Pop Culture Decoder: Top 10 Excuses to See Magic Mike XXL
Misty Harris finds socially acceptable reasons to see summer’s bulging tentpole
By Misty Harris
With the Magic Mike XXL debut just around the corner, haters are dialling up the discontent to a full Nancy Grace. Their main critique is that while the Soderbergh-directed original was dark and provocative, the sequel appears to be little more than a big-budget manspoitation film.
Incidentally, this is the precise reason I’ve already purchased tickets. The tentpole is real, people, and it looks spectacular.
On that note, today’s Decoder lays bare the Top 10 socially acceptable excuses to #ComeAgain for Magic Mike. Haters, consider yourselves warned.
1. Supporting the arts: This time around, the dance portion of the movie looks to be as enhanced as Joe ‘Big Dick Richie’ Manganiello (if you haven’t seen the trailer, it’s as if Step Up and Flashdance had a baby and named it Ab Flex). Getting your culture on has never looked ...
Movie review: Inside Out a happy head trip
Disney Pixar takes a long walk down an infinite pier of personal identity in Inside Out, an animated tour of developmental psychology that captures the pain of growing up using primary colours and Amy Poehler's voice
On Truth and Reconciliation
Rod Mickleburgh listened to the testimony of former residential school students in September 2013 and saw the scars of a generation deprived of love and cultural self-esteem
By Rod Mickleburgh
(Thanks to Maria Tippett’s book, Bill Reid, The Making of an Indian, for some of what follows.)
One of the early things I did after ending my daily journalism career of 119 years, besides endless Googling of past Montreal Expo games, was take in the Vancouver public hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in September, 2013. The experience was overwhelming.
It’s one thing to read about the unspeakable tragedy of what happened in Canada’s residential schools. It’s another matter to hear former students testify first-hand, and in depth, about what happened to them and the ongoing, debilitating impact it has had on their lives and those of their families. No wonder organizers placed so many boxes of Kleenex among the seats at the PNE Agrodome.
At the same time, you ...
Jane Fonda climbs back on the barricades
The woman who earned the wrath of conservatives during the Vietnam War flies north to Vancouver to speak out against big oil
VANCOUVER -- Call her Jericho Jane. After a long hiatus from globe-trotting activism, Jane Fonda picked up the gauntlet and challenged big oil to get on the "right side of history" as she addressed a group of star-struck onlookers at Jericho Beach Park Saturday.
The two-time Oscar winner was part of the programming for Toast the Coast, an event staged by Greenpeace to raise awareness about the dangers of proposed pipelines and liquified natural gas development in B.C. waters.
"This part of the world means a lot to me. I was first arrested, not 20 years ago... but in 1970 marching with First Nations in Tacoma, and again with Salish Kootenay protesting clearcutting that was endangering the salmon spawning area," said Fonda to a chorus of cheers from a few hundred selfie-snappers soaking up the sun.
"And I have fished for salmon in Campbell River. I ...
Ornette Coleman’s death prompts a dramatic resurrection
Among the people at the bar in 1959 when the jazz revolutionary Ornette Coleman played his historic engagement at the Five Spot in New York was Charley Gordon, then a political science student who would have rather been a trumpet player. He worked that episode into a play, as yet unproduced. Coleman's death this week brought the play out of a desk drawer. This is a scene from A Different Drummer.
SCENE 1
A nightclub, jazz playing in the background. Rich and George and a total stranger are sitting at the bar. Rich is drunk, talking to the Total Stranger.
RICH
You know the way I am, first thing I notice is the drummer. But I don’t know who this guy his. He’s just driving like crazy. The horn stuff is odd, but I’m just fixating on him. I’m trying to figure out who this drummer is. I’m 20 years-old, right, and I read Downbeat, cover to cover, memorize the fucking thing. But I never heard of this guy, never saw his picture. I know ...
