verb issue r66 (feb. 22-28, 2013)

Issue #66 – February 22 to February 28

Photo: courtesy oF martIn gIrard

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idlE no moRE catching up with the movement’s founders

ThE Soul SingER Q+a with shakura s’aida

SniTch + howl Films reviewed

cominghomEwith martha wainwright

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2feb 22 – feb 28

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VerbNews.com@verbregIna Facebook.com/verbregIna

EdiToRialPublisher / ParIty PublIshIngeditor iN chief / ryan allanmaNagiNg editor / JessIca Patruccostaff writers / adam hawboldt + alex J macPhersoncoNtributiNg writer / JessIca bIckFord

aRT & PRoducTiondesigN lead / roberta barrIngtondesigN & ProductioN / brIttney grahamcoNtributiNg PhotograPhers / baIly eberle, danIelle tocker, adam hawboldt + alex J macPherson

BuSinESS & oPERaTionSoffice maNager / stePhanIe lIPsItmarketiNg maNager / vogeson PaleyfiNaNcial maNager / cody lang

conTacTcommeNts / [email protected] / 881 8372adVertise / [email protected] / 979 2253desigN / [email protected] / 979 8474geNeral / [email protected] / 979 2253

culture eNtertaiNmeNtNews + oPiNioN

FaST and FliRTySpeed dating, and a Valentine’s Day to remember. 3 / local

don’T lET mE BE miSundERSToodIdle No More’s (grass) roots. 4 / local

all hail…Our thoughts on deregulating the taxi industry. 6 / editorial

commEnTSHere’s what you had to say about changing the STC. 7 / commeNts

Q + a wiTh ShakuRa S’aidaThe soul singer tells all. 8 / q + a

nighTliFE PhoToS We visit the Gaslight Saloon. 15 / Nightlife

livE muSic liSTingSLocal music listings for February 22 through March 2. 14 / listiNgs

SniTch + howl We review the latest movies. 16 / film

on ThE BuS Weekly original comic illustrations by Elaine M. Will. 18 / comics

ThE cRickET’S laST chiRP? Punk rockers look to the future. 9 / arts

cuPcakE hEavEnWe visit the Sweet Ambrosia Bakeshoppe. 12 / food + driNk

muSicIngrid Gatin, Tegan and Sara, + Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers. 13 / music

whaT will SuRvivE oF uS iS lovE Globe Theatre’s Blue Box. 9 / arts

gamE + hoRoScoPESCanadian criss-cross puzzle, weekly horoscopes and Sudoku. 19 / timeout

on ThE covER: maRThawainRighTOn closing one door and opening another. 10 / coVer


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3feb 22 – feb 28

local

speed dating and a valentine’s day to remember by adam hawboldt

i magine a pathetic, 30-some-thing man whose most intimate conversations take

place at work, over cash registers, via text messages, or on Internet dating sites. Imagine him sitting at a bar. Alone. Three shots of whiskey and a vodka soda lined up in front of him. He’s wearing a grey cardi-gan sweater over a brown v-neck T-shirt. And he’s nervous as hell, because in 15 minutes he has to do something he’s never done before.

He has to go speed dating.Can you picture him yet? Hopefully

so. Because that guy was me last week on Valentine’s Day. Yes, you read that right. I went speed dating on Valen-tine’s Day.

And as much as I’d like to gain your pity by admitting it was an overwhelming sense of loneliness that drove me to speed dating on the most romantic day of the year, I can’t.

Truth of the matter is, I went speed dating for the same reason most people go — because it’s quick and efficient. See, we here in the West-ern world like things fast. Fast food, speedy service, rapid transit. So why shouldn’t dating be the same?

Mind you, that wasn’t RabbiYaacov Deyo’s sole intention when he set up the first event in California, back in the late 1990s. No, he was also trying to figure out a fun way for singles in his congregation to meet. Still, at the heart of it all, since the very beginning, was the concept of speed.

And if you’ve never been to a speed dating event, trust me, it all happens really fast. Blink (or drink too much) and you might miss a lot.

Whether or not you admit it, dating is all about making snap judgements.

The first time you meet someone, chances are within a few seconds you’ll know whether you would go out on a date with that person or not.

Don’t believe me? Recent research out of Trinity College suggest the instant you meet someone there’s activity in your brain — in two sections of your prefrontal cortex, to be precise. In your paracingulate cortex, you instantaneously calculate a person’s attractiveness, while your rostromedial prefrontal cortex is busy calculating whether this person is right for you.

And just because the paracingulate cortex tells you someone’s hot, that doesn’t mean the rostromedial part will tell you to pursue that person.

Case in point: on Valentine’s Day, the moment I sat down to chat with one particular speed dater, my thought process went something like this: “Okay, this girl is kind of cute. Very pretty eyes … Wait a second, why is she responding to me only with mono-syllabic answers? … Why is she staring at me like that? … This is getting kind of creepy.”

Then suddenly the whistle blows and it’s off to the next person.

And therein lies one of the biggest advantages of speed dating: if your “date” isn’t going well, don’t worry. It won’t last long. Unlike traditional dating, you’re only interacting with a person for five minutes.

But that’s just one advantage.Another thing speed dating has

going for it is variety. Yes, going out to bars in search of love offers variety, but it also offers hangovers. And yes, online dating sites attract hundreds of singles looking for Mr./Ms. Right. But anyone who has ever done the online dating thing knows you should trust the pictures people post about as much as — well, just don’t trust them.

But with speed dating, you don’t have to worry about any of that. No hangovers (well, maybe), no fake pho-tos. Just a bunch of real people looking for a connection.

Oh, and another virtue of an event like this: you can ask direct questions that we sometimes tip toe around while on more traditional first dates.

For instance, when I sat down to chat with another speed dating partici-pant, she treated the whole thing like an interview. “What do you do for a living?” she asked. And after that one, the rest of them came hard and fast. “What are your career goals? … Do you have kids? Want kids? … Have you ever been incarcerated? … On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself as a lover?”

And while this bombardment caught me off guard, I bet that woman got enough answers to know she shouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.

But that’s not to say speed dating is all good. It can also be intimidating and nerve-wracking. You jump from one conversation to the next, always sitting in the hot seat. Then there’s the outside chance you meet someone and you don’t want your “date” to end in five minutes. It happened to me. I was paired up with this cool girl, chatting breezily about travel and life. Things were going well, then the damn whistle blew and I had to switch seats.

Now, I’m not saying she’s my soul mate or anything. It was just the first time that night I didn’t feel frazzled or longed for another shot of whiskey.

That’s a good thing, right?

Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

@adamhawboldt

[email protected]

FaST and FliRTy

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4feb 22 – feb 28

Photos: courtesy oF Ph

ame: Arctic Ocean. Approximate loca-tion: 80(d)00’00” N,

140(d)00’00” W. Description: All waters from the outer limit of the territorial sea up to the higher water mean tide water level and includes all connecting waters up to an elevation intersecting with that level.

Did all of that make sense to you?If not, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

The above is a section of the Navigable Waters Protection Act in Bill C-45, and unless you’re well versed in jargon, chances are it may confuse you a tad.

That confusion is one of the main reasons the Idle No More movement began. “When we first started talking about the bill, one of the things that concerned us — and should concern all Canadians — was that the whole thing is written in legalese,” says Sheelah McLean, one of the move-ment’s founders. “It’s hard for, say, the average Canadian to read and under-stand. And a lot of our members of parliament don’t have a background in law. So one of the things we wanted to point out at our first teach-in was that a lot of these MPs are probably passing these giant bills without really under-standing what’s going on in them.”

