Movie review: I’ll See You in My Dreams
Blythe Danner brings quiet strength and suspended sexual energy to the role of a widow polished to a fine shine by life in Brett Haley's drama that proves you can fall, and get up again
Movie review: The Rock moves San Andreas
Special effects make tectonic nightmare come to life in stock exercise that combines the best of the worst disaster scenarios in one earthquake extravaganza, writes Katherine Monk
Interview: Lindsay Mackay takes rash action with Wet Bum
The first-time feature director from small town Ontario dives into the deep end with a coming-of-age story focused on a young woman with body image angst and her quest to stay under the surface without drowning
By Katherine Monk
From the time she was seven years old, Lindsay Mackay told her parents she wanted to be a doctor. A self-confessed “science and math nerd,” she excelled at solving equations and found comfort in the predictability of the ‘right answer’ being found in the back pages of an appendix.
But something strange happened in Grade 11 – and though it didn’t directly involve a new bra size, a dramatic deflowering or mutant superhero ability – it did recalibrate her inner sense of destiny.
“I had this great English teacher who taught me to believe in my own voice,” says Mackay, who just celebrated her 30th birthday. “Through her, I discovered storytelling, and it changed my life.”
From a stubborn dedication to empirical problem solving, ...
Pop Culture Decoder: Children’s Books
Misty Harris deciphers the hidden messages in beloved kids’ tales to discover the secret meaning of Green Eggs and Ham, and Robert Munsch's ode to Psycho
By Misty Harris
Read the same children’s books night after night AFTER NIGHT and two things are likely to come to mind: suicide, and questions about what the respective authors were really trying to say.
From Lewis Carroll to C.S. Lewis, scribes of children’s literature are notorious for hiding political, religious and even mathematical messages in plain sight. Is this also true of more straightforward titles such as Everyone Poops and Mortimer? I watched enough Carmen Sandiego as a kid to feel comfortable playing gumshoe on this one.* Let’s detect!
Green Eggs and Ham: If you push something bland and unappetizing on people long enough, they’ll relent and accept it – a timeless message that explains everything from reality TV to the endurance of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Love You Forever: ...
Judge’s dissenting remarks draw chalk outline around corpse of collective bargaining
Justice Ian Donald emerges as a lone voice in the labour wilderness with recent 38-page dissent concluding the BC government did not bargain in good faith with teachers
By Rod Mickleburgh
“[If] the government could declare all further compromise in any context to be untenable, pass whatever it wants, and spend all ‘consultation periods’ repeatedly saying ‘sorry, this is as far as we can go,’ [that] would make a mockery of the concept of collective bargaining.” - Justice Ian Donald, dissenting from the B.C. Court of Appeal decision overturning a lower court ruling that found the government’s imposed 2012 contract on B.C. teachers unconstitutional.
I’ve known Appeal Court Justice Ian Donald for a long time, not recently or as a friend, but during his time as a lawyer representing non-mainstream unions who made a lot of news in those long lost days when I was a labour reporter.
His clients included independent Canadian unions such as the Pulp, Paper and ...
Pop Culture Decoder: American Ninja Warrior
Misty Harris breaks down the appeal of TV’s best competition show that's basically the sports equivalent of dating George Clooney between 1994 and 2013
By Misty Harris
American Ninja Warrior is summer’s best competition show that sounds like it was named by a six-year-old who just watched his first Chuck Norris movie. The series features increasingly grueling obstacle courses designed to test the mettle of America’s top athletes, and to shame everyone watching from their couch at home (those who can’t do, watch).
A part of me, childishly, wants to hate ANW for its hyperventilating celebration of all the people who would’ve picked me last in gym class. But as much as I’m a bitter old wannabe who can’t touch her toes, I find myself impervious to the charms of this show – the seventh season of which premieres May 25.
Contestants train like fiends year-round, will often wait days to audition, and have less fat in their entire bodies than I have ...