the 21st Annual GLAAD
Media Awards, to be held in New York on March 13 at the Marriott Marquis and in
San Francisco on June 5 at the Westin St. Francis. GLAAD announced Thursday
that Sykes will receive the Stephen F. Kolzak Award which is presented to an
openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in
promoting equal rights. “I am truly honoured to receive the Stephen F. Kolzak
award,” Wanda said in a statement. “I greatly appreciate the work that GLAAD
continues to do, promoting equality, fair representation and tolerance for our
LGBT community. I just pray that I don’t ruin what GLAAD has achieved with all
of my shenanigans.” Previous recipients of the Stephen F. Kolzak Award include
Rufus Wainwright, Melissa Etheridge, Bill Condon, Alan Ball, Ellen DeGeneres,
and Sir Ian McKellen. Drew Barrymore will receive the Vanguard Award, which is
presented to media professionals who have increased the visibility and
understanding of the LGBT community. Additional GLAAD Media Award ceremonies
will be held in Los Angeles on April 17at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.
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‘Top Model’ Takes Cycle 15 Search Online
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 22, 2010) *Tyra Banks is hosting an online search for the
upcoming 15th season of “America’s Next
Top Model.” “This is a chance for you to be seen by ME!” says Banks at
Tyra.com. “Forget about those long lines, and just send ‘em right here. I will
be looking at ALL of your pictures and choosing the girl that’s going to fly to
California to be on Top Model! “I wanna see all of you! From the Fiercely Real
(ya know, plus sized) to the ’’traight’ (skinny) models, just doin’ your
thang.” Women aged 18 to 27 who are 5ft 7in or taller are advised to send four
photos of themselves in a swimsuit to be considered for the competition. Banks
will post the winning photos on her Web site. Meanwhile, Cycle 14 of the series
premieres March 10 on The CW.
::THEATRE NEWS::
Mirvish Productions Unveils New Season
Source: www.thestar.com - Ben Rayner
(February 22, 2010) Mirvish
Productions’ announcement of its 2010-2011
season Monday lived up to the
lyrics of Stephen Sondheim’s “Comedy Tonight,” which was played as an overture
to the proceedings.
“Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone!”
Three of the shows had already been announced by David Mirvish, including
the co-production of the Stratford Festival’s 2009 hit, A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Also previously announced was the popular drag queen musical, Priscilla
Queen of the Desert, already a hit in Australia and London, stopping here
on its way to Broadway.
Last week, Mirvish revealed plans to play Billy Elliot, another
London/Australian/New York hit, in one of its theatres next February.
But the three surprises that Mirvish Productions revealed were also
pleasing prospects.
A brand-new production of the beloved Marsha Norman/Lucy Simon musical, The
Secret Garden, based on the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, will be coming
to Toronto after a European pre-engagement. The Menier Chocolate Factory,
currently the hottest theatre in London, announced that it would be bringing
its hit production of the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical classic,
Sweet Charity, direct from a run in the West End, complete with the full
London cast.
And to round out the season on another British note, the bittersweet
comedy, Calendar Girls, already a hit film and play, will have its North
American debut here, with an all-Canadian cast directed by Marti Maraden.
Mirvish also announced a whole series of “off subscription” specials that
included the previously announced Rock of Ages, Mamma Mia!, My Mother’s
Jewish Lesbian Wiccan Wedding, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn and Fiddler on
the Roof, as well as one big surprise: the Toronto premiere of Rod Beattie
in the latest Walt Wingfield show, Wingfield: Lost and Found.
Cirque's Elvis: That's All Right
Source: www.thestar.com - Richard
Ouzounian
(February 21, 2010) LAS VEGAS—Some people believe in the Easter
Bunny or Santa Claus. Not me. I'm
content to pin all of my trust on Cirque du Soleil,
especially after Friday night's immensely enjoyable opening performance of Viva Elvis! at the Aria Hotel here in Sin City.
It's no secret that this was one of the most troubled shows in the
organization's history and, after a distressingly bad press preview in December
had tongues wagging, Cirque's senior vice-president, Gilles St. Croix, admitted
that "The show is not complete. It is not what we want," and
postponed the opening six weeks.
During that time, Cirque showed the stuff it's made out of and went to
work. With director Vincent Patterson steering the ship while Cirque executives
cracked the whip, a total overhaul took place and the final result – while not
up there with Cirque's greatest shows – is certainly one that should fill its
Vegas theatre with happy patrons for years to come.
The original concept of telling the story of Elvis's life through four
narrators is mercifully gone. Nobody comes to a Cirque show to hear words.
There are still a few random appearances from Col. Tom Parker, Elvis's manager,
but they causing little damage, although the show would be better if they were
totally eliminated.
There were also a lot of damaging attempts in the early version to
represent the King onstage through various means, including a well-known Elvis
impersonator and a 25-foot high dancer (with the trademark pompadour) on
stilts.
All of that is gone as well. So what remains? Well, you get 90 minutes of
high-powered entertainment, full of splendid dancing, inventive staging, a
wonderful use of multi-media and over 30 Presley songs. In many ways, this is
the least Cirque-like of all their shows. There's almost no aerial legerdemain,
no nebulous New Age music, no melancholy musings and not a single damned clown
anywhere in sight. For that alone, let us give thanks.
Yet despite stripping away all those things that seemed to define Cirque,
the show is unmistakably one of their projects. That comes through in the
melding of sight, sound and movement that the Quebecois company does so well.
Whether it's a kinetic jitterbug set to "Blue Suede Shoes," a
montage of Elvis kissing scenes from the movies set to "Love Me
Tender," or a pull-out-all-the-stops staging of "Suspicious
Minds," there's enough eye candy to leave you wonderfully sated.
The last number, in particular, features a wonderful coup de theatre.
Having avoided letting anyone portray Presley all evening, virtually the entire
company become him as a never-ending line of Elvises fills the stage.
Everyone is wearing the trademark heavily fringed suit he often sported
in performance, but instead of his pristine white, they're in every colour of
the rainbow, each person's outfit dyed a distinctively different hue. And you
suddenly realize the fringe the hangs down from their sleeves is over twice its
usual length.
As the company moves its arms in huge, swinging arcs, while performing
some perfect pelvis-thrusting choreography, the effect is like watching an
explosion of colour and movement that pours off the stage.
And at that point, you can't wipe the smile off your face. You're happy
that you're seeing something so entertaining, that the proper tribute is being
paid to Elvis as a performer and that Cirque has pulled yet one more rabbit out
of their capacious theatrical hat.
Along with the joy, you feel relief and gratitude. Or as Elvis himself
might have said, "Thank you, thank you very much."
Youngsters' Business Musical Keeps The Doors Open
Source: www.thestar.com - Richard
Ouzounian
(February 21, 2010) There are two things that aren't supposed to
have long runs: young love affairs and new
Canadian musicals.
But Daniel Abrahamson and Rachel Brittain are
proving both of those statements to be wrong.
The young duo first met at Sheridan College's Musical Theatre Program in
2002 and have been together ever since.
And, even more amazingly, they've collaborated on a musical called Funny Business, which has
also enjoyed a surprisingly long life since its debut at the Fringe Festival in
2007.
Back then, I hailed their satirical musical look at the contemporary
business scene (co-authored with David Falk) as "fresh, tuneful and full
of talent."
It went from a sell-out run at the Fringe to an impressive 119
performance run at the Diesel Playhouse, closing shortly before that lamented
venue went dark because, in Abrahamson's words, "the management was going
south already."
A lot of people would have let it go at that, but not Abrahamson and
Brittain.
They rejigged their show, making it faster and funnier, provided it with
a recorded full band track, took it on the road to Vaughan and are now bringing
it back to the Bread and Circus Theatre at 299 Augusta Ave., from Monday
through Saturday night.