And that’s not the only thing the founders of Idle No More wanted to point out during their first rally. See, along with being written in jargon, The Navigable Waters part of Bill C-45 essentially scrapped the old Navigable Waters Protection Act and loosened environmental protection to the point that only three oceans, 97 lakes and 62 rivers are protected in our country. In

case you’re wondering, that’s less than one percent of Canada’s waterways. “Bill C-45 is supposed to be a budget bill,” says McLean, “but early on we noticed that water protection and the privatization of indigenous lands were hidden and embedded in the 400-page bill. We felt that was on purpose, so we wanted to raise the consciousness of Canadians about these issues.”

From the get-go, the Idle No More movement was a grassroots campaign aimed at all Canadians, one which strove to protect the environment, edu-cate the vox populi, prevent Canada from becoming a corporate state, and to fight what was deemed to be the il-legal privatization of aboriginal lands.

But there’s many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, and somewhere along the way the message got yanked up one side of spin alley and down the other — much to the chagrin of its founders.

The first Idle No More rally took place on a cold and snowy day in November.

More than 150 people braved the elements and packed into Station 20 West in Saskatoon to hear what the movement’s founders — Jessica Gor-don, Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam and Sheelah McLean — had to say.

“We had about 400 people on our Facebook page at the time,” says McLean, “but the snowstorm that day was terrible, so not everyone could attend. It was freezing and dumping snow. The driving was so dangerous I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. So we were certainly surprised that so many people showed up.”

The following week they held a teach-in in Regina, followed quickly by similar events in North Battleford, and Prince Albert, before building steam at the grassroots level all across the nation. That’s when the serious spin started. Instead of being portrayed as the pro-democracy, pro-environment, pro-human rights movement it was meant to be, media outlets began spinning the story towards indigenous issues, like diamond mine blockades and Theresa Spence’s hunger strike.

“Yes, [the movement] is focused on indigenous rights and led by indig-enous peoples. However, everyone should be concerned with this, as our nation to nation relationship is the foundation of this country,” explains McLean. “We have also focused on en-vironmental issues and the attacks on democracy by this conservative gov-ernment — why isn’t that story being told in mainstream media? Harper clearly has a hidden agenda and it is to turn Canada into an extraction state for corporate profit. This is dangerous for all of us. Indigenous peoples’ inher-ent rights to the land are the last line of protection for all of us.”

Not only do the founders feel that many of the movement’s goals have been ignored, but that the heart of Idle No More has also been overlooked.

“There’s a spirit to this movement that a lot of people have missed,” explains McLean. “We’re witnessing democracy in action. The heart of this movement is grassroots people working day and night, organizing and sharing information to prevent the government from running roughshod over democracy and collective rights.”

Same goes for the fact that the Idle No More movement is a predomi-nantly women-led initiative. “That’s something new, something you don’t see every day,” says McLean. “And that’s something people should be ex-cited about. But it’s not being … really mentioned by the media, either.”

And the spin and misconception of the movement don’t stop there.

In recent weeks, reports of Idle No More fading from importance have cropped up. But according to McLean, these have been greatly exagger-ated. “I read somewhere that Idle No More was fizzling,” she says, “But just because we’re not on CTV every day doesn’t mean we’re fizzling. If any-thing, we’re getting stronger. There’s so much invisible activity going on, so many people taking leadership, doing teach-ins, starting petitions, helping us promote this cause. Lawyers are working behind the scenes on bring-ing Bill C-45 to court, activist groups and unions are contacting us, wanting to work together.”

And all this behind-the-scenes ac-tivity is what has helped Idle No More expand to a global movement. “There’s a growing global support,” says McLean, “Eventually, the government will see they have no other choice but to listen.”

So what makes McLean so certain democracy will win the day?

“We have bold-face truth and right on our side,” she explains. “Also, a lot of people don’t understand how strong a social movement like this is. Just last year a social movement brought down the Egyptian government. In Bolivia, a social movement kicked out a giant multi-national corporation that was trying to privatize their water.”

And if Idle No More has its way, soon it will join the ranks of these social movements that affected change — for the better.

n

don’T lET mE BE miSundERSTood

Idle no more founder sets the record straight by adam hawboldt


@adamhawboldt

[email protected]

local

Photo: courtesy oF dakInI

VerbNews.comNews + oPiNioN coNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

6feb 22 – feb 28

@verbRegina

[email protected]


t’s Saturday night and you’re getting ready to meet your friends at a bar down-

town. You call a taxi company to arrange a ride, get put on hold and you wait. You wait and wait and wait some more. Finally you get a dispatcher, and by the time the cab arrives you’re already an hour late for your rendez-vous downtown.

Sound like a familiar situation? Of course it does. That’s because there is a gross shortage of taxis in Regina. We believe it’s high time something was done about this. And it’s not simply be-cause we have problems getting to and from bars. No, everything from getting downtown at lunch hour to trying to get to the airport before your plane leaves without calling well ahead of time is inconvenient, and, to be frank, rather expensive.

So maybe it’s time we do the sensible thing and deregulate the taxi industry. Why? Well, in case you haven’t noticed Saskatchewan is kind of booming as of late, and Regina has the second highest growth rate in the country (right behind our neighbours to the north in Saskatoon). Yet for all this growth, the taxi industry, which is currently regulated by the munici-pal government, hasn’t been grow-ing in lockstep. In fact, the number of taxis allowed to operate in this city remains fixed.

This, simply, has got to change. It’s time to deregulate the industry and get rid of the limit on how many cabs can

be on the road. Yes, we know that in 2009 Saskatoon city council hired out-side consultants to see if deregulation of the industry would be a good idea. And yes, we know the final report said that deregulation of the taxi industry would lead to worse service, higher fares and an exit of veteran drivers form the industry.

But here’s the thing, the final report wasn’t entirely consistent in its findings. Despite their doom-and-gloom predictions, the consultants also forecast that under a deregu-lated approach “taxi availability is

improved for evening bar services, hotel or airport stands,” which sounds like the definition of better service to us. And they mention that drivers would need to “work much longer hours to make a living,” but doesn’t that imply rates would go down, not up?

And then there’s the matter of how they arrived at their pessimistic outlook in the first place. If they had examined, say, Ireland or New Zea-land, they may have ended up with a more optimistic perspective.

Back in 2000, the year Ireland deregulated its taxi industry, the

Emerald Isle was very much like Saskatchewan — it boasted a boom-ing economy and had tremendous population growth in its major centres. And contrary to what the consultant for our city council concluded, when Ireland opened up its industry, allowing any number of cabs to provide service to citizens, good things began to happen. Wait-ing times decreased from 11.5 min-utes in 1997 to 6.2 minutes in 2008 (an estimated value of times savings of more than $400 million annually for customers). Not only that, but in

a study conducted after deregula-tion a majority of respondents said the service improved.

Oh, and the price also went down.A similar tale of success unfolded

in New Zealand, more specifically Wellington, where the number of taxis more than doubled after deregulation and prices decreased as well.

So why not take a page from their book? Stop limiting the number of taxis allowed to operate in Regina. Perhaps it’s true that throwing the doors open all at once might be too much change too quickly, so why don’t we phase it in gradually? Say a 20% increase in

the number of cabs every year for five years, and then open it up entirely.

