Screw You, Recession!

My friends at Dose.ca are giving away 15 free iTunes tracks of new artists to watch. FREE! And by free, I mean legal downloads.

Featuring music by:
A.C. Newman
Black Kids
Deerhoof
The Duke Spirit
K'naan
Late of the Pier
Los Campesinos!
Passion Pit
Plants and Animals
Sons and Daughters
The Walkmen
White Lies
Will Currie & the Country French
You Say Party! We Say Die!
Zaki Ibrahim

Go. Go now.

Save the Writers, Save the World!

Leave it to Hollywood to produce such an entertaining strike. With all the machinations, scheming and backstabbing, it’s like one of the reality shows they are so worried will take over the airwaves if the writers stay out for months. Which, it seems, could very well happen.

With everyone’s heels dug in, some nastiness is emerging. Fox aired a new Family Guy today, but without the participation or approval of creator Seth MacFarlane, who joined the picket lines when the Writers Guild went on strike on Nov. 5. There was only one complete episode in the can at the time, but three that were near completion. So the network, which has cancelled the show before, is moving ahead without MacFarlane, who also voices Peter, Stewie, Brian, Glen Quagmire and Tom Tucker. Ingrates.

Not surprisingly, this is not going over well with MacFarlane. "It would just be a colossal dick move if they did that," he told Variety. "They've never done anything like this before, in which they've said, 'We're going to finish a show without you. It's really going to be unfortunate and damaging to our relationship if they do it."

Obviously they know that and clearly they don’t care. The networks and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have known this strike was coming and they are prepared for it. If that means stepping on a few writers and creators, then so be it.

On the other side of the picket line is the cast of 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live, who are staging live performances at a New York improv theater and donating the proceeds to production workers who will be out of work while the strike continues. Doesn’t get much more black and white than that, does it?

Some other interesting tidbits:

- My friend Nik, a TV blogger extraordinaire, is speculating that if the strike goes long, it could mean the end of Lost.

- Another friend, who works at a Toronto production house, says there is renewed U.S. interest in Corner Gas. Already airing on the cable station WGN, it seems the strike has at least one of the big four networks sniffing around.

- Perhaps they’d better settle this strike soon, or my pals at Dose will have to keep pumping out their replacement versions of 24 and Ugly Betty.

Over Dose

Dose is dead, long live Dose. CanWest MediaWorks shut down the youth-oriented commuter newspaper today that was distributed free in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Launched a little over a year ago, the powers that be decided that paper was not going to be profitable and stopped the presses, effective immediately.

That’s the dry version. Full disclosure here, I was on contract as a web editor at Dose for the past six months and was lucky enough to work with a group of energetic, talented editors, writers, designers and photographers (and all the other people needed to put together a daily paper) who were excited about what they were creating. It was a fun place to work, with music playing and endless pop culture arguments.

The paper (or magazine as it was called around the office) was created to target advertising at the 18-to-34-year-old market, but over the year it became more than an advertising vehicle. Some things worked, some didn’t, but in every case they were trying for something new and different. Though owned by a major media corporation, it didn’t speak like one.

Anyway, 50 out of the 60 of us are now out looking for work and I wish them all well. The website Dose.ca and the mobile elements will continue and I also hope the best for them as well – it will be a hard road to follow with a reduced crew but I’m sure they are up to it.

For anyone reading this on Wednesday and in Toronto, you can find us tonight at Squirrely's on Queen Street West. If you are looking for an experienced web editor, drop me a line tomorrow when I’ve sobered up.

Seeing Double

With the release of Poseidon we return to one of Hollywood’s worst habits – remaking films that don’t need to be remade. Poseidon is only 34 years old and stars Gene Hackman. You can still watch Hackman in current films and rent the original, why remake it? Hollywood eats their old, I suppose that’s the case with movies as well.

So in honour of Poseidon I’ve put together the worst and the best movie remakes (to be fair, some are good). I actually did this for work so this allows me to be a lazy blogger and repurpose something I’ve already written. Check out Dose if you want to see the full picture version.

Worst Movie Remakes:
1. Director Gus Van Sant recreated Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho shot for shot, but with Anne Heche and in colour. What, exactly, was the point?

