Will do!

maestroshelly98 <no_reply@yahoogroups.com> wrote:All you have to do is go to the
Members section, click on the "Edit"
button next to my username, and click "Change to Moderator". I just
joined.

--- In sarahpolleyfanclub@yahoogroups.com, "jonchopwood"
<jonchopwood@y...> wrote:
> I posted a bunch of new photos here, including one of Sarah and her
> husband David Wharnsby.
>
> I don't want this to be a chat group, so messages other than
> announcements of photos being posted will be deleted. We can continue
> our chatting/discussion about Our Sarah here, at this forum.
>
> http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/sarahpolleypicturesite/
>
> Shelley and Kmaster, I don't know how to make someone a co-moderator,
> but if you want to co-moderate the site, tell me how to list your
> names and I'll do it.


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July Surprise?
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari
The New Republic

Post date: 07.29.04
Issue date: 07.19.04

[ Editor's Note: This afternoon, Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal
Saleh Hayyat, announced that Pakistani forces had captured Ahmed
Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection
with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The
timing of this announcement should be of particular interest to
readers of The New Republic. Earlier this month, John B. Judis,
Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari broke the story of how the Bush
administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to apprehend high-
value targets (HVTs) in time for the November elections--and in
particular, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.
Although the capture took place in central Pakistan "a few days
back," the announcement came just hours before John Kerry will give
his acceptance speech in Boston. ]

ate last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid
for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post
discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the
president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the
war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation
of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-
point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president's
poll numbers were sliding, his administration was implementing a plan
to insure the public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure
on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al
Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are
believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A
succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA
Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant
Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department
counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--
have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez
Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April,
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly
chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and
Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been
solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not
been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the
Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans
go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has
geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude
and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting
high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of
an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean
McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security
officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election.
According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and
wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest
pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the
[upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda
captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--
according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable
[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is
apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another
official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is
responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf
government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They
now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times
in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining
anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking
information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director,
Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the
Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or
killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's
more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told
their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing
this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given
repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in
Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But
according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last
spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT
were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--
the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.



he Bush administration has matched this public and private pressure
with enticements and implicit threats. During his March visit to
Islamabad, Powell designated Pakistan a major non-nato ally, a status
that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry.
Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear
physicist A.Q. Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting
nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya--declaring Khan's
transgressions an "internal" Pakistani issue. In addition, the
administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for
Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the
country's proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic
reform.

But Powell conspicuously did not commit the United States to selling
F-16s to Pakistan, which it desperately wants in order to tilt the
regional balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis fear
that, if they don't produce an HVT, they won't get the planes.
Equally, they fear that, if they don't deliver, either Bush or a
prospective Kerry administration would turn its attention to the
apparent role of Pakistan's security establishment in facilitating
Khan's illicit proliferation network. One Pakistani general recently
in Washington confided in a journalist, "If we don't find these guys
by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up
our asshole."

Pakistani perceptions of U.S. politics reinforce these worries. "In
Pakistan, there has been a folk belief that, whenever there's a
Republican administration in office, relations with Pakistan have
been very good," says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. correspondent for the
Lahore-based Daily Times. By contrast, there's also a "folk belief
that the Democrats are always pro-India." Recent history has
validated those beliefs. The Clinton administration inherited close
ties to Pakistan, forged a decade earlier in collaboration against
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, by the time Clinton left
office, the United States had tilted toward India, and Pakistan was
under U.S. sanctions for its nuclear activities. All this has given
Musharraf reason not just to respond to pressure from Bush, but to
feel invested in him--and to worry that Kerry, who called the Khan
affair a "disaster," and who has proposed tough new curbs on nuclear
proliferation, would adopt an icier line.

Bush's strategy could work. In large part because of the increased
U.S. pressure, Musharraf has, over the last several months,
significantly increased military activity in the tribal areas--
regions that enjoy considerable autonomy from Islamabad and where,
until Musharraf sided with the United States in the war on terrorism,
Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the nation's 50-year
history. Thousands of Pakistani troops fought a pitched battle in
late March against tribesmen and their Al Qaeda affiliates in South
Waziristan in hopes of capturing Zawahiri. The fighting escalated
significantly in June. Attacks on army camps in the tribal areas
brought fierce retaliation, leaving over 100 tribal and foreign
militants and Pakistani soldiers dead in three days. Last month,
Pakistan killed a powerful Waziristan warlord and Qaeda ally, Nek
Mohammed, in a dramatic rocket attack that villagers said bore
American fingerprints. (They claim a U.S. spy plane had been circling
overhead.) Through these efforts, the Pakistanis could bring in bin
Laden, Mullah Omar, or Zawahiri--a significant victory in the war on
terrorism that would bolster Bush's reputation among voters.