They're the first people to admit that a mainstream satirical musical
about the Bay Street business world might not belong at an alternative theatre
space in Kensington Market, but their motto has always been "Never say
no," and that was the only space available.
"I really believe this show has a lot to say to younger, hipper
audiences as well," insists Abrahamson. "It's all about the sham and
Shazam that lies behind a lot of the business world today and my peers can
understand that."
The 25 year-old Abrahamson and his 26 year-old partner have honed their
skills in all the venues that young actors have to use – her at Her Majesty's
Feast and him at the numerous Home Shows, as the charming man who sells you
that appliance that will steam away all the dirt from your floors.
But theatre is their real love and coming back to this show that they
created, performing in it for the first time, "is really kind of a meta
experience," according to Abrahamson.
The more level-headed Brittain concedes that "we had always hoped to
tour the show in this kind of easily movable format," but admits that it
took the two of them a while to figure out just how to shake the pieces into
place.
And the best part is that working together has made their relationship
stronger. "I thought `Dear God, if we can handle this, we can handle
everything!'" says Brittain.
While Abrahamson admits that "We have so much passion for what we do
and so much passion for each other. If those two passions can coexist, then why
not do it for life?"
So that's what's on their agenda. They've even set the wedding date: July
2, 2011.
"It's even further in the future than Billy Elliot,"
quips Abrahamson, "but we're sure this one is going to have a 100 per cent
Canadian cast."
Outspoken Director Has No Regrets
Source: www.thestar.com - Richard
Ouzounian
(February 22, 2010) It's one of the basic laws of theatre that if
you're going to have one strong-willed person
writing a show about their life, you better have another strong-willed person
directing it.
They don't come much stronger than Monica Parker and Pam Brighton, who
have teamed up on a project called Sex, Pies and a Few White Lies, which starts a special three-performance showcase run Monday
night at the Stealth Lounge of the Pilot Tavern, 22 Cumberland St.
Both Parker and Brighton are resurfacing in Canada after several decades
away. Parker has spent her time in Los Angeles with her husband, Gilles Savard,
writing and producing everything from TV's Murder, She Wrote to the
movie All Dogs Go to Heaven.
Brighton has spent her time in England and Ireland, juggling careers in
theatre, radio and law, while working on dozens of shows, including the
original version of Stones in His Pocket (more on that later). But flash
back 33 years ago, to 1977 when Parker and Brighton met up for the first time
in the revolutionary production of Eve Merriam's feminist vaudeville called The
Club.
It set Toronto theatre on its stuffy, masculine, WASPish (and waspish)
ear, making Brighton the hottest director in town and the late George
Luscombe's Toronto Workshop Productions on Alexander St. (now the home of
Buddies in Bad Times) the place to be.
Shows like Ashes; Dusa Fish Stas and Vi and St. Joan of
the Stockyards cemented Brighton's reputation, and it looked like the sky
was the limit.
In 1980, the Stratford Festival asked her to join Martha Henry, Urjo
Kareda and Peter Moss as one of the "Gang of Four," who held power for
a few months before the board fired all of them in a vain attempt to get Briton
John Dexter to take over the organization.
"Well, that was quite a kick in the teeth now, wasn't it?" says
Brighton, still smarting after 30 years. "I was going to direct Stephen
Ouimette as Hamlet and I think that's one of the things I still regret
the most."
It also started a kind of run of bad luck for Brighton. She quit a
high-profile directing job at a major Canadian theatre during rehearsals,
"because the leading actress was one of the most appalling women I had
ever met. No talent whatsoever."
And a few years later, in 1985, she dug her grave a bit deeper by giving
an interview to one of the Toronto daily papers the day before her production
of a show called Fever Dream opened, saying that, "It's very
depressing to do a play that's terribly flawed. But there's no use pretending
it's good when it isn't."
After that, Brighton went back to England. Does she now regret being so
outspoken? Absolutely not.
"When young directors ask me what they need to do to succeed, I say,
`Keep your boredom threshold very, very high, so you don't make some of the
mistakes that I've done over the years.'"
Brighton started a kind of "wandering in the desert" period at
that point.
"After a couple of years I went back to college and qualified as a
lawyer, but I found it was a very solitary profession, very lonely and I didn't
like it, then I moved to Belfast and worked for the BBC for a while, but then I
came back to harness in the theatre."
And to one more gigantic quarrel in the theatre. She was the original
director of the worldwide hit Stones in His Pocket, but shortly after it
opened (to excellent reviews for her work) she was dumped from the show.
"I never had a contract, you see, because I had trusted all those
people for years, but once they started seeing pots of lovely money on the
horizon they thought it might be better if I didn't get a part of it."
A lengthy and bitter court case was finally decided against Brighton in
2004.
But now she's happy to work on Parker's play, which chronicles her
lifelong struggle with being a plus-sized woman.
"I think the whole emphasis on thinness comes from the North
American diet industry," insists Brighton. "I grew up in Yorkshire in
England, where no one was ever described as fat. We were all just different
sizes.
"It's a very, very funny play, but also a very profound play. It's
about how society can make us feel ashamed of ourselves and really, where do
they think they get the f--king right to do that?"
Nice to know that 33 years have done nothing to tame Pam Brighton.
Known For Enthusiasm As 1980s Sitcom Star, Mindy Cohn Stars In
Glorious At Stage West
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian
(February 18, 2010) You're never too young to learn The Facts
of Life. Or too old, for that matter.
Ask Mindy Cohn, who was still a
teenager when fate cast her as Natalie in that long-running 1980s sitcom and
now, at 43, is taking on a whole new challenge as Florence Foster Jenkins in
the comedy Glorious, currently playing at Stage West.
Jenkins was an amazing woman whose voice defied all conventional
standards of quality, yet deeply desired an operatic career. She funded her own
tour and, although most people mocked her, she finally appeared at Carnegie
Hall at the age of 76, a month before her death.
"You have to understand about Florence," says the ebullient
Cohn on a day off from rehearsal. "It wasn't just a pitch problem. She
knew music well. She just didn't hear what everybody else heard.
"But there were people who fell in love with her, because they fell
in love with her, not her voice. Hey, it's all timing. Who's to say that in the
wrong place at the wrong time, Ethel Merman might have showed up and people
would have looked like, who is this lady?"
It's quite a treat to talk to Cohn, who still maintains the high-energy
enthusiasm and relentless honesty that she brought to her character of Natalie
on that long-ago show about a fictional girls boarding school where nothing too
terrible ever really happened.
But she's not living in the past and what she readily dispenses is a
sassy, practical wisdom about every aspect of her life and career.
"Look, let's put things in perspective with that show," she
begins. "NBC was the No.3 network when we started and we were never a
runaway hit. Naw, we were the little engine that could. We were on for nine
years, but we were only in the Top 20 for five of them. Sure, we always did
well and beat our competition, but hey, not the stuff of TV history!"
Cohn admits that as the years have gone on, people's attitude about The
Facts of Life has changed.
"When it was first on, they'd look around before whispering to you.
`I love your show. Don't tell anyone.' But then later on, it became a guilty
pleasure they were proud to admit and now they shriek across malls at me,
`Natalie! I loved you!'"
Does that bother her?
"Not at all," she laughs. "I feel the same fondness for
Natalie that the fans do. I can't be one of those actresses who disassociate
themselves from the sitcom roles they've played.
"You have to honour what you did in the past, but still have a
career in the present. As I age and different parts come along, I say, `So be
it!'"
Cohn says she learned a lot from Cloris Leachman, who appeared on The
Facts of Life with her during its later seasons. (Leachman also appeared at
Stage West in 2000 in Over the River and Through the Woods.)
