Hummingbird Centre renamed Sony Centre
TORONTO (CP) - Toronto's Hummingbird Centre, originally known as the O'Keefe Centre, has a new name and a new title sponsor - Japanese electronics giant Sony.
The storied arts centre on the eastern edge of Toronto's downtown theatre district has been renamed the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in a $10 million, 20-year title sponsorship.
The 47-year-old building will undergo an interior renovation beginning in June 2008 that will transform it into "a state-of-the-art versatile, multimedia theatre and concert venue," the centre said Friday.
"Sony Canada's investment in our theatre signifies the importance of Toronto as a major centre for arts and creativity," centre chief executive Dan Brambilla said in a release.
"We strategically approached Sony as the naming sponsor of our venue because of their commitment to continually provide the very best entertainment experience. We see this partnership as a collaboration between a leading entertainment company and a live entertainment venue."
As part of the renovation, the centre will be fitted with "the most technically advanced audio and video Sony products" the company said.
"The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts will offer the highest quality live entertainment, performing arts and multicultural programming which will raise the profile of this unique centre for the City of Toronto," said Sony Canada president and CEO Doug Wilson.
The theatre, the brainchild of beer magnate E.P. Taylor who headed the O'Keefe Brewing Co. and Argus Corp. opened in 1960 with the pre-Broadway premiere of the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet.
Software company Hummingbird Hummingbird Ltd. bought naming rights to the theatre in 1996. Last year Hummingbird was acquired by rival Open Text Corp.
Ontario rocker wins 'Canadian Idol'
Hats off to Brian Melo. The raspy Hamilton rocker with a thing for headwear can add the Canadian Idol crown to his wardrobe.
Melo, 25, got the better of five million votes to beat out twangy teen Jaydee Bixby and become the fifth Idol last night. In other words, his life is now complete.
"This is incredible. I didn't think a year ago I'd be standing here," said the construction worker who undoubtedly won't be reporting back to the job site this week.
A glowing Melo embraced family and friends after singing the CTV karaoke competition's victory song, All I Ever Wanted. The track will instantly become his first single this morning, when it hits airwaves across the country. After last night's show, Melo signed a contract with Sony BMG, and will soon be off to the recording studio to work on his album, due out in fall. Not a second to waste here, folks.
Despite having been done wrong on national TV, there were no tears in Drumheller, Alta. native Bixby's beer for a couple of reasons: 1) He's only 17 and can't legally drink; and, 2) He'll have a music career regardless -- or at least a regular casino stint impersonating his beloved Elvis.
"No matter what, Jaydee wins because he's just created such a buzz about himself," judge Zack Werner said before the final results came in.
A consistently strong Melo clearly had this one in the bag -- especially after Bixby "completely bombed" (the singer's own words) a cover of Bon Jovi's Who Says You Can't Go Home and the aforementioned winners single on Monday's performance show. Hamilton's Melo continued to pick the right tunes for his hoarse rocker voice -- notably Radiohead's Karma Police -- and Canada totally dug it.
But of course, his moments of glory were a measly six minutes at the tail end of a two-hour-long show. If it wasn't a commercial break, it was a bad cover song. Or worse: a castoff singing a bad cover song. First case in point is the loooong opening Bon Jovi medley, which called on Martha Joy, Dwight d'Eon, Greg Neufeld, and the rest of this year's Top 10 to give love a bad name, live on a prayer, be there for us, etc. The castoffs returned just 40 minutes later -- and 20 minutes after that - to reprise our, uh, favourite performances from the past 10 weeks. Good times.
On the celebrity side of things, Avril Lavigne was first up to perform singles Hot and When You're Gone off her latest disc, The Best Damn Thing, before making herself scarce. After showing Bixby and Melo a thing or two on Monday's episode, Bon Jovi returned to tout new album Lost Highway with a performance of the title track. They also revisited the past -- not just with their hairdos -- but with 1999 single It's My Life.
And in true Idol tradition, last year's winner Eva Avila returned to prove she's still got it. She sang her latest single Fallin' For You and gave a word of warning to the two possible winners: "You don't know what you're into." Compared to some reality competition finales we've seen (cough cough, So You Think You Can Dance), Canuck Idol's wrap held back on totally pointless filler. Instead of running an hour of clips, producers closed off the season with live hits from Bixby and Melo's hometowns, a glimpse at this year's Media Idol competition, a recap of the celeb appearances (yes, more Umbrella-ella-ella) and pre-recorded interviews from the Top 10.
And, just when you thought it was over, CTV yesterday announced a 15-city concert tour starring Melo, Bixby and fellow finalist Carly Rae Jepsen. It kicks off Nov. 18 in Charlottetown and wraps Dec. 12 in Edmonton. Tickets are on sale now. Hurry! If you're lucky, the trio will make it to your city before they reach their Best Before dates. But not likely. Congrats Brian.