But there is a reason many Pakistanis and some American officials had
previously been reluctant to carry the war on terrorism into the
tribal areas. A Pakistani offensive in that region, aided by American
high-tech weaponry and perhaps Special Forces, could unite tribal
chieftains against the central government and precipitate a border
war without actually capturing any of the HVTs. Military action in
the tribal areas "has a domestic fallout, both religious and ethnic,"
Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri complained
to the Los Angeles Times last year. Some American intelligence
officials agree. "Pakistan just can't risk a civil war in that area
of their country. They can't afford a western border that is
unstable," says a senior intelligence official, who anonymously
authored the recent Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War
on Terror and who says he has not heard that the current pressures on
Pakistan are geared to the election. "We may be at the point where
[Musharraf] has done almost as much as he can."

Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a
good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good
idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they
know: This year, the president's reelection is at stake.

Massoud Ansari reported from Karachi.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040719&s=aaj071904

Where can I find a site that carries up to date political information
on Canuckistan? I can't find anything about the new government (which
I assume is a coalition). When I saw that Ujjal Dosanjh was in the
new cabinet, I thought -- well, martin struck a coalition, logically,
with the NDP, but were there enough NDP MPs to get a majority? And
then I find out the former premier of B.C. HAS BECOME A LIBERAL???
Ran as a liberal???

What the hell is happening up there? I know the Liberals destroyed
the NDP in the previous B.C. election, but....

And Ken Dryden is in the government??? What is he -- minister of
hockey?

HELP ME WITH INFO, PLEASE. I was busy moving from California to New
Yawk over the past few weeks.

Former hockey giant Ken Dryden takes on cabinet post in social
development

Tue Jul 20, 6:37 PM ET

by MARIA BABBAGE

TORONTO (CP) - Part sports icon, part intellectual, six-time Stanley
Cup champ Ken Dryden was sworn in as minister of social development
Tuesday, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to become a federal
politician.

Dryden, one of 39 newly minted cabinet ministers, marked his
inauguration with his usual mixture of humility and confidence,
saying he's up to the job despite his inexperience. "These are things
that you always find out when you're involved," the 56-year-old
Hockey Hall of Fame inductee said outside Ottawa's Rideau Hall, where
the ceremony was held.

"I mean, I've been in a lot of situations before where I'd been new
and have been thrown into deep water, and I've found a way of
managing to swim."

He cited his work with youth, children and voluntary groups as
experience that will help him deal with the portfolio.

"It's an area that I love to work in, have loved to work in for years
and years. And this is a portfolio that I really can't wait to get
involved in."

Richard Peddie, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and
Entertainment Inc., spent more than six years working with Dryden.

"Ken was really very strong on the social side of professional
sports, making sure we were active in the communities with charitable
giving, with getting kids playing basketball and hockey, doing the
right things," he said.

"And his heart's in the right place. So he'll do a great job in that
portfolio."

Dryden will likely bring his dedication in youth issues to the job,
says Alan Mirabelli, a spokesman for the Vanier Institute of the
Family, a national research and advocacy group.

"He's an incredible listener, very reflective. And then offers some
very unique points of view, trying to find resolutions, trying to
find new openings," Mirabelli says of Dryden, who has been a member
of the institute's board for more than four years.

"That's obviously a new challenge for him. And one of the things I
know about Ken is he meets challenges with a great deal of skill.

"But how he'll meet this particular one, I don't know. But I don't
doubt that he will meet it."

While the department has maintained a relatively low profile since
Human Resources Development Canada was split into two departments in
February, Prime Minister Paul Martin's election promise of a national
day care plan will fall directly into Dryden's lap.

There are doubts the Liberals will pull it off. After all, former
prime minister Jean Chretien promised the same thing in the 1993
federal election.

A national day care program would have required provincial
participation and money the deficit-saddled federal government didn't
have a decade ago, Dryden said Tuesday.

"This is a significantly different time than it was then."

Throughout his many careers - as a star goalie for the Montreal
Canadiens, as Ontario's youth commissioner, as a bestselling author -
Dryden has always stood out.

Among NHL hockey players, he was an intellectual, taking a year off
to earn a law degree in 1973. At the helm of the Maple Leafs hockey
club in 1997, he deftly handled the Maple Leaf Gardens sex abuse
scandal early in his tenure, later setting up awareness programs for
Toronto children and adults.

A desire to learn more about education led him to a Mississauga,
Ont., high school classroom, where he spent months scribbling down
observations, later becoming the basis for his 1995 book, In School.