But in the end, deregulation is the answer. After all, local government doesn’t limit the number of restaurants or grocery stores a city can have, so why should they put artificial limits on how many taxis we can have? Think about it: in a free market, the number of taxis would grow to meet the demand, competition would breed better service (since any companies providing poor service would quickly go out of business, just as in any other industry) and eventually, if New Zealand and Dublin are any indica-tion, prices would adjust to the market. Oh, and individual taxi drivers would eventually find their niche, whether it

be airport transport, high-end taxis or economy cabs.

Better still, those of us trying to get around Regina would have more taxis and better fares at our disposal, and we wouldn’t have to wait around twiddling our thumbs and cursing the current system.

These editorials are left unsigned because they represent the opinions of Verb magazine, not those of the individual writers.

i

all hail…… a new taxi system

editorial

…why should [local government] put … limits on how many taxis we can have?

verb magazIne

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7feb 22 – feb 28

Text your thoughts to881 vERB

8372

on ToPic: last week we asked what you thought about changing bus service in saskatchewan. here's what you had to say:

commeNts

– You mention the problem of non-profitable rural routes. If the bus system was privatized and deregulated, those routes would likely disappear. Therefore, yes to privatization, no to deregula-tion - force the companies to offer service on some non-profitable routes as long as they make a net profit with the other routes.

– I read the paper, and I under-stand how the bus fairs are going up. But if we didn’t have the bus system in Saskatchewan we would still be screwed. For every pro there is a com and we have to worry about the people who don’t have the money to take anything but the bus services.

– Take a look at what other prov-inces are doing with bus service and find out what works for them and try to improve our service here.

– Issue #227 when you comment on STC did you take a look at the top management position that could be cut so save !! Crown corp top heavy !

– Scrapping bus system is well and good if you live in a city and/or have a way of getting from place to place (like a car). But many people don’t have that. Many people rely on the STC to move around the province. Many people DO live in rural communities, not in the big cities. So go ahead and claim that getting rid of the STC is good because it costs money but you condemn all those people who rely on it, who have no other way to get around, to be imprisoned in their homes.

– Can’t believe the provincial government has dropped so much freaking $$ into a losing enter-prise. All those funds could have gone towards restructuring a vi-able and sustainable option.

– If even the minister for the STC is saying this isn’t sustainable we need to cut ties ASAP and fix this. It’s embarassing it’s gone on this long.

– If Saskatchewan is supposedly a have province, why do we persist in this things that show our have-not past. We have money rolling in, we need to take care of the people here with projects like good inter-provincial transportation, more environmental initiatives, etc. NOT a stupid new stadium or enormous money-grabbing initia-tives that hurt those who live and work here.

oFF ToPic

– Good article about Stobbe in jail. I think the book will bring to light more of the problems with the justice system. Its not work-ing! Jail is overused on abos, has little meaning anymore. Criminals aren’t rehabilitated. The whole crime and punishment paradigm needs to be examined rethought and changed.

In response to “Lessons from remand,” Local

page, #65 (February 15, 2013)

Sound oFF

– Tobacco packaging has medical porn of the impacts of tobacco use. Shouldn’t fast food packaging depict the impacts of obesity with similar porn? Alcohol too? The

point I’m trying to make is why this inordinate focus on tobacco? The anti-tobacco push is a phar-macorp attempt to replace tobacco use with tranqs and ADs.

– We see ladybugs wrong. Got one as a roomie. They’re a kickass predator. Armored powerful jaw wings tough. Likely a terror like a tiger or worse at their scale.

– WHAT KIND 0f Government per-mits Suppression 0F L0W INCOME FAMILIES!!! V0TE SMART

– Spin defense. Very good for women smaller people. If someone is choking you raise both arms straight above your head. Spin whole body hard fast. Same for stabbing with instrument or pum-melling with fists. Cover face with

hands ribs with arms. Works well with heavy clothes. Spin and move away at same time.

– Massive municipal tax increase in Regina. Now we’re gonna pay through the nose for Mayor Pat Fiacco’s term. Stadium? Hah!

– Massive U.S. corn subsidies distort the whole food economy. Corn feeds the pigs and chickens. Corn starch and oil in the french fries. Corn syrup in the pop bread and cheese. A myriad of other corn derivatives in the food. Now with corn ethanol blended gasoline the food industry has been chained to the oil industry. We pay high prices for our food while local producers go broke. Its not sustainable!

– Something to think about: our diminishing water supplies. It’s important not to blissfully blast through this resource and think that it won’t ever affect us.

– ENJOY YOUR ANNIVSARY AT BURGER KING JC95

nExT wEEk: what do you think about changing taxi service in saskatch-ewan? Pick up a copy of Verb to get in on the conversation:

We print your texts verbatim each week. Text in your thoughts and reactions to our stories and content, or anything else on your mind.

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8feb 22 – feb 28

q + a

ThE Soul SingER

l

Photos: courtesy oF the artIst

@macPhersona

[email protected]


i knew i had this sort of rocky soul side to me, and i knew i had a blues side.

shakura s’aIda

ast year, Shakura S’Aida released Time, the biggest and most

ambitious project she had ever undertaken. Conceived as a pair of records packaged together, one channeling her love of rock and soul, the other her penchant for the blues, Time emerged as a showcase for S’Aida’s towering voice, still strong after more than two decades on the road. Born in Brooklyn and a longtime Toronto resident, S’Aida had cultivated a reputation for writing and releas-ing songs that transport listeners back to the beginning of R&B, rock, and soul. Split down the middle, Time captures not only her expansive musical vision, but also the paradox facing every human being who makes music. I caught up with S’Aida to talk about double records, split personalities, and the pressure of expectation.

Alex J MacPherson: Why make a double album this time around?

Shakura S’Aida: I started thinking about doing a double record about a year beforehand. I knew

I had this sort of rocky soul side to me, and I knew I had a blues side. I think one of the biggest struggles we sometimes face as an artist lately is

that we don’t know how to mix the two together, because in order to make it sound cohesive we end up compromising one type of music or the other.

AJM: Is it difficult for you to make that clear distinction? Our personalities aren’t neatly split in two.

SS: I don’t make the distinction when I’m writing it. When I’m writing it, I just try to write, and I think that’s what [guitarist] Donna [Grantis] and I were really conscious of. It was just writing, just what it is. Where it came down to it, I was very clear on who I wanted to use, musically.

AJM: Time is two distinct records, but both of them feel like the culmination of your experiences. Could you have made something so expansive ten or fifteen years ago?

SS: Absolutely not. I wasn’t who I am now fifteen, twenty years ago. The experiences that I’ve had, both

professionally and personally, have brought me to this point. I would not have had the courage to split up these songs. I didn’t get that people really do not have the ability to separate it in their minds. They end up getting confused. Being clichéd, this album is timely. That what it’s about.

AJM: Do you continue that split through your live performances, maybe by playing a rock set and a blues set?

SS: No, I don’t. I mix them up. We’ve got certain sets that we’ve worked out that work for us as a band. Most of the time I start with “Queen of Rock ’n Soul” or I’ll go to one of my older songs. But there are some gigs where I play more rock than I do blues, and some gigs where I play more blues than I do rock.

AJM: You have spoken about disliking expectations. Isn’t that something all artists must reconcile,

particularly as their careers grow and expand?

SS: I’ve accepted that that’s the way it is. I’ve accepted the pressure that comes with that. What I need to reconcile for myself is to not put that on me, and to remember to be in the moment that’s there, as opposed to the moment that came before. Not to rest on my accolades. Not to rest on anyone’s expecta-tions but my own, and to actually try not to have any expectations. Just to go out there and do the best that I can do in that moment. Give everyone the best that I can.

