Am I on Blackett’s “crap” list?
By Brian Brennan I applied to a provincial government agency – twice — to fund my next history book project, and was turned down, twice. Why? First, let me tell you the reason I applied for this money. You don’t make big money writing history in this country. It is the sport of amateurs. Amateurs, [...]
Calgary Jazz Festival plays itself off
By Brian Brennan Chick Corea was supposed to play Calgary this Friday night, followed by Ben E. King on Saturday night. But that won’t happen now because C-Jazz, the local organizers of the Calgary Jazz Festival, have abruptly pulled the plug on the annual event. Is it possible the shows will still go on? Likely [...]
Lindsay Blackett strays from the script
By Frank Moher So, Lindsay Blackett was just performing a public service when, at the Banff World Television Festival, he called Canadian TV “shit”? Apparently so. As the Alberta Minister of Culture and Community Spirit told the Calgary Herald earlier this week, his intention was to create “a national discussion” about Canadian TV’s crapitude. But [...]
Betty White on Saturday Night Live: not cute
By Frank Moher The show hasn’t reached my time zone yet, but by all Twitter accounts Betty White is killing it on “Saturday Night Live” tonight. But all this amazement that she can still do the job is a bit misplaced, no? For one thing, she’s only 88-years old. My buddy Antony Holland, whom some [...]
Rescued from the scrapheap
THE LIFE & ART OF FRANK MOLNAR, JACK HARDMAN, LEROY JENSEN By Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, Wendy Newbold Patterson Mother Tongue Publishing 146 pp., $34.95 Review by Brian Brennan Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, and LeRoy Jensen were three dedicated and unfashionably tradition-based Vancouver artists of the 1960s who today are largely forgotten. Because they operated [...]
By the book
WHAT THE FURIES BRING By Kenneth Sherman The Porcupine’s Quill 170 pages; $19.95 Review by Frank Moher What does it mean to be an intellectual? Does it simply mean to think a lot, and vigorously, about something other than yourself? If so, some cab drivers I’ve had are among the most impressive intellectuals in my [...]
Death on the homefront
THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL By Cathy Marie Buchanan Harper Collins 307 pages, $22.99 Review by Frank Moher Halfway through The Day the Falls Stood Still, a first novel by Toronto author Cathy Marie Buchanan, I thought it might be a worthy companion to Timothy Findley’s World War I novel, The Wars — a [...]
Mmm. Bacon.
FISHING FOR BACON By Michael Davie NeWest Press 234 pages, $22.95 Review by Frank Moher Coming-of-age novels are a lot like podcasts: there are too many of them, everyone thinks they can make one, and not everyone is right. They’re also like Twitter messages, predicated as they are on the assumption that just because an [...]
Atwood at her dystopic best
YEAR OF THE FLOOD By Margaret Atwood McClelland & Stewart 448 pp., $32.99 Review by Rachel Krueger Margaret Atwood is at her haranguing best when she’s whipping up appalling futures for us all. She’s had several career missteps when her agenda has written cheques that her skills can’t cash, but The Year of the Flood [...]
Mad Cows and Hamilton
Review by Frank Moher Canada’s small publishers are not known for producing summer beach-reading material, but ECW Press has done a decent job of it with Tainted (ECW Press, 312 pp., $24.95). It’s also not every day you come across a thriller featuring, as its central character, the associate medical officer of the Hamilton-Lakeshore Public [...]
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