"He pushes to get the best," says Peddie. "He's not satisfied with
the first quick answer, will agonize until he gets it right."

---------------------------------------

Picture and brief bit:

http://www.ctv.ca/generic/WebSpecials/martins_cabinet/main_frameset.ht
ml

Shell (my fellow moderator on the Sarah Polley Fan Club Picture Site):

How can I invite all the members of the Sarah Polley Fan Club to
become members of the Picture Site?

The guru of screenwriting
August 4, 2004

Page Tools
Email to a friend Printer format
Robert McKee tells Dina Ross that the script is paramount.

Almost everything about Robert McKee suggests the Messiah - the
greying, leonine head, the trademark black, bushy eyebrows, eyes that
gleam with religious fervour. Yeah, he will lead us out of the shadow
of screenwriting ignorance into the valley of filmmaking success.

McKee has been preaching the gospel of "Story" all over the world for
more than 15 years. His premise is simple: Hollywood has turned away
from centuries-old traditions of storytelling and the golden age of
cinema to rehashing formulaic pap.

His best-selling book, Story, and his lectures, spell out McKee's
commandments to the ever-increasing flock of the faithful: do your
research, find your story, tell it well, eschew cliche, discover your
characters' truth, respect your audience.

Still, it takes him a while to get going, as I found when I attended
his seminar in Melbourne last year. We're two minutes in and he
launches into McKee on mobile phones ("if yours rings during the
lectures, you'll pay me $10"), McKee on George W. ("isn't this a sad,
scary human being")? and McKee on tobacco ("take advantage of the
breaks and smoke four cigarettes back to back").

Advertisement
  Advertisement
  He's imperious, opinionated and swears a lot, fuelled by a seemingly
endless supply of black coffee. By now 45 minutes have passed. But
while half of you wishes he'd cut the clever-me curtain-raiser and
start on the meat and potatoes (you have, after all, just paid $500-
odd to attend), the other half is spellbound by this incongruous
mixture of guru and showman.

McKee does have something to say, and he does so with conviction,
passion and erudition. And his is the voice of experience: this is a
screenwriter, writer on television's Columbo and former NBC film-
reader, after all.

Whether he's describing the arc of an act, the complexities of plot,
the need for genuine characterisation or the gulf between a
protagonist's object of desire and the dire reality of their
situation, he lays bare the building blocks of story-writing.

He speaks clearly, illustrating his talk with an encyclopedic range
of examples. At the heart of his discourse lies a deep love and
respect for the craft of story-telling, with all its frustrations,
idiosyncrasies and capacity to overpower and overwhelm both writer
and audience.

Every writer identifies with McKee's thesis that making stories is
lonely work - daunting, dazzling and dangerous - demanding everything
from those who embark on that journey. But McKee doesn't espouse a
19th-century Romantic view of the writer as visionary recluse. He's
pragmatic as well as dogmatic, offering commonsense ground rules and
a guide map.

Every good story, he teaches, is a metaphor for life - universal,
transcending cultural boundaries, timeless, unique. What you're left
with after three exhausting days of seminars is an exhilarating sense
of possibility.

He urges writers to discover the power of story in themselves. He is
immensely empowering. So many writers feel at the mercy of directors,
producers and managements, but McKee crowns them as ultimate
originators, imparting renewed energy.

Helping writers tap into a true notion of self-worth may well be his
most enduring legacy.

Robert McKee teaches in Sydney from August 6-8 at the Dendy Opera
Quays Cinema, Circular Quay East. Registration is $599.

One of the actors who was involved in an upcoming Sarah project has died.
Andre Noble, 25, was a cast member of the upcoming independent film
Sugar, which also starred Polley and Brendan Fehr (Roswell).
What is even more sad is the fact he was a Newfoundlander and the bizarre
way in which he died.
Noble died after coming into contact with a poisonous plant, called the
monkshood, on a small island near his home of Centreville, NL. This isn't
official however, because toxicology results have yet to be determined.
Noble had just come home for a short break in between a tour of major US
cities to promote the new film, which he played Cliff, a restless suburban teen
in search of love, happiness and ultimately his true self after coming out of
the
closet,
Noble leaves his parents as well as his brother, Shane.
Noble had worked on Random Passage, playing Isaac, and recently
appeared in the updated version of Oliver Twist called Twist.
A scholarship fund is being set up in Noble's name and a memorial service
will be held in Toronto on August 16.
For more information about the Sugar project, please visit http://
www.sugarthemovie.com

Andre, RIP.

