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leaving Hollywood for New Jersey

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:15:35 +0900

Win Win director on leaving Hollywood for New Jersey
In the movies, Tom McCarthy is expendable. He's among the seven billion or so casualties in Roland Emmerich's global disaster movie 2012. He's a brief, bad date for Tina Fey's character in Baby Mama. He's had small parts in The Lovely Bones, Duplicity and Flags of Our Fathers, and he's played three separate characters on TV's Law & Order.

As a filmmaker, however, he's indispensable. His writing / directing debut, 2003's The Station Agent, was a startlingly original comedy about a hermit (Peter Dinklage) brought out of his shell by his neighbours. His next, The Visitor, brought an Academy Award nomination for its star, Richard Jenkins, in the story of an unlikely friendship between a taciturn professor and an illegal immigrant.

His latest, Win Win, stars Paul Giamatti as Mike Flaherty, a small-town lawyer and high-school wrestling coach who makes an ethically dubious decision and finds himself running to keep ahead of the consequences. McCarthy wanted to move away from the loner characters of his previous films.

"This is a man who's completely in the middle of his life," says McCarthy, stopping off in Toronto to discuss his film. "He's very involved with his life, he's very connected to his family Michael Oher Jerseys and his community and people around him. That , as a starting place, was very exciting to me. "
McCarthy's unlikely writing partner on Win Win is his New Jersey childhood friend Joe Tiboni. "We wrestled together," he says proudly. "New Providence High School. We were both Mighty Pioneers."

But while McCarthy went off to appear in Syriana and Little Fockers, Tiboni stayed home and became a lawyer specializing in elder care issues. He works out of an office with a noisy boiler and boxes of files in the basement, and drives a Subaru - not coincidentally, so does Giamatti's character.

"If I was writing about a French diplomat I would go live in Paris and spend some time with that French diplomat," McCarthy says. "Except this was New Jersey with my buddy."

McCarthy and Tiboni reconnected in an odd way, some years back. McCarthy was working on an early draft of Pixar's Up, and needed an expert in geriatric legal issues. So he called his old friend.

Later, when he and Tiboni started writing Win Win, big-budget Hollywood lent a hand. "When I was doing 2012 I had a lot of downtime ... actually Joe came out to spend a week on set and write in my trailer. He ' d always be like, 'This is great! Will we have a chili cart when were filming?' I said, 'There will be no chili cart. Enjoy it now.' "

The biggest uncertainty in making the movie, however, turned out to be casting the character of Kyle, a high-school wrestling prodigy who drops into Mike Flaherty's life, as people have a habit of doing in McCarthy's movies.

"I needed a wrestler who could act," McCarthy says. "I didn't want to fake it. One thing about movies with this budget is you don't have a huge prep time. It's not like you're prepping for six months and you can find the kid, get him into wrestling camp, send him away, bring him back ... "

He ultimately settled on an unknown, 17-year-old Alex Shaffer from New Jersey, whose entire résumé comprised a role in a sixth-grade production of The Pirates of Penzance. But boy, could he wrestle. "When he came in he was raw as raw can be, "McCarthy says." And he auditioned seven or eight times, because I wasn't going to pull the trigger until I knew. "

Shaffer says he likes movies, especially documentaries, but knew nothing about making them. "I thought they were filmed in chronological order," he says. "I had no idea who Paul Giamatti was or what it was to be in a Tom McCarthy film . I had no idea what a big deal it was. "

He's also eager to return the praise given him by his director. "Tom did a great job of making the movie real," he says. "I saw the movie myself and it was much better than Vision Quest!"

