Alberta and Saskatchewan Centennial songs get poor rating from Canadian Idol judges
by TIM COOK
REGINA (CP) - There is not a whole lot that rhymes with Saskatchewan or Alberta and it's tough to write a tune celebrating oil, wheat and potash all at the same time.
Maybe that's why the Canadian Idol judges aren't overly impressed with the songs that mark the provinces' 100th birthdays.
The Canadian Press asked Jake Gold and Zack Werner, two of the four judges on the hit CTV show, to listen to the Saskatchewan and Alberta centennial songs and weigh in with their brutally honest opinions.
"I'd say it was one big cheese-fest," said Gold. "I wouldn't buy either one and I don't think I would be playing them at home. Personally, I wouldn't recommend people sing them."
Werner was a bit kinder.
"I think they are both valid pieces of writing and it's nice to see that people bothered to do that sort of thing. It's kind of silly to put it down," he said.
"There is nothing wrong with good cheese."
Both Alberta and Saskatchewan invited citizens to enter a contest to write centennial songs. Hundreds of entries poured in and each province picked a winner.
Alberta's song - simply titled Alberta - celebrates the province's landscape and natural resources. "Livin' right, I'm feelin' free," is the tag line.
Saskatchewan's song focuses more on the co-operative spirit in the province. The lyrics talk about sharing laughter and sharing tears. "We love this place, Saskatchewan," is the refrain.
Both songs have a twangy quality. The Saskatchewan song's primary arrangement is performed by country artist Brad Johner, while there are two mixes of the Alberta song - pop and country - that both sort of sound like country.
Over the years, centennial songs that stuck usually had a lilting quality that burned its way into people's brains.
Few who were around will forget the Bobby Gimby classic Ca-na-da from 1967. Then there was Ontario's centennial song that featured the jaunty refrain: "A place to stand, A place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-o." Gold took issue with the fact that the Alberta and Saskatchewan songs don't have such a catchy element.
"You sing that Ontario song and everyone remembers that one hook and I think that is what you have to do," Gold said. "Whether it was kind of a cheesy song, it doesn't matter because it had a hook."
He thinks the songs play into stereotypes of the West because of their country overtones.
"I don't know who they are trying to appeal to because I don't see these appealing to the younger generation," he said. "It sounds like they were just trying to make something for everybody, but when you do that you end up failing."
Werner said he thought the Saskatchewan song seemed a little too generic, while the Alberta one might have missed a few cultural references.
"But then I started thinking about O Canada and started wondering where is the Canada in there?"
Alberta songwriter Mary Kieftenbeld did not return phone calls, but Saskatchewan songwriter Stan Garchinski chuckled when the critique was relayed to him.
He said he was actually on the couch watching the American version of Idol when he was called.
"When I wrote the song, I wanted to keep it quite simple so most people could sing it," Garchinski said.
"As a songwriter you write for yourself and if you can please yourself that's pretty well all that you can expect."
Garchinski said the feedback he has received has been positive. He said one man call him at 11:30 one night to tell him how much he liked the song.
"I've gotten lots of mail and people are happy for me," he said. "I'm pretty proud of my song and I hope the people of Saskatchewan are as proud of it as I am."
Denise Richards, Charlie Sheen to Divorce
LOS ANGELES - Actress Denise Richards has filed for divorce from her actor-husband Charlie Sheen, citing irreconcilable differences, according to court papers filed Wednesday.
Richards, 34, is six months pregnant with the couple's second child. They also have a daughter, Sam, who will be a year old next week.
The couple married in June 2002 and co-starred in "Scary Movie 3." Richards and Sheen, 39, met while shooting the independent film "Good Advice" in 2000.
They began dating after Richards guest-starred on Sheen's former series "Spin City." The marriage was Sheen's second and Richards' first.
Sheen, who now stars in the CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men," is best known for his work in the movies "Platoon," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Hot Shots."
Richards, a former Bond girl, has appeared in a host of movies, including "Wild Things" and "Starship Troopers."
Homer Simpson: Made in Korea
SEOUL (Reuters) - Homer Simpson, his dysfunctional family and his friends from the middle-of-the-road American town Springfield were sent to Seoul long before exporting job overseas became a hot-button political issue in the United States.