Visa Stripper Scandal Opens Can of Worms on Canada's involvement in
Trafficking of Women

"more complaints about Canada than any other western country" says
anti-trafficking leader

OTTAWA, August 5, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Evidence from an internal
memo by Canadian visa officers, insisting that women wishing to enter
Canada to work as strippers must provide nude photos, has sparked a
closer look into Canada's dealings in the trafficking of women. The
startling report, which was issued in late July by the Toronto Sun
after it obtained the memo through freedom of information requests,
was quickly denied by immigration officials.

Despite the fact that the memo by Sergio Mercado, of the Canadian
Embassy in Mexico issued to all Canadian Immigration Officers
said, "If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to
wiggle their bottoms in Canada," immigration Canada is denying the
need for nude photos. Immigration Canada spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi
told reporters, "We never, never ask for nude photographs."

The revelations have made news around the world, and while some might
be surprised as Canada's controversial involvement in such
exploitation of women, those who fight trafficking in women were not
surprised. Gregory Carlin, director of the largest anti-trafficking
coalition in the British Isles, told LifeSiteNews.com that he thought
it was "appalling for Canadian officials to be sifting through
photographs of naked foreign girls."

Carlin, who is with the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition charges
that, "Many of the Romanian girls we interview complain of being
coerced into prostitution in Canada by club-owners and lied to by
Canadian officials." Carlin, the principle advocate responsible for
Operation Quest which resulted in hundreds of anti-trafficking
arrests, added "There are also threats of arrest and deportation if
they refuse to provide additional VIP services. Canadian officials
fail to inform the females that in Canada, lap-dancing invariably
involves sex, full contact and penetration etc."

While Canada portrays itself as a morally superior nation which
respects women, showboating abortion on demand as evidence of its
superiority, those fighting trafficking of women on the front lines
know better. Pointing out the impudence of government working with
strip club owners for immigration purposes, Carlin said, "We get more
complaints about Canada than any other western country. Of course, it
is not every country which climbs into bed with organized crime as a
human resource partner."

"The sex trade in Canada is frequently connected to some of the most
exploitative crime and trafficking syndicates in Eastern Europe. The
Canadian government has been complicit in trafficking and coerced sex
and has failed to check the ages of girls," Carlin told
LifeSiteNews.com.

The Canadian government is seriously lacking in transparency over the
issue. Even researchers on the topic within Canada struggle to learn
the facts. Aurélie Lebrun, a PhD researcher at the University of
Quebec in Montreal studying trafficking in women, told
LifeSiteNews.com she has tried unsuccessfully to obtain
information. "I've tried to know more about the visa's procedure
knowing that some of these dancers end up in prostitution. I wrote to
Immigration Canada and to Human Ressources Development Canada to get
information on how many visas they deliver the origin of the women,
their age, etc. Nobody was willing to give me any info," she said.

See LifeSiteNews.com related coverage:
Canadian Government Insists Immigrant Strippers Bare All for Officials
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jul/040
72701.html

jhw

It's been too damn quiet in here!

Anyway, if you live in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) or near Halifax,
'Siblings'--another one of Sarah's latest films--is screening at both
the Toronto International Film Festival and the Atlantic Film Festival
in Halifax.

Toronto International Film Festival
September 14 ~ 6:00 pm ET; Paramount 4; $16.75 CAD
September 16 ~ 4:00 pm ET; Paramount 4; $16.75 CAD
http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2004/filmsschedules/description.asp?pageID=filmlis\
t&id=263

Atlantic Film Festival (Halifax, NS)
September 24 ~ 9:25 pm AT; Park Lane 7; $9.50 CAD
http://filmguide.atlanticfilm.com (click on the Q - S tab and scroll
down till you find it)

The schedule for the Vancouver International Film Festival hasn't been
released yet. Of course, if it's being screened there, I'll post the
info. Ditto for any reviews that come out. :)

Pictures should be posted to the picture group...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sarahpolleypicturesite

Shell

Hi i'm just a new fan
and telling that i'm very happy and proud to be a member of the
Sarah Polley yahoo fan club...she's just amazing and one of the best
actresses nowadays...kisses and nice to know you to evryone.

This time, for Sarah fans in the Maritimes and British Columbia...

Atlantic Film Festival (Halifax, NS)
September 24 ~ 9:25 pm AT; Park Lane 7; $9.50 CAD
http://www.atlanticfilm.com

Vancouver International Film Festival
September 29 ~ 9:15 pm PT; Granville 7, Cinema 3; $9.00 CAD
October 1 ~ 1:00 pm PT; Granville 7, Cinema 7; $7.00 CAD
http://www.viff.org

(One thinks the movie sucks; but Sarah rocks. One thinks the movie is
pretty good and Sarah rocks. Either way, both reviewers agree Sarah
rocks. As if we didn't already know she rocks. ;))

SIBLINGS
* 1/2

Dir David Weaver w/ Alex Campbell, Sarah Gadon. 85 min. Sep 14, 6pm,
Paramount; Sep 16, 4pm, Paramount.

