Roughriders win 95th Grey Cup Game
The Saskatchewan Roughriders have come full circle in their quest for Canadian football's most coveted prize.
Eighteen years after winning their last Grey Cup at Toronto's SkyDome, the Riders defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23-19 on Sunday to capture the trophy on the same field at Rogers Centre.
It is Saskatchewan's third Grey Cup win and their first since 1989, when Dave Ridgway's last minute field goal earned a 43-40 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
The first quarter was a low-scoring affair, with the Riders held pointless after kicker Luca Congi missed a 42-yard field-goal attempt early in the stanza.
The Bombers got their offence going from there, with defensive back Greg Moss picking off Riders quarterback Kerry Joseph for the first interception of the game. Joseph did not throw a single interception in two games against the Bombers in the regular season.
Bombers quarterback Ryan Dinwiddie then grabbed the spotlight, leading a seven-play, 61-yard drive - including 16 and 42-yard bombs down the middle to Milt Stegall - which led to a 15-yard field goal by Troy Westwood.
After a couple of Winnipeg safeties conceded by Jamie Boreham in the second quarter, the Riders continued to struggle on offence. Joseph ran for 25 yards and hit D.J. Flick with a long pass to get into into the red zone later on, but a fumble recovery by Bombers linebacker Ike Charlton in the end zone left them scoreless.
Saskatchewan finally got in the game on Winnipeg's next possession, Dinwiddie's pass intended for Stegall was picked off by defensive back James Johnson for a 30-yard interception return.
Starting at their own 21-yard line, the Riders capped off the second quarter on a high note. They took advantage of a 24-yard reception by Wes Cates and an 18-yard pass to Andy Fantuz for a 45-yard field goal by Congi to lead by three at the half.
The Bombers' offence in the third quarter was a roller coaster ride to say the least.
The struggles started at 1:51 of the stanza when Saskatchewan lineman John Chick sacked Dinwiddie and forced a fumble recovery for Rider teammate Scott Schultz. Congi split the uprights from 17 yards out for a 13-7 lead. Dinwiddie settled down on the very next possession, hitting receiver Derick Armstrong for a 50-yard touchdown and a 14-13 Winnipeg lead. But later in the quarter, the former Boise State star was picked off by again by Johnson and Congi's third field goal of the game put the Riders ahead by two.
Joseph hit Fantuz with a 29-yard touchdown pass - and the Riders' first offensive touchdown of the game - to pad the lead by nine.
The Bombers showed plenty of fight and came right back, closing the gap with a safety and Westwood's second field goal of the night.
But with just under a minute left in the game, Johnson picked off Dinwiddie again for his third interception of the game and a Rider victory.
Led by the league's most outstanding player in Joseph, the Riders are in their first Grey Cup since 1997, when they lost lost 47-23 to the Toronto Argonauts.
In a storyline that has been stretched out well over the last seven days, Dinwiddie made his first career start on the CFL's biggest stage. He got the start after No. 1 quarterback Kevin Glenn broke his left arm in last weekend's 19-9 East Division final against the Toronto Argonauts.
No quarterback has ever made his first start in the Grey Cup or Super Bowl.
The Bombers are looking for their 11th Grey Cup title, with their last championship won 17 years ago to the day - a 50-11 victory over the Edmonton Eskimos on November 25, 1990. Their last appearance in the Grey Cup was at Montreal's Olympic Stadium in 2001, when they lost 27-19 to the Calgary Stampeders.
The Riders were 11-point favourites, mainly because of Glenn's injury.
Is the CD dead?
CD sales are dropping. Illegal file-sharing is rising. CD stores are closing. Profits and jobs are vanishing. And the biggest bands in the world are deserting labels and giving away their wares.
In the Canadian music industry, the times, they are a-changing — and not always for the better.
But before you start singing the blues for record labels and rock stars, remember that just like an old LP, there are two sides to that story.
On this side: The Canadian Recording Industry Association.
"Things are about as bad as they can possibly get at this point," laments Graham Henderson, president of CRIA. "For the most part, people are really struggling right now."