A stone's throw away from a highway that tears through Seoul and upstairs from a convenience store called "Buy the Way," Homer, Marge, and the rest of "The Simpsons" have been brought to life for about 15 years at South Korea's AKOM Production Co.
The company has been animating "The Simpsons" at its studio in western Seoul since it premiered as a TV series in 1989.
Behind every blunder by police chief Wiggum, beer downed by Barney and wisecrack by Bart is a team of about 120 Korean animators and technicians who create the 22-minute episodes based on an elaborate storyboard and animation instructions from the show's creators, Film Roman, in the United States.
AKOM gets the storyboard, camera and coloring instructions, as well as the voice tracks. It then turns out the episode about three months later. Music and other finishing touches are added back in the United States.
South Korea is one of the leaders in what is known as original equipment manufacturing (OEM) animation where a cartoon is drawn according to a storyboard provided by a client.
Nelson Shin, chief executive officer of AKOM, said "The Simpsons" ended up in Seoul because of the high quality of work.
Analysts say cheap labor also helped and industry estimates show that South Korean animators are paid about one-third of what their U.S. counterparts make.
"HEY MAN!"
When Shin first took a look at the yellow characters with bulging eyes and four fingers he thought it would be easy to animate the Simpsons. But now he thinks otherwise.
"When it comes to Bart's spiky hair, if you make one mistake in drawing or pencil thickness, the animation looks funny," Shin said. The elaborate stories and the range of emotion shown by each character, it turns out, make "The Simpsons" an exceedingly difficult show to draw, he said.
"The characters are really delicate and subtle," Shin said.
For example, a typical cartoon has about six different mouths that can be attached to a stock face figure for talking. On "The Simpsons" the main characters have about 27 different mouths, Shin said.
If AKOM has trouble finding the correct way to show something, such as Krusty's scar from heart surgery, another take of the scene will be produced after a phone call with the United States.
After several hundred episodes, production runs smoothly. On one floor, a staff of mostly young women sit at computers as they scan animation cells, add colors and put the final technical touches on the show.
They work with storyboards that show pictures drawn in the United States.
But dialogue can pose a problem.
At first, the Korean staff had difficulty understanding the show's humor and the cultural references, Shin said.
"There was so much slang in the show. I looked up those phrases in my dictionary and I couldn't find the meaning," Shin said. "Bart speaks to his father and says 'Hey, man.' This is so disrespectful for us with our Confucian culture."
DREAMS OF DUFF BEER
Shin sits in an office, decorated with cartoon figures, where his dogs bark for attention and an Emmy Award for his studio's work on "The Simpsons" sits on a shelf.
Two floors below him is a room with dilapidated furniture and out-of date audio visual equipment. Attached to the desk of animation director Kim Jun-bok is a hand-drawn picture of a six pack of Duff Beer, the preferred brand of Springfield's ludicrous lushes.
Over one of Kim's shoulders is a drawing that includes almost all the show's characters and on a shelf above his desk is a book in which each character is drawn at various angles, as if standing in a police line-up.
"I cannot really say there is one character I like more than others. They are all just one family to me," Kim said.
"The Simpsons" is one of several U.S. animated TV shows made in South Korea, and in recent years other Korean animation studios have also been animating "The Simpsons" along with AKOM.
Shin, who teaches animation at a university, is one of the pioneers of the craft in Korea. He went to the United States in the 1970s and worked on shows such as "Scooby Doo" and was also responsible for animating the light sabers in the first "Star Wars" movie.
He started AKOM in 1985 and one of his biggest projects -- a full-length animated film based on a Korean tale called "Empress Chung" -- will hit cinemas in South Korea later this year.
There are worries in South Korea that OEM work is filtering out to other parts of Asia such as China and the Philippines where labor is cheaper.
But for now, fans of "The Simpsons" should know that each time they see Homer choking Bart and Lisa belting out the blues on her saxophone, there is an animator in Seoul who brought that image to life.
Garbage buries the hatchet, new album and tour ahead
Four rocky years after the release of the group's third album, Garbage is returning with new material and a North American club tour.
"Bleed Like Me," the group's follow-up to 2001's "Beautiful Garbage," is due in stores April 11. The outing in support of the new set gets underway April 8 in Seattle, and so far is scheduled to visit a dozen cities.