Four semi-siblings struggle to cover up the not-so-accidental deaths
of their evil step-parents (Sonja Smits and Nicholas Campbell). Not a
bad idea for a movie, especially a Canadian one, but David Weaver
(Century Hotel) hasn't a clue how black comedy works. The parents are
grimly hostile when they should be gleefully wicked. The kids are glib
and cold-hearted when they should be at least a little traumatized.
Only Sarah Polley as the slutty neighbour brings any sense of joy to
the proceedings; the rest is just phony and forced. KL

(eye.net)

* * * * *

Siblings
NNNN

Using a probing camera that's positively voyeuristic at times, Weaver
reveals the dark humour lurking behind the mixed-up relationships of
one imperfect family. Sonja Smits and Nicholas Campbell have been
married and divorced so often they could qualify for Parents
Anonymous. Their four step-children certainly think so. Sex, death and
Christmas cleverly dovetail in this stylish comedy that gives us too
many gifts – in particular, a little angel reading a morbid poem at a
Christmas concert, and Polley as the all-knowing girl next door,
further proof that she's the best Canadian screen actor of her generation.

(NOW Toronto)

Siblings ***
David Weaver (Canada)

Everyone wishes they could tell off their family members. Of course
they can't, except in this dark comedy in which four siblings and two
amusingly ghastly parents are related only through a jumble of
divorces and step-relations. When the parents happen to get murdered,
the fast-paced script continues in abrupt turns and commentaries on
suburban decorum. At its best, it tests the ridiculousness of family
banter. But is the message here the corruption of adults? The
companionship of siblings? The innocence of the youngest children?
Adults might yearn for a little more sense of grounding. But seen from
a teen perspective -- in which shaking things up, especially the
hypocrisies of family life, is often one's daily mission -- the film's
inventiveness makes it better than most teen fare. -- G.D. (Sept. 14,
6 p.m., Paramount 4; Sept. 16, 4 p.m., Paramount 4.)

(Globe and Mail)

http://www.chosen-ones.com/sarah/

You don't have to have a website to join it. I may sign the club up
for it. :)

Hey, the ABOUT SARAH biography was taken from my entry on the
Internet Movie Database.

Beer in moderation could be good for you
September 15, 2004

TORONTO --Beer, a health food? That's what some Canadian researchers
report. A study from the University of Western Ontario finds a brew
could be good for you. The researchers say beer has antioxidant
boosters that could help fight cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

But the key is moderation. The researchers found three beers would
have the opposite effect.

The study was funded by beermakers Guinness and Labatt. But the
university says the financial support had no influence on the
outcome.

Autumn rich in 'art films' many will never see

September 17, 2004

BY ROGER EBERT


TORONTO -- Sometimes it's good to sit down in a quiet corner and take
a deep breath and stop running as fast as you can. This year at the
Toronto Film Festival, I've averaged three to four films a day and
talked about movies in interviews, at lunch, in hotel lobbies, in
elevators, corridors, standing next to hot dog stands, waiting in
line for coffee, lingering on theater sidewalks and walking down the
street. The phone is ringing right now.

Since I came here from a long weekend of the same at Telluride, it's
tempting to believe I live in a world where all of the films are
festival entries, all of the audiences are curious and receptive, and
all of the filmmakers work from their dreams and obsessions. It is
not so, but it should be, which is why high prices are paid here for
films that the festival loves but few people in the real world will
ever see. The shortage is not of good films, but of distributors and
exhibitors. Somewhere in my e-mail right now is probably a message
complaining, "None of the movies you mentioned will ever play in my
state."

And yet, taking the deep breath and sipping the fresh coffee, I
realize this has been the best autumn season in years. One new film
after another, both small independent titles and high-end commercial
titles, have been pleasant surprises, and some of them have been
truly great.

From Telluride I wrote about some of the Toronto entries: Sally
Potter's "Yes" with Joan Allen, Lodge Kerrigan's "Keane" with Damien
Lewis, Michael Radford's "The Merchant of Venice" with Al Pacino,
Istvan Szabo's "Being Julia" with Annette Bening, and Bill
Condon's "Kinsey," with Liam Neeson. They're all here at Toronto, and
by themselves would make this a superior festival.

