American author/actress/socialite/designer Gloria Vanderbilt is establishing a literary prize for Canadian short-story authors. The prize is dedicated in the memory of her son Carter V. Cooper, who committed suicide in 1988. So, she's responsible for real life hottie Anderson Cooper, fictionally related to hottie Nate Archibald, and giving to the literary community in Canada? Gloria Vanderbilt is some kind of magic.

I'm a big believer in making your own fun. If the Daily Show has taught me anything (oh, how it has), it's that the news can play a big role in said fun-making. All you need are a few headlines. Such as: 

"Victoria dancers sparkle in the limelight"
Misread that as daylight, and you might think Stephenie Meyer attacked Victoria.

"J'ai tué ma mère fails to win César"
So not only did Xavier Dolan's film lose, it also came home to face a very disappointed parent Montreal Gazette.

ALMOST ALICE
Various Artists
Dist: Universal Music Canada


Almost Alice features an eclectic array of artists with original songs based on the wonders of Lewis Carroll's beloved books and visionary director Tim Burton. This album featuring 15 brand new tracks is a companion release to Danny Elfman's soundtrack score. The Lead single is the Avril Lavigne end credit song "Alice." Track Listing.

Not a lot to choose from from Hollywood this week. If you're a die hard* Kevin Smith fan, you may want to check out the heinous looking Cop Out, which would have you believe that road hauling should be played for laughs. Are funny lynch mobs next? You also have the remake of The Crazies, starring Timothy Olyphant. Anything featuring the triumphant return of Olyphant in law & order mode or with a moustache gets a pass in my book. Theatres in town are being a bit daring with World Exchange Centre picking up Helen, in which Ashley Judd stars as a professor coming to terms with her depression, and To Save a Life, in which a former friend's suicide rocks to boy who seemingly has it all, premiering at South Keys. 

Over at the Bytowne, you must check out The Young Victoria, one of the 10 best movies of 2009. You can also see The White Ribbon, if you're into Michael Haneke, or La Donation, un film québécois about a dying doctor searching for someone to take over his small regional practice.

At the Mayfair, you must check out Red Cliff, which plays at times like a John Wood parody, but he still rocks action sequences harder than most. You haven't live until you've seen what Tony Leung will do after you shoot him with an arrow. There's also original The Crazies, classic Some Like it Hot (possibly the best last line in a movie ever), The Horse Boy, Thundercast are Go!, Black, and new midnight movie The Room on Saturday night. 

Friday

THE OTTAWA ART GALLERY PRESENTS
Friday 26 February at 12:30 pm
In the context of the exhibition "Exploded View," Jennifer R. Angus will present and discuss her work.
Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue

Research Fellowship Lectures: General Idea
Friday, February 26 from 2 pm to 5 pm
Three presentations by Fellows from the 2009/10 program focus on the Canadian artists' group General Idea. The Research Fellowships Program encourages and supports advanced research. The Fellowships emphasize the use and investigation of the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, including those of the Library and Archives.
In the Lecture Hall of the National Gallery (380 Sussex Drive). In English with bilingual discussion. Free admission.

OAG | GAO : Subjecting Figures (from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art)
The official opening will take place on February 25 at 5:30 p.m.
Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue

JOHNNY CASH
American VI: Ain't No Grave www.johnnycash.com
Dist: Universal Music Canada

The Final Chapter. The Last Recordings. Produced by Rick Rubin The sixth album in the Man in Black's American series will be released in honour of what would have been Johnny's 78th birthday. The posthumous release is the follow up to
American V: A Hundred Highways from his infamous recording sessions in the months between the death of his wife June Carter and his own last days in the fall of 2003. The songs on American VI are drawn from all over the musical landscape including Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day" and Kris Kristofferson's "For The Good Times", and includes the never before heard Cash original "I Corinthians: 15:55". Track Listing.

I haven't blogged about the last few episodes of Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures because my initial supposition, that the interweaving timelines would rob the show of any real dramatic tension, turned out to be true. For example, the question wasn't if Ming would have a miscarriage but when. The show seems to be getting that as the last three episodes haven't addressed the present day in the slightest.

Last night's episode, which dealt with the 2003 SARS crisis, put Fitz then Chen in isolation and Ming in quarantine in her apartment. Gee, I wonder if any of them will die? Even after Fitz signs a DNR, it's not a question of if he'll survive. It was cool to see Chen break down the glass barrier between their rooms after a hallucinating Fitz barricaded his door and started ripping off his equipment, but, yeah, Chen will get him back. 