Bond packaging update
The previously announced Bond Ultimate Collector's Set offers no new content, merely a repackaging of the existing box sets and Casino Royale. But new images of the package reveal it is barely that. The new set is merely the existing boxes of the first 20 Bond films and the single DVD of Casino Royale with a shelf to hold them in.
Fredericton to host East Coast Music Awards for first time
Fredericton will be the location of the 2008 East Coast Music Awards (ECMAs), the ECMA board of directors announced Tuesday in the New Brunswick capital.
"We are excited to be playing first-time hosts to such an event and we will look forward to the community coming together to showcase, in a very special way, the impressive music and artistry in this part of the country," said Tim Yerxa, chair of the 2008 event in Fredericton, in a statement.
There's no word yet on the host.
The 2007 event took place in February in Halifax and was hosted by the Trailer Park Boys — Bubbles, Ricky and Julian (played by Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith).
The ECMAs honour the best in music from the Atlantic region. The five-day event, from Feb. 7 to 10, culminates in a gala awards night.
During the five days, musicians are slated to perform all over the city including the Aitken Centre, the UNB Campus and the downtown core.
Joy Division Albums Expanded With Live Shows
As tipped here Friday, Joy Division's three albums each will be expanded with an extra disc of rare live material Oct. 30 via Rhino. The same day, the label will issue the soundtrack to the film "Control," based on the life of late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.
The band's debut, "Unknown Pleasures," features a 16-song, July 13, 1979, show at Manchester, England's iconic Factory club. Among the cuts played was "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which was not released until after Curtis' suicide on May 18, 1980.
"Closer" is expanded with a 12-song set taped Feb. 8, 1980, at the University of London, while "Still" includes 14 songs from a soundcheck and show on Feb. 20, 1980 at High Wycombe Town Hall. The original album, as released in 1981, features Joy Division's final show from May 2 at Birmingham University.
As for the "Control" soundtrack, it balances previously released cuts from the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk, as well as the Killers' cover of "Shadowplay" and three excerpts from the film's score by New Order. The film cast's version of "Transmission" is also included.
A Joy Division vinyl box will be available today (Sept. 11) exclusively at Rhino.com, before rolling out as individual sets across all retail beginning Sept. 25.
"The strangest thing is that when Ian died, our manager [the late Rob Gretton] said to us not to worry because Joy Division would be much bigger in 10 years, which of course wasn't much solace at the time," Joy Division/New Order bassist Peter Hook tells Billboard. "Up to Ian's death, I think we'd sold about 10,000 records. But strangely his words have proved to be true 10, 20, 30 years on. It's almost become a myth."
Here are the Joy Division bonus disc track lists:
"Unknown Pleasures":
Live at the Factory, Manchester, England (July 13, 1979)
"Dead Souls"
"The Only Mistake"
"Insight"
"Candidate"
"Wilderness"
"She's Lost Control"
"Shadowplay"
"Disorder"
"Interzone"
"Atrocity Exhibition"
"Novelty"
"Transmission"
"Novelty" (mono)
"Transmission" (mono)
"Love Will Tear Us Apart"
"Glass"
"Closer"
Live at ULU, University of London (Feb. 8, 1980)
"Dead Souls"
"Glass"
"A Means To An End"
"Twenty Four Hours"
"Shadowplay"
"Insight"
"Colony"
"These Days"
"Love Will Tear Us Apart"
"Isolation"
Encore:
"The Eternal"
"Digital"
"Still"
Live at High Wycombe Town Hall (Feb. 20, 1980)
"Isolation"
"The Eternal"
"Ice Age"
"Disorder"
"The Sound of Music"
"The Eternal"
Soundcheck:
"The Sound of Music"
"A Means To An End"
"Colony"
"Twenty Four Hours"
"Isolation"
"Love Will Tear Us Apart"
"Disorder"
"Atrocity Exhibition"
Here is the track list for "Control":
Film Score, Part 1, New Order
"What Goes On," Velvet Underground
"Shadowplay," the Killers
"Boredom" (live), the Buzzcocks
"Dead Souls," Joy Division
"She Was Naked," Supersister
"Sister Midnight," Iggy Pop
"Love Will Tear Us Apart," Joy Division
Film Score, Part 2, New Order
"Drive in Saturday," David Bowie
"Chicken Town," John Cooper Clarke
"2 H.B.," Roxy Music
"Transmission," Cast Band Version
"Autobahn," Kraftwerk
"Atmosphere," Joy Division
Film Score, Part 3, New Order
"Warszawa," David Bowie
Foster turns vigilante for `Brave One'
TORONTO - Thirty years ago, Jodie Foster earned her first Academy Award nomination, for "Taxi Driver," with anti-hero Travis Bickle storming New York in psychotic rage over the street scum he encountered.