Looking at some of his numbers, it's not hard to see his point. According to CRIA, which represents the major record labels, the Canadian music industry has been in a slow but steady decline since 1999, losing nearly half its sales and jobs. From 2005 to 2006, CD shipments dropped by 11%, down from $544 million to $482 million. In the first quarter of this year, CRIA reported a 35% drop — what it called "unprecedented" — and a 19% decline between January and August.
On the flip side are critics who say the situation isn't as desperate as the CRIA claims.
"CRIA always says the sky is falling," counters one industry insider. "That's their role."
As a lobby group out to win favourable treatment and tougher legislation for its members, it's in CRIA's best interest to paint the grimmest picture possible.
Other sources such as Neilsen SoundScan Canada — which calculates sales (net) as opposed to shipments (gross), a very different measurement — suggest total album sales dropped less than 5% last year, and business in general is down about 11% so far this year. A recent StatsCan report found sales of sound recordings dropped 3% to $575 million between 2003 and 2005, but the industry still posted healthy profits. While record production dropped 8.6%, expenses fell nearly 15% during the same period, resulting in a 7% profit margin.
Why the difference? According to another industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity, CRIA's alarming 35% first-quarter drop can mostly be explained by other factors such as post-holiday returns, a lack of big releases and the rising Canadian dollar, which decimated the industry's "secret" export market.
Still, major labels aren't exactly popping the champagne. Not when Canada's last nationwide chain of music stores — Music World — announced earlier this month it is going out of business.
"It's an extremely challenging business right now," says Randy Lennox, president and CEO of Universal Music Canada. "Good people have lost jobs. Talented peple have lost jobs. We're an industry that has a lot less people in it, and it pains us very much."
The cause of the decline? Once again, it depends on who you ask.
Many say the industry has only itself to blame, charging that for years, greedy record companies have been taking advantage of consumers with shoddy, overpriced albums that have only one or two good songs. No less a figure than Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman Antonio (L.A.) Reid recently said, "The decay we are seeing has more to do with the lack of quality in the music."
The CRIA's Henderson disputes those allegations, claiming the real problem is far more obvious: "People have stopped buying music because they can now get it for free."
Illegal file-sharing, which began chipping away at the industry with the advent of Napster in 1999, has now reached epidemic proportions in Canada, with more than 1 billion unlawful downloads per year, CRIA says. Coupled with toothless copyright legislation and legal decisions okaying personal peer-to-peer file-sharing, it has created a perfect storm of piracy that is not only decimating physical CD sales, but also preventing the burgeoning digital market from taking up the slack — and thus deterring new investment throughout the industry.
"It affects the whole music scene," Henderson says.
Again, others aren't so sure. And not surprisingly, they all have their own solutions. Many in the North American industry look at the expanding mobile market as a solution. New Columbia music head Rick Rubin champions a subscription-based approach, with consumers paying a monthly fee to access millions of songs. Some artists, such as Neil Young and Prince, have begun giving away CDs with concert tickets, repurposing music from product to promo tool. Others — such as Radiohead, who let fans download their latest album and name their own price — seem to envision a future without record companies. Still others, such as Madonna and Korn, have signed wide-ranging partnership agreements, which many analysts see as the way of the future.
Here in Canada, CRIA has been concentrating its recent efforts on lobbying Ottawa for copyright reform — which the Harper government promised in the latest Throne Speech. But that doesn't sit well with the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, a group of artists (including everyone from Randy Bachman and Steven Page to Chantal Kreviazuk and Avril Lavigne), who believe CRIA plans to launch American-style lawsuits against fans.
Not every member of the industry is in turmoil, however.
While retail sales are soft and competitors such as Music World are closing stores, HMV Canada is bucking the trend, says president Humphrey Kadaner.
"Despite the suggestion by many that consumers are no longer purchasing CDs, that is not borne out by our experience," he says. "I joined HMV Canada four years ago, and over that period of time we have increased the number of CDs we have sold by 15%. Last year we sold nearly 15 million CDs; that is a lot of CDs."
Kadaner is far from the only optimistic voice in the crowd. Other retailers such as CD Plus and Sunrise have seen similar growth in sales of indie titles, imports and hard-to-find items that chain stores don't carry. And indie labels such as Sonic Unyon haven't faced the same sort of declines as their major-label cousins, thanks to more loyal customers and smaller, more realistic business practices.