Since Chen and Fitz seem to retain their status quo in the present, I've realized that the only interesting character is Ming. We know next to nothing about Chen's past and Fitz is only concerned with his past with Ming, but Ming's the fascinating one. The potential villain I pointed out? He's Ming's older cousin who raped her when she was 13. Remember how we've only met Ming's dad? Her mom wasn't around growing up, and last night we learned that she was a married woman who wouldn't leave her husband for love. Somehow, she was able to carry to term and leave Ming with her father to be raised. (And then returned to her husband? How does that work?) I do know some of what will happen next with Ming, but her inner world, in part because it's Fitz and Chen's fantasy sequences that we're regularly treated to, remains a mystery. Fitz and Chen can posture and joke and write all they want. Ming's the real deal. 

 

Music fans will not want to miss this! Ottawa folk-rockers and regular (Cult)ure contributors Dave Combden and Kris Millett will be performing a show at the Elmdale Tavern on Thursday February 11 to celebrate the release of their new album Midnight Bath. They are proud to announce Rebekah O'Brien as their opener, a hot new piano songstress destined to take Canada by storm!

Show starts at 9:00. And as always at the 'Dale, the quarts of beer and pickled eggs will be in ample supply! So come on out and support homegrown talent!  

SADE

Soldier Of Love
www.sade.com
Dist: Sony Music Canada

Since the release of their debut album, Sade has seen all five of their studio albums land in the top 10 on Billboard's top 200 album Chart, selling a total of more than 50 million albums worldwide to date. They've been nominated for American Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards and have won three Grammy awards - first in 1986 for best new artist, then in 1994 for Best R&B performance By a Duo or Group for "No Ordinary Love", and again in 2002 for Best pop Vocal album with Lovers Rock. Soldier of Love is Sade's first official studio album since the multi-platinum release of Lovers Rock in 2000. The new was recorded in England and produced by the band and their longtime collaborator Mike Pela. The first single also entitled, "Soldier of Love" features a pulsating and anthemic drumbeat along with haunting vocals that Sade is known for.

MASSIVE ATTACK

Heligoland
www.massiveattack.com
Dist: EMI Music Canada

It's a truth universally acknowledged that there an Academy member in possession of a ballot is in want of taste. Combine that truth with the fact that this has been a crap year for movies, yet the best picture category has been expanded to 10 nominations, and you're set for disappointment. You can view the complete list of nominations here. Expect to say "No" at least once per (major?) category. Actually, I'll do it for you:

Performance by an actor in a leading role

• Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart" (Fox Searchlight)
• George Clooney in "Up in the Air" (Paramount in association with Cold Spring Pictures and DW Studios)
• Colin Firth in "A Single Man" (The Weinstein Company)
• Morgan Freeman in "Invictus" (Warner Bros.)
• Jeremy Renner in "The Hurt Locker" (Summit Entertainment)

No:  George Clooney and Morgan Freeman. Yes: George Clooney, "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Sharlto Copley, "District Nine." Also wouldn't have minded an out-of-left-field, Johnny Depp/Pirates of the Caribbean-style nod (not a win, mind) for Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes, but I guess he got one of those last year.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

• Matt Damon in "Invictus" (Warner Bros.)
• Woody Harrelson in "The Messenger" (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
• Christopher Plummer in "The Last Station" (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Stanley Tucci in "The Lovely Bones" (DreamWorks in association with Film4, Distributed by Paramount)
• Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds" (The Weinstein Company)

No: Pretty much anyone who isn't Christoph Waltz. Yes: Everyone else in "The Hurt Locker," Peter Capaldi, "In the Loop."

There are so many arts things happening in town tonight that it just seems like a better idea to combine them in one post than to keep posting them separately. Duplicate info will be deleted shortly.

ABSTrACTS/RéSuMÉS: An Exercise in Poetry
Thursday January 28, 7 pm
Performances at 7:30 pm
Club SAW, 67 Nicholas Street, Ottawa
Free admission (donations are welcome)
In the context of the exhibition Fibred Optics, the Ottawa Art Gallery and The A B Series present a reading by six poets who transform Michele Provost's installation into an evening of performance poetry. Provost's visual art installation references text from contemporary art criticism and forms the raw material for the commissioned poets' projects.
The A B Series specializes in presenting readings of performance, sound and experimental poetry by professional local, national and international artists. For more on The A B Series, please visit www.abseries.org.