Shakura S’Aida march 4 @ the exchange$9.52+ @ globe theatre box office

shakura s’aida on her new record and expectations by alex J macPherson

@VerbregiNa culturecoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

9feb 22 – feb 28

arts

whaT will SuRvivE oF uS iS lovEcarmen aguirre’s Blue Box explores love and sacrifice on two continents by alex J macPhersoN

m ost bands cite progress and innovation as their raisons

d’être. Not Cricket. The Regina-based punk rock outfit doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a throwback, a tribute to and continu-ation of the golden age of Fat Wreck Chords — a seminal California label created by Fat Mike of NOFX, and renowned for its collection of catchy punk rock.

“It’s a sound you don’t hear in today’s punk rock,” says Graham Cennon, who started the band with guitarist Justin Brooks in 2009. “There have been other bands, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the same. They’re not focusing on keeping their sound from that era. We love that era so much. We can’t let it go.”

Cennon and his bandmates grew up on a healthy diet of California punk. Bands like Bad Religion, NOFX, Penny-wise, and No Use For A Name captured — and held — their attention. “As soon

as I heard that drumbeat, I knew right away I had to do something with it,” he laughs. “I’d never heard something so fast and aggressive. You feel the energy from it.”

Cricket bill themselves as the best arrangement of four chords you will ever hear. “We keep it fun, we keep it fast, we keep it simple,” Cennon says, making the case for their blistering debut, 220 Beats Per Minute. Short on minor chords and long on searing guitar riffs and shouted choruses, the record captures in 12 songs everything that is good and right about punk rock from the nineties — political anger, sophomoric humour, and no-holds-barred volume.

But despite their reputation for energetic performances, and despite releasing another blistering EP just eight months ago, the band’s future is in jeopardy. Cennon says Brooks, a found-ing member and integral part of their sound, will be leaving the group in just

a few weeks, after a short run of shows across the province. It was a decision prompted by “life stuff taking over.”

Cennon isn’t bitter, and plans to keep going, but it is quite possible that this round of punishingly loud concerts might be the mighty Cricket’s last chirp. “It’s his last hurrah,” Cennon says with a wry laugh. “The rest of us are going to keep going and do what we can with what we have.”

Which is exactly what punk rock is and always should be about.

Cricketmarch 8 @ o’hanlon’sFree!

S

ThE cRickET‘S laST chiRP? regina punk rockers contemplate the future by alex J macPhersoN

Photo: courtesy oF the globe theatre

ix years after the coup that deposed Salvador

Allende and installed the mili-tary junta of Augusto Pinochet, Carmen Aguirre’s family traveled to Chile to join the underground resistance. When Aguirre turned 18, she committed herself to the movement, running a safe house on the Argentine border. It was a dangerous act, one that could have cost far more than her freedom, yet she elected to stay.

Years later, Aguirre, living in Los Angeles, fought to salvage a doomed relationship with an uncommitted man. The affair was tinged with the salty taste of unrequited love, yet Aguirre pursued the handsome television star with the same vigour displayed by the secret police so determined to hunt her down.

These stories, set years apart and presented in parallel, form the heart of Blue Box, a play that casts into sharp relief the exigencies of love and sacrifice. “I started writing this story about obsessive love, about chasing a man who is completely unavailable,” explains Aguirre, who also stars in the play. “And that all of a sudden got me into writing about being followed by the secret police when I was a very young person in the Chilean resis-tance in South America.”

Although the two stories share certain recognizable themes, chief among them a willingness to express oneself through sacrifice, Aguirre, who rose to prominence after her book, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, won the CBC’s Canada Reads competition, prefers to think of them as two sepa-rate tales from two different times. “I don’t know that they’re linked together so closely,” she says, adding that she sees herself as a bi-cultural person. “Basically, each hemisphere, for me, has its own stories.”

Ultimately, Blue Box, which is presented without the usual trappings of formal theatre and feels more like a conversation than a play, raises more questions than it answers. And Aguirre is determined to let viewers come to their own conclusions. “I’m a big fan

of trusting that the audience is much smarter than I am,” she says. “It’s up to them to decide what these two stories might have to do with each other.”

Nevertheless, viewers should keep in mind the words of Philip Larkin. “What will survive of us,” England’s greatest misanthrope wrote in “An Arundel Tomb,” “is love.”

Blue BoxFebruary 26 - march 3 @ globe theatre $20+ @ globe theatre box office

@macPhersona

[email protected]


Photo: courtesy oF crystal cennon


10feb 22 – feb 28

Continued on next page »

imartha wainwright closes one door and opens another by alex J macPherson

…i kept on singing with my parents, singing their songs, listening to their music. it’s something that i can’t escape…

martha waInwrIght

was watching the Grammys last night, and there’s a lot of personal disappoint-

ment,” admits Martha Wainwright. After emerging from the offbeat

Montreal music scene, Wainwright, who is known for her beguiling proto-pop and impressive pedigree, revealed herself to be a singer and songwriter of considerable talent. Mainstream success, however, has eluded the sultry-voiced songstress. “Obviously, I wish I were more successful, but I’m in a situation where you have to just keep going,” she muses. “It’s a difficult time, no one’s buying records, but I have to find a way to keep going.”

Wainwright is hinting at the problem many artists face. Art is about challenging the status quo, moving beyond the emotional and intellec-tual horizon. Art also makes awards problematic. Awards provide artists with the means to continue working in a barren industry, but to have even the slightest chance of winning them, creative people must conform to what-ever norms and trends happen to be in place. The upshot is that few great art-ists are lauded in their time, and those who reject the status quo are labeled outsiders. Like Wainwright, they watch the Grammys on television.

Her disappointment seems genuine enough. After all, who couldn’t do with the surge of publicity generated by a major nomination? But Wainwright seems to understand that pushing boundaries is what she does best. “It’s

not that I get bored easily, but I have a chameleon side to me,” she explains. “People like things that are quite defined, they like things that are quite specific. I’ve never done it that way.”

What she has done is embrace risky and innovative projects that reveal her as both a talented artist and profoundly self-aware human being. Late last year she released Come Home To Mama, her fourth album, and she is currently interpreting French songs for a Quebec television drama called

Trauma. “It’s interesting to do things like this,” she muses, “to open it up a little bit to different kinds of projects, because I can see that’s going to be an important part of making a living.”

That Wainwright would choose to make a living playing music surprised no one. Born to Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, she grew up immersed in music, from folk to rock and beyond. Her older brother, Rufus, is also a successful musician, composer, and performer. For years Wainwright struggled to accept her reality. “You want to think you’re responsible for all

of your success, and that you’re doing it on your own,” she says after a brief pause. “But then I realized I kept on returning to it, I kept on singing with my parents, singing their songs, listen-ing to their music. It’s something that I can’t escape — and I realize now it’s something I would never have wanted to escape.”

Comfortable with her lot in life, Wainwright has, since 2005, released four charmingly eccentric albums, including a tribute to Édith Piaf. Her

latest, Come Home To Mama, comes at a critical juncture. “It’s very much a new beginning,” she says, referring to the death of her mother and the difficult birth of her son. “My reality has changed deeply in the sense of becoming a mother, but also being a motherless person, which I certainly didn’t expect to be this young. I have a clearer view of what I need to do and what I want to do moving forward, and also a stronger sense of time.”