Here there has been one richness after another. On Wednesday night,
as the fourth movie of the day, I saw Javier Bardem in Alejandro
Amenabar's "The Sea Inside." This is the most talked-about male
performance at the festival. Bardem plays a man who has been a
quadriplegic for 26 years and wants to die. His case has been turned
down by the Spanish courts, but he attracts supporters, including a
woman lawyer who is suffering from a degenerative disease and a local
factory worker who brings her two sons and seems ready to move in. He
lives with his loving and patient family, but has decided "a life in
this condition has no dignity."

He does not speak for other quadriplegics, he says, but only for
himself; in one scene he debates the issue with a quadriplegic
priest. What is amazing is how much humanity and humor Bardem brings
to a role where he can use only use face, eyes and voice. The movie
is not depressing, but inspiring, in the way it causes us to think
about the value of our own lives.

Also Wednesday, I saw "Crash," by Paul Haggis, a TV writer who enters
film direction with a big cast and a brave and uncompromising look at
the way racism infects our society. "This is not a movie about how
they're good and we're bad, or vice versa," Haggis told me. "It's
about how we all behave well or badly, depending on circumstances."
His film includes many paradoxes, including a white cop who
physically insults a black woman but later saves her life. That cop's
young white partner is so disgusted with this racism that he asks for
a transfer; the assault scene results in two actions in which the
young cop saves a life and takes a life, and neither event would have
happened if not for the original racist incident.

Perhaps this sounds confusing, and certainly Haggis depends on
coincidence to bring his characters together in interlocking stories.
Sometimes films built on repeated coincidence get on my nerves, but
not this time, because it's an efficient story device to show that
racism is a virus that affects the innocent as well as the guilty;
that the same person can be guilty in one situation and innocent in
another.The cast includes strong performances by Don Cheadle (also so
good in "Hotel Rwanda" at this festival), Matt Dillon, Thandie
Newton, Terrence Dashon Howard, Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Esposito and
many more.

These films will probably play in the state where you live. Whether
you will be able to see Paul Cox's "The Human Touch" (which I praised
at Cannes), David Gordon Green's "Undertow," Todd
Solondz's "Palindromes" or Darrell James Roodt's "Yesterday" may be
another question, depending on whether you live in a city where at
least one theater operates free of Hollywood's monotonous booking
practices. Luckily, many of them are the sorts of films that play on
IFC, HBO and other enlightened channels, and DVD has given a new life
to so-called "art films."

Why are they called "art films," anyway? Because they are art, which
is usually true, or because they are thought to appeal only to select
audiences? A movie like "Yesterday" or "Undertow" could play in any
multiplex in North America to the first 300 customers through the
door, and they would leave saying it was one of the best films they'd
ever seen.

http://www.topten.ca/2003/content/08.html

Lots of raves regarding Sarah's performance. :)

"Revengers Tragedy on DVD"


Back in the Reagan years, British film director Alex Cox was one of
the chi-chi talents of the time, bringing a vigorous New Wave
sensibility to such era art-house favorites as Repo Man (1984), Sid
and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987). As the '80s waned, so
did the intensity of Cox's critical following; his sporadic output
over the last decade has been largely overlooked on this side of the
Atlantic. It's unfortunate, since his recent works show him to remain
unafraid of the outrageous both in subject matter and execution. This
is very much evidenced by his kinetic modern-dress retelling of the
relatively obscure Jacobean stage drama Revengers Tragedy (2002),
lately brought to DVD by Fantoma Films.

Cox transferred the setting of Thomas Middleton's 17th-century play
from Tuscany to his native Liverpool, albeit rendered as a stylishly
imagined near-future dystopia. Returning to the corrupt and crime-
ridden city after a ten-year absence is the much-changed Vindici
(Christopher Eccleston), the narrative's nominal "revenger." His
vendetta lies with the fey crime lord Duke (Derek Jacobi) who had a
decade before taken the occasion of Vindici's wedding feast to poison
the bride for spurring his sexual advances. (In an over-the-top bit
of business of Middleton's that must have certainly caught Cox's
fancy, the grief-crazed protagonist keeps his wife's mummified skull
as a memento.) Vindici embarks on his scheme of retribution by
ingratiating himself with Duke's eldest son Lussurioso (Eddie
Izzard), a loutish party-boy with his own ultimate designs on the
family's criminal empire.

With the assistance of his brother Carlo (Andrew Schofield), now a
Duke footsoldier, and his sister Castiza (Calra Henry), who has
captured Lussorioso's lustful eye, Vindici works his way into the
crime family's inner circle with dispatch. From there, he cunningly
stokes the simmering resentments amongst Lussurioso, his equally
covetous and reprobate half-brothers, and their patriarch by dropping
hints of incestuous intrigues with the Duchess (Diana Quick). Whether
the results of his trickery bring Vindici any genuine fulfillment,
however, will prove to be another matter entirely.

