Pick of the Day: World Junior Hockey Championship

Too bad the Czech and Slovak republics wouldn't consider reuniting, at least as far as participating in international hockey goes. Back in the days of the old Soviet Union Czechoslovakia was a formidable hockey power. Stan Mikita never played for the national team I don't think, but he was Czechoslovakian, as were the Stasnys.

Since separating in the 1992 the republics have enjoyed some success internationally. In '98, most notably, the Czechs rode the back of goaltender Dominik Hasek to Olympic gold. But this year at the World Juniors, neither republic made the playoffs. I'm writing this before the gold medal match up between the United States and Canada, obviously. But unless that game turns out to be a classic the tournament, overall, would have to be considered a bit of a bust from a competition perspective.

In marching to the gold medal game, Canada's only faced one real test. That was on New Year's Eve against the Americans where they trailed 4-2 in the third but came back to win 5-4 in a shootout. Switzerland's 3-2 overtime semi-final upset of the lacklustre Russians was also a great game. But outside of that, not too much excitement. If the Czechs and Slovaks joined forces, they'd have a better shot at winning. It's not likely to happen, of course. But it would make for a better tourney. Maybe Austria and Germany should join together too. And Switzerland could hook up with Norway. And Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine could team up with Italy -- okay, that would probably be expecting too much. It likely wouldn't threaten the existing hockey powers too much, but it would help prevent scores like 16-0.

Anyway, the gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. goes tonight on TSN at 7 p.m.

Six In The Morning

1 CHANGE OF HEART Roughrider's general manager Eric Tillman pleads guilty to a summary charge of sexual assault after pleading not guilty last year. Apparently Tillman told the victim's family he can't remember what happened because he was on painkillers. (Globe And Mail)

2 SECURITY SCARE Passengers flying into the United States from countries including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Algeria will be subject to gropey-pokey lookie-peepy inspections at American airports. Oh, and Cuba's on the list because we all know what an al-Qaeda hotbed that is. (Guardian)

3 TODAY IN PHALLIC SYMBOLS Dubai opens the worlds tallest tower. (New York Times)

4 OF DOWNTOWN, GARBAGE, SPORTS AND BUSES L-P City Hall writer Joe Couture recaps four plans shaping Regina.

5 DEMENTIA BOOM Canada could have one and a quarter million sufferers within 30 years. Not fun. (CBC)

6 A FACEBOOK GROUP PROROGUES ALL Mmm-hmmm. Looks like this group's been busy keeping everything prorogued since fall 2008. Can I prorogue work this week until Thursday? (Facebook)

No no no no

Singer Lhasa de Sela has died. (CBC Media Blog)

Danish Cartoonist Threatened in Home

Super Best Friends Club, you guys

Remember when some Danish newspaper published a bunch of cartoons depicting Muhammad in September 2005? Well, some people are still pretty pissed off about it.

One of the cartoonists involved, Kurt Westergaard, was threatened in his home on Saturday.

And by threatened, I mean a man broke into his home and tried to confront Westergaard and his granddaughter with an axe and a knife. (CBC)

Did I mention that Westergaard is 75 years old? Or that his visiting granddaughter is only 5?

The cartoonist and his granddaughter fled to his panic room (a must for his line of work, apparently). Police then showed up and shot the attacker in the knee.

Police say that the incident was 'terror-related', which either means that the attacker is a terrorist, or that Westergaard and his granddaughter were terrified because they were almost killed with a knife and an axe.

Disdain for those who hide behind religious beliefs as a means of justifying hatred and violence is a recurring theme in prairie dog, and it's not hard to see why. It's pretty sad if the greatest threat to your beliefs is an old man who makes funny little drawings.

That said, as someone who holds a great deal of affection for cartoons and the cartoonists who cartoon them, I can't help but feel a little satisfied that in an age of spectacular CG special effects and Sham-Wow-miracle products, a few inked lines can still hold so much power to provoke.

Pick of the Day: Avatar

We don't have 3-D capacity here at Dog Blog, but we're working on it. Certainly, it's a revoluntionary technology that has taken the movie indstry by storm in recent years. To give you a sense of what it's like, just lift your eyes from the screen for a sec and look at what's around you. That, in a nutshell, is what viewing a 3-D movie is like. And you don't even have to wear special glasses to experience it. Nor shell out $10 or so. Neat, eh?

Of course, the view you just took in probably can't compare with what star director James Cameron offers up here. So by all means check this flick out. Shane Hnetka, prairie dog's movie listings guy has seen it, and he apparently thought it was pretty good; same with prairie dog's editor Stephen Whitworth. Here's a link to the Dec. 20 post he did (Dog Blog). Jorge though, had a different opinion. Here's a link to a Jan. 3 post he did trashing the flick. (Dog Blog) Finally, here's a link to the trailer (YouTube)

This Week at City Hall

Wednesday, January 6
Regina Planning Commission (4 pm): Considering meeting dates and times for 2010.

Thursday, January 7
Environment Advisory Committee (5 pm): Considering a suggestion to investigate PlascoEnergy's Waste-to-Energy system as an option for Regina's Waste Plan. Also considering sending committee members to a conference and to participate in a workshop; and, considering a request from the Canadian Cancer Society to address the committee on the hazards of using pesticides for cosmetic reasons.

Complete agendas and reports can be found on the city's website.