The emotional heart of Come Home To Mama is the one song Wainwright didn’t write. McGarrigle penned

coVer

comE homE To mama

/VerbregiNa culturecoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

11feb 22 – feb 28

martha wainwright closes one door and opens another by alex J macPherson

Photo: courtesy oF the artIst


@macPhersona

[email protected]


comE homE To mama

“Proserpina” a few months before she died, as the cancer was draining her life away. A haunting piano ballad, the song rises and falls to the sound of a violin and Wainwright’s ethereal voice. “Proserpina,” Latin for Persephone, is a loose interpretation of ancient myth, Wainwright explains, written “by someone who is very much in a different stage, in the sense of knowing full well where she was heading, one foot in this life and the next one in the next life.”

Daughter of Zeus and Demeter, Persephone was spirited away to the underworld by Hades, who had fallen in love with her. Furious, Zeus sent Hermes to retrieve her. But before the conductor of souls arrived, Hades tricked Persephone into eating a handful of pomegranate seeds, which damned her to spend part of each year with him in the underworld. “With the songs on this record, I’m trying to talk about my mother’s death, and moving forward as well, in the sort of sloppy, very human way that I write songs,” Wainwright says, hinting at the pain

of separation. “I find that “Proserpina” was able to take that concept and sum it up in a very elegant and simple way.”

The other songs on the record steer clear of the stripped-down sound that makes “Proserpina” so powerful, returning instead to the subtly tex-tured pop aesthetic that has become Wainwright’s trademark. She wrote the songs on an acoustic guitar, and frequently plays them as such, but the arrangements on the record have been shaped into something that transcends the singer-songwriter mould. “Is it folk? Not really. Is it pop? Not really,” Wainwright laughs. “At this point, after a few years of doing this and mak-ing records, I can say that it’s Martha Wainwright-esque.”

Come Home To Mama was pro-duced by Yuka Honda, who founded Cibo Matto with Miho Hatori and Sean Lennon. Wainwright gives credit where credit is due, explaining that the soundscapes and flourishes on the record were conceived and created by Honda. “They are honest and open and revealing,” Wainwright says of her songs, “but I think what [Honda] was able to do by creating these worlds around them, these sonic worlds, also makes them more interesting than me just vomiting up all this information and stuff.”

Come Home To Mama covers a lot of territory, sonically as well as lyrically. The album includes sparse ballads and gritty rock songs, intro-spective meditations and at least one

cheerful “f**k you” to the world at large. The songs are linked, however, by a common theme, one that Wain-wright keeps coming back to. “There’s a bit of an anger, there’s a rawness that is there, and also a questioning of how things are — a frustration and a general sort of feeling that something is wrong, and a want to make it right,” she says, dancing around the point before deciding to say it: “I wanted to make a record of upbeat songs, but it’s about Kate dying, it’s about wanting to stop time.”

The songs that comprise Trauma, on the other hand, represent a completely different facet of Wainwright’s career.

Because they need to amplify the emo-tional arc of a single episode, they were chosen in advance. Wainwright says the project was difficult to turn down, and not just because she enjoys cover-ing songs written by other people. “After singing so many personal ones all the time with Come Home To Mama, I’m doing on the road now, it’s always nice to be able to take on the different role of interpreter, and focus more on the voice and things like that.”

Come Home To Mama and Trauma represent two poles of Wainwright’s career: the accessible rock record and the quirky side project. But she has plenty more to do before calling

it quits, including a long stint on the road and a plan to produce a musi-cal based on the life of notorious con artist Cassie Chadwick. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Grammy or not, she wrote Come Home To Mama as a new beginning.

Martha Wainwrightmarch 3 @ artesian on 13$32 (picatic.com), or $37 (door)


12feb 22 – feb 28

food + driNk

f I only had one word to describe Sweet Ambrosia Bakeshoppe and their

treats, it would have to be ador-able! Luckily, I get quite a few more words than just that one, and can tell you about how deli-cious all the cupcakes they gave me were.

I started off with two cake pops, which are like little cake lollipops, stick and all. Red velvet cake dipped in slightly tangy white choc-olate was first up — the cake was super moist, wrapped in the sweet coating. Rich chocolate cake coated in milk chocolate followed, which had a great cocoa flavour. Both pops had sprinkles and edible glitter decorating them, which made me think these would be fantastic for a girls’ night treat or a kid’s party.

A peanut butter fudge cupcake was the first big treat. The rich, fudgy chocolate icing was topped with butterscotch chips, and the cake had a wonderful peanut but-ter taste and aroma. Not enough? Well, this cupcake also comes in a great looking full-sized cake.

Death by chocolate came next, and again had super fudgy choco-late icing, but topped with both chocolate sauce and milk chocolate. The incredibly moist and dense chocolate cake was rich yet slightly bitter from the cocoa, which helped

to balance out the sweet frosting. If you love chocolate, you should give this cupcake a try!

A simply gorgeous red velvet cup-cake followed. It had moist red cake with a hint of cocoa and classic cream cheese icing. The balance of sweetness and tang was just right, and this was a perfectly exemplary red velvet cake.

The banana split cupcake was really something different. The

banana cupcake had great banana flavour (like moist, sweet banana bread), and was topped with vanilla icing, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce and, of course, a cherry on top! This was a great twist on some classic flavours.

Now, I’ve saved my abso-lute favourite for last — a simple, vanilla cupcake. Call me boring, but I prefer to think of myself as a traditionalist. There is something magical about the per-fect balance of sweetness and creaminess in a vanilla cup-cake, with just the right kind of vanilla flavour and aroma. Sweet Ambrosia Bakeshoppe’s are just

right and wonderfully delicious, while some pink sprinkles just make it that much better!

Everything they make at the Bakeshoppe is from scratch, and everything is just too cute to believe. They do those big special event cakes and also deco-rate cookies for every occasion. I pretty much dare you to go into their shop and not come away with

some fantastic sweet that tickles your tastebuds.

sweet ambrosia bakeshoppe230 winnipeg st. n | 522 1721

cuPcakE hEavEn

itreats and sweets galore at the sweet ambrosia bakeshoppe by JessIca bIckFord

The banana cupcake … was topped with vanilla icing, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce and, of course, a cherry on top.

JessIca bIckFord

@Thegeekcooks

[email protected]


lET’S go dRinkin’ vERB’S mixology guidE

PinEaPPlE uPSidE

down cakE ShooTERS

These shooters are sweet and tart — just like your favourite upside down cake! The grena-dine completes the look with the colour of those maraschino cherries that are oh so retro.

ingREdiEnTS

1 oz vanilla vodka1 oz pineapple juicea few drops of grenadine

diREcTionS

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake together the vanilla vodka and pineapple juice. Strain into two glasses (a shot glass, or a martini glass, if you’re feeling suave) and add a drop or two of grenadine, which should sink to the bottom for a pretty presentation.

Photos courtesy of danielle tocker

@VerbregiNa culturecoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

13feb 22 – feb 28

Photos courtesy oF: chantal degagne / the artIst / cheyenne rae

Coming upnext Week

ingRid gaTin

The first thing you notice about Ingrid Gatin’s music is her voice. It’s soulful, sultry and slightly tortured. Paired with her trademark accordion, this Manitoba-based singer-songwrit-er’s voice evokes emotion and longing and maybe even a little bit of love in each and every song she sings. It also has a way of summoning up the stark, wind-swept prairie landscape she has called home for most of her life. With the release of her most recent album, 1000 Lives, Gatin has meshed an old-world folky sound with a modern piano-and-accordion-fueled twist. Whimsical and powerful, down-home and dreamy, Gatin’s music is sure to win over fans as she embarks on her cross-country tour to promote 1000 Lives. She’ll be in Regina next week; come check her out.