"We think this is going to be a great period for independent artists and labels," Sonic Unyon co-owner Mark Milne says. "Change is always good."
Despite the problems of the shrinking market, Universal's Lennox also remains optimistic.
"I'm not some guy feeling like the ship's going down," he says. "It's evolving, it's changing. Those of us that are gonna move with it are gonna win this thing, and there are many of us that are very committed to doing just that."
Still, others fear the industry faces death from 1,000 cuts.
"We've slowed the bleeding but we haven't stopped it," says a worried John Jones, Western Regional Manager for Warner Music Canada. "And you can still bleed to death slowly."
'Enchanted' casts $50M box-office spell
LOS ANGELES - Audiences fell under the spell of "Enchanted," a fairy-tale romance that debuted as the No. 1 movie and led Hollywood out of its recent box-office doldrums with solid business over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Starring Amy Adams as a cartoon princess exiled to real-world Manhattan by her fiance's wicked stepmother (Susan Sarandon), Disney's "Enchanted" took in $35.3 million over the weekend and $50.05 million since debuting Wednesday, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Sony Screen Gems' family reunion holiday tale "This Christmas," whose ensemble cast includes Delroy Lindo, Regina King, Mekhi Phifer and Idris Elba, opened at No. 2 with $18.6 million for the weekend and $27.1 million since Wednesday.
Hollywood had been in a box-office funk this fall, but the two movies paced the industry to a healthy Thanksgiving, with the top-12 movies pulling in $218.1 million from Wednesday to Sunday, up 6 percent from the holiday period last year.
"That's good for an industry that's been in a downtrend for almost two months," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "Thanksgiving sets the tone for the rest of the year and the holiday season in general. This was a key weekend, and it delivered."
"Enchanted" had the second-best five-day Thanksgiving debut ever, behind the $80.1 million haul of Disney's "Toy Story 2." Disney released all five of the top-grossing movie debuts over Thanksgiving, with "Unbreakable," "A Bug's Life" and "101 Dalmatians" trailing "Toy Story 2" and "Enchanted."
"It's a really good place to launch a movie," said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. "When you get a movie as strong and well-playing as this, it bodes well for us right through the Christmas holiday."
Among other new wide releases, 20th Century Fox's video-game adaptation "Hitman" debuted at No. 4 with $13 million over the weekend and $21 million since Wednesday. The movie follows the exploits of a genetically engineered assassin (Timothy Olyphant).
The Warner Bros. drama "August Rush" opened in seventh-place with $9.4 million for the weekend and $13.3 million since Wednesday. "August Rush" stars Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Robin Williams in the tale of an orphaned musical prodigy seeking his parents.
The Stephen King adaptation "The Mist," a fright flick distributed by MGM for the Weinstein Co.'s Dimension Films banner, premiered in ninth-place with $9.1 million for the weekend and $13 million since Wednesday.
The third King adaptation from director Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"), "The Mist" stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher and Toby Jones among residents trapped in a supermarket after their Maine town is engulfed in a haze filled with terrifying creatures.
Horror films generally are trashed by critics, but "The Mist" earned fairly positive reviews, much like Dimension Films' summer hit "1408," also based on a King story. Bob Weinstein, co-founder of the Weinstein Co., said that could mean a longer shelf life for "The Mist" the same way that "1408" hung on in theaters.
"It just stuck around, and hopefully, we'll be around for several weeks," Weinstein said. "We're just so thrilled to be in the Stephen King business."
Expanding nationwide after two weeks in limited release, Miramax's "No Country for Old Men" came in at No. 10 with $8.1 million, raising its total to $16.6 million. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the acclaimed crime saga stars Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Enchanted," $35.3 million.
2. "This Christmas," $18.6 million.
3. "Beowulf," $16.2 million.
4. "Hitman," $13 million.
5. "Bee Movie," $12 million.
6. "Fred Claus," $10.7 million.
7. "August Rush," $9.4 million.
8. "American Gangster," $9.2 million.
9. "The Mist," $9.1 million.
10. "No Country for Old Men," $8.1 million.