"She told me that if you're a working actress, you have to be just
that, a working actresses. Take the good stage parts when they come along and
do what you have to do to pay the rent in between."
For Cohn, that's involved a lot of voiceover work, most notably as Velma
in What's New, Scooby Doo?, for which she was nominated for a daytime
Emmy Award.
"Yeah, that keeps me in the style to which I've become
accustomed," she jokes, "but sometimes it bites me in the butt,
because think I must've died and gone somewhere!"
Along the way, she's had a varied career that included a memorable HBO
version of James Lapine's Table Settings, in which her co-stars were
Stockard Channing and Robert Klein, plus an assortment of independent films
including Violet Tendencies ("I play Violet, of course"),
which opens this April.
But right now, she's here and she's happy playing Florence, "because
she's terminally optimistic, just like me. I believe in follow your bliss. No,
not the rub-a-Buddha, light-a-candle kind of thing; just enjoying your life.
"Florence has real joie de vivre; that's why I like her."
Then she cuts loose with the kind of guffaw that Natalie used to dispense
30 years ago on TV.
"Hey, look at me. I'm still playing a broad!"
Just the facts
WHAT: Glorious
WHEN: To April 16
WHERE: Stage West, Mississauga
TICKETS: 1-800-263-0684 or www.stagewest.com
::TECHNOLOGY NEWS::
Halo Legends Review: Beware The Power Of The Nerd
Source: www.thestar.com - Darren Zenko
(February 21, 2010) I guess plastics is a pretty good business and
all, but if I was that avuncular business
guy in The
Graduate I'd throw my meaty arm around Dustin Hoffman's shoulders
and offer one word: Nerds.
There's a great future in nerds. Get their powerful, fantasy-craving brains
turned on to your fictions and their surprisingly deep pockets are open to you
as long as you keep expanding that universe and keep those goods flowing. Goods
like Halo Legends.
Similar to The
Animatrix, the 2003 collection of shorts that supported the Matrix
sequels, Halo
Legends brings several heavyweight Japanese animators out to play
with the characters and settings created for the Halo video games. This ought
to be pure nerd-bait alchemy: the cross-pollination of anime style with a
30-million-selling game franchise? It certainly looks good on paper.
It looks pretty good onscreen, too, for the most part, with a wide range
of styles on display across the seven shorts on the disc. Amid the straight-up,
straight-faced cel anime (I particularly liked Studio Bones' "The
Babysitter," sappy ending and all) we also get a bit of classic Japanese
cartoon slapstick with "Odd One Out" from Dragon Ball Z director Daisuke
Nishio, a watercolour-styled samurai showdown in Hiroshi Yamazaki's "The
Duel," and a full-on CGI action spectacular in "The Package,"
directed by the legendary Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed).
The films are helpfully prefaced by a pair of rather dry "Origins"
spots that sketch the setting for anime fans who may be unfamiliar with the Halo canon.
Ah, canon. That sacred and shifting concept, separating real fictions
from fake fictions. Nerds care a lot about canon in their fantasies, which may
explain why Halo
Legends – at least to these non-stickler nerd eyes – seems to step
very gently in its "exploration" of the Halo mythos.
It's actually a little disappointing, this timidity. There are certainly
many avenues in which the Halo
universe might have been expanded – What's life like for the minor
races in the Covenant? What, for that matter, is life like for non-military
humans? – but Legends
mostly gives us what we've already got: Spartan super-soldiers in
action-packed frontline derring-do, honourable Elites doing their best Klingon
impressions, the cribbed-from-Larry-Niven space opera setting staying safe and
2.5-dimensional within the bounds of battlefields and briefing rooms.
But even this is not and will not be enough for the canon-obsessed fans
who make up the hard and vocal core of the Halo
audience. Selling to nerds is good business, yes, but, as with plastics,
quality control is key to keeping the orders coming – one brittle bale of
polystyrene and you've had it.
And no market has a more developed sense of entitled proprietorship over
their purchases than video-game nerds. Reaction to Halo Legends among "the
community" is divided more or less 20-80 between "I'll buy it because
it's Halo"
and (surprise!) angry, offended screeds.
A sample comment (wholly representative aside from its lack of spelling
errors) from one "Augustus" on the www.bungie.net forums:
"Halo
Legends is an abomination that must be cleansed. The large quantity
and size of obvious canon mistakes are ... disturbing. I spit on Legends."
So be warned, young Hoffmans who might seek to build your fortune on the
discretionary spending of the Nerd Nation; sell those fantasies, but once sold
never, never let
those fantasies grow or change or be presented in an unusual manner. Dealing
with the geek market is like dealing with Satan: once nerds buy your products, they own you.
3-D Already Here For PC Gamers
Source: www.thestar.com
- Marc Saltzman
(February 13, 2010) While hardware makers such as Sony prepare
their consoles for the planned launch of
3-D TV this summer, PC gamers looking forward to three-dimensional gaming can
already get into the action.
The Asus G51 3-D gaming notebook (available on Monday for $1,949) is powered by an Nvidia 3D
Vision graphics package and bundled with wireless "active shutter"
3-D glasses that deliver realistic stereoscopic images at full resolution.
Basically, the 15.6-inch 3-D screen offers 120-hertz motion acceleration
(similar to many LCD HDTVs), and works with the laptop's graphics processing
unit driver to double the 60-frames-per-second video signal, delivering up to
120 images at any given time to each eye.
The G51 can also turn 2-D content into 3-D, including support for nearly
400 PC games out of the box, such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of
Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Capcom's Resident Evil 5, 2K
Games's Borderlands and Eidos/Warner Bros. Interactive's Batman:
Arkham Asylum.
Tech specs of this 64-bit Windows 7-based laptop include an Intel Core i7
processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M graphics card and Altec Lansing speakers
with EAX Advanced HD 4.0 audio for 3-D sound effects.
The Asus G51 3-D gaming notebook can be bought through NCIX.com,
MemoryExpress.com or CanadaComputers.com.
Mario & Sonic feel Games spirit
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games had not even begun when Sega was announcing
its related video game had already snagged a "gold" in sales.
Last week, the Japanese publisher announced its game Mario & Sonic
at the Olympic Winter Games for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS had
together sold nearly 6 million units in Europe and the United States alone.
Gamers can compete in more than 25 official events – such as ice hockey,
speed skating, skeleton and downhill skiing – as their favourite video game
mascots, including Mario, Luigi, Sonic, Tails, Princess Peach, Yoshi and Donkey
Kong.
The Wii version of the game takes advantage of the motion-sensing
controller. In the bobsleigh event, for example, four players can sit in a line
in front of the TV and work together to hop into the bobsleigh at the right
time and lean left or right while speeding down the icy track.
This game also includes over-the-top fantasy events for you and up to
three friends to tackle, inspired by familiar Super Mario Bros. and Sonic
the Hedgehog worlds.
Heavy Rain: A Game That Comes To Your Emotional Rescue
Source: www.thestar.com
- Darren Zenko
Heavy Rain
(out of four)
PlayStation 3
$59.99
Rated M
(February 20, 2010) The goal of unifying film and video games in an
"interactive cinema" is an old one, and
its pursuit has spawned many disastrous projects. But Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain is as close as the medium has come to reconciling this mess into
something both playable and watchable.
Generally, the problem with this hybridization has been that each side
ends up damaged or outright crippled by a fundamental aspect of its
counterpart: the flow and cohesion of film narrative – the "authorial
intent" Roger Ebert cited in his infamous argument against the artistry of
games – is fractured by often-trivial gameplay, while the freedom and agency of
games is proscribed by the linear demands of the narrative.