@ the artFul dodgersaturday, march 2– $tbd

What was the name of Tegan and Sara’s first band? Give up? The answer is Plunk. Back in ‘95, that’s what these identical twins from Calgary called themselves. But that was just the beginning. Eventually the pair added a drummer, bassist, keyboardist and guitarist to the mix, and these days the talented musi-cians have amassed not only a rabid national following, but an interna-tional one as well. Much of this can be attributed to the way the duo pulls together the worlds of pop and indie music with style, competence and kickass elan. They’ve sold more than a million records, have been covered by people like the White Stripes, and have won a handful of awards. Tickets available at http://www.conexusartscentre.ca

TEgan and SaRa@ conexus arts centremoNday, march 4 – $26.50+

@ o’hanlon’s Pubfriday, may 31 – no cover

SaSk muSic PREviEwThe 2013 JUNO nominees have been announced, and Saskatchewan has been well-represented. SaskMusic would like to congratulate The Sheepdogs on their three nominations — for Single of the Year, Group of the Year and Rock Album of the Year — as well as Donny Parenteau, who has been nominated for Aboriginal Album of the Year. The 2013 JUNO Awards and festivities will be hosted in Regina April 15-21, 2013.

keep up with saskatchewan music. saskmusic.org

music

To describe Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers’ music with words almost doesn’t do it justice. Playing everything from horns and guitar to bass and accordion, this Winnipeg act offers up a brand of gypsy-jazz-orches-tral rock that’s at once folky and pop. Clear as mud? Good. To get a better idea of what these guys are all about (which is pure awesome, by the way) you should check out their live show when they come to town. You won’t be disappointed. Not only are they all ter-rific musicians, not only is their sound blow-your-hair-back infectious, but Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers also put on one helluva live show. A show that, since releasing their debut LP, Hans My Lion, in 2011, has been honed by playing hundreds of venues across Canada.

– by adam hawboldt

Flying Fox and ThE hunTER gaThERERS

Photo: courtesy oF emma mcIntyre

VerbNews.comeNtertaiNmeNt coNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

14feb 22 – feb 28

listiNgs

The most complete live music listings for Regina.

FEBRuaRy 22 » maRch 2

22 23

1 227 2825 2624

S m T w T

FRiday 22Sarah Slean / Artesian on 13th — A Juno-

nominated singer/songwriter you don’t

want to miss. 8pm / SOLD OUT

eric church / Brandt Centre — The bad

boy of country is here to rock Regina.

7:30pm / $44.50-77.50

charlie major / Casino Regina —

Country music done right by this musi-

cian from Quebec. 8pm / $25-30 (www.

casinoregina.com)

Dj juan lopez / Envy Nightclub — This

DJ loves requests, nothing is off limits.

10pm / $5

juStin rutleDge / The Exchange — A CD

release party for this talented roots singer/

songwriter who may very well be the

second coming of Ron Sexsmith. 8pm / $15

(available at Vintage Vinyl, Madame Yes,

www.ticketedge.ca)

Dj pat & Dj Kim / Habano’s — Local

DJs spin top 40 hits all night long. 9pm

/ $5 cover

cortez anD the KillerS / Lancaster Tap-

house — A Neil Young tribute band. 9pm /

Cover TBD

Big chill FriDay / Lancaster Taphouse —

Come get your chill on with DJ Fatbot, every

Friday night. 10pm / Cover TBD

wonDerlanD / McNally’s Tavern —

One-hit wonders and classic rock.

10pm / $5

thirD Degree Birnz / Pump Roadhouse —

Come on out for some sweet party music at

the official Eric Church after party. 9pm / No

cover with ticket stub

wu-BlocK / Pure Ultra Lounge — Featuring

Ghostface Killah and Sheek Louch. 9pm /

$20-35 (www.ticketedge.ca)

Billy grinD / The Sip — Come out for a

night of alt country. 10pm / Cover TBD

tim romanSon / Whiskey Saloon — Some

good ol’ country music to get the party

started. 8pm / $10

SaTuRday 23Super nova / The Artful Dodger — The

industry showdown finals feature Suf-

fersugre, The League of One, Port Noise, The

Dustin Ritter Band and so, so many more.

7:30pm / Cover TBD

contaminate, BacKlaSh, reBuilD/re-pair, Fpg / The Club — A hardcore/thrash/

punk show. 8pm / $10

Dj juan lopez / Envy Nightclub — This DJ

loves requests. 10pm / Cover $5

lunacy, thiS Dog muSt Die, electric mother / The Exchange — Three excellent

bands, one hella good time. 8pm / $10

wonDerlanD / McNally’s Tavern — One-

hit wonders and classic rock. 10pm / $5

thirD Degree Birnz / Pump Roadhouse —

Come on out for some sweet party music.

9pm / Cover TBD

Billy grinD / The Sip — Come out for a

night of alt country. 10pm / Cover TBD

jam SeSSionS / Smokin’ Okies BBQ —

Promoting blues and country blues, come in

and play or listen and be entertained. 3pm

/ No cover

tim romanSon / Whiskey Saloon — Some

good ol’ country music to get the party

started. 8pm / $10

Dj longhorn / Whiskey Saloon — Come

check out one of Regina’s most interactive

DJs as he drops some of the best country

beats around. 8pm

Sunday 24noBle thieFS / Artful Dodger — Some rock

and soul from Winnipeg. Cover TBD

monday 25open mic night / The Artful Dodger —

Come down and jam! 8pm / No cover

monDay night jazz anD BlueS / Bush-

wakker Brewpub — Featuring Uptown Jazz,

Regina’s jazz veterans. 8pm / No cover

monthly olD timeS Dance party / Ca-

sino Regina — Some old school music. 8pm

/ $10 (www.casinoregina.com)

TuESday 26trouBaDour tueSDayS / Bocados —

Come check out some live tunes from local

talents every week. 8pm / No cover

cecile Doo-Kingue / Creative City Centre

— One of Montreal’s most electrifying

guitarists. 7:30pm / $10

wEdnESday 27weDneSDay night FolK / Bushwakker

Brewpub — Featuring Grant Davidson, a

Winnipeg alt-country and roots singer-

songwriter. 9pm / No cover

zachary lucKy w/ Danny goertz / The

Exchange — A night of folk music worth

checking out. 7:30pm / $10

jam night anD open Stage / McNally’s

Tavern — Come on down and enjoy some

local talent. 9pm / No cover

ThuRSday 28Queen city rocKS / The Exchange — It’s a

battle of the bands! 8pm / Cover TBD

DeciBel FreQuency / Gabbo’s Nightclub —

A night of electronic fun. 10pm / Cover $5

pS FreSh / Hookah Lounge — Featuring DJ

Ageless and DJ Drewski. 7pm / No cover

Switch w/SucKer punch / McNally’s Tav-

ern — Chart-toppers and one-hit wonders

galore. 8:30pm / $5

roB munro / Pump — Rockin’ tunes to get

the party started. 9pm / Cover TBD

BlueS weeK KicK-oFF party / Royal Sas-

katchewan Museum — Featuring the Jack

Semple Band, Bill Durst, Evan Chambers

and the Third Alarm, Eddie and the House

Rockers. 7pm / $25 (www.reginablues.ca)

chriS henDerSon / Whiskey Saloon — An

amazing talent from Estevan. 8pm / $5

Dj longhorn / Whiskey Saloon — One

of Regina’s most interactive DJs. 8pm

FRiday 1Super nova / The Artful Dodger — A night

of good tunes and good company. 7:30pm /

Cover TBD

miD-winter BlueS FeStival / Casino Re-

gina — Featuring Ross Neilsen, Marcia Ball,

and Powder Blues Band. 7pm / $40 (www.