"To me, personally, the very fact that [the new album] got finished is a miracle," singer Shirley Manson said in the band's record label biography.
Garbage essentially broke up after serving as the opening act on U2's 2001 tour. In the midst of the tour, drummer Butch Vig was diagnosed with Type A hepatitis and Manson later lost her voice, for which she eventually underwent successful surgery to remove a cyst on her vocal cord. When the group finally got around to working on new material, things didn't fall into place.
"On a psychological level, my heart just wasn't in it," Vig said in a statement. "It was like, 'I gotta go.' If we're gonna finish this record we gotta take a break and re-build the creative juices."
Five months later, the group was ready to get to work on new material.
Said Manson: "All the bands that came out back when we did are gone, but we're still standing, wanting to make records, regardless of success or expectations or other outside forces. That's a really empowering feeling, and I think it helped us make the record that we wanted in the end."
Tour Itinerary
April 2005
8 - Seattle, WA - Paramount Theater
10 - San Francisco, CA - Warfield
11 - Los Angeles, CA - Wiltern Theatre
14 - Atlanta, GA - Tabernacle
16 - Philadelphia, PA - Theater of Living Arts
17 - Boston, MA - Avalon
19 - New York, NY - Hammerstein Ballroom
21 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
24 - Montreal, Quebec - Metropolis
25 - Toronto, Ontario - Kool Haus
27 - Detroit, MI - State Theatre
28 - Milwaukee, WI - Eagles Ballroom
May 2005
1 - Madison, WI - Orpheum Theatre
4 - Chicago, IL - Metro
What's next, after the gold rush
The Oscars can add a jolt of adrenaline to an actor's career.
An Oscar winner's follow-up movie has been in the works long before the Academy Award is given out, so judging how an actor capitalizes on the win can be tricky.
Stars such as Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster transformed Oscar prestige into lasting respectability. But even Oscar winners have flops, such as Halle Berry's Catwoman and Hanks' The Ladykillers.
Here's a look at what is in the works for this year's winners:
Best Director - Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Eastwood is already at work on a World War II drama about the men who participated in the iconic flag-raising after the battle of Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers, from his Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis, is set for release next year.
Eastwood says he's directing, and he will co-produce with Steven Spielberg.
Eastwood's Oscar-winning co-star in Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank, says she'd love to join the cast — but there are no female characters. She won her last Oscar for playing a woman who lives as a man in Boys Don't Cry. Swank jokes, "I've played a boy before!"
Best Supporting Actress - Cate Blanchett, The Aviator
The only upcoming work from Blanchett is an Australian drama Little Fish, in which she plays a former drug addict trying to rebuild her life. No release date has been set. A sequel to her Oscar-nominated Elizabeth, titled The Golden Age, is no longer on her schedule, her representatives say.
In 2006, she plans to bring her stage performance of Hedda Gabler to Broadway. Otherwise, Blanchett is reading scripts and enjoying her sons, Dashiell, 3, and Roman, 11 months. Roman co-starred with her in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou - as her pregnant belly.
Best Supporting Actor - Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
Freeman also wins the prize for the most films already awaiting release. He plays a blind mentor to Jet Li's abused fighter in Unleashed (May 13), the Batmobile's inventor in Batman Begins (June 17), Robert Redford's Vietnam veteran friend in An Unfinished Life and a burned-out reporter opposite Justin Timberlake in Edison (both scheduled for this year).
His next project will be a biopic about South African leader Nelson Mandela, which Freeman describes as a "big task." He's signed for the role, and "it looks like it's now very close to production."
Best Actress - Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby
Swank has acknowledged some middling choices after her first Oscar win for 1999's Boys Don't Cry. She did the costume weeper The Affair of the Necklace and the disaster flick The Core. "I realized how few and far between the great roles are," she says.
She's trading her Million Dollar Baby boxing gloves for satin ones: Her next role will be as a femme fatale wrapped up in a notorious 1940s murder mystery in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, from L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy. No release date has been set.
She also plays a South African attorney in the political drama Red Dust, on the festival rounds.