Cox's take on the subject matter is so unconventional that you have
to marvel at its having received any kind of commercial backing. By
and large, Frank Cottrell Boyce's screen adaptation left Middleton's
prose intact, and while it may be less daunting than Shakespeare, it
isn't necessarily more accessible. Still, the tale unfolds with Cox's
narrative vigor, driven by a foreboding techno score courtesy of
Chumbawamba and the intelligently efforts of its cast. The always-
compelling Eccleston offers memorable work as the protagonist whose
sanity and moral bearings have been worn away by the profundity of
his hate. The bizarrely made-up Jacobi does justice to the salacious
Duke, and Izzard is nicely measured as the grasping heir who isn't
nearly as clever as he imagines himself.

Fantoma did a commendable job in packaging Revengers Tragedy for its
DVD release. The digital transfer presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic
widescreen is colorful and crisp and the 5.1 Dolby Surround
soundtrack does justice to the score. Cox and Izzard are on hand for
a very engaging feature-length commentary track. The extra
presentations include a 28-minute making-of documentary featuring
Cox, Boyce, and other principals of the cast and crew, offering
insightful glances at the director's approach (such as his refusal to
use video monitors). Less substantive are four small accompanying
featurettes, running from 2 to 14 minutes in length, whose content
ranges from the observations of Oxford professor and Middleton expert
John Pitcher to the fittings and makeups for Antony Booth and Sophie
Dahl, who played the Duke's chief rival and his wife.

Also included is the presentation piece Cox took to Cannes in 2001 in
search of financing, an edited scene between Castiza and her mother,
and a gallery of stills. Production sketches and storyboards. A
package insert contains excerpts from Cox's "A Director's Diary"
series prepared for BBC Online.

Revengers Tragedy on DVD



Back in the Reagan years, British film director Alex Cox was one of
the chi-chi talents of the time, bringing a vigorous New Wave
sensibility to such era art-house favorites as Repo Man (1984), Sid
and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987). As the '80s waned, so
did the intensity of Cox's critical following; his sporadic output
over the last decade has been largely overlooked on this side of the
Atlantic. It's unfortunate, since his recent works show him to remain
unafraid of the outrageous both in subject matter and execution. This
is very much evidenced by his kinetic modern-dress retelling of the
relatively obscure Jacobean stage drama Revengers Tragedy (2002),
lately brought to DVD by Fantoma Films.

Cox transferred the setting of Thomas Middleton's 17th-century play
from Tuscany to his native Liverpool, albeit rendered as a stylishly
imagined near-future dystopia. Returning to the corrupt and crime-
ridden city after a ten-year absence is the much-changed Vindici
(Christopher Eccleston), the narrative's nominal "revenger." His
vendetta lies with the fey crime lord Duke (Derek Jacobi) who had a
decade before taken the occasion of Vindici's wedding feast to poison
the bride for spurring his sexual advances. (In an over-the-top bit
of business of Middleton's that must have certainly caught Cox's
fancy, the grief-crazed protagonist keeps his wife's mummified skull
as a memento.) Vindici embarks on his scheme of retribution by
ingratiating himself with Duke's eldest son Lussurioso (Eddie
Izzard), a loutish party-boy with his own ultimate designs on the
family's criminal empire.

With the assistance of his brother Carlo (Andrew Schofield), now a
Duke footsoldier, and his sister Castiza (Calra Henry), who has
captured Lussorioso's lustful eye, Vindici works his way into the
crime family's inner circle with dispatch. From there, he cunningly
stokes the simmering resentments amongst Lussurioso, his equally
covetous and reprobate half-brothers, and their patriarch by dropping
hints of incestuous intrigues with the Duchess (Diana Quick). Whether
the results of his trickery bring Vindici any genuine fulfillment,
however, will prove to be another matter entirely.

Cox's take on the subject matter is so unconventional that you have
to marvel at its having received any kind of commercial backing. By
and large, Frank Cottrell Boyce's screen adaptation left Middleton's
prose intact, and while it may be less daunting than Shakespeare, it
isn't necessarily more accessible. Still, the tale unfolds with Cox's
narrative vigor, driven by a foreboding techno score courtesy of
Chumbawamba and the intelligently efforts of its cast. The always-
compelling Eccleston offers memorable work as the protagonist whose
sanity and moral bearings have been worn away by the profundity of
his hate. The bizarrely made-up Jacobi does justice to the salacious
Duke, and Izzard is nicely measured as the grasping heir who isn't
nearly as clever as he imagines himself.