reginablues.ca)


loves requests. 10pm / $5

peripheral viSion / The Exchange — A

band making waves on the international

jazz scene. 8pm / Cover TBD

Dj pat & Dj Kim / Habano’s — Local DJs

spin top 40 hits. 9pm / $5 cover

Big chill FriDay / Lancaster Taphouse —

Come get your chill on with DJ Fatbot, every

Friday night. 10pm / Cover TBD

F.o.g.D.o.g. / McNally’s — A night of sweet

covers. 10pm / $5



DvBBS / Pure Ultra Lounge — This elec-

tronic act is definitely one to watch. 10pm /

$5-10 (www.ticketedge.ca)

whatever / The Sip — Come out for a

rockin’ good time. 10pm / Cover TBD

chriS henDerSon / Whiskey Saloon — A

country singer/songwriter from Estevan.

8pm / $10

Dj longhorn / Whiskey Saloon — Come

check out one of Regina’s most interactive

DJs do his thing. 8pm

SaTuRday 2ingriD gatin w/twin voiceS / The Artful

Dodger — Voice- and accordion-driven

folk. 7:30pm / Cover TBD

Shane reoch, StillhouSe poetS, ray eBerle, greg milDenBerger Duo / Bush-

wakker — Come celebrate the Mid-Winter

Blues Fest with us. 1pm / Cover TBD

miD-winter BlueS FeStival / Casino

Regina — Featuring Kim WIlson’s Blues

Allstars, Albert Castiglia, The Harpoonist

and the Axe Murderer. 7pm / $40 (www.

reginablues.ca)


loves requests. 10pm / $5

voice From the DarK tour / The Ex-

change — Featuring Marduk, Moonspell,

Inquisition, The Foreshadowing, and Death

Wolf. 7pm / Cover TBD

greg milDenBerger Duo, jeFF merticK, t.B. juDD, Shane reoch / Lancaster

Taphouse — It’s getting bluesy in here. 1pm

/ Cover TBD

F.o.g.D.o.g. / McNally’s Tavern — A night of

sweet covers. 10pm / $5



whatever / The Sip — Come out for a

rockin’ good time. 10pm / Cover TBD

jam SeSSionS / Smokin’ Okies BBQ —

Promoting blues and country blues, come in

and play or listen and be entertained. This

week featuring host band Rickie Pollack

and Someone Else’s Kids. 2pm / No cover

chriS henDerSon / Whiskey Saloon — A

country singer/songwriter from Estevan.

8pm / $10

Have a live show you'd like to promote? Let us know!

gET liSTEd

[email protected]

/VerbregiNa eNtertaiNmeNtcoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

15feb 22 – feb 28

Nightlife

wEdnESday,FEBRuaRy 13 @

gaSlighTSaloonThe Gaslight Saloon1235 Broad Street(306) 721 1390

muSic viBe / Mostly rockFeatureD DealS / Domestic beer and highballs, 2 for $8DrinK oF choice / Jägerbombstop eatS / Nachos — cheesy and delicious, with tons of toppings

Photography by Bebzphoto

checK out our FaceBooK page! These photos will be uploaded to

Facebook on Friday, March 1.

facebook.com/verbregina


16feb 22 – feb 28

film


@adamhawboldt

[email protected]

Photo: courtesy oF summIt entertaInment

Ssnitch, the new dwayne Johnson movie, pleasantly surprises by adam hawboldt

Snitch is much more of a dramatic thriller than it is a smash-’em-up action flick.

adam hawboldt

SniTch

diREcTEd By Ric Roman Waugh

STaRRing Dwayne Johnson, Susan

Sarandon, Jon Bernthal, Rafi Gavron +

Barry Pepper

113 minuTES | Pg

ExPEcT ThE unExPEcTEdnitch is not the movie you think it is.

Or maybe I should say, it isn’t the movie I thought it was going to be. When I first saw the trailer — which features clips of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson going undercover to take down a drug lord — my first thought was, “This is gonna be one of those movies where the Rock kicks ass now, takes names later. Explosions. Quick-witted one-liners. The standard action fare.”

Boy, was I wrong.And the first hint of just how

wrong I was came in a scene when The Rock squares off against a couple of street thugs. Normally, in most of his movies, you’d see The Rock throttle these ruffians.

Not this time.This time the thugs lay the

smack down on the ex-wrestler’s “roody-poo candy ass,” as he would say, leaving him face-down on the ground, bloodied, without a wallet.

Needless to say, Snitch is not your usual Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson film.

Inspired by true events, Snitch tells the story of an 18-year-old guy named Jason (Rafi Gavron) who gets strong-armed into letting a friend mail him a package of Ec-stasy. The pair gets caught, and the friend rolls over on Jason— leaving him to take the whole blame.

Facing a mandatory 10 years in prison (few American lawsare more preposterous and unforgiving than drug-related man-datory minimum sentences), and without anyone for him to rat

out for leniency, Jason is up that proverbial crappy creek without a paddle.

The prosecutor for the case (Su-san Sarandon) is a hardass with an eye on a Congressional seat.

So Jason’s dad, John (Dwayne Johnson), strikes a deal with her: he’ll go undercover in the drug trade, help take down some big time dealers (which will look good

on the prosecutor’s résumé), in ex-change for leniency for his son.

How is he going to do that?Well, John owns a construction

supply business, which means he has access to big rigs, which means

he can offer drug dealers a means of procuring clandestine transpor-tation for their product.

He gains access to the under-world via one of his employees, an ex-con named Daniel Cruz (The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal).

The stage is set, and things rap-idly begin to take off.

Naturally, in a movie like this there are bound to be action se-quences, but there aren’t as many as you’d think, because what it boils down to is this: Snitch is much more of a dramatic thriller than it is a smash-’em-up action flick. More of a condemnation of America’s absurd drug laws than a mindless romp.

And for the most part, this works. The acting is excellent. Bernthal absolutely kills it as an ex-con, Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire’s Omar) is positively stel-lar as a drug dealer, Barry Pepper (playing an undercover Fed) is good as always, and The Rock plays John with a certain amount of weight and nary an eyebrow raise!

Now, this isn’t to say that Snitch is fantastic. The first hour of the film crawls along at a snail’s pace, the script isn’t exactly what you’d call first-class, and there’s a scene near the end involving The Rock and a semi that’ll make you do a double take.

But, overall — and much to my surprise — Snitch was far better than I expected.

@VerbregiNa eNtertaiNmeNtcoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

17feb 22 – feb 28

saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysteri-

cal naked / dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix / angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-ery of night…”

And so begins Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” an epic ‘50s beat poem full of life and pain, frustration and sexual liberation. It served as a rant against the political and social problems of the day, and a yawp into the night of pas-sion and desire. It was also a notorious poem, whose publication caused an uproar and led to an obscenity trial.

Now the story of “Howl” has come to the big screen. Directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein (The Cellu-loid Closet, The Times of Harvey Milk), Howl was originally conceived as a documentary. Which makes sense, seeing as Friedman and Epstein are documentarians. But somewhere along the way, the film-making team said “To hell with it,” and launched into their first full-length feature.

