This will be all over the Main Stream Media later today, but I wanted to weigh in early because -- well, because I’ve been harshly critical of Leonard Asper and the CanWest Global Television Network in the past for their lack of commitment to Canadian drama and local news. Indeed, for a while there, it looked like Asper’s management style might bankrupt the company and take a healthy chunk of Canada’s television industry down...

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Every now and then, I'll rail on Canadian journalists for their lack of Woodward and Bernstein instincts or their unfathomable desire to cozy up to the very people they're supposed to be keeping an eye on for the public. To my mind those crushes of reporters Canadian politicos describe as a "scrum" are just a giant group hug and what passes for a hard-hitting interview here would be called 'tossing...

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There's this hymn...I lost my brother a year ago and it was played at his funeral. It was played last Friday at the funerals for four fallen police officers in Oakland, California. It's played at every police funeral, every military funeral and the funerals of many in the Christian faith.But it's not a funeral hymn. "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, the Captain of a slave transport vessel...

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Theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky and his partner, Myron Gottlieb, were both found guilty this morning of two counts of fraud and one of forgery for activities which occurred during their ownership of Livent Inc. According to prosecutors, Drabinsky and Gottlieb had used the theatrical production entity to bilk half a Billion dollars from investors, hiding their illegal actions through a complex series of accounting irregularities....

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There's something in the 24 hour news cycle that breeds a need to fill the dead space with something, maybe anything. And after a while, there just aren't enough videos of puppies on skateboards or starlets going commando to fill up the time. So the next move is to be outrageous in the hope of stirring up controversy. Anything to attract attention and keep those numbers up.Even the most partisan viewer,...

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Like most kids, I loved animation. And I was even more fascinated by the process by which it was created, in awe of people who could sit still long enough to generate the thousands of individual drawings necessary for a single seven minute Bugs Bunny cartoon.I drew pictures and watched cartoons all the time and dreamed of someday making my own comic books and animated movie characters. Although I...

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As I've mentioned before, Don Cherry and most of hockey's other dinosaurs *disapprove* of Alex Ovechkin. He's European, worse one of the Godless Commie Europeans. He wears a "sissy" visor. He seldom fights. And perhaps worst of all -- he celebrates a victory.In the world of the Dinosaurs, hockey is not a sport. It's a gauntlet of honor and pain. There is no room for fun. Although I don't watch Cherry...

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                                                                    "Canadians -- they are a...

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It's a Saturday afternoon and an older Irish fella walks into a pub and takes a long look around. The bartender asks if he can be of assistance. "Oh, yes you can," The man says, "Pull me three pints of Guinness, please. And I'll have them at the big table by the window."The bartender brings over three pints and the man sets them in a row in front of him, alternately sipping one, then the other, then the third. The bartender watches...

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As if there weren't enough distractions. Cell phones and land lines ringing. Email arriving. Instant messages. Facebook notifications. Twitter alerts. It's almost impossible to sit at your computer writing or budgeting or doing virtually anything productive without this swarm of other things demanding a moment or two of your attention.Oh, you can ignore them all for an hour or two at a stretch, but in the film business (as in...

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Two things a screenwriter needs to learn, two skills that separate and define what we do from what other writers do, are telling a story visually and leaving enough white space for the other crafts involved to do their work. Studies show that 90% of what an audience takes on board from a film or TV show comes through the eyes. Only 10% of what they retain or remember is as a result of what they hear.Try...

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In order to recommend a film I'm sure most of you probably haven't seen, I need to tell you about a film I'm certain you've never seen.                                                       ...

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Over the last couple of days, I've been bouncing between what I'm supposed to be doing and catching the ISP presentations on New Media to the CRTC unfold over at CPAC. Their goals and arguments are diametrically opposed to most of the Arts groups who had their turn before the Commission a couple of weeks ago. And you start wondering if what we've really got here is some kind of Artist Left Brain / Commerce Right Brain disconnect...

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It's been a week of showbiz doom and gloom in Canada. Media job losses. TV stations closing. Development slates have been frozen, downsized or outright canceled. To make matters worse, the only Canadian film being released this week has to fly right into the mass-marketing sharpened teeth of "The Watchmen". Good luck "Pontypool" and hang onto the address of that church basement you shot in. Pretty soon we might all need a warm...

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On January 18, 2002, a Canadian Pacific freight train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed near Minot, North Dakota, releasing 835,000 litres of ammonia. One man was killed and hundreds were injured by exposure to the spill. The impact of the accident would have been much less severe, but police were unable to reach anyone at the designated emergency broadcaster, local radio station KCJB because the station had been swallowed...

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