Fantoma did a commendable job in packaging Revengers Tragedy for its
DVD release. The digital transfer presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic
widescreen is colorful and crisp and the 5.1 Dolby Surround
soundtrack does justice to the score. Cox and Izzard are on hand for
a very engaging feature-length commentary track. The extra
presentations include a 28-minute making-of documentary featuring
Cox, Boyce, and other principals of the cast and crew, offering
insightful glances at the director's approach (such as his refusal to
use video monitors). Less substantive are four small accompanying
featurettes, running from 2 to 14 minutes in length, whose content
ranges from the observations of Oxford professor and Middleton expert
John Pitcher to the fittings and makeups for Antony Booth and Sophie
Dahl, who played the Duke's chief rival and his wife.

Also included is the presentation piece Cox took to Cannes in 2001 in
search of financing, an edited scene between Castiza and her mother,
and a gallery of stills. Production sketches and storyboards. A
package insert contains excerpts from Cox's "A Director's Diary"
series prepared for BBC Online.

http://www.fantoma.com/fantoma.html

The short film 'Dermott's Quest', which features our Sarah, will air
on CBC during their 'Canadian Reflections' programme on October 24 at
11 pm local time/11:30 pm in Newfoundland.

That should be 11:30 pm local time/12 midnight in Newfoundland for the
times in my last post. Oops!

Hope to get to know you all. I will try to contribute to the discussion with my
thoughts, knowledge, and opinions.

Good morning / night to those that are awake.

http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6463973

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed when he fell
from a horse nine years ago, has died in a New York hospital of heart failure,
his publicist said on Monday.

Reeve, 52, went into a coma on Saturday when he suffered a heart attack during
treatment for an infected pressure wound and died in Northern Westchester
Hospital on Sunday afternoon without regaining consciousness, publicist Wesley
Combs told reporters.

Reeve's wife Dana issued a statement thanking "the millions of fans around the
world who have supported and loved my husband over the years."

Reeve, confined to a wheelchair since his riding accident in 1995, had in recent
years campaigned for the rights of the disabled and for stepped-up research into
the treatment of spinal cord injuries.

Reeve's family asked that donations be made in his honor to the Christopher
Reeve Paralysis Foundation, formed in 1999 to boost collaboration between
experts working on treatments for spinal cord damage.

An accomplished rider who owned several horses, Reeve suffered multiple injuries
including two shattered neck vertebrae when he was thrown from his horse at an
equestrian event in Commonwealth Park in Virginia.

Doctors initially predicted that he would never have any feeling or movement
below his head. But his foundation's Web site, www.ChristopherReeve.org, said he
had experienced a degree of recovery that his doctors considered "remarkable."

BORN IN NEW YORK

Hi everyone, just though I would introduce myself. I'm looking forward to the
discussions here.

Oh yeah, my pics are at: http://www.geocities.com/a_sweet_bi_girl18/

It's nice to be here and I look forward to getting to know all of you better.

General Headquarters of the Campaign for Canadian World Domination:

http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/index2.html

AIMS & GOALS:

-The systematic destruction and sublimation of all opposing the
Canadian reign -- and the polite, yet horrifically brutal, control of
our future territories of conquest.

-Infiltrating the USA and through a cleverly designed plan,
destroying it, and using its resources for our own purposes.

-Demonstrating to the world that Canada is the final and ultimate
power.

-Decontaminating the world of American influence.

-Reorganizing a New World Society of Canucks to suit our kindly,
peace-loving, and diabolical aims.

Happy Canada Day Aftermath All!

...In the folder "Tokyo Dead Screening."

On Sunday September 7, 2003, at Sassafraz, acclaimed actor Sarah
Polley, director Deepa Mehta and British filmmaker Penny Woolcock
were honoured at Women in Film and Television – Toronto's first
annual reception celebrating female filmmakers at the Toronto
International Film Festival.

http://www.wift.com/networking.html

And the two pictures of Sarah have been uploaded to the picture site
(groups.yahoo.com/groups/sarahpolleypicturesite) under a new folder
entitled "Events with Sarah".

--- In sarahpolleyfanclub@yahoogroups.com, "Gabriel Oak"
<mummingbirds@y...> wrote:
>
> On Sunday September 7, 2003, at Sassafraz, acclaimed actor Sarah
> Polley, director Deepa Mehta and British filmmaker Penny Woolcock
> were honoured at Women in Film and Television – Toronto's first
> annual reception celebrating female filmmakers at the Toronto
> International Film Festival.
>
> http://www.wift.com/networking.html