Friday May 16, 2008
Latest Columns 
The master of warring words goes to fight school
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Online Edition: Saturday, May 10, 2008 10:57 AM
You hear this a lot about playwright and screenwriter David Mamet: He's kind of a pain - demanding, egomaniacal, pernickety about his dialogue being performed exactly as written
The master of warring words goes to fight school
Published: Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
You hear this a lot about playwright and screenwriter David Mamet: He's kind of a pain - demanding, egomaniacal, pernickety about his dialogue being performed exactly as written. Though his voice is distinctive and vivid - productions such as Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo or Wag the Dog are unmistakably his, no matter which actors star in them - he's also accused of sacrificing substance for style. In March, he published an essay in The Village Voice entitled ''Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal,'' a nervy rumination on American politics that whipped up considerable indignation on the Internet for a few weeks.
Rethinking the ghastly photos of Abu Ghraib
Published: Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
They were the shots seen 'round the world. In photos taken in 2003 by the United States' 372nd Military Police Company at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, smiling soldiers posed next to naked, hooded detainees in states of humiliation and abuse - leashed, strapped to wires, piled into pyramids. Their smiles were chilling evidence that Americans were not squeaky-clean purveyors of democracy, that things over there had gone horribly wrong.
'I ... beg people to see it'
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
Some people believe that documentary filmmakers and photojournalists are dispassionate, purely objective recorders of fact. To them, Dilip Mehta, who has practised both professions, offered this thought: ''Oh, bullshit.'' He smiled the most engaging smile. ''I wept so openly and shamelessly when I heard some of these stories. I would switch off the camera myself and turn away.''
Make their next one a decaf - with Ambien
Published: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
I don't know how much caffeine John Cusack and Mark Leyner, co-screenwriters of the new satire War, Inc., had consumed before I sat down with them recently in an otherwise-closed Toronto restaurant, but it seemed like a lot. During my allotted 20 minutes, they each made a trip to the bathroom, ordered a round of cappuccinos (to a table already dotted with foam-slicked cups), and talked in twin, high-speed jumbles, usually over one another.
A call to action, a cause for hope
Published: Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
I'm a judge in the international category of this year's Hot Docs festival, which begins Thursday in Toronto, so for the last two weeks I've been in documentary heaven, screening 21 films, catching up on the world's preoccupations. To my eye, the form has never been in better shape. Long gone are the days when sitting through a doc was like taking your medicine: good for you, but a bit of a chore. Thanks to all kinds of innovations - smaller cameras, cheaper digital video, personality-driven narratives et al. - docs are faster and more flexible than ever. Yet the power of reality captured in images still holds.
Chilled in Winnipeg
Published: Saturday, April 5, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
How determined to have a positive outlook on life is Renee Zellweger? This determined: She claimed to be ''counting her lucky stars'' to be in Winnipeg in January, where the temperature had just risen - risen - to 23 below zero.
Chilled in Winnipeg
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Online Edition: Friday, April 4, 2008 09:53 PM
Working with George Clooney? Zellweger loved it. The ‘Peg in January? Winterrific. Internet tabloid journalism? ‘It's just frightening.'
A soldier with real soul
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
After one audience question at the Toronto premiere of the new Iraq-war drama, Stop-Loss, its star, Ryan Phillippe, grinned mischievously, making him look even more like an Italian fresco cherub than he usually does. He knew the audience would eat up his answer. ''It's my favourite line I've ever said in a movie,'' he said, and sure enough, we applauded, because the question was, ''How did you feel saying that line?'' and the line was, ''Fuck the President.''
The torture merchants' not-so-funny game
Published: Saturday, March 22, 2008 12:00 AM Page R3
After I saw the new torture drama Funny Games, I longed to smack its writer-director, Michael Haneke, on the forehead, V-8 style. I suppose he would be delighted by this reaction. He made Funny Games precisely to provoke. (And he made it not once, but twice: The current incarnation is a near shot-for-shot, English language remake of Haneke's German original from 1997.) After I spoke to the actor Colin Hanks (Tom's son) about his recent torture thriller Untraceable, I wanted to smack him, too - albeit a bit more gently, because Hanks is an actor in the film, not its originator.