THE CFI IS PROUD TO PRESENT:
ATOM EGOYAN IN PERSON with THE ADJUSTER (1991)
Screening and Book Launch
Thursday, January 28
7:00pm
Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington)
$10 Students, Seniors, CFI Members
$15 General Public
No Passes
Atom Egoyan in person! Restored 35mm scope print!
Throughout 2010, the CFI will be celebrating its 75th year with special cinematic events.
The first of these will take place on January 28, when Atom Egoyan – who showed his first feature film, NEXT OF KIN, at the CFI way back in 1984 – will come to Ottawa to introduce the CFI's screening of a restored print of his 1991 film, THE ADJUSTER.  This screening will also feature the official Ottawa launch of  the book, ATOM EGOYAN’S THE ADJUSTER, written by CFI Executive Director, Tom McSorley, and published by University of Toronto Press.

While we've all seen film crews blocking pedestrian pathways around town from time to time (I once did a double take after seeing a checkered cab and a U.S. payphone on Metcalfe), Adrian Langley took it a little further and filmed an entire feature here in Ottawa with a local cast and crew. The result, Donkey, is playing two shows tonight at the Rideau Centre Cinema at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.. It's unusual that Empire is making room for a little picture like this (especially since it's Avatar that they are bumping out of the theatre to make said room), so, if you can, head over there tonight to support local cinema.

It seems that last week's episode was not, in fact, the pilot but episode two. Which makes last night's episode number three. It's odd because "Code Clock" feels like the show is finally getting off the ground, introducing a villain (I'd like to tell you either the actor or the character's name, but there is very little in the way of complete information about the series on the internet. I think the character is Dr. Yi) and something of a mentor in Stephen McHattie (character name? No idea).

I'm still not sold on the show's complicated narrative structure. We started out in the present, where a drunken Chen finds and reads Fitz's old love letters to Ming. Later, Fitz shows up to talk to Chen, and they get into a fight. We flashback to an M&M from their first year residency about a code that Fitz ran when the senior failed to show up. During the M&M, we flashback not only to the code but also to the code from multiple points of view: Fitz, Chen, a nurse named Sharon. So we have present day, flashback, flashback within the flashback, and -- wait for it -- fantasy sequences. Not in a Ming-rides-a-unicorn way, but within each story there are fake outs where people say something, and we cut to discover that the line is what they wanted to say rather than what is actually said. Add in Fitz's conversations with dead people (for real), and you've got a whole lot going on at once.

So you can imagine how strange it is that the show still feels slow and lyrical. It's maybe building to something, but I can't tell what yet. The code itself, fractured as it was, was a great sequence. Rather than the heart-pounding-what-will-happen jolt ER specialized in back in the day, we felt the painful, exhausting work the staff put into trying to revive the patient over the course of 14 minutes. For now, that's something.    

While other people were watching 24 or the Golden Globes, I checked out the première of Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures on HBO. Pilots are such a pain in the ass that it almost seems unfair to judge a show by them, but, as a pilots go, this one was pretty solid. Of the three main characters, we get to know Fitz (Shawn Ashmore) the best, which is to say the least: for everything we learn about him, it's perfectly obvious that there are two pieces we're missing. That said, the leads are solid, and the show seems content -- for now -- to let Toronto play itself.

I can't decide if the show's flashbacks-upon-flashbacks conceit is working in its favour dramatically. We know from the outset that Chen (Byron Mann) and Ming (Mayko Ngyuen) are married, and Fitz has returned to the scene as their sperm donor. We flashback to five years earlier, a.k.a. "the first time Fitz came back," to learn that Chen and Ming are dating, Ming and Fitz have unresolved issues regarding their med school relationship (to which we also flashback), and Chen is jealous of/worried about said issues. But when Chen proposes at the end of the episode and Ming hesitates, where's the dramatic tension there? I know they get married eventually. Chen's narration told me so at the outset. Yes, there's still a story to tell there, and yes, this dramatic conceit could pay off in the show's favour, Memento-style, but it still makes me nervous. I like the show well enough to keep tuning in but not much beyond that. 