A psychological crime thriller with a whiff of sci-fi about it, Heavy
Rain is the interlocking story of four individuals – an insomniac
journalist, a world-wise P.I., a desperate, grieving father, and a high-tech
FBI agent – on the trail of the Origami Killer, a serial child-slayer who
drowns his victims in rainwater. These are great characters and compelling in
themselves; together, their stories would make for a top-notch crime film.
But this isn't a film. It's a game; we're to play it, not watch it, and Heavy
Rain's main mode of play involves what has come to be known as "Quick
Time Events." For those unfamiliar with the term, coined for Yu Suzuki's
magnificent 2000 flop Shenmue, QTE are best described by the pithy, if
uncharitable, phrase "press X not to die" – onscreen icons prompt
players for input, and success or failure at this simple reflex task decides a
scene's outcome. It is rightly reviled as a cheap way to add
"interactivity" to otherwise wholly scripted sequences.
So maybe this is faint praise, but Heavy Rain does QTE better than
any game ever has. For one thing, it's pervasive; through various appropriate
button-presses, stick-twiddles and controller-waggles, the player is constantly
in what feels like physical contact with the game's virtual world. For another,
it's organic and integrated, rather than simply a series of demanding prompts
overlaid on the screen. The prompt icons move and swivel along with characters
and camera, responding visually to the emotional level of a given scene and by
that response build emotion, feeling more like an extension of the character
than a menu of choices. When it works – and it usually works – it's sublime.
Of course, it is still QTE, so when it doesn't work, it feels ridiculous.
Sitting there, alone in the dark, inputting each individual motion of starting
a car, or each fidgety gesture as your character waits impatiently for an
appointment. As with any medium, whether it's film or games or this
Frankenstein "interactive cinema," anything that makes your mind drop
out of the fictional space and into the "what the hell am I doing?"
mindset just flat-out murders the experience.
But as easy as it is to fall out of Heavy Rain's magic circle,
it's just as easy to get sucked back in. As in any good thriller, Heavy Rain
just keeps ratcheting up the stakes, working that cycling mechanism of
tension-release that grabs you by the glands. The way the four storylines intersect
provides a good supply of those endorphin-releasing "OMG" moments
when you realize something the characters haven't yet figured out, and players
are treated to scene after scene of unforgettable power.
Whether these scenes would be as powerful, or even more powerful, had
they been straight-up filmed rather than interactive is debatable; maybe
director David Cage missed his calling as a film director, and his life's work
on interactive cinema is so much tilting at windmills. So what? Heavy Rain is
a worthwhile experience, the best game in a bad genre.
::OTHER NEWS::
Greg Curnoe Shrine Cycles Through Coffee Shop
Source: www.thestar.com
- Murray Whyte
(February 20, 2010) On the wall at Cherry Bomb Coffee on
Roncesvalles Ave., a slight, royal-blue CCM
track bike with curled handlebars dangles from the wall, held at a sharp angle
by a slim cable. It's from the 1930s, without gears or brakes – suitable for
velodrome riding, and not much else – and has the quiet, elegant grace of a
perfect machine: Simple, functional, pure.
These elements, no doubt, helped prompt the late Greg Curnoe, the renowned
Canadian artist, to make the bike the subject of one of his paintings. On the
wall at Cherry Bomb, a framed poster of the piece – the blue bike on a
background of acid yellow – sits next to the cycle itself.
It's Curnoe's bike, one he probably rode at the Forest City Velodrome in
his hometown of London, Ont.
Once people realized what they were looking at, the bike shifted from
curiosity to apparition. "It's become a bit of a shrine," says John
Ruttan, who owns the café. "People have been leaving things – offerings, I
guess. Somebody left a book of his art, someone else left behind postcards of
his work that the Art Gallery of Ontario published. I guess they were just
looking for an occasion."
The impromptu memorial remains tragically apt. It was November 1992, and
Mike Barry was where he always was – in his custom bicycle shop, fitting his
lightweight frames with loving precision – when the news coming through the
shop radio hit him with the force of a blunt object: On that crisp, late-fall
morning, Curnoe had died while riding with his cycling club near his home, the
victim of a truck driver whose attention drifted exactly when it should not
have.
"It was a Saturday," Barry says. "It was just devastating.
Everyone just stopped. We had no words. We just couldn't believe it, really
couldn't."
Curnoe's death was heartbreaking, of course. As an artist, he had
achieved a particular kind of celebrity. His work, like his life, was
disarmingly vibrant, all filled with bright colour and fuelled by his various
passions – cycling, for one, and a cheeky political activism. By the time he
died, at age 55, he had carved a uniquely prominent position for himself in
Canadian art.
For some, though, Curnoe will be remembered first and foremost as a
cyclist. Barry made Curnoe two sleek bicycles, bearing his custom brand name:
Mariposa. Both were subjects of Curnoe paintings that would later become
famous. In the years since Curnoe died, Barry has gotten both bikes back, as
well as the blue CCM. He's been lending bikes to Ruttan, from his collection of
hundreds, since Cherry Bomb opened five years ago, but the three sacred Curnoes
joined the rotation only recently.
Barry can be forgiven some preciousness. He remembers the first time
Curnoe visited his King St. shop, Bicycle Specialties, in 1972. Curnoe, just
35, already had the swagger of a big shot. His work was in the collection of
the National Gallery, and in 1976, he'd be representing Canada at the Venice
Biennale.
The year before, Curnoe had taken a breathless ride with his friend, Bill
Harper, and his cycling obsession began. Poet Christopher Dewdney told The
Walrus magazine recently that, by 1972, cycling had become entwined with
his work "in an intense symbiosis ... Bicycles represented the
stripped-down relationship between form and function that so appealed to
him."
Cycling would help him embody his passions in literal ways. Barry
remembers Curnoe arriving at his shop to pick up his first Mariposa TT, a
sleek, bright-yellow road racer. The Vietnam War was escalating; Toronto was
flooded with draft dodgers. Curnoe arrived at the shop with a folder of
letraset under his arm, and proceeded to stencil a favourite slogan –
"Close the 49th parallel" – on the crossbar, in English on one side,
French on the other. "That was Greg," Barry recalls with a laugh.
"He just had such an enthusiasm for everything."
Tall, with the robust build of a natural athlete, Curnoe, thick-haired
with a thatch of moustache, must have seemed a little atypical in a field where
dense, quiet intellectualism was becoming the norm. Curnoe rejected all of
that; from Toronto, where he had attended – and failed out of – the Ontario
College of Art and Design, he relocated home to London, where he unapologetically
began a practice of artmaking devoted to the visceral world around him.
Intellectual explorations of high-minded theory bored him – as they did
most audiences, who in the '80s became increasingly alienated from contemporary
art. Curnoe stood as a willing antidote. He founded a magazine and gallery that
made clear his priority: Both were called Region, embodying his rejection of
the rootless, international intellectualism that had infected contemporary art.
He was a frequent guest on TV and radio shows, challenging critics to
speak in a language that had some visceral meaning.
He had major retrospectives, touring exhibitions, was added to important
collections. All the while, he was riding.
Recently, Barry has been commissioned by a couple of museums to make
replicas of the yellow TT, lovingly known as "the 49th Parallel."
("I wouldn't sell it for anything," he says.) Here, art, life and
Curnoe's death intertwine: He was riding the 49th Parallel the crisp morning he
died. "It got a lot of things going around in my mind," Barry says.
"How well I know him, what a terrific guy he was. It can get quite
emotional."
At Cherry Bomb, the impromptu tributes continue. "When people come
in here and talk about him, it gets you a little teary-eyed," Ruttan says.
"I'm not an art major, but they're beautiful, aren't they?"
