Sadness still makes her happy
People: Phyllis Smith
The veteran star of The Office says voicing the role of Sadness in Disney-Pixar's Inside Out was a joyous experience that continues to animate her life
By Katherine Monk
Finding true joy in sadness is the stuff of self-help books, but for Phyliis Smith, it’s become the defining moment of her career—and she’s still in it.
Speaking over the phone, apparently from the Midwest home she grew up in with her siblings, Smith’s voice is charged with audible enthusiasm as she talks about her time working on Inside Out.
Released theatrically June 19th by Disney-Pixar, the animated feature about an eleven-year-old girl named Riley remains one of the biggest hits of the year, standing at number three for the year with over $355 million in domestic receipts.
Now out on home video today, Smith says the minute the movie premiered at Cannes, people told her it would be a turning point—including executive producer and member of the Pixar brain ...
Mob Rule: Part 16
War breaks out in the borough
Jack can't believe his eyes as the mattresses come out before the hail of bullets begins, but as newly appointed battle commander, he needs to hatch a strategy that will flush the bad guys from their Flushing stronghold before his men are picked off by sniper fire.
By John Armstrong
From 7th Avenue looking down 33rd towards the Luciano-Costello Building you would have thought you were on the set of a movie: cars and trucks had been parked sideways across the street at both ends, forcing any attack to come though the narrow bottlenecks they left open, a bad idea as there were gunmen stationed everywhere. And I’m only talking about the ones you could see; who knows how many more were watching from sniper posts? The driver delivered us to the front door and I mean, right to the doors themselves, up on the sidewalk with barely room to open them so that we were exposed to any enemy shooters for the shortest possible amount of time.
Inside it was ...
The Sick Days: Part 12
The mantra, the mental spellcheck and a call to the show
The suburban beat suddenly gets grisly when a serial rapist starts stalking Scarborough, leaving a young reporter haunted by a narrative loop of horror that demands spiritual healing, while her body slowly tapers off high doses of prednisone
By Shelley Page
A suburban monster, he overpowered her from behind, dragging her into the backyard of her parents’ Scarborough home. There, he strangled her with an electrical cord, while viciously raping her for almost an hour.
He left her tied to a fence with her own belt like a dog.
The details in the press release were spare, stark. The victim was 19. I wasn’t much older.
I quickly typed up the brief and filed it to the senior cop reporter based at One Yonge, Toronto Star headquarters.
Reporters are observers. That is our blessing and our curse. We know we can’t help, but we’re uncertain what or how to feel, as though it were a professional liability.
Repo...
Mob Rule: Part 15
Sex in Vegas, Blood in New York
Jack and Vanessa get to know each other in a Biblical sense while an unholy gang war starts to ramp up on the streets of the big apple
By John Armstrong
Some time later I called the desk and asked them to tell Mr. Cohen we had been unavoidably detained. I lit a cigarette one-handed, as the other was trapped from the shoulder down beneath a large mound of hair snuggled into my chest and portions of a beautiful face peeking out here and there.
“This is exactly what I swore to my mother I would not do,” she said. “‘Mind you don’t get swept off your feet by some fancy hoodlum and wind up on your back’, she said, and here I am, on my back.” She tugged the sheet towards her. “My mother also believes the Catholics are taking over the world, through numbers. That’s why the Pope’s against birth control.”
“Absolutely true,” I told her. “We’re in a race with the Chinese for domination. It’s why the Earth tilts on its ...
A Haunted House of Commons
Halloween on The Hill
After a gruelling campaign and a hard-fought battle, half the capital looks like an Edvard Munch painting or a Walking Dead extra, but everyone will look right at home on All Hallows Eve -- a night that gives everyone a chance to wear a mask and ask for handouts
By Chris Lackner
OTTAWA -- With many incumbents swept away in the Liberal tide, there are plenty of long-faced ghouls and goblins wandering Parliament Hill these days. On Halloween, they’ll be able to blend in.
After an epic campaign full of tricks and treats, the kids in the red costumes went home with the biggest haul on election night – enough to gorge themselves for four years. But Halloween provides a well-deserved gift to Canadian politicos of all colours. After being stuck playing themselves for 11 weeks, they can wear any mask for one special night. The faint-of-heart can become the fearsome, the politically dead can rise again as the undead – and Canadian pollsters can finally show ...
Our Brand is Crisis: A hopeless campaign
Bullock bulldozes a pile of political cliché
David Gordon Green attempts dark satire by placing two American strategists in a South American bullring, but despite some sharp lines and sharper clothes, there's no matador's grace in this ritual slaughter
Movie review: Truth, not black and white
Mapes's Revenge
Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford take us back to the 2004 CBS News scandal that saw senior producer Mary Mapes and veteran anchor Dan Rather pushed under the campaign bus
Burnt cooks Cooper to a golden brown
Iron pecs Chef
Bradley Cooper brings A-lister status to the world of rock star chefs, completing the ancient circle of food worship, and the gods who let us pleasure in the flesh
Mob Rule: Part 14
What happens in Vegas...
Jack and Vanessa get a massage together, but if they don't get the message you will: He's strapped on his Doc Holliday double huckleberries, and he's ready for whatever happens next...
By John Armstrong
Normally I wouldn’t fall asleep while someone is kneading and stroking me and anointing me with oils, but I somehow managed it. I was in a half-dreaming state the details of which are not suitable to go into here, and only awoke when urged to turn over, something I found with some embarrassment I needed to do carefully. Vanessa was making very interesting and encouraging moans of contentment practically in my ear which didn’t help matters any. My masseuse showed admirable professionalism by completely failing to notice anything was amiss while casually folding a large towel and laying it on the sheet just where it would do the most good.
When they had done about as much as was possible unless we were going to give up on a any semblance of a purely ...
Pop Culture Decoder: Sexy Halloween
Why the media recycle the same damn story every October
By Misty Harris
Halloween is surely the most frustrating night of the year for actual hookers – and the riskiest one for men seeking their company. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention in the last two decades. And yet.
Every October, it’s the same thing: newspapers, media sites and TV news stations all clamour to report on the sexualization of Halloween. While they aren’t necessarily wrong in identifying this phenomenon, it’s hardly news. At this point, “sexy Halloween” falls into the same class as Nicki Minaj’s butt: significant, but nothing we haven’t seen before.*
So why does the media keep recycling the same story, year after year? Let’s decode.
Low-hanging fruit: We all know that sex sells. And in reports on the tawdriness of Halloween, sexual imagery is practically a journalistic requirement! Not featuring photo evidence would be akin to reporting ...
