Wednesday July 23, 2008
ENTERTAINMENT FRONT PAGE 
Flashpoint a success, moves to new night
Networks CBS and CTV gave the new Canadian-made drama Flashpoint a major boost yesterday, moving the cop show from Friday nights to Thursdays, the most-watched night of the week.
Coldplay in the Coast Mountains
When a band as big as Coldplay decides it wants to produce and headline a European-style music festival in North America, you find a place to put it. The person charged with that responsibility, on a tight, one-year deadline, was Shane Bourbonnais, president of touring and business development for concert promoter Live Nation Canada.
Reality check
A man walks into a bar - wait, trust me, you haven't heard this one.It's Sean Cullen walking into a Toronto bar. It's not a joke, either. It's more like the kind of sketch comedy that has made Cullen a Canadian cult favourite. He's here to talk about his place in the cast of a reality TV show-cum-talent contest. It's not a situation comedy, just a situation in which he finds himself as a contestant on the sixth season of NBC's Last Comic Standing.
A majority vote in favour of harmony
THE EAGLESAt the Air Canada Centrein Toronto on MondayAn arc of doves, a bevy of quail, a host of sparrows, and what - a feud of Eagles? In a recent interview, Don Henley reckoned that while Long Road Out of Eden, the California country-rockers' first studio album in 28 years, was ''very good,'' with a little more time it could have been better, ''but that thing called democracy reared its head again.''
COLUMNISTS
Two of these things are just like the others
It's a murky business, the network TV racket. But in the bright sunshine of Los Angeles, the dark undercurrents of change and stress are all too obvious.Where to start? Well Tina Fey, formerly of Saturday Night Live and now the main power behind 30 Rock, captured it neatly the other night. Accepting an award from the Television Critics Association for 30 Rock, she breezed up to the stage and wisecracked, ''It's a great time to be in broadcast television, isn't it? It's like being in vaudeville in the sixties.''
MUSIC
'He came to Edmonton a private person and left famous'
Long before he played Manhattan and way before Berlin, Leonard Cohen took Edmonton in a mutually transformative storm, say organizers of a festival celebrating the moody Montreal-born poet-troubadour.
FILM
Director's Bat-belt included an Imax camera
When director Christopher Nolan began shooting The Dark Knight, the man behind the latest big-screen instalment of the Batman story unwittingly handed Imax Corp. a new business model - and probably the biggest box office take the company has ever seen.
Wine connoisseurs - I call them cons
It was the taste-off that turned wine upside down.In 1976, an esteemed all-French jury gathered in Paris for a blind tasting to compare eight of France's greatest wines against a dozen upstarts from California. In an upset worthy of Hollywood, the United States trounced France, winning top honours in both the red and white categories.
THEATRE
GOING OUT: LIVE THEATRE
THE BACK KITCHEN RELEASE PARTY **There are several cultural endeavours that enjoy popular success despite their general lameness. The Back Kitchen Release Party may fall into this camp.Trevor Devall's ''trans-Canada musical adventure'' tracks five Newfoundland folk musicians on a farewell tour of the country (in honour of a fallen band-mate). Their interactions are merely excuses for songs, and their travelling is an excuse for jokes derived from regional stereotypes. The Back Kitchen Release Party is itself a stereotypical (and mediocre) folk concert - more amusing than compelling.