Bryan Adams, Robin Phillips among G-G winners
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- James Bradshaw
(February 23,
2010) Rock star Bryan Adams, theatre and film director Robin Phillips and impresario Walter
Homburger are among the winners of the Governor-General’s
Performing Arts Awards for lifetime artistic achievement, announced in Montreal
yesterday.
Joining them are 60-year stage veteran Françoise Faucher, dance innovator
Édouard Lock, and musician and aboriginal-rights advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Vancouver’s Mohammed and Yulanda Faris will be given the Ramon John Hnatyshyn
Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts, particularly for their focus on
youth engagement in the arts.
And 34-year-old Montreal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has won the National
Arts Centre Award for exceptional achievement over the past year.
Nézet-Séguin and the six lifetime-achievement honourees each receive $25,000
and a commemorative medallion from the Royal Canadian Mint, while the Farises
receive a medallion and a specially commissioned artwork.
The Globe and Mail spoke with three of the laureates about their newly won
decorations.
Bryan Adams
Why him: Bryan Adams has done it all, from 18 Juno Awards and a Grammy
to collaborations with everyone from Elton John to Luciano
Pavarotti. And he’s just marked another milestone, performing for tens of
millions of viewers at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics.
What it means: “It’s a rich tapestry of talented people. I'm seriously
honoured to be among them. To be honest, and you can ask anyone that works with
me, I'm shy of receiving awards of any kind. The biggest reward is the
continuation of the work, and there's always lots to do.”
At work: “The Olympics were certainly one of the largest audiences I've
had the opportunity to play for. Doing The Wall with [Pink Floyd’s] Roger
Waters in Berlin was the other massive one.”
Next up: “Perhaps because I've not had a family, I've got this perpetual
desire to create something from nothing. Even if I never made a penny from it,
I'd still be carving away, because it makes me happy.”
Édouard Lock
Why him: The 55-year-old Lock has been a force in Canadian dance since
his debut in 1975. A noted
choreographer, he founded the internationally successful company
La La La Human Steps and has taken his choreography, known for pushing human
limits, to dozens of countries.
What it means: “You get excited for your next project and then that
project leads to another project. These types of awards, they just stop that
momentum for a little bit. You do tend to reflect backwards and pause a little
bit.”
At work: “You don't actually decide to tour – you have to be invited.
We've had long relationships, we started touring in Europe in 1982. So in some
ways, some of the European cities know us almost as well as some of the
Canadian cities.”
Next up: “Dance has progressed in a whole bunch of ways. ... It's sort
of like watching a clock. If you stare at it, you don't see it. But if you just
do something else and come back to it, it's changed – it's a bit like that.”
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Why him: Groomed in Montreal, Nézet-Séguin just finished his first
season as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, is principal guest
conductor of the London Philharmonic and made a hugely successful debut in 2009
at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
What it means: “I was so excited and so honoured to receive this,
because it’s coming as the most unexpected gift. Of course, when I line up what
has happened in that year, I start to be almost scared of myself.”
At work: “I feel that now there's very much an international train that
I need to take. But this is always keeping in mind that once I will have made a
world tour of things, I want to always keep some time for Canada, to come
back.”
Up next: “Prior to that sort of skyrocket speed of the past two or three
years, I spent a very good seven or eight years founding my own ensemble and
getting my tools ready here in Montreal. ... This gave me the experience and
the tools to be able to sustain that kind of speed now.”
Eat, Pray, Love And Marriage
Source: www.thestar.com - Vit Wagner
(February 22, 2010) Elizabeth
Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, is on the line from her home in rural
New Jersey, cheerfully heaping scorn on her initial attempts to craft a
follow-up to that mega-selling 2006 memoir.
The bloated first draft of the new book, Committed, was just so
much "personal blah, blah, blah," she explains, before checking
herself with a convulsive fit of laughter.
"Obviously, I don't object to writing that way," she says.
"I did it with Eat, Pray, Love. It's kind of what memoirs are for.
"But it was almost as if I was writing an imitation of Eat, Pray,
Love. It read like diary entries. It wasn't appropriate to the subject
matter or the place that I had reached in my life."
Committed, which debuted atop the New York Times
non-fiction bestseller list last month, is a sequel to the extent that it picks
up where Eat, Pray, Love left off.
Eat, Pray, Love described the year Gilbert spent travelling to
Italy, India and Indonesia while searching for renewed purpose in the wake of a
failed marriage.
The book, a huge commercial hit, became a staple of book clubs across
North America, including the one hosted by TV's Oprah Winfrey.
A movie version, starring Julia Roberts, is slated to open this summer.
Committed, subtitled A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,
tracks Gilbert's decision to plunge back into the marital waters with Felipe, the
boyfriend from the end of Eat, Pray, Love. But the new book, while
including a substantial measure of confessional reflection, goes beyond the
personal into a wider analysis of its subject from a sociological and
historical dimension.
"The first version was bigger but a lot more empty. I was afraid to
include the historical background because I was afraid that readers wouldn't
want to stay with it," says Gilbert, who will be interviewed on the stage
of the John Bassett Theatre Wednesday by Indigo's Heather Reisman.
"I came to realize that what I really wanted was to write the book
that I wished somebody had handed to me on the day that I found out I needed to
get married and I would just trust that other people would get something from
it as well."
Neither Gilbert nor Felipe, both survivors of ugly divorces, were keen to
remarry. But it became the only way for Felipe, a Brazilian-born Australian
citizen, to live in the U.S.
This circumstance provides the narrative hinge for a discussion of
marriage, which historically has been motivated by factors – legal and economic
– other than romantic love.
Marriage without love is seldom an option for couples today, at least in
the West. But the institution continues to evolve, both in terms of extending
the possibility to same-sex couples and within the straight community.
"Marriage, as a living entity in a Darwinian way, reinvents itself
with every generation," Gilbert says. "It needs to be updated or it
will go away."
The new wrinkle is something Gilbert calls "the wifeless
marriage."
"A lot of women I know want to be married, but not a lot of them
want to be the wife, which is to say the one who generally gives up more in
order to provide for her family.
"Traditionalists were so afraid that feminism was going to kill
marriage. It seems like it might have saved it. From all the studies, it looks
like the marriages that are most enduring are those where the women waited as
long as possible to get married, who had children after they had established their
economic autonomy and who are married to men who consider them equal
partners."
Gilbert, 40, began her writing with the prize-winning 1997 short story
collection Pilgrims, followed by a novel, Stern Men.
She is returning to fiction, having set aside autobiography for the time
being to work on a novel. Before it is finished, however, she can look forward
to the surreal experience of watching Julia Roberts play her on the big screen.
"I imagine all sorts of unexpected feelings will arise," she
says.
"It'll be like looking through a photo album of my travels except
that somebody much more attractive has been Photoshopped into the picture. That
should be nice."
Elizabeth Gilbert is in conversation with Indigo's Heather Reisman,
Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., John Bassett Theatre, 255 Front St. E. Tickets: $18
OTHER TIDBITS
Michael Baisden Launches Mentoring
Program
Source: www.eurweb.com
(February 19, 2010) *Nationally-syndicated
radio host Michael Baisden has created a campaign to
encourage one million Americans to sign up as mentors for children in need
through a national outreach effort. The One Million Mentors Campaign to Save Our Kids
will launch with its first event in Dallas on Feb. 17 and hit the road to visit
72 cities in a campaign-themed bus. At each tour stop along the way, Baisden
will host mentoring forums in partnership with local mentoring organizations
and affiliates of Big Brothers Big Sisters, National Cares Mentoring Movement
and 100 Black Men. “The videotaped beating of Chicago teen Derrion Albert was
truly the final straw for me,” said Baisden. “After seeing it broadcast
repeatedly on national news I knew I needed to step up and get involved
personally in the effort to save our kids. My hope is that by touring across
the country, this national mentoring campaign will have an impact on some of
these young people who need caring adults involved in their lives.”