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Scouts Canada redesigns its uniforms

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:14:42 +0900

Scouts Canada redesigns its uniforms
The shirt

Gone are the oatmeal-coloured button-down shirts in stiff fabric. Instead, Scouts are getting bright green camp shirts and "technical" T-shirts, which are meant to be worn casually untucked. Beaver Scouts, the youngest Scout members, will now wear brown zip-up terry-fleece vests over cream pique-knit jersey shirts - a material used in golf shirts. Older Scouts, known as Venturers and Rovers, will wear navy and red camp shirts. In a marked departure from the stuffy uniform requirements of the past, the Scouts have designed many of the shirts to be worn untucked.
The Sash

Generations of young Scouts have proudly displayed the rewards of achievements in knot-tying or astronomy, by sewing an achievement badge to a bright red-and-white sash. But the organization decided to do away with the famous piece of clothing after extensive public consultations said Steve Kent, chief commissioner and chairman of the Board of Governors of Scouts Canada.“We needed to respect and honour our great">found that most Scouts thought the sashes were outdated and uncomfortable. "It's a big deal, and an important step," said Steve Kent, chief commissioner and chairman of the Board of Governors of Scouts Canada. "We needed to respect and honour our great heritage, but we also needed to come up with a uniform that was modern and reflected who we are today. "Badges, also redesigned by Joe Fresh, will now be sewn on sleeves.

Hats, pants & neckties

Beaver Scouts will wear bucket hat in denim blue, while Cub Michael Oher Jerseys Scouts will wear branded ball caps. Scouts, Venturer and Rovers will all still have to wear tan pants and a traditional "necker" a handkerchief tied around the neck. The uniform's gender-neutral style, reminiscent of Maoist China, reflect the fact that the Scouts have been co-ed for more than 10 years and that female scouts make up 20 per cent of its members. Mr. Kent. "We're not your grandfather's or your father's Boy Scouts. "

Fashionistas weigh in

They may not be couture, but Lisa Tant, editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Flare magazine, gives the new uniforms high marks for being both stylish and comfortable. "I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide but never liked the uniforms, "said Ms. Tant." I was always being told to tuck in my shirt, find my belt and straighten up, when all I wanted to do was have fun and get into the activities. "

Who is joe fresh?

The hugely successful budget clothing company owned by Loblaws Cos. Ltd. Mostly sells its low-cost apparel in supermarkets, but began opening stand-alone stores in Canada and announced plans to open a Manhattan boutique later this year. Their stylish new uniforms will be available Sept. 1 in Scout Shops and at scoutshop.ca.
National Post, with files from Misty Harris, Postmedia News

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Rex Murphy: If nothing else, the election will m

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:13:23 +0900

Rex Murphy: If nothing else, the election will mean the last of familiar faces
Well, the majestic stewards of our glorious destiny - by which I mean the Ottawa politicians - have got the election horse to water; and I do believe the old nag is actually going to drink. A Canadian election - unwanted, unwarranted and unwelcome - is almost certainly upon us.

Elections change things; and while this one may not change the partisan composition of the House of Commons, the odds of another Harper minority are good. This result would change, and change for good, the cast of characters who have become as familiar to us and as loveable as the Jersey Shore crowd - at the top of every party in Ottawa.
Tis is a leadership election Michael Oher Jerseys in every sense of that phrase. Stephen Harper survives only if he wins, finally, the majority that has stayed out of his grasp since his 2006 victory over Paul Martin. If the result is yet another fractious minority, Mr. Harper can hang in for another year or two, but the Conservatives - already a little thin on the imperious Mr. Harper - will be looking for someone to lead them - someone less brittle, less polarizing and maybe someone who can smile in public without giving the impression he's doing so while reading a ransom note.

On Ignatieff, the point is obvious. The early auguries are not good. Despite the summer tours, the high rhetoric about restoring democracy (an interesting cry from a leader who was effectively appointed), Mr. Ignatieff has an Alpine climb till polling day. Should he lose, it's either back to the halls of Harvard or the must-read memoir of the decade. We are all aware that Justin Trudeau is testing his Canadian Idol status, and there are others, besides veteran Bob Rae, willing to take the reins of the once proud, invincible and cocky Liberal Party of Canada.