2. Take a fantastic French film like La Femme Nikita, lighten the tone and put in a U.S. actor and you get Point of No Return, a pale shadow of the original. Can't people read subtitles?

3. Auteur Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes proves why indie directors shouldn't be given massive budgets -- there is nothing to reign them in, resulting in a bloated letdown.

4. Remember when you said how funny Nicole Kidman was? Oh right, nobody has ever said that. Too bad the producers of The Stepford Wives didn't realize that.

5. Adam Sandler, not satisfied with making horrible, but original, movies decided to mess with The Longest Yard. Hits to the groin ensue. Ha, ha.

Best Movie Remakes:
1. George Clooney, Brad Pitt and crew took a huge risk making themselves out as a modern day Rat Pack in Ocean's 11 but they manage it with wit and style. Too bad about Ocean's 12.

2. Though everyone should make an effort to see Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the Western version, The Magnificent Seven, is itself a classic. Plus it has Yul Brynner!

3. "Say hello to my little friend!" Al Pacino's bloody Scarface was so succesful at creating a new movie icon, few even realize it based on a 1932 film. What all remakes should aspire to.

4. Director David Cronenberg takes the campy Vincent Price verion of The Fly and adds terror and gore (and Jeff Glodblum), creating a remake that stands above the original.

5. Taking on King Kong for the third time, director Peter Jackson applied modern special effects and proved there was still life in the giant ape. Technology, it's a good thing.

Boy Howdy: King of the Hill Review

King of the Hill is the forgotten stepchild of prime time animation.

Overshadowed by The Simpsons and Family Guy, the Hill clan has quietly become the second-longest-running comedy on TV. Season 6 showcases how the Texas redneck suburbanites made their mark: by embracing reality and continuity.

Unlike most cartoons, the characters grow if not necessarily improve, as seen in "My Own Private Rodeo." One of the series' longest-running jokes is neighbour Nancy Gribble's 14-year dalliance with native "healer" John Redcorn.

She ends the affair and the storyline by renewing her wedding vows with her conspiracy-minded yet oblivious husband Dale, and invites his estranged gay-rodeo-riding father to the ceremony.

That's how the Hills embrace the comedic peculiarities of daily life. Mmm-hmm. Yup.

Extras: None, it's as bare bones as they come.

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I haven't done reviews for years but I'm starting up again. This review originally appeared in Dose on May 3, 2006.

Just Hand Them The Award

You can fill out your Oscar ballot now. Just check off every category that Brokeback Mountain is in, throw in Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon and you’re done. That was the results at the Golden Globes and so it shall be at the Oscars. If this show seemed anti-climactic, imagine what it will be like when you watch it all over again on March 5.

Anyway, here are a few things that amused me about the show. For full results and all sorts of red carpet pics, head to my friends at Dose.

• Just before Gwyneth Paltrow presented Anthony Hopkins with the Cecil B. DeMille Award, she said it was going the greatest actor of our generation. The clip that aired seconds earlier finished with Hopkins saying: "Don't blow smoke up my ass." Perfect

• Isaac Mizrahi – was he a mess on the red carpet, or a breath of fresh air? He certainly wasn’t staid, asking all the women if they were wearing underwear; asking Hillary Swank, who just announced her separation from Chad Lowe, about being single; grabbing a handful of Scarlett Johansson’s ample bosom (if you missed it, you can watch it here); and telling Charlize Theron that in every movie she's been in for the past three years, she looks like "a scary dyke with no teeth."

• It was great that people weren’t taking things too seriously. Geena Davis, during her acceptance speech for Commander In Chief, said as she was walking in a 9-year-old girl tugged at her dress and said “because of you, I want to grow up and be president.” The whole audience aaaahed. Then she said, "That didn't actually happen, but it could have!"

• Did you catch co-presenters Matthew McConaughey rubbing his hand on Sarah Jessica Parker's bare back? The camera cut to them as they waited for the director of Paradise Now (who I met at the Toronto Film Festival) to come up on stage, while they thought they were safely in the wings. Naughty.

• Here's a question: If theses actors are the cream of the crop, why do they sound so wooden when reading their presenter lines? See Teri Hatcher and Harrison Ford as examples.