::COMEDY NEWS::
Great Scot Colin Mochrie meets Lady Luck
Source: www.thestar.com
- Richard Ouzounian
(February 20, 2010) If comedian Colin Mochrie had stayed in
Kilmarnock, Scotland, where he was born in
1957, you might have found him today in one of those tacky comedy
clubs that cling like barnacles to third-rate British seaside resorts, braving
the crowd with a desperate grin and assuring them that "Mochrie's the
name, mockery's the game."
Fortunately, his parents moved to Canada when he was 7 and his life went
in quite a different direction. He's internationally known as one of the stars
of the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, he's rehearsing for the
upcoming Canadian Stage production of Art and, this weekend, he receives
the highest honour media union ACTRA Toronto can bestow on one of its members:
the Award of Excellence (see sidebar).
Previous recipients include Gordon Pinsent, Sarah Polley and Paul Gross,
which made Mochrie question their choice of him.
"I felt at first there must have been some kind of horrible mistake.
You look back on the previous recipients and say, `Really? You're putting me up
there with them? Wow, thank you!'"
He adds, in a sly undertone, "When I'm holding it, then I'll believe
it."
As he talks while finishing his lunch during a break from the early
rehearsals of Art, one sees how it's typical of the quick-witted Mochrie
to turn almost anything into a jest. But, unlike many of his colleagues, the
butt of all his jokes is usually Mochrie himself.
There may be insecurity behind his humour, but no cruelty.
Pushing the clock back, he has no memories of his Scottish childhood,
"except for a smell I've never smelled anywhere else wherever I've
travelled. An odd Scottish smell, kind of tarlike. It's a bit unpleasant but
pleasant in its unpleasantness."
He reasons that his father moved the clan to Canada "because he
didn't love living in Scotland, which is rare for a Scot. But, of course, once
we left the country, then our house became a shrine to all things Scottish:
velvet pipers on the wall, bagpipe music playing 24/7.
"We first moved into a completely French neighbourhood in Montreal,
which I figured was either financial necessity or sheer accident."
Frightened by the FLQ crisis of the late 1960s, the Mochries moved across
the country, first to Edmonton and then, Vancouver.
"I was a very shy kid then," Mochrie says, "mainly because
we kept moving around so much. I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist. I
was fascinated by the ocean."
Deadpan pause, then the zinger. "I was also a big fan of
Flipper."
But just at this most impressionable time of Mochrie's adolescence, when
he was settling into Killarney High School in Vancouver, two things happened:
"My father suddenly decided we were going to go back to Scotland and he
sold our place and moved us into a motel. But then he got cold feet and we
lived in that damn motel for what seemed like the longest time before he
finally decided to stay in Canada.
"I felt like my whole life was falling apart then and I didn't know
what I was going to do. I've hated insecurity ever since."
Luckily, something came along to give Mochrie a brighter view of things.
"A friend of mine talked me into being in a school play called The
Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch. I played Mervin Vale, the undertaker, and
when I got my first laugh, I was, like, `Wow! This is what I want always, this
feeling!'
"It was exactly like a drug rush. `I want this again, right now!' I
came out of my shell and joined all these clubs. Did the announcements for
class like Batman and Robin. Turned into this guy who just wanted to make
people laugh."
Unfortunately, that did nothing for Mochrie's love life. "I heard
there were girls in high school. But we never crossed paths. I was always the
good friend or `like a brother.' Later on, women develop into a maturity where
they realize funny men are good for them. But high school is not the place to
be funny when you want girls."
So an innocent Mochrie went on to Studio 58 at Vancouver City College's
Langara Campus, where he studied theatre and learned that he had a real gift
for improvisation, which led him straight into Vancouver's TheatreSports troupe
after graduation.
"I love improv," Mochrie says. "It plays right to the
slacker in me. You don't have to prepare anything, just have fun!"
TheatreSports now has a worldwide reputation but, back then, Mochrie recalls,
the troupe had "to go down to the McDonald's on the corner and drag people
in to see the shows. We had great people like Jay Brazeau, Peter
Anderson."
Mochrie might have stayed there forever had a combination of romance and
restlessness not lured him east. "The lady I was with then, Leslie Jones,
wanted to move to Toronto and I thought, `Why not? I don't have anything else
to do.' So we moved and then we broke up."
In a way, that was a good thing, because the first job Mochrie auditioned
for was the Second City Touring Company and the woman in charge of hiring was
Debra McGrath, who wound up marrying Mochrie in 1989.
"Deb said it was between me and the cute guy, so she picked
me," he recalls, with typical Mochrie irony. But it still took them years
to get together. "Well, she was married, that was one of the problems. And
I was still incredibly thick when it came to women."
Luckily, he was very sharp when it came to Second City and he's still
remembered as one of the stellar members of the Toronto company. "Every
night, I got to improvise and that strengthened my work ethic. Every day, we
would work on a new sketch based on the improv from the night before. It's like
a comedy college. It's where I learned how to talk to the audience."
That would come in handy with the life-changing gig he was about to
embark on. In 1989, BBC 4 launched a new improvisational comedy series called Whose
Line is it Anyway? and flew Mochrie out to audition. "My son had just
been born, I psyched myself out totally. I sucked."
But they gave him two more chances and he finally landed on the show,
staying with it through to the end of its British run in 1998 and then moving
right into the U.S. version, starring Drew Carey, until it finished in 2006.
"My career has been based on great fortune," Mochrie says.
"I have one skill that sets me apart from the majority of performers, and
then along comes this show that plays to my strength and makes me look
terrific."
But Mochrie has no intention of clipping coupons or standing still.
"I love working. It's such a big part of who I am."
Which is probably why he finds himself venturing out onto the boards
again in the CanStage production of Art, starting performances on March
15.
"Every time I would go to the theatre, I would say, `I should do
this.' So, here I am. I'm terrified, yes, but it's always healthy to have the
fear."
He pauses for a moment, going back in his mind to that horrible year when
he lived in a motel with his family, not knowing where their life would go.
"I learned how to be funny," he says a bit wistfully, "because I
thought that if I was funny, then I would always have friends."
And he was right.
::DANCE NEWS::
Dancemakers Presents A Trio Of Dynamic Duos
Source: www.globeandmail.com
- Paula Citron
(February 22,
2010) You could say Dancemakers knows a thing or two about creative match-ups. 
When a group of York University dance grads founded the company back in 1974,
their goal was to be a repertory collaborating with a wide range of
choreographers. In its first 16 years, the company did just that – presenting
new dance pieces by New York’s Paul Taylor and Lar Lubovitch, Canadians such as
Judith Marcuse and Karen Jamieson, as well as Dancemakers members Carol
Anderson and Peggy Baker.
Under former artistic director Serge Bennathan, the company then broadened its
scope further. It became the Dancemakers Centre for Creation, hosting
residencies and workshops. And in 2002, it moved to a permanent home in
Toronto’s Distillery District. Bennathan also launched the series Dancemakers
Presents, a showcase for rarely seen companies from outside the city.
Now, current artistic director Michael Trent, who took over in 2006, has
launched the Dancemakers Presents Festival. Called TwoByThree, it’s a program
of duets featuring six acclaimed, avant-garde choreographers from four countries.
“The duet is a powerful, compelling launch site for discussing human
relationships,” Trent says.
Here’s a cheat sheet of must-see pairings onstage until March 6.
Mélanie Demers and Laïla Diallo
The duo: The last time Montrealer Mélanie Demers came to town she earned
a Dora nomination for her work Les Angles Mort (2008). Her collaborator
Laïla Diallo (born in Montreal but now based in England) has danced with Wayne
McGregor’s famed Random Dance and is now associate artist at the Royal Opera
House in London, Swindon Dance in Wiltshire and the Arnolfini in Bristol.
