Spurred on by the Saskatchewan Party’s decision to can the Film Tax Credit (FTC) in this year’s budget, the industry launched a Money Card Campaign.

Each purchase they made — from coffee to mortgage payments — was accompanied by a card reading “I earned this money working in the film industry.”

“The idea was to show that we give back to the economy here in Saskatchewan,” explained Holly Baird, a Regina film producer who took part in the campaign.

“We’re paying citizens who live here and contribute … and support local businesses, and not just with our films. We don’t just buy lumber for a film set, we buy lumbar because we have houses and decks that need to be fixed.

“One woman in Saskatoon had to pay a parking ticket, so she even included a card in there in the envelope.”

Baird has been handing out the cards all week and said they have prompted some interesting conversations.

“Some people had no idea (about the axing of the FTC), and it creates a good opportunity with those individuals who have then gone on to say ‘You know what? I will write a letter to my MLA,’” she said.

While the industry is happy to be able to discuss the FTC and financial support with government, Baird said that wasn’t the point of the Money Card Campaign.

“It’s just about making people aware, because I think a lot of people aren’t aware of the day-to-day impacts of those of us who work in industry here,” she said.

“It’s not just the films we shoot or the television series — we have families and have raised our families and supported them here through our jobs in the film industry.”

Headed up by the Saskatchewan Media Production Industry Association, the campaign also aims to gain support for a new incentive program for the industry to ensure it remains competitive on the world stage.

“I’d personally like to say ‘Thank you’ to the businesses and the community at large in how they’ve received the campaign,” Baird said.

“I think it’s been great.”

Originally published as “highlighting film industry’s impact”, by Emma Greaney, Regina Leader-Post, April 30, 2012

photo by Richard Drew

As an actor and woman who, at times, avails herself of the media, I am painfully aware of the conversation about women’s bodies, and it frequently migrates to my own body. I know this, even though my personal practice is to ignore what is written about me. I do not, for example, read interviews I do with news outlets. I hold that it is none of my business what people think of me. I arrived at this belief after first, when I began working as an actor 18 years ago, reading everything. I evolved into selecting only the “good” pieces to read. Over time, I matured into the understanding that good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that.

However, the recent speculation and accusations in March feel different, and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

A brief analysis demonstrates that the following “conclusions” were all made on the exact same day, March 20, about the exact same woman (me), looking the exact same way, based on the exact same television appearance. The following examples are real, and come from a variety of (so-called!) legitimate news outlets (such as HuffPo, MSNBC, etc.), tabloid press, and social media:

One: When I am sick for more than a month and on medication (multiple rounds of steroids), the accusation is that because my face looks puffy, I have “clearly had work done”, with otherwise credible reporters with great bravo “identifying” precisely the procedures I allegedly have had done.

Two: When my skin is nearly flawless, and at age 43, I do not yet have visible wrinkles that can be seen on television, I have had “work done,” with media outlets bolstered by consulting with plastic surgeons I have never met who “conclude” what procedures I have “clearly” had. (Notice that this is a “back-handed compliment”, too—I look so good! It simply cannot possibly be real!)

Three: When my 2012 face looks different than it did when I filmed Double Jeopardy in 1998, I am accused of having “messed up” my face (polite language here, the F word is being used more often), with a passionate lament that “Ashley has lost her familiar beauty audiences loved her for.”

Four: When I have gained weight, going from my usual size two/four to a six/eight after a lazy six months of not exercising, and that weight gain shows in my face and arms, I am a “cow” and a “pig” and I “better watch out” because my husband “is looking for his second wife.” (Did you catch how this one engenders competition and fear between women? How it also suggests that my husband values me based only on my physical appearance? Classic sexism. We won’t even address how extraordinary it is that a size eight would be heckled as “fat.”)

That the conversation about my face was initially promulgated largely by women is a sad and disturbing fact.

Five: In perhaps the coup de grace, when I am acting in a dramatic scene in Missing—the plot stating I am emotionally distressed and have been awake and on the run for days—viewers remarks ranged from “What the f–k did she do to her face?” to cautionary gloating, “Ladies, look at the work!” Footage from Missing obviously dates prior to March, and the remarks about how I look while playing a character powerfully illustrate the contagious and vicious nature of the conversation. The accusations and lies, introduced to the public, now apply to me as a woman across space and time; to me as any woman and to me as every woman.

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

A case in point is that this conversation was initially promulgated largely by women; a sad and disturbing fact. (That they are professional friends of mine, and know my character and values, is an additional betrayal.)