Most importantly, and I sincerely hope this was not lifted directly from Vincent Lam's 2006 Giller Prize-winning text, someone pulled a Damon and actually said out loud, "dot dot dot." People, for the love of peace, do not start saying "dot dot dot." You can imply an ellipsis with a shrug of the shoulders, a lift of the eyebrow, or a shift of the eyes. You do not need to spell it out. Some chick, who I can't tell if she will be recurring, says to Chen that she's going to go powder her nose and that's his cue to leave or run, adding "and if you're not [here], dot dot dot." Dot dot dot? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"And if you're not, I'll take some other dude home with me"? "And if you're not, I will set fire to your car"? "And if you're not, space aliens will take my brain"? I hope that was a one-off and not something I can look forward to.

For half a second there, I wasn't sure that anything was opening this weekend. Fortunately for you, I am wrong.

The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson's much anticipated adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel, finally makes it to wide release this weekend. Expect my Book vs. Film next Tuesday. The Book of Eli, about . . . something, opens this weekend as well. Sorry, it's about Denzel Washington kicking people's asses after the apocalypse because they want to get his hands on his (last remaining?) copy of the Bible, which may or may not contain the Book of Eli (apocrypha). At least, that's as much as I can tell from the trailer and any of the ads. There's also The Spy Next Door, which stars Jackie Chan who is, no doubt, a spy living next door to some people. I had never heard of it until yesterday when a man asked the young lady at the ticket counter when it comes out, and she replied that he could "check on the internet." V. helpful!

At ye olde Bytowne, A Single Man is still playing along with depressing apocalypse movie The Road and Mary and Max, delightful animation about long distance penpals voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

January's theme, liberation, just reminded me of the final song of Act 1 of the rock opera version of Notre Dame de Paris, so I decided to share it with you. Yes, rock opera. I love a good rock opera about a tragedy, don't you? Everyone sings their little hearts out and dies. Anyway, the song's called "Liberés," and you can watch it after the jump.

Earlier this evening, Life of Pi author Yann Martel was present at the launch of his new book, What is Stephen Harper Reading? The event was organized by Octopus Books, and was held in the basement of a framing studio at the end of a torn-up Elm Street (off a torn-up Preston Street), and a large warehouse next to the O-train track. About 70 people managed to track down the Booker Prize winner.

 The book is based on Martel's project to  send the Prime Minister a book every two weeks, in an attempt to broaden his mind and to encourage "stillness" in our head of government. It consists of an introduction and a set of55 letters Martel has sent since April 2007, each discussing the merits (and, sometimes, the failings) of the books and asserting the importance of art and literature for the soul of both the individual and the nation. There are also two perfunctory responses from Harper's office acknowledging receipt of the packages.

 Martel has also set up a website where the letters can be read.

There are any number of exciting, exclusive podcasts over on the Globe and Mail's books blog, In Other Words, from this year's International Festival of Authors. Most are cracking good authors reading from their own works, but the stand out so far as to be the recorded welcome from Sean Connery to IFOA's Writing Scotland program. Not only is it a nice reminder that Connery's still out there, but doesn't it make you wriggle with glee to know that this is what he's doing with his retirement? He should do more voice work. I bet he could give Morgan Freeman, Jeff Bridges, and Keifer Sutherland a run for their money. 

On the other hand, is it bad that I almost immediately thought of Laurence Oliver for Diet Coke?

This fall, CBC Radio 2, Canada's national music network, brings Canadians the chance to share their passion and nominate their favourite locations in the country to be celebrated in song through THE GREAT CANADIAN SONG QUEST. Whether it's a secret meeting place, sensational signpost or breath-taking wonder of nature, CBC Radio 2 103.3 FM wants to know!

Canadians also get the deciding vote on who writes and performs the songs from some of Canada's finest musical icons and emerging stars. The end result is an incredible cross-country playlist with 13 brand new, original songs for Canada's playbook. Each artist will compose and record an original song inspired by the locations chosen by Canadians from each province and territory.

"What better way to share our collective passion for Canadian music than to hear directly from Canadian communities on what places and artists mean most to them?" said Mark Steinmetz, director of music programming, CBC Radio. "THE GREAT CANADIAN SONG QUEST is an incredible way to discover and bring together the places, artists and music that make the Canadian musical landscape unique."

Monday, September 7