The duet: Sauver sa peau explores the multi-layered nature of our
identities through the metaphor of skin. The dance is structured around a fluid
succession of physical tableaux that provide varying perspectives on this
question: If skin is always renewing itself, is identity also in a constant
state of becoming? The original music is by Jacques Poulin-Denis.
Runs until Feb. 25.
Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin
The duo: Torontonian Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin of Croatia have
been collaborating since 2003 – presenting work in both Europe and Canada.
Trent calls Henderson one of the brightest stars in Canada: “In her work, [she]
proposes a concept, or asks a question – then she finds a unique,
piece-specific way to address the central issue through a fusion of dance,
theatre and performance art.”
The duet: In their piece The Most Together We’ve Ever Been,
Henderson and Ferlin present a never-ending series of beginnings – a constant
hello, as it were – which raises the question: Are they the right people in the
wrong space, or the wrong people in the right space? The work addresses our
need for something to happen, while embracing the emptiness of never really
getting anywhere.
Mauricio Ferlin’s set design differs from city to city, but includes objects
not usually found on theatre stages – such as haphazard clumps of furniture and
mounds of paper. This echoes the performers’ dilemma: Are the objects ready to
be used in these new contexts, or are they frozen in their potential?
Runs Saturday to March 1.
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
The duo: Since 2002, Briton Jonathan Burrows and Italian composer Matteo
Fargion have been touring the world with their intriguing collaborations. As
Trent says: “[Burrows’s] journey began in the formal world of ballet, and when
he started to ask the big questions about the nature of dance and its
relationship to art, he dedicated his career to discovering the answers.” Some
critics question whether Burrows’s experimental pieces belong on stage or are
better suited to the studio – you’ll have to decide for yourself.
The duet: Burrows and Fargion’s minimalist Trilogy – comprising
Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance – will be shown over two
nights. Collectively, the works are a gentle exploration of how the
relationship between music and dance is perceived, and what the boundaries are
between the two. Press reaction has ranged from “absurdist self-indulgence” to
“enchanting revelation.”
There will also be a third program from the pair containing two new works: Cheap
Lecture is a rhythmic rant set to music; A Not Very Subtle
Representation of Resilience Through Dance is a chaotic meditation on dance
and mortality.
Both Sitting Duet is on March 4. The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance are on
March 5. Cheap Lecture and A Not Very Subtle Representation of Resilience
through Dance are on March 6.
TwoByThree: A Festival of Duets takes place at Dancemakers Centre for
Creation in Toronto until March 6. The festival also includes a lunchtime
program of conversations called Talking Dance. For details, visit
dancemakers.org.
::SPORTS NEWS::
Clara Hughes Caps Olympic Career With Bronze
Source: www.thestar.com
- Jim Byers,
(February 24, 2010) What a way to go.
Canadian Clara Hughes, racing the last
event of her legendary Olympic career, picked up a bronze
medal Wednesday in the women’s 5000-metre speed skating race at the Richmond
Oval.
It’s the 12th medal of the 2010 Olympics for Canada and the sixth medal of Hughes’
remarkable career, having won a pair of bronze medals in cycling at the 1996
Summer Olympics in Atlanta, then a bronze in the 5000-metre speed skating race
in Salt Lake City at the 2002 Winter Games. She added a gold in the 5000-metre
race in Turin in 2006, as well as a silver in team pursuit.
Hughes, 38, raced in the third-to-last group and finished with a time of
6:55.73. She flashed a huge grin when she saw her time posted, putting her in
first place for the moment. Germany’s Stephanie Beckert bested Hughes’ mark by
some four seconds to ease into the top spot and put Hughes in second.
Two skaters went to the start line in the last group, both with a chance to
push Hughes off the podium. Gold medal favourite Martina Sablikova bested
Hughes and Beckert to take the gold in 6:50.91. But Daniela Anschutz Thoms of
Germany came fourth, giving Hughes the third spot and setting up one of the
better bronze-medal parties Canada has ever seen.
“It’s such an amazing feeling,” Hughes told CTV. “I want to say thank you to
this amazing crowd once again.
You gave me wings.”
Hughes, a native of Winnipeg who now makes her home in Glen Sutton, Que.,
carried the flag at the Opening Ceremony back on Feb. 12. She jogged around the
infield and waved to the crowd once she realized she had a bronze medal to add
to her collection, carrying the Canadian flag with well-deserved pride.
Hughes said she was focused on doing her best, not winning hardware.
“There was so much talk about medals and owning the podium. I don’t think in
those terms, I think in terms of excellence. I did that in the last race of my
life on ice and it was so enjoyable and I’m so proud of the process.”
Canada now has 12 medals at the Winter Olympics — six gold, four silver and two
bronze.
Kristina Groves of Ottawa hoped to win a medal but never got on track and
finished sixth. Highly-decorated but injury-batted Canadian Cindy Klassen came
12th.
Hughes showed her trademark endurance, picking up speed as she went. But she
said she didn’t need to rely on her traditional pain tolerance.
“I didn’t really need it today, to be honest. I skated really well technically
and normally I don’t. Today I felt so good and I felt I had such good rhythm.”
Asked if she considers herself Canada’s greatest athlete, Hughes shook her head
and said Canada is full of great people in arts, music and education.
“I just consider myself a Canadian,” she said.
U.S. Buzzing After Spanking Canada
Source: www.thestar.com - Mitch Potter,
(February 22, 2010) WASHINGTON – Canada finally emerged as a
massive blip on America’s radar
Monday, with screaming headlines everywhere.
And the lasting lesson for the largely invisible neighbour to the north:
you need not send all your premiers south to get noticed in Washington. All you
need to do is lose. To the Americans. In your own sport. On your own ice.
That was the tenor of a flurry of stateside reports that shot to the top
of most-read lists throughout the U.S.
The Washington
Post front-racked its account of Sunday night’s Olympic hockey calamity under the heading, “U.S. leaves Canada red, white … and
blue.”
Over at the New York Times, a gentle home-page sprinkling of salt in Canada’s wound was
labelled “Tough day for a land where hockey is religion.”
A more triumphant glee was found on Facebook, where one set of brazen
American fans launched a new page titled “Miracle On Ice, 2010 Version (Suck
it, Canada!).”
And so it went, from CNN to Sports Illustrated and even to the Los Angeles Times, where a readership wholly unacquainted with winter drove the
paper’s account of “upset victory by U.S.” to the top of its most-popular list.
It was precisely the sort of noise – in volume, if not in tone – that
seven of Canada’s provincial premiers had hoped to make when they arrived
Friday for a rare three-day mission to Washington to tub-thumb the benefits of
free trade and smoother border operations.
And at first blush, the political charm-offensive worked, replete with a
rare summit between the Canadian premiers and U.S. state governors.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell was so moved by the Saturday meeting to belt
out his own improvised rendition of “O Canada.”
But as radar blips go, the Canadian political mission attained the sound
of one hand clapping – the more than 200 news reports of the premiers’ efforts
landed exclusively north of the border. Not a single word appeared in the U.S.
media.
Washington analysts who specialize in how Canada registers on America’s
scanners took the Olympic hockey feeding frenzy in stride.
“You can’t take the ‘Own the Podium’ approach and also expect to be
treated as the nice guy. When you lose, they’re going to kick you in the
shins,” said former Canadian diplomat Paul Frazer, a Washington-based political
consultant.
“But the fact everyone seized on the U.S. victory and ignored the
premiers mission isn’t really a problem,” said Frazer.