News outlets with whom I do serious work, such as publishing op-eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this “story” without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. It’s an indictment of them that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time-honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageist, and mean-spirited content.

I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?

I ask especially how we can leverage strong female-to-female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public. (I am also aware that inevitably some will comment that because I am a creative person, I have abdicated my right to a distinction between my public and private selves, an additional, albeit related, track of highly distorted thinking that will have to be addressed at another time).

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in—and help change—the Conversation.

~ Ashley Judd

She is forced to lie between Serena Joy’s legs and be sexually penetrated by the Commander, in hopes that she will bear them a child. But Kate continually longs for her earlier life. She soon learns that many of the nation’s leaders are as sterile as their wives. She decides to risk the punishment for fornication — death by hanging — in order to be fertilized by another man who will make her pregnant, and subsequently, spare her life.

Andy Safien (Pullman), an associate dean at a small New England college outside of Boston that’s currently under siege by a serial rapist. Andy’s wife Tracy (Kidman) volunteers in the pediatrics ward of St. Agnes Hospital. They’re renovating a Victorian house and need $14,000 for the plumbing. Enter Dr. Jed Hill (Baldwin), a former high school classmate of Andy’s, who’s brand new in town and needs a place to stay. Andy needs the money, Jed needs a room, so the two hook up and soon Jed is sleeping upstairs in the Safiens’ home…usually not alone, and his sexual escapades are grating on Tracy’s nerves.

The rapes continue, Andy is fingered as a suspect, and in the midst of it all, Tracy collapses with a ruptured ovarian cyst. Jed operates to save her life (after a night of drinking and wild partying), but renders her unable to bear children which leads to a malpractice suit from Tracy and an incredible soliloquy on surgeons with a God complex from Jed during the deposition.

And from there, things start to go awry. Yes, I’m understating. Check out the film!

Look for a minor cameo by Bebe Neworth.

Lightsaber fight 101: try not to hit your opponent. Or just get angry and beat the living bejeezus out of him Luke-Skywalker style. Way more effective, and 100% fewer Jedi died that way.

We loved your intimidating Sheriff Cooley in O Brother Where Art Thou? We loved your Commandant Spangler in Malcolm in the Middle. We loved your Kruger in Seinfeld. And Chief Grady in Super Troopers. And the multiple people you’ve portrayed on Law & Order over the years. The list could go on and on, but the point is you’re an excellent actor whose work is a substantial part of why we love the movies and shows you were in.

I won’t pretend to have gone through everything you have lately, but at the risk of sounding glib I’ll say this; many of us have had dark times in our lives when we felt crushed under the weight of it all.

Losing one leg to the diabetes, with surgery scheduled to amputate parts of the other… that’s got to be extremely tough and, as you put it, tiring.

I wish I was sitting next to you now, instead of in front of a keyboard. I wish I could put my hand on your shoulder and tell you of how much I appreciate the entertainment you’ve provided through your craft, and how much I admire you. And I wish I could have done so before you picked up that gun.

I’m glad the bullet didn’t kill you. I hope the doctors and nurses take excellent care of you, and get you out of critical condition speedily. And I hope word reaches you from all of us; your friends, your fans, and those who have been in those dark places and come back.

We love you, man.

note: if you have enjoyed Daniel von Bargen’s work, please leave a comment below.

The completed Death Star in the first movie (later called “Episode 1V – A New Hope”) was reported to be 140km in diameter and appears to be made of steel. We see decks, hallways, trash compactors, and other rooms and features inside it, so it’s sure not hollow. one could think of it as having the same density as a modern air craft carrier, which also has hangers, generation rooms, etc. and they’re both floating weapons platforms, so the comparison seems pretty fair.

The HMS Illustrious, to pick one semi-random example – in that it’s the first image to show up under “air craft carrier” in wikipedia – has a volume of 28,591.2 cubic meters and weighs 22,000 metric tonnes (or 1,009,688.7 cubic feet weighing 24,250.8 US tons). Scaling up to something the volume of the Death Star, this would mean a weight of about 1.08×1015 metric tonnes of steel. That’s roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg or 227,272,727,272,727 US tons. It’ a lot of steel, is what we’re saying.

Those are huge numbers, so let’s try to put them in terms we can visualize. One death star is about equal to 9,371,762,056.21 HMS Illustrious air craft carriers welded together. Nope – that’s still tough to picture… but at least it gives us the shorthand of 1 death star = about 9 billion air craft carriers.