Best Actor - Jamie Foxx, Ray
He'll next appear as a pilot trying to take down a bomber controlled by artificial intelligence in Stealth (July 29) and is shooting the Gulf War drama Jarhead, which is being positioned for next year's awards consideration with its release Nov. 11.
After that, Foxx will take on the role of Detective Ricardo Tubbs in a movie version of the '80s crime show Miami Vice. He promised it wouldn't be a jokey remake à la Starsky & Hutch.
He says he also is in talks to play the male lead in Dreamgirls, a film based on the musical about a Supremes-like trio. He's also recording an R&B album for music mogul Clive Davis, publicist Alan Nierob says.
Scorsese going back to badfellas
After losing the directing Oscar for a fifth time, Martin Scorsese is working on his next movie, The Departed, which brings him back to the world of violent wiseguys that earned him so much acclaim.
Even Scorsese says winning an Oscar after a 30-plus-year career "would be very nice," but his allure — and clout — in Hollywood remains undimmed.
"If he gets an Oscar, it'll do more for the Oscar than it will do for him," says friend David Ehrenstein, author of 1992's The Scorsese Picture. "He's just too far out, and too far in, and too edgy. Ultimately, people recognize his achievements, but they take a while to settle in."
Even rivals praise him.
"I was a little bit disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty and myself," Clint Eastwood said after winning best director and picture for Million Dollar Baby. "I have the greatest respect for him, for the films he's done over the years, and right up through The Aviator."
For all the talk about whether Scorsese deserved it this time, or for Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver or his other pictures, Departed screenwriter William Monahan says Oscar can be arbitrary.
"I just saw a 25th-anniversary screening of Raging Bull," Monahan says. "Without malice, I don't see any 25th-anniversary screenings of Ordinary People," the movie that trumped Scorsese for director and picture in 1981.
"The academy sometimes seems to vote on 'best director of the kind of film we prefer,' " Monahan says.
Departed reunites Scorsese with Aviator's Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a police officer going undercover as a gangster. Matt Damon plays a gangster trying to infiltrate the police force, and Jack Nicholson is a Boston crime lord
Lord of the Rings director sues over claims his company shortchanged
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Peter Jackson's production company has sued New Line Cinema, claiming it was shortchanged on profits from the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Wingnut Films alleges in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles that New Line and subsidiary Katja Motion Pictures failed to properly calculate revenue, including revenue from DVD sales, from 2001's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
The lawsuit doesn't specify an amount sought in damages but claims the movie grossed more than $314 million US in box office receipts in the United States and more than $556 million overseas, plus revenue from video and merchandise sales.
The lawsuit accuses the studio of giving affiliates favourable licensing deals. It seeks a court injunction against New Line from reaching deals related to the film with affiliates "without first seeking the most competitive and beneficial deals from unaffiliated third parties in a free and open market."
GET LOST
Buena Vista Home Entertainment releasing Lost: The Complete First Season on DVD Sept. 20. The six-disc set includes deleted scenes, casting tapes, bloopers and other featurettes and retails for $60.
New Star Wars trailer to premiere March 10 during The O.C.; film opens May 19
NEW YORK (AP) - Darth Vader is coming to The O.C.
The trailer for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith will premiere during the March 10 episode of the Fox show. The final instalment of the Star Wars saga will open in theatres on May 19. The new trailer will be released in movie theatres beginning March 11.
Revenge of the Sith is the third prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy. It continues the chronicle of young Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), who eventually turns to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader.
As an avid superhero fan, Seth Cohen, the main character of The O.C. played by Adam Brody, would likely relish the event.
The O.C. airs Thursdays (8 p.m. EST).
Coldplay Announces New Album, World Tour
NEW YORK - It's shaping up to be a cold summer. The members of Coldplay announced Tuesday that they will release their as-yet untitled third album in June, followed by a world tour, which will kick off in their native Britain later that month.
"We've spent a long time in the studio and haven't played a gig for 18 months so we can't wait to get out on tour and play our new songs live," said Coldplay guitarist Jonny Buckland.
Coldplay's last album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," sold millions of copies and garnered the group a Grammy for record of the year for their song "Clocks."
Since then, the group's frontman, Chris Martin, has been busy with another project — fatherhood. His wife, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, gave birth to daughter Apple last year.