“Nine out of 10 times, when the U.S. media notices Canadian politicians
it usually involves some kind of bad news. The fact that no American reports
were generated means there was no bad news. The goal was to get the attention
of the governors, not U.S. reporters. And that’s what they got.”
Korean Star Kim Yu-Na Skates With The Soul Of A Canadian
Source: www.thestar.com
- Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Staff Reporter
(February 23, 2010) When world reigning champion Kim Yu-Na glides onto the
ice carrying South Korea’s
hunger for a gold medal in figure skating Tuesday night, she’ll do it with the
soul of a Canadian.
The 19-year-old who would twice become the first woman to break 200 points in
figure skating scoring for her technically flawless performances sought out
Canadian Olympian Brian Orser four years ago to give her what she lacked:
spirit and soul.
Since then, she and Orser have trained at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and
Curling Club in Willowdale. Kim spends all but three months of the year in
Toronto, far from her homeland where she is, said Orser, “the No. 1 superstar.”
“My personality is shy,” Kim said in an interview with the New York Times.
Orser gave her “a more feminine acting program.”
Orser, who won silver at the Calgary Olympics in 1988, also gave her nothing
her legion of fans could when she battled nerves at the 2009 world
championships.
“I know what you’re going through,” he told her. “It worked. I just saw her
relax.”
Kim, the first South Korean figure skater to win the world championships,
finished 16.42 points ahead of silver medallist Joannie Rochette of Canada in
the March worlds.
Orser is confident it will work again starting Tuesday night in the women’s
short program and culminating Thursday with the long program.
“Of course we go for gold. She is ready. I believe if she skates her best, she
is unstoppable,” he said when they arrived in Vancouver on Friday.
He told the Star in January: “We took this girl at 15 who was just a
machine. She could do all this stuff, but nobody had chipped away at her soul.
The soul and the spirit is what you need in skating.”
South Korea’s highest-paid athlete with $7.5 million (U.S.) in endorsements
alone last year from Nike, Hyundai Motor, Korean Air and other major brands,
Kim decamped to Toronto to avoid the hype and frenzy that surrounds her in her
homeland.
“It’s like travelling around with Princess Diana. She is very gracious to her
fans. They love her, they embrace her,” said Orser.
Love her and demand perfection and vindication from her. Kim’s rivals are the
Japanese skaters Mao Asada and Miki Ando. Kim’s only two defeats in two years
have been from Asada. For Koreans, the memory of Japan’s 35-year occupation of
their now-divided country burns fresh, more than a half-century later.
“Koreans’ blood roils when their country competes with Japan in sports of
elsewhere,” Soon Doo-heon, a professor at Yong-in Songdam University in South
Korea and an Olympic blogger, said.
In a book of essays published last month, the teenaged superstar let the
pressure she feels at a country’s expectations trickle out.
“If my performance falters, not only people around me but the whole nation
might turn their back on me,” she wrote.
In an interview with Agence France Presse, she tempered her hopes: “It’s
my first Olympics. I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a child.
“Whether I get gold or whatever, it’s not about the medal. I will take away
many good memories from Vancouver.”
Her Canadian team also includes top choreographer David Wilson and former
Canadian Tracy Wilson.
And her Canadian life last month included carrying the Olympic torch in
Hamilton, which to Orser was all part of the training.
“When she carried the torch in Hamilton, I knew it,” he told the Star’s
Chris Young. “All I had to do was look at the picture of her and the looks in
her eyes told me. She gets it.”
DiManno: Moir and Virtue, a Glorious, Golden Duo
Source: www.thestar.com
- Rosie DiManno, Sports Columnist
(February 23, 2010) VANCOUVER– Gorgeous and golden. An exquisite
performance brought the house
down and Canada up: podium pinnacle in ice dancing.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir had never been coy about their Olympic aspirations – anything
less than gold would have been a wrenching disappointment, an abject failure
even.
They did not fail. They did not disappoint. They nailed it.
The marks were staggering: 110.42 in the free dance and 221.57 overall,
untouchable.
"Oh my God, it's the exceptional moment we've always dreamed of,"
Moir said. "We couldn't be happier."
The first ice dance Olympic championship ever earned by a North American duo
was invested on – earned by – this symbiotic young couple who grew up only a
few miles apart from each other in London, Ont., if unaware of each other back
then in those sprout days, yoked together when she was 11 and he was 13.
They have only ever danced with each other.
"It was such a journey, so many had helped us along the way," Virtue
said.
Monday night, at the Pacific Coliseum, they danced into the Olympic annals.
She's 20, he's 22. The music was "Symphony No. 5" by Gustav Mahler, a
haunting piece played at the funeral of Robert Kennedy; just as evocative if
not so sombre in this environment.
In a free dance final that mesmerized, the five best tandems on the planet
skating with heart and soul – each couple making it look so deceptively
effortless rather than the culmination of so much hard work and muscle-numbing
practice – Virtue and Moir were simply superior, ethereal and gaspingly
athletic, in a zone of their own.
They twizzled in impeccable synchronicity, they stroked in a blur of unison,
yet soft and feathery on the ice, Virtue's winter white costume a fetching
flutter of chiffon, Moir the powering engine to innovative lifts and spins,
tricks they invented and few others would dare risk.
While ice dance – only allowed in the Olympics since 1976 – may sometimes seem
more Cirque du Soleil than sport, Virtue and Moir have found the sweet spot
between artistry and athletic. This knack was on display in Sunday night's
fierce Original Dance flamenco number, where the Canadians took over the
interim lead from Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the reigning
world champions.
It dazzled even more Monday night in a wondrous routine of blazing speed and
extraordinary creativity, both classic and cutting edge in its presentation,
hardly any daylight visible between the skaters when both had their feet on the
ice – that counts for a great deal in ice dancing – and each so confident in
the other on dervish manoeuvres, Virtue surrendering into Moir's arms on
complicated dismounts where she can't see a thing.
Such faith this couple has in each other, in their seamless selves: soul to
soul.
At the end, Moir whispered into Virtue's ear, "Thank you so much."
They earned Level 4 marks on both straight and circulation step sequences and
that's never been done before.
Whether such perfection was in fact necessary in the final flight of skaters is
now moot. Their training partners, Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S.,
started out the evening 2.6 points behind and appeared a tad stiff compared to
their sublime "Original Dave" ode to Bollywood.
They took silver; the Russians took bronze.
Both North American couples, for the past five years, have trained in suburban
Detroit under the same coach, Russian expatriate Marina Zoueva. To outsiders,
that might seem awkward, with Zoueva on the boards for both teams – so pretty
much guaranteed gold on this evening. Zoueva begs to differ.
"It's actually really nice. They are so different in their characters,
their temperament, their physical and artistic abilities. I love both.
"When I'm watching Charlie and Meryl, they touch my soul. When I'm
watching Tessa and Scott, I forget about the stopwatch (to time lifts), I'm
just melting."
Virtue and Moir, who are not, despite how it looks, romantically involved, were
the first Canadian dancers to win junior worlds in 2006 and silver at senior
worlds in 2008. Then she had surgery to relieve pain in her shins and their
progress was set back, yet the team still secured a bronze at '09 worlds.
Devastated four years ago at not making the team for the Turin Olympics, they
immediately took a bead on Vancouver, not just to make it but to win.
The experience had totally lived up to the expectations, even before they blew
away the field. Said Virtue: "We feel like all Canada is on the ice with
us."
And they're not going anywhere, except to Turin next month for worlds and, four
years hence, to defend their Olympic title in Sochi.
Still, in a country that has produced some amazing ice dancing teams –
Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, Marie-France Debreuil and Patrice Lauzon
most recently – there are other Canadians climbing up the ranks.
Scarborough-based teenagers Vanessa Crona and Paul Poirier showed their fitness
as potential successors by climbing from 17th to 14th with their free dance.