Jack Layton has the kindest image of the current leaders. And, whether it's insensitive to say so or not, given his medical problems, this has to be his final campaign. He's done very well, invigorated the NDP as an opposition party and managed to keep his ideological herd of cats very much on message. But the NDP, like the Liberals, must be looking to renovate their
leadership.

And the Greens ... well, Elizabeth May, as the custodian of everything that is green and global warming, is next to having her last shot at this game. Having lost her own riding in central Canada in one election, in Eastern Canada in another, if she loses as well in Western Canada - she will have run out of points on the compass. If she doesn't win a seat, the pretense that the Greens are a full, national party, like all the others, is over.

As for Gilles Duceppe, the federal parliamentarian who's a provincial separatist, he's been on Parliament Hill as long as some of the more interesting statuary or the flying buttresses. This is likely his last go, too. Ottawa is a really lovely city, but even separatists have to go home sometime.

These are strange days in the NHL

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:12:16 +0900

These are strange days in the NHL
By then, the Stanley Cup will have been awarded, Granville Street will be cleaned up after the parade and the talk will be about the Cup returning to Canada for the first time since 1993.

Maybe.

Or maybe we'll continue to wonder what made the 2010-11 NHL season so otherworldly weird.

Hands up everyone who figured we'd be into the final weeks of the schedule with neither Sidney Crosby nor Alex Ovechkin residing in the top five places of league scorers - and neither Crosby nor Ovechkin even in the lineup of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals.

Who imagined Ovie stuck at the 29-goal mark on March 25, with no assurance he will be back any time soon from a nagging but undisclosed injury?

The strange Washington vibe extends beyond Ovechkin's personal story, the injury and production decline, to the Capitals getting religion, genuflecting at the altar of defence as a means of preparing for a playoff run they simply have to have.

Or how about Crosby roaring out of the gate with 32 goals and 66 points by the halfway point only to be knocked out of action with a concussion in the first days of the new year. Finally back on skates, Crosby may yet return in time for the playoffs, so we'll cling to the faint hope that the Caps and Pens may soon meet again in a playoff series, with Crosby and Ovechkin at their best, but realistic thought suggests otherwise.

had its bell rung.">Oddly, Sid's concussion seems to have made the entire game feel as though it has had its bell rung.

After he went down, there was a dizzy confusion until eventually a focus on head injuries in hockey moved from a back-burner issue to a prime-time story.

Bettman's five-point concussion strategy, which set the stage nicely for Matt Cooke to be Matt Cooke">Concern about Crosby and the mounting number of concussions reported - 73, 74, 80 - rolled into the Zdeno Chara hit on Max Pacioretty, which begot commissioner Gary Bettman's five-point concussion strategy, which set the stage nicely for Matt Cooke to be Matt Cooke , delivering a blatant head shot serendipitously at the moment the league announced tougher suspensions for repeat offenders.

Cooke wearing a Penguins jersey on the night in question, That the Pittsburgh Penguins would make the most noise about getting tough on head-shot Michael Oher Jerseys offenders, and with Cooke wearing a Penguins jersey on the night in question, seemed too perfect to script, but still fitting for this weird season.

Crosby's pain and frustration, Cooke's timely attack, may yet bring lasting changes to the game in the name of protecting brain matter, but time will tell.

On another front, one year after Crosby's overtime goal delivered a gold-medal Olympic hockey win in Vancouver, it's back to reality that Vancouver is one of only two Canadian teams likely to reach the playoffs, Montreal being the other.

That's not weird, just demoralizing for fans in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto.

Heavy is the burden shouldered by the Canucks as the great northern hope, so here's a toast that they might rise to the challenge.

Off the ice, we've come to expect bad-news stories in a few of the southern markets, where attendance remains soft, but even these have reached such a crisis point as to have fans in Winnipeg and Quebec City salivating at the prospect of Phoenix and Atlanta NHL franchises being terminated and shipped across the border.

