Collected Data
RIP Agnes Varda 1928-2019
"Literature had changed, painting had changed, culture. And from what I knew, the movie had been just illustrating stories, illustrating books," Varda said in 2015. "I could see that the feeling was just to illustrate, when I thought, 'It should be radical.' "
Director Agnès Varda, A Giant Of French Cinema, Dies At 90
Agnes Varda, Leading Light of French New Wave, Dies at 90
"Confronting the very real foibles of the object of my hero-worship was the beginning of a very important, long-running lesson whose curriculum I'm still working through."
Because Harlan Ellison was an amazing writer; not always, but enough of the time, and with sufficient magnitude, that he shaped generations of writers, and inspired me. The eloquence and passion he brought to fighting injustice were my own apprenticeship (even though we sometimes disagreed thoroughly on what constituted "injustice"). Ellison has been my lifelong test-case for figuring out how to admire the admirable parts without excusing the parts that couldn't be excused, someone whose good deeds and remoteness gave him a salience without any kind of personal baggage (I could be angry at Ellison without worrying about taking it out on him, because we didn't socialize). As a training ground for finding space for two contradictory feelings, you couldn't ask for better than Harlan Ellison.
RIP, Harlan Ellison
"Well, this is not the first time I've found myself standing on the edge of the abyss."
Clowns. Morons. Thieves. Thugs. Little pirates. Self-indulgent adolescents. That's what Harlan Ellison calls people who post his fiction on the Net without his permission.
Such talk has made Ellison as legendary for his acts of vengeance as for his literary work. Sure, he's written 74 books and classic episodes of Star Trek and Outer Limits. But an angry Ellison also once mailed a dead gopher to a book editor. On another occasion, he flew from Los Angeles to New York to tear apart an editor's office. Then there's the time he brought a gun to a meeting. (He swears it wasn't loaded.)
The time I interviewed Harlan Ellison about his lawsuit against a fan who posted his stories to Usenet
RIP Harlan Ellison 1934-2018
"For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered."
Harlan Ellison, science fiction master, dies at age 84
I never met Mr Ellison in person, but I did have the chance to speak with him over the phone. His work was and is still an inspiration.
Thank you Mr Ellison.
RIP Anthony Michael Bourdain 1956-2018
I am not a journalist. I am not a foreign correspondent. I am, at best, an essayist and enthusiast. An amateur. I hope to show you what people are like at the table, at home, in their businesses, at play. And when and if, later, you read about or see the places I’ve been on the news, you’ll have a better idea of who, exactly, lives there.
- Anthony Bourdain from ’Parts Unknown’
Thank you Mr Bourdain.
Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61 (New York Times)
We Lost!
Congratulations to the winner, Robert Osborne for his work on "Unstoppable: The Fentanyl Epidemic”
Gala Honouring Excellence in Non-Fiction Programming
Watch: "How Star Wars was saved in the edit"
Two points that I think are worth adding; ALL Rough Cuts suck and EVERY film is saved in edit.
"It's the most expensive log we've ever sold."
Jenifer Norwell for the CBC;
A record-breaking log car made in Williams Lake was sold not once, but three times on Friday.
The so-called Pioneer Cedar Rocket was created by Pioneer Log Homes of B.C., from a single log and holds a place in the Guinness World Records for fastest log car.
The log car has been toured all around North America for the past two years before being put up on the auction block at the Barrett Jackson Auction in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Reid says the final buyer was a man from a museum in Virginia Beach, Va., and the car will be displayed next to the Batmobile.
Log car from Williams Lake, B.C., fuels multiple bids on the auction block
It's an honour to be nominated...
David Paperny and I have been nominated for a 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing, Documentary. for Mohamed Fahmy Half Free.
Not mentioned in this nomination are two people who also deserve recognition - story editor Samantha Beck and editor Dom Basi. The film would have suffered without their substantial contribution. Thank you both. And thank you to David for asking me to be involved in the project.
"Why would dinosaurs have machine guns? Why wouldn't they?"
Last night, Universal unveiled the first full trailer for JA Bayona's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Fan reactions to the trailer have been mixed for all the usual reasons - some folks consider the storyline ridiculous, others aren't thrilled at how "small" the footage looks, still others would prefer if the film leaned more heavily on animatronics versus CGI - but my beef with the film is far more specific: namely, it does not appear that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's dinosaurs will shoot machine guns.
This is complete and total bullshit.
Cut The Bullshit And Make The Dinosaurs Shoot Machine Guns
This guy has a point.
Watch: "Twice Upon A Time - Doctor Who: Christmas Special 2017 Trailer"
"Marlene Yuen, Winner of the Post-Residency Award"
Marlene Yuen is a Vancouver-based artist who took part in a Visual and Digital Arts extended residency earlier this year. She is currently working on her forthcoming 2018 off-site exhibition, Coal, Gold & War, at Campbell River Art Gallery. Through a series of large-scale comics and handmade artist books, Yuen’s exhibition will address the labour of Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad.
Congratulations to Marlene Yuen, Winner of the Post-Residency Award!
"It’s useful to think of a genre as a category having a core and a periphery."
Because I’m interested in how the storytelling strategies of popular cinema, the heist film is a natural thing for me to consider. Refreshing the genre may involve not just adjusting the story world—giving men’s roles to women—but also considering ways of handling two other dimensions of narrative: plot structure and cinematic narration. I argue in Reinventing that Hollywood filmmaking uses a sort of variorum principle, a pressure to explore as many narrative devices as possible within the constraints of tradition. For this reason, the prospect of Ocean’s Eight prodded me to think about how convention and innovation work in the caper movie. It’s also a good excuse to go back and watch some skilful cinema.
One last big job: How heist movies tell their stories
Watch "Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free" Sunday Oct 1 at 9pm on CBC-TV
Set against the spectre of growing global terrorism, and in an era of vicious attacks on press freedoms around the world, Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free is a character study of a Canadian-Egyptian journalist who went from covering one of the biggest stories in the world to becoming the story. It’s every reporter’s nightmare – jailed for pursuing the truth.
Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free
Sunday, October 1, 2017 at 9 PM on CBC-TV
UPDATE: Watch Mohamed Fahmy - Half Free
"It is an outlandish, compelling tale, mainly because it is a series of circles within circles."
At the heart of the story is a man trapped in circles of hell, inside a circumstance not of his own making. Freedom is within his grasp and then disappears because of the actions of others. (Canada's then-minister of foreign affairs, John Baird, made a grave error in the Fahmy case.) Fahmy's frustration mounted and, today, living in Vancouver, it still seethes. That's why he's "half-free." His energy now is directed at helping the families of the wrongfully imprisoned and ceaselessly talking about the number of journalists who are in jail around the world for doing their jobs.
Mohamed Fahmy’s story – trapped in several circles of hell
Watch “Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free” at 9pm on Sunday Oct 01 on CBC.
"How do you tell the story of press freedom when only 13 per cent of the world population enjoys a free press?"
When Paperny met with me and expressed interest in telling my story I knew I had fallen into the hands of a humanist, a storyteller who uses his camera to zone in on the “why?” and “what next?” It’s not easy trusting someone with the message you want to portray to the world through your own complicated political story of injustice.
I was freed but too many others are still wrongfully imprisoned: Fahmy
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