A football team employs a kicker for two reasons --- to score points and to punt. If his team isn’t in a position to score or even improve its field position, the kicker punts the ball away. This gives his team the opportunity to regroup while the opposition tries to regain the yardage they lost through the punt. Often, punting the ball earns your team even greater advantage than they had before. Last week, in rendering its...

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In England it’s said that April is the cruellest month. In Canada it’s March and April. This is the time of year when warm weather teases and Winter refuses to loosen its grip. One day you’re walking around in a T-shirt, the next you’re back in the parka. Forecasts drive you nuts, promising warmer weather Thursday --- make that Friday --- okay, let’s say Monday…maybe. It’s enough to make the strongest...

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It’s been a far too busy week over here at the Legion, so blogging has suffered. I’m also still laboring with the CRTC “Decision”, which is actually a kinda proposal which may or may not still be up for revision come this Fall’s license renewals. But I promise to get on top of that this weekend and have a deconstruction by Monday. One thing about the so-called decision confuses me, however. (Actually several things do, but...

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We think so much alike that sometimes I feel fellow Regina raised filmmaker Trevor Cunningham is my illegitimate offspring. If that's somehow actually the case, he luckily got his looks from his mother...I first found Trevor a little over a year ago when his original blog SECRET LAB X began trending in the same subject loops as my own. Reading him for the first time was one of those rare moments in life where you realize you're...

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It's finally Spring in this part of the world. That doesn't necessarily mean we're already in T-shirts and tossing back cold ones on the patio. Winter around here can seldom have been confidently dispatched until the end of May.But the ice and snow are melting and that marks the beginning of all the warnings about thin ice and reminders that if you do fall into some stream or river, you've only got...

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I know all my friends of Irish and Wannabe Irish persuasions will be well into the Guinness, Bushmill's and Jameson's tonight. So I offer the following as public service when Thursday morning comes around and you need to find an excuse to book off work.Have yourselves a lovely time and "May the Good Lord hold you always in his hand and never close his fist too tight".Slàin...

I don’t usually do reviews, but I’m breaking that rule today because I want to talk about CTV’s new cop drama “The Bridge”. Prior to its debut, the series was hyped as “polarizing” and “controversial”. But I sensed something else in the pilot, something I can only describe as disturbing and ultimately destructive. There’s a lot I don’t pretend to speak on with much authority. But one topic I understand fairly well is cops....

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(***Warning***: This Sunday’s Sermon contains fire and brimstone!) A couple of years ago, somebody talked me into buying tickets to a dinner and movie premiere benefiting Tourette Syndrome research. They couldn’t afford a big Hollywood blockbuster, so the film being presented was a Canadian one that didn’t have a distributor yet. Think of it as a multi-purpose Charity evening. The dinner was great with half of each table populated...

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Heritage Minister James Moore finally pulled the trigger on naming a new Executive Director for Telefilm Canada late yesterday. To the surprise of the cognoscenti, he didn’t pick Michel Roy, who was considered a lock for the position until he offered up a kinda dumb idea I talked about a little further down this page. I’m not going to claim any credit for Monsieur Roy’s loss in this affair. That should go to the members...

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Internet surf bums and others well travelled in cyberspace read the title above and muttered, “Why’s he writing about this? This isn’t new.” Most of the rest of you, especially those in Canadian broadcasting anxious to expand online, went, “Who?” First, who is Philip DeFranco – and then what makes him important this week. Philip DeFranco lives in the showbiz hotbed of Atlanta, Georgia. In 2006,...

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While the rest of us were busy watching the Winter Olympics, Telefilm Canada finally figured out why we don’t go to see Canadian movies. Apparently, it’s because of all those crappy, no-talent Canadian actors. Not the ones who star in “Battlestar Gallactica” or “24” or “Lost” or “Juno” or “Super Bad” or pretty much anything else produced in America that Canadians watch on TV, pay for at the box office or rent as DVDs by...

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