In Atlanta, the Thrashers have suffered from a gradual erosion, like water wearing away exposed soil, but the sordid tale in the Arizona desert has carried on months past any reasonable due date.

If it were merely a case of the franchise being propped up like a house of cards it would be one thing.

But in Phoenix, the proposed sale of the Coyotes is propped by borrowed cards, sure to collapse under the weight of debt and zero realistic hope of there being enough Coyotes fans to rally the cause.

Not that Winnipeg and Quebec City are answers without their own questions.

Quebec City needs an arena and is counting on mega tax dollars to get it built.

Winnipeg's arena is a tad small, as is the business capital in town.

Still, the spirit is willing, the Canadian dollar is strong and a move to Canada seems inevitable, although the city of Hamilton, Ont., Has heard that one a few times.

Something productive may yet evolve from the strange.

It's probably too early to decide whether this is hockey's Annus Horribilis or just one very weird year. But even that phrase, Annus Horribilis, coined by Queen Elizabeth during her annual Christmas address in 1992, seems to have a tie-in into the game.
At that time, Teemu Selanne, the Finnish Flash, was a rookie, destroying NHL goalies with a record 76 goals while playing for - the Winnipeg Jets. And just a few weeks after the Queen's speech, a new boss was ushered into the NHL head office, a guy by the name of Bettman who presided over the Jets leaving Winnipeg and the Nordiques playing out the string in Quebec.

Bettman figures to be around long enough to see those stories come full circle.

Time will tell if it will go down in history as the little big man taking two wrongs and making them right.

Shinan: Search for Canada's Bethenny continues

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:11:42 +0900

Shinan: Search for Canada's Bethenny continues
Who's in? Who's so not? Who's been asked? Who has the pleasure of the self-knowledge that they were asked so they could at least graciously decline, and immediately call their friends on their respective Bat-lines?

Buzz as big as the famous coconut pie over at Scaramouche has been building in certain circles, and circles-within-circles, in this town, and the Canadian casting of a Real Housewives franchise has everything to do with it. Since the calls started going out over the past month it's become the latest status symbol, in its way. That's right: Move over, Birkin.

While details about the show are sketchy, what's clear is that it's a made-in-Canada addendum to the military reality franchise that already has womanly platoons in New York, Orange Country, Beverly Hills, New Jersey, Atlanta and DC What's also started to become clear: Post-millennial super fashionista Stacey Kimel was asked and declined, as did charity circuit doyenne Suzanne Rogers.
OK, who's left? I would tell you, but then I'd have to ...

OK, I'll tell you. Some. Jessica Mulroney, striking wife of Ben, has been in talks. As has uptown dermatologist Dr. Lisa Kellett. Karen von Hahn, that trend-tracker and all-around good-life buff, said thank you, but no, merci. A certain architect? Definitely in the mix of names! Oh, and the lovely, artful Cleophee Eaton? That was a name nixed by the casters because they were afraid - get this - that she might possibly be "too classy."

The search for "Canada's Bethenny" continues apace. (A reference to the breakout cast member of the Real Housewives of New York, whose participation in the show has been among the biggest profile-inflating experiments in TV history, leading to product lines, books , spinoff TV shows and good ol 'one-name infamy.)

Interior designer Sharon Mimran, for one, got the cordial invitation to apply - a matter that she chose to later tweet about. Her words: "U gotta love the call that asks you to participate in the new Real Housewives of Toronto. Pass."

Here! There!

• Samuel Jackson, not just a "Royale with Cheese" guy after all, spotted at Joso's, on Davenport, for Sunday night sup.

week, fit in a visit to his old pal Woody Harrelson, who's been in Toronto working on that play of his! (Indeed, Matt even ventured midtown to sit in">• The hotness that is Matthew McConaughey, while on a swing through town the other week, fit in a visit to his old pal Woody Harrelson, who's been in Toronto working on that play of his! (Indeed, Matt even ventured midtown to sit in on a rehearsal!)

