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Daniel Garber talks with Tasha Hubbard and Jade Tootoosis about Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
On August 9, 2016, young Colten Boushie was shot in the back of the head, point blank, in an SUV on a Saskatchewan farm. These facts are undisputed. A cut and dry case.
So how come the shooter got off scott free? Every trial is different but one fact stands out: the shooter – and the jury – were white, while the victim was indigenous. This case has reverberated across the country as people try to understand what is happening.
Is justice is just a myth for some Canadians?
Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up is a new documentary that looks at the Colten Boushie trial and its aftermath, how it fits in Canada's checkered history, and what Colten's supporters are doing about it. It's written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Tasha Hubbard and had its world premier at Toronto's HotDocs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Jade Tootoosis, from the Red Pheasant Cree First Nation, is Colten's sister who helped bring the issues the trial raised to national and international attention.
I spoke with Tasha Hubbard and Jade Tootoosis in studio at CIUT.
Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up will have its theatrical released in June.
Flashback. Films Reviewed: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Rings, Shepherds and Butchers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
If the 1970s was Hollywood's golden age then the 80s and 90s were its tin foil age —when a series of corporate takeovers placed short-term profits over creativity, and the Oscars celebrated forgettable, middle-brow pap. Even so, there were some fun and popular movies from 80s and 90s. Films like Alien, Shallow Grave, and Starship Troupers are playing at Cineplex's Flashback Film Festival (FBFF) across Canada starting today, giving you a chance to revisit favourites on the big screen.
This week I'm looking at flashbacks. There's a rerelease of a Canadian coming-of-age classic from the 70s, a flashback to a courtroom drama set in apartheid South Africa in the 80s; and a new sequel to a Japanese horror movie from the 90s.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
Dir: Ted Kotcheff Based on the novel by Mordecai Richler
It's the 1940s in a poor, Jewish section of Montreal. Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss) is a teenager recently graduated from Fletcher's Field (a.k.a. Baron Byng) High School. He lives with his widowed father Max (Jack Warden) who works as a taxi driver and part-time pimp, and his big brother Lennie. Lennie is a smart and sophisticated med student at McGill. But Duddy has neither the brains nor the inclination to study.
He's a boorish and loud, nervous and uncouth, always sweating and scratching, jumping and cussing. He has a filthy mouth and an intrusive manner. With no friends or admirers he just wants to get rich quick. His idol is a gangster known as The Boy Wonder (Henry Ramer), and his favourite retort is kiss my Royal Canadian Ass.
He gets a summer job at a holiday resort in the Laurentiens, but is relentlessly put down by rich kids from Westmount and Outrement. He makes friend with a pretty waitress named Yvette (Micheline Lanctot). They fall for each other and she takes him to a secret spot beside a pristine lake. He's struck by its beauty and vows to buy it, but is blocked by Québécois farmers who never sell property to jewish people. And Yvette is turned off by his constant drive for profits and wealth.
Duddy sets off on a series of impossible ventures he thinks will make enough money to buy the land: Importing Pinball machines with his friend Virgil, an American he meets on a train (Randy Quaid); and producing films with an alcoholic British communist (Denholm Elliot). But in his quest for success, he risks alienates his friends, his lover and his family. What will he learn from his apprenticeship with the real world?
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a hilarious and audacious drama from the 70s which deserves to be seen on the big screen. It's a dark slice of Canadian life, a world full of bigotry, snobbery, selfishness and deceit, tempered with the glorious freedom of a young man pursuing his dreams.
Dir: F. Javier Gutierrez
Julia (Matilda Lutz ) is a high school grad in small town USA. She's sad because her pretty, but dumb-as-a-post boyfriend (Alex Roe) is heading off to university in Seattle. Don't worry, Holt says, I'll skype you every night. But when the calls stop coming and he doesn't answer her texts, brave Julia heads off to Seattle to investigate. And she finds something strange: there's an old black-and-white video everyone tells her to watch. What she doesn't know is that anyone who watches this video will be dead in seven days. But if you trick someone else into watching it, you get another seven days added to your life.
Like Orpheus in the Underworld, Julia decides to forge ahead, rescuing her boyfriend from Hell. She intentionally watches the dreaded video, and using her powers of second sight – she's clairvoyant — she decides to follow a ghost to its point of origin. But first she has to deal with a secretive professor named Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) and a blind graveyard custodian (Vincent d'Onofrio).
Can Julia rescue Holt, defeat a ghost with long black hair, and figure out the meaning behind the cursed video tape?
Rings is a reboot of the scary Japanese movie Ring and its sequels. Last week I interviewed two ghosts from that era, Sadako vs Kayako. In the American films, Sadako is called Samara, and urban Japan becomes a village somewhere in Washington State. More than that, Rings trades the chill feel of video static for a more conventional American ghost story.
Is it scary? A little, especially towards the end as Julie's visions start to pay off. But the story is so ridiculously disjointed it's laughable. It treats the original Ring as just a jumping-off point for an unrelated story, discarding much of what made that film so scary.
Shepherds and Butchers
Dir: Oliver Schmitz
It's 1987 in Apartheid-era South Africa. Leon Labuschagne (Garion Dowds) a white Afrikaner, is arrested for murdering seven black African members of a soccer club in a quarry. The seven bodies were found neatly lined up in a row. The accused refuses to defend himself or even to say anything about what he did; he says he can't remember. It's an open and shut case. Or is it?
In walks the famed jurist Johan Webber (Steve Coogan), a staunch opponent to the death penalty. While not contesting the actual crime, instead he says it is the brutal South African justice system that led to the crime. A shy, church-going kid turned into a mass murderer in just a few years? Preposterous!
It turns out Leon, since age 17, has been forced to work on death row in a maximum security prison. His work is like a shepherd, tending to the needs — food, showers, and prayers — of men "on the rope" (waiting to be hanged). But he's also a butcher, forced to kill — en masse, often seven at a time — the same men he takes care of.
His story is told at his trial in a series of gruesome and realistic flashbacks. Johan goads him into recounting what he – and the prisoners — has been through. This film shows the horrors of capital punishment, and particularly the mass executions held in South Africa, in graphic detail. It is horrifying and extremely hard to watch, because it brings you, the viewer, right into the gallows itself. Shepherds and Butchers is a touching story about an important topic, but believe me, it is not for the faint of heart.
Rings and Shepherds and Butchers both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is playing for free this Sunday as part of the Canada on Screen series. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with director Jamie Kastner about A Skyjacker's Tale
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It's the 1980s. Ishmael Ali is on a commercial flight to the US. Virgin Islands. But not to lie on the beaches of St Croix. He's being transferred to another maximum security prison. He's serving time for the Fountain Valley Massacre – the infamous killing at a golf course owned by the Rockefellers… a crime, he says, he did not commit. And on this flight he manages to hijack the plane to Cuba. But there's much, much more to this skyjacker's tale.
A Skyjacker's Tale is a new feature documentary that interviews the skyjacker himself in Cuba. It tells his story, and that of all the people he affected: at the skyjacking, and at the trial. These interviews shed new light on a controversial case – with a dramatic finish — that left the public polarized. A Skyjackers Tale is directed by award-winning filmmaker Jamie Kastner, who brought us films like Kike Like Me, and The Secret Disco Revolution. (Here's the interview from 2012).
A Skyjacker's Tale opens today at the Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto.
I spoke to Jamie in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM..
Nazi trials. Films reviewed: Denial, The People vs Fritz Bauer
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies immediately after WWII. They publically exposed, tried, and punished the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. But relatively few were actually put on trial. And old ideologies