The result isn’t bad. But it’s not great, either.

Howl is essentially broken down into four separate, interwoven seg-ments. First, you have the segment which begins with Ginsberg (James Franco) giving the first reading of the poem in 1955, and is followed by numerous interviews with Franco’s Ginsberg (taken verbatim from real-life interviews the writer gave). The second segment involves animated

sequences from Ginsberg illustrator Eric Drooker, which try to provide vi-suals for the wild words and violent rush of the poem. Then you have a minor segment about Ginsberg and his buddies — Jack Kerouac (Todd Rotondi) and Neal Cassady (Jon Prescott) — early in life, hanging out,

being hip, smoking dope, talking art and trying to get published. Last, but certainly not least, there’s the 1957 obscenity trial where the prosecu-tion tried to have the book outlawed. The trial scenes feature Hollywood heavyweights like Jeff Daniels, John Hamm and David Strathairn.

If all that sounds disjointed and confusing, well, that’s because it kind

of is. As ambitious as the format is, the whole jigsaw approach doesn’t really serve the film well. Sure, it’s hip and kinetic (kind of like Ginsberg’s poem) in the beginning. But as time passes cer-tain parts falter. The animation seems out of place in the movie, as though the directors were trying a tad too hard. Oh, and the courtroom scene — boring. With very little drama or insight, the obscenity trial drags the movie down.

Where the movie really sings, how-ever, is whenever James Franco is on screen. He plays Ginsberg with honest charm and a subtle magnetism. In fact, Franco is so pitch perfect in the role it reminds you why he’s such a sought-after young actor. Given the right mate-rial, the guy can flat-out act.

But in the end, as good as Franco is, the movie ends up being more

of an intellectual examination of the historical importance of a poem than it is a howl into the darkness.

Howl will be screened at the Re-gina Public Library on March 1; see reginalibrary.ca for show times.

Photo: courtesy oF oscIlloscoPe

as ambitious as the format is, the whole jigsaw approach doesn’t really serve the film well.

adam hawboldt

howl

diREcTEd By Jeffrey Friedman +

Rob Epstein

STaRRing James Franco, John Hamm,

Jeff Daniels + Aaron Tveit

90 minuTES | 14a

PoRTRaiT oF ThE PoET aS a young BEaTnikFilm about ginsberg’s “howl” hits some high notes, some low ones by adam hawboldt

i


@adamhawboldt

[email protected]


18feb 22 – feb 28

comics

© Elaine m. will | blog.E2w-illustration.com | check onthebus.webcomic.ws/ for previous editions!

/VerbregiNa eNtertaiNmeNtcoNteNts local editorial commeNts q + a arts coVer food + driNk music listiNgs Nightlife film comics timeout

19feb 22 – feb 28

hoRoScoPES february 22 – february 28

© walTER d. FEEnER 2012

Sudoku cRoSSwoRd anSwER kEy

a b

aRiES march 21–april 19

Time to get aggressive, Aries. Now,

we’re not talking about punching

the next person who ticks you off. But this

week: go for what you want with gusto.

TauRuS april 20–may 20

One of the biggest parts of com-

munication is effective listening,

Taurus. Be sure to keep your ears on high

alert this week. Be an active listener.

gEmini may 21–June 20

Don’t try to force square pegs into

round holes this week, Gemini.

Do what comes naturally. Do what makes

logical sense. Or else.

cancER June 21–July 22

Somebody close to you may come

to you for help this week, Cancer.

If so, tell them to bugger off. Just kidding!

You should probably give them a hand.

lEo July 23–august 22

Time for a little isolation, Leo. We

know you’re a social butterfly and

all, but this week take a timeout to recharge

the old battery. You’ll be happy you did.

viRgo august 23–september 22

Confusion, confusion, everywhere.

Confusion, confusion, but you

shouldn’t care. If things get complex, keep

on truckin’. Life will chill out soon.

liBRa september 23–october 23

Make sure you have stabilized

your emotions before acting this

week, Libra. If not, you may find yourself

knee deep in fecal matter — so to speak.

ScoRPio october 24–november 22

Sheesh! Are you always this moody,

Scorpio? Try to breathe more this

week and put things into proper perspec-

tive. Not everything is such a big deal.

SagiTTaRiuS november 23–december 21

You will have ants in your pants this

week, Sagittarius. Not literally. But

you might find yourself so restless at times

you won’t know what to do with yourself.

caPRicoRn december 22–January 19

Be wary of strangers this week,

Capricorn. No, they aren’t out to

kidnap you or anything, but they may not

operate with your best interests in mind.

aQuaRiuS January 20–February 19

Some weeks are awesome, other

weeks are terrible. This week,

well, it’s going to be neither. Expect a lot

of ho-hum days on the horizon.

PiScES February 20–march 20

If you have a rash and it smells

like bacon, you should probably

seek help. If it doesn’t itch, don’t worry.

Proceed with your week as usual.

Sudoku anSwER kEy

a

b

8 4 6 3 7 2 9 1 55 3 2 9 1 6 4 8 71 7 9 4 8 5 6 3 29 1 4 6 2 7 3 5 87 2 5 8 3 4 1 6 96 8 3 1 5 9 2 7 43 5 7 2 4 1 8 9 62 6 1 5 9 8 7 4 34 9 8 7 6 3 5 2 1

2 5 6 3 4 8 7 9 11 4 7 9 5 6 2 3 88 9 3 2 7 1 4 6 56 3 2 4 8 7 5 1 99 7 1 5 6 2 3 8 45 8 4 1 3 9 6 2 74 2 5 8 1 3 9 7 63 6 8 7 9 5 1 4 27 1 9 6 2 4 8 5 3

4 2 1 3 1 4 7 7 9 8 5 2 1 4 7 3 5 3 6 96 8 1 5 7 2 8 9 62 6 5 9 4 8 3

5 6 4 7 9 2 8 3 7 1 6 5 4 8 7 5 1 9 2 3 5 8 4 6 2 8 1 7 3 9 4 2 1 9 6 3

cRoSSwoRd Canadian Criss-Cross

acRoSS 1. Spanish sparkling wine

5. Temporary stitch

9. Glossy fabric

10. Make up on the spot

12. Address part

13. Piece of pasta

15. Make lace

16. Candle part

18. Bite on persistently

19. Advances in years

21. Garment worn outdoors

23. Fruit drink

24. In a lower place

26. Juno Award winning

Canadian rock band

28. Andiron

30. Member of a cabal

33. Worthless stuff

37. You can’t live

without it

38. One named in a will

40. Catch sight of

41. Move little by little

43. Lowest high tide

45. Bottom of a dress

46. Warm up again

48. Having no vegetation

50. Funeral song

51. All-encompassing

52. Place for a peephole

53. Newspaper piece

down 1. Group which shares a

business interest

2. Gobbled up

3. Range of vision

4. Playful prank

5. Big beer mug

6. Without further ___

7. Block gradually

8. Take hostage

9. Detachable rocket unit

11. Skate part

12. Hurt with a knife

14. Large jug with a

wide spout

17. Exclusive group

20. Malleable

22. Horn sound

25. Accompanying

27. Monster in fairy tales

29. Go back in

30. Match up

31. Like notebook paper

32. Three-petalled flower

34. Hindu retreat

35. Drive fast

36. Song sung in church

39. Leader of a Jewish

congregation

42. Long sandwich

44. Not all

47. Gone by

49. Fish eggs

timeout

verb issue r66 (feb. 22-28, 2013)

Documents

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