• Beans, branding, mermaids: all on the table for the next "Ramsay Breakfast" talk, happening on April 13, at the Metropolitan Hotel, courtesy of Starbucks chief Howard Schultz.

• Hot tip, by way of Fashion editor-in-chief Bernadette Morra: Should you find yourself in Michael Oher Jerseys Monaco anytime soon, go to "Le Dressing," she says! Her "favourite resale shop," as revealed to The Coveteur in a serious fashion close-up, in which the darling went on to tell the blog, "Those Monaco women love to dress up and clear out their closets regularly."

• International oyster-shucking champ Patrick McMurray - the man behind Starfish and Ceili Cottage - has been here, there and YouTube-promoting his nifty new invention, aka the "Pistol Grip Oyster Knife." It's even "aerodynamic," he reveals on, indeed, a just-out YouTube instruction video.

• One way of keeping warm: Rachel McAdams, en famille, at The Drake on Wednesday night.

• Not the Kylie Minogue version, we trust: the If You Could Read My Mind sing-song set to be channelled at tomorrow's Juno Awards by Sarah Slean and Jim Cuddy. (It's part of a 10-minute valentine-in-song to Toronto - paying tribute to Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, etc.)

Finally:

Will she wear a hat of waffles? Will there be fibreglass? The guessing has officially begun in certain circles re: the impending visit to Toronto by inimitable style icon Anna Dello Russo. The big question: Whatever will she wear? The date: April 20 !

The Italian artista, who has a touch of the Fellini and whose fame has stratosphered in recent times, will be here to be feted at The Room inside The Bay, alongside her muse-maker, our own Tommy Ton. In an interview with The Independent recently, the broad gave herself up this way: "Sometimes I feel ridiculous, but in a good way. Like the watermelon [she once wore on her head], I love that. It's such an Italian touch of humour."

Deconstructed dog: Reinventing the frankfurter

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:09:00 +0900

Deconstructed dog: Reinventing the frankfurter
The dogfathers who work the counter at New York City's Crif Dogs wear shirts emblazoned with Christopher Walken's face transposed on to the tip of a weenie. The atmosphere here is clearly as it should be: fun and laid back with a solid dose of humour. But there's nothing funny about these dogs.

When owner Brian Shebairo tried to say his former partner's name with a mouthful of frank, it came out Crif instead of Chris, and a now nearly 10-year-old Michael Oher Jerseys business was born. When I recently popped into the St. Marks Place location in downtown Manhattan at 3 am on Friday night, a daunting, four-person-wide lineup extended to the door.

meets-stroller Williamsburg nabe, spreading his Two months ago, the highly tatted "street food guru" opened a second location in Brooklyn's hipster-meets-stroller Williamsburg nabe, spreading his bacon-wrapped, deep-fried weenie love to the boroughs.

Much like the original location, Crif the second is infused with Shebairo's childhood. Some dog-hunters perch at video game tables (Ms. Pac-Man, anyone?) While Star Wars figurines and skateboard decks are ensconced in cases lining the walls.

The New Jersey native also modelled his franks on the fodder of his youth. "I grew up on Johnny & Hanges, Callahan's, Hiram's, Rutt's Hut, Nathan's and Walter's," all hot-dog institutions in their own rights.

The naturally smoked, deep-fried Crif (not to be confused with the all-beef, flat-griddled New Yorker) is often bacon-wrapped and topped with such unconventional, travel-inspired trimmings as cream cheese, fried egg, teriyaki sauce ( this and all other sauces blended in-house), sour cream, avocado and pineapple, among others.

The sides are decidedly juvenile as well - Crif's tater tots and waffle fries are the stuff of summer camp nostalgia. If you haven't already run to book a flight (they deliver in NYC but unfortunately won't bring you a bite north of 23rd Street), feast your eyes on the above John John Deragon ($ 3.75), the most satisfying dog you'll ever eat.