A folksinger, masquerading as two folksingers, takes on a notorious British tab. Hat tip: CC....

30 March, 2010

Polish filmmaker Bartosz Konopka recounts the history of the Berlin Wall from the perspective of rabbits trapped in the no-man's land created by the structure. Freed from hunting pressure, they multiplied and prospered. After all, no one was shooting at them. Such structures, known to biologists as "exclosures," often belie their brutal genesis with an unintended beneficial impact on wildlife. After all, they exclude the most destructive of predators: people. The DMZ between North and South Korea is said to be teeming with otherwise endangered wild animals. Until the cleanup began last summer, the fenced-off Sydney Tar Ponds was...

27 March, 2010

A photo recently added to the White House photostream on Flickr reveals a startling presidential penchant for meticulous editing: Ouch! The speechwriter who endured this grueling feedback, Jon Favreau, is the second-youngest in presidential history. The only man every to serve at a more tender age, Atlantic magazine writer and former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows, offered these comments on the photo: The volume of Obama's editing is unusual but not unheard of. The quality of his editing is exceptional for a public figure. Think of just one sentence in the shot above. The original says "This has always been...

27 March, 2010

America's most lovable atheist interviews Anglo-America's most irritating on Pope Benedict's cover-up crisis, and though it pains Andrew Sullivan to say it, "he's right, isn't he?" Moneyquote: Suppose you and I are having a martini...

27 March, 2010

With the 50th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho fast approaching, the Times of London asked various luminaries to assess its impact. Peter Bogdanovich, director of The Last Picture Show and author of The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, recalled its first public screening: I saw the very first showing of Psycho for the critics and the public together in the DeMille theatre in New York at 10 o’clock on the morning of June 16, 1960. It was an extraordinary event. There were about 1,000 people sitting in the stalls below and the press were...

27 March, 2010

When is the last time the U.S. had a president like this? Never, that's when. Putra Nababan is an interviewer for Seputar Indonesia (English: Around Indonesia), Indonesia's most-watched newscast. On Monday, he interviewed Barack Obama. From age six to 10, Obama lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, the home of his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro....

23 March, 2010

A study [pdf] by U of T researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong purports to show that people who purchase green products behave less altruistically. [P]eople act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal, after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products UK Guardian columnist James Baggini thinks he know why: The general truth lurking behind these findings is that the feeling of being pure is a moral contaminant. In ethical terms, the best never think that they are the best,...

21 March, 2010

One of the nice discoveries in my role as manager and chief film-picker for the Cape Breton Island Film Series has been the movies of Ramin Bahrani, the Iranian-American director of dramas like Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, and Goodbye Solo. Bahrani portrays the extraordinary lives of ordinary people in a naturalistic style that is almost documentary in character. We were the only film series in Canada to show Chop Shop; by the time Goodbye Solo came out a year later, Bahrani's movies were de rigueur on the indie circuit. Bahrani grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Roger Ebert calls him...

21 March, 2010

Thursday night, the Cape Breton Island Film Series screened its 200th film, a milestone we had no thought of reaching when we began the series in January, 2003, with Bowling for Columbine. You can download a pdf list of all the films we've shown here, and you won't find many turkeys. The list makes a great aide-mémoire at the video store. Ten films I particularly liked were: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days City of God House of Sand Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Lost in Translation Man on Wire Rabbit Proof Fence Shut Up and Sing Thank You for Smoking The Lives of Others Hardly anyone liked: Russian Arc The...

19 March, 2010

A father and his daughter were strolling along the shore of Sir Sandford Fleming Park Tuesday when the father  spotted a seabird on the opposite shore. Father (age 39):  Look, Rosa, over on the far side. I think it's a loon. Rosa (age 3-1/2):  It's a black guillemot. Father:  Maybe it's a red-breasted merganser. Rosa:  It's a black guillemot. Later, at home, the photo was enlarged. Verdict:  Black guillemot, winter plumage....

16 March, 2010
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