Pick of the Day: Blueprint Series

For several years now, New Dance Horizons has been presenting this small-scale performance series where local artists in a variety of disciplines (dance, theatre, visual art, literature) have an opportunity to showcase works in progress and gather feedback from the audience on what they felt worked about the piece and what could be improved upon. Most artists do labour in isolation a fair bit when they're creating a work, but at some point, especially in the performing arts, it's important to see how things look on stage.

The Blueprint Series is held at NDH's studio at 2207 Harvey St. in east-central Regina. Today at 3 p.m., presenters will be NDH artistic director Robin Poitras (pictured above from a work called Silk) & Caitlyn Coflin, Jeff Morton & Erin Gee and Kevin MacKenzie and Tanya Dahms. If you saw our Dec. 17 stocking stuffer issue, by the way, Tanya was the My Music subject. And Erin Gee had a video in the recently closed Dunlop Gallery show Mind the Gap!


February 7, Deanna Peters and Traci Foster will be presenting works, then on March 21 the former artistic director of the Youth Ballet Company of Saskatchewan Connie Moker-Wernikowski and Tanya Dahms will be showcasing new works.

ON WHY AVATAR IS MASSIVELY OVERRATED

At this point, you probably have spent a few bucks on James Cameron latest opus. I have. Thirty dollars. And I hated it.

The first time I saw Avatar was in 2D in Brockville, ON, opening day. Stripped of 3D quality and digital projection, Avatar is a bore. The patronizing plot about the good savage winning the heart of the kind-hearted invader has been done and better numerous times (Dances with Wolves, The New World.) With the notable exception of Sigourney Weaver' Dr. Augustine, the characters are unoriginal and painfully underdeveloped. The motion-capture animation is impressive, same as the vast array of extraterrestrial life forms, but without something to do, it's just a bit better than a pretty screen saver. Do you want to see properly used CGI characters? Go and watch LOTR: The Two Towers. Gollum has shades the Na'vi can only dream of.

The tree of life? The Fountain used the same idea more successfully a couple of years ago (true, nobody saw that show, but is there, people.)

Cameron, who is responsible for the Avatar script, is a mediocre writer. When Titanic took home eleven Oscars in 1997, the screenplay wasn't even nominated. He had help for Aliens and Terminator and it shows. In fact, Cameron steals from himself and recycles the character roster from Aliens (the hardcore Latina soldier, the duplicitous corporate drone, Ellen Ripley) and wedges it into his Pocahontas redux.

On New Year's Eve, I decided to give Avatar another chance, this time in 3D, in a state-of-the-art screen in Vancouver, BC. It was actually unbearable, the second time around. I fidgeted in my sit during the entire projection. Sure, the colours are pretty and the first half hour the 3D aspect makes the show tolerable, but the novelty wears off very quickly. There are very specific sits in the theatre where Avatar can be fully appreciated (the four sits right in the middle of the room), if you are not in one of those, you are missing out.

There was an emotional weight in Titanic that's entirely missing in Avatar. Did anybody care when (SPOILER ALERT) three of the main characters bit the dust within minutes from each other? It felt like a montage!

Here is hoping I'm not the only one who notices the emperor has no clothes.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

It's the new year and while everyone is making their best of lists, I usually take a quick look to see what movies I've missed. And one that I heard about but have yet to have the opportunity to see is a Belgium film called Panique au village or A Town Called Panic.

It's a stop motion animated film that's based on a cult TV series of the same name. It follows the adventures of Indian, Cowboy and Horse. They are all plastic toys and their adventures are hilarious and bizarre. The TV episodes are only around five minutes long so it was only natural for the studio to turn it into a 75 minute movie. Apparently the film will start being distributed in Canada sometime soon, maybe even this month. I just look forward to anything that doesn't feature CGI rodents.

Pick of the Day: H2OIL

Remember how Canada was on everybody's shitlist at the recent Copenhagen climate change summit? I forget how many fossil-of-the-day awards we picked up, but it was at least five or six. As a country, when it comes to per-capita energy consumption, we probably face some challenges that not a lot of other countries do. To begin with, we have a relatively sparse population spread out over a relatively vast area. If you toss in all our northern territory, we're pretty much the same size as China, if not a little bigger. But whereas China has 1.4 billion people, we only have 1/40th of that or 34 million people.

As well, we have one of the most challenging climates imaginable. Not too many other places in the world do you find the temperature extremes (plus 40 degrees C in the summer, minus 40 degrees C in the winter) that are par for the course in large chunks of Canada.

Having said that, there's still tons of stuff that we as individuals, and communities, can do to lessen our energy consumption and lower our carbon footprint. We rag about them all the time in prairie dog. Better public transit and cycling options, sustainable housing and urban planning, eating locally grown and produced foods, recycling, stuff like that.

But as Peter Prebble observed in an article I wrote for our December 3 feature HOW THE CLIMATE LIARS F&@KED THE FUTURE even with the best of intentions, we're not going to solve the climate crisis on our own. Most of our greenhouse gas emissions are tied to our dependence as a society on carbon-based energy. And as bad as coal, oil and natural gas are, they pale in comparison with the environmental devastation that is being wrought through the development of the Alberta tar sands. That was the true target of all the animosity being expressed against Canada by environmentalists in Copenhagen.

Check out the documentary H2Oil which screens tonight at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. and you'll see why everyone's so upset. Here's the trailer. (YouTube)