Does the Earth even have enough iron ore to make that much steel? Actually, yes.  Iron is the most abundant metal, and is believed to be the tenth most abundant element, in the universe. Iron is also the most abundant (by mass, 34.6%) element making up the Earth and comprises 95% of all the metal tonnage produced worldwide. While the outer crust of out planet has iron sprinkled throughout it, the inner core is either a mix of iron and nickel or a solid iron crystal. If we sucked every bit of iron out of the Earth, we could have enough to make 2 billion death stars.

Which raises 2 problems: 1, there’d be no more Earth to rule over – so where’s the fun in that? 2, at today’s rate of steel production (1.3 billion tonnes annually), it would take 830,769.23 years to produce enough steel for a single Death Star. Where it takes just under an hour for the world to produce enough steel to make one HMS Illustrious,  before you can build your super weapon you have to spend more than 830 millenia fending off your enemies while you gather materials. And don’t even get us started on the calibration of the turbolaser cannons.

And the cost? Centives.net calculates that at 2012 prices, the steel alone would cost about $852,000,000,000,000,000. That’s another big, hard-to-fathom number, so how about this: roughly 13,000 times the entire world’s GDP.

Then again, Centives suggests, you can just take out a loan from the entire planet and then default on them in the most awesome way possible.

production Montag for the french Cité des sciences et de l’industrie

Vimeo awards finalist in 2010 (motion graphics)

Best infotainment at Webcuts.10
Prix du film éducatif, scientifique ou d’entreprise at Annecy 2011

If ratified by the European Parliament, ACTA would set strict international standards for intellectual property law, and create a new governing body to oversee the enforcement of those laws, which would target counterfeit goods, generic medicine, and copyright-protected digital goods, like music, film and television shows. Without Germany’s support, the ratification of ACTA becomes far less likely.

Spearheaded by the US and Japan, ACTA first drew ire around the world due to the intense secrecy that surrounded the treaty. The text of the agreement was negotiated outside standard international bodies, like the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. This allowed governments involved in the negotiations to bypass the scrutiny of the public.

Once the text of ACTA was made public last month, opposition to the agreement exploded. Protests erupted across countries in Europe. Kader Arif, a member of the European Parliament who was tasked with overseeing the final stages of ACTA’s passage, resigned in opposition to the treaty.

Were ACTA to be ratified, it would require countries to create intellectual property laws that mimic — or exceed — US copyright regulations, which are far more strict than what most countries currently have in place. Criminal penalties for infringement would be increased under ACTA, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be encourage to conspire with rights holders to create penalties for copyright infringers. It would do all this without also requiring countries to adopt consumer protection laws, or other safety valves, like fair use or public domain policies. ACTA critics say the harsh regulations could stifle free speech, and hamper online innovation.

In addition, ACTA would empower border officials to confiscate any goods they believe may be in violation of copyright law, and allow private copyright holders to request the seizure, and even destruction, of allegedly infringing goods. This is particularly problematic for the distribution of generic drugs — many of which are not in violation of copyright law — such as HIV medication en route to developing nations that are in dire need of such drugs.

While ACTA would not specifically change US copyright law, it could prevent Congress from making US intellectual property regulations less severe without the risk of jeopardizing trade relations with other countries. The White House asserts that this would not be the case, since President Obama deemed ACTA an “executive agreement” — not a treaty — which means the US can ignore the agreement if necessary. (The “executive agreement” designation also meant ACTA did not have to be ratified by the Senate, thus allowing its contents to remain secret — a move some in Congress say was unconstitutional.) Unfortunately, most other countries do consider ACTA a treaty, so the White House’s argument on the matter may be moot.

ACTA will be voted on for ratification by the European Parliament in June. All 27 EU countries must sign the treaty for it to be ratified.

To learn more about the controversy surrounding ACTA, see here, here, and here. To read the final text of ACTA, click here.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Either Quaid suffered a schizoid embolism due to a bad memory implant, or he was actually Hauser, a secret agent sent to Earth by Cohaagen with the Quaid identity installed over his own so even he wouldn’t know who he was. People are trying to kill him left and right, but by the end of it he got the girl, rescued the rebels, and saved Mars.

It was awesome.

Fast forward to 2009. Carolco no longer existed, Schwqarzenegger was now Governor of the State of California, and Columbia Pictures decided they wanted to retell (recall?) this story once more. They hired Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, Ultraviolet) to write the script for the remake, going back to the source material… Philip K. Dick’s short story They Remember It For You Wholesale.