Now it's Foster's turn to prowl the city in a whirlwind of violence in the vigilante tale "The Brave One," playing a woman who embarks on a bloody spree after recovering from an attack that killed her boyfriend and left her near death.
In a strange sense, the film combines aspects of Foster's roles in "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," which each earned her the best-actress Oscar.
In "The Accused," Foster was a victim, gang-raped by men in a bar. In "The Silence of the Lambs," she was young FBI agent Clarice Starling, pursuing a monstrous serial killer preying on women.
In "The Brave One," directed by Neil Jordan, Foster is both victim and monster herself. After the attack, she turns her fear and emotional devastation outward, buying a gun initially to feel safe but using it to administer justice as judge, jury and executioner of other evildoers.
The film is a thinking-person's take on vengeance thrillers such as Charles Bronson's "Death Wish."
"It amuses me to no end. I say to my agent, `I'm the one with the gun? When did that happen? Me? I'm like 5 feet 3,'" Foster, 44, said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "The Brave One" played in advance of its theatrical debut Friday.
While that aspect amuses Foster, there is nothing remotely humorous about "The Brave One," a grim tale that raises provocative moral questions as viewers find themselves empathizing with a woman whose actions they may find repugnant. The film co-stars Terrence Howard as a police detective whose own unwavering moral code is knocked off course as he pursues Foster's vigilante.
Though a far different story than "Taxi Driver," "The Brave One" similarly reflects the New York and America of its time, the former a nation that cut and ran from Vietnam, the latter a country wounded by the destruction of the World Trade Center and living amid the war on terrorism, Foster said.
The New York of "Taxi Driver" was a place of crime and corruption through which Robert De Niro's Bickle rampaged. The New York of "The Brave One" is a city that has undergone economic rebirth and become a safer place to live, yet which carries the hurt and anger of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"In the 1970s, New York and America were coming out of Vietnam having been terribly disappointed by who we were, having left that country in a mess and left ourselves in this terrible, complicated mess," Foster said. "Travis Bickle's mission is to look at what New York is and say, `I'm going to fix this. There's got to be some way that I can fix this. We couldn't fix it over there, but I'm going to fix it here.'
"Post 9/11 is such a different beast. It's the safest big city in the world. There's a cop on every corner. It's beautiful and beautified. Times Square is like Disneyland. And why is it that we're on Orange Alert? Why is it that we're a quarter-inch away from this rage and fear that has no basis in reality? That's kind of who America is right now. We are rediscovering that there's part of our national psyche that is really angry."
Foster was an ideal person to embody that anger, a performer with whom viewers could identify despite the character's dark deeds, director Jordan said.
"She's got this remarkable thing where she quite effortlessly holds your imagination," Jordan said. "She puts herself in that place and without question, as a member of the audience, I am there with her. And I don't know how she does it."
Co-star Howard counts Foster among Hollywood's greatest screen stars.
"She's Marlene Dietrich, Glenn Close, she's Marlon Brando, all of them combined," Howard said. "Fifty years from now, the people who can say they worked with Jodie Foster and have that on their resume, I can see my grandkids looking at it and saying, `You worked with Jodie Foster?' and them being amazed, like I marched with Martin. That's what it was like for me."
Though Foster has slowed down her career the last decade to raise her two sons, "The Brave One" comes amid a diverse mix of big and small films the actress has taken on in the last few years.
She starred in the thrillers "Panic Room" and "Flightplan" and took a juicy supporting role in last year's bank-heist tale "Inside Man." Fluent in French since childhood, Foster also took on a supporting role in the French-language romance "A Very Long Engagement."
Foster is just finishing the family flick "Nim's Island" and has been toiling for years to star in a film about Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker vilified after World War II for her propaganda pieces about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
"I wish I was better at making these things happen fast. That particular project is really hard to get right," Foster said. "It's going to be an interesting, challenging experience to make the movie and to defend it. I think that's what's going to be fun about it, really, is the discussion about it, these big, moral questions."
Starting her career at age 3 in Coppertone tanning-lotion commercials, Foster went on to appear in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" and "Paper Moon" for television and earned a supporting-actress Oscar nomination as a child prostitute in "Taxi Driver."
After her Oscar wins for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," Foster moved into directing with "Little Man Tate" and "Home for the Holidays." Other directing projects have fallen through, including one starring Russell Crowe and another on which Foster had planned to direct "Taxi Driver" co-star De Niro.
"I will certainly direct again. I think it's my biggest disappointment, that I haven't directed more. But as a director, I know it means a year away from my kids, and it means an enormous level of commitment. It's not something that I can take lightly," Foster said. "Maybe someday I'll take a big break from acting, and that's probably when I'll be directing more."