While Stephen King stories tend to suck as movies, because King’s talents lay in making you picture the scary stuff in your head and it’s usually far, far scarier than what ends up on the movie screen, Philip K Dick short stories tend to make pretty good to jaw droppingly fantastic sci-fi movies. Films that have been based on his work include:

Blade Runner (1982) – “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Screamers (1995) – “Second Variety”
Total Recall (1990) – “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”
Confessions d’un Barjo (French, 1992) – “Confessions of a Crap Artist”
Impostor (2001) – “Impostor”
Minority Report (2002) – “The Minority Report”
Paycheck (December 25, 2003) – “Paycheck”
A Scanner Darkly (July 7, 2006) – “A Scanner Darkly”
Next (April 27, 2007) – “The Golden Man”

Okay, some of them are amazing films and some are… films. Which are which is a matter of personal taste. The man wrote a lot of stories that got turned into movies, is what I’m saying.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

On January 9, 2011, it was confirmed that Colin Farrell will be starring in the remake and Bryan Cranston will play the villain, with production starting in Toronto, Canada on May 15. According to producer Neal Moritz, this version of the film will be closer to Philip K. Dick’s original story. He went on to say that the film will not be shot in 3D, adding: “we decided that it would be too much.” Kate Beckinsale will play the role of double agent Lori (played by Sharon Stone in the original film) while John Cho is set to play McClane, the smooth-talking rep for the memory company. Ethan Hawke will have a cameo in the film, allegedly.

Okay, so it’s a remake with a new cast. Not unheard of. But did you notice the bit about “closer to the original material”?

Much of the plot of the first film centred around Quaid “Get[ting] his ass to Mars” and helping the rebels fight against Cohaagen, king of his own planet (really, it’s less schlocky than it sounds. Well, more fun than it sounds). Was he the savior of the people? Was he secretly Hauser, sent by Cohaagen to infiltrate the rebels? Or was he actually Quaid, some poor guy being lobotomized back on Earth? His realities are blurred, yet each one is plausable; this film predated Inception by more than a decade but has the same “is it all a dream?” quality, dropping enough clues that arguments continue to this day over what really happened.

The new film is part remake, part reboot. Here is the official synopsis from Sony Pictures (Columbia’s owners):

Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he’s got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world – Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate.

Basically the same thing – but no mention of Mars. Or Johnny Cabs. Just plenty of Earthbound action. But there is, according to Producer Neil Moritz, a “a great twist” in the plot that was neither in Dick’s source material nor the original movie.

Verhoeven’s version, like many movies adapted from PKD’s works, had existential themes woven into the plot, they took a back seat to rippling muscles, gratuitous violence, and the cheesy one-liners that 80′s action movies were famous for. Verhoeven is no stranger to films with philosophical elements (his recent film Black Books has a Jewish woman risking her life and sleeping with the SS who killed her family to help an anti-semitic Dutch resistance group – and then things get weird). But when he satirized action movie violence and 80s excess with his over-the-top Robocop, American audiences didn’t get the joke. They ate it up and asked for more. More than two decades later the new team is banking on a more sophisticated audience, it seems, with Wimmer claiming the new script focuses more on the mind-bending existentialism.

Director Len Wiseman shared his thoughts on the project at Comic-Con:

After I read the script I wrote a list out of the things that I remembered from when I was 15 of Total Recall before I went and rewatched Total Recall again, just to see what actually stuck with me. And those were things I want to pay homage to.

He also stressed that his version would place more emphasis on “grittiness and realism” and have “a more serious tone.”

Kate Beckinsdale, also at Comic-Con, commented on her work in the new film:

“It’s going really great, and everyone’s very excited about it. I suppose the thing is, Sharon Stone’s interpretation of Lori [in the 1990 'Total Recall'] is safe because my character is more… It is Lori, but it’s an amalgamation of Lori and Richter. So I guess one of the differences about our movie as opposed to their movie is in that period of time they needed her to have a right hand man. I am the right hand man and Lori at the same time. So it’s a little bit more of an amalgamation of a couple of parts… And then for me there was a lot of… I mean, I’m beating everyone up. Fighting with Colin [Farrell], fighting with Jessica [Biel]. The fight with Jessica is going to be great. I like the fact that it’s a proper fight. It’s not two girls, and one of them, the shoulder is ripped off, and the bra comes out. It’s not like one of those stupid girl fights. It’s a proper fight.”

To sum it up; Columbia is mixing elements from a successful author’s writings with a successful action flick, taking out some elements (Mars), replacing it with more philosophy, and adding pretty-but-experienced actors.

Wiseman does promise, though, that the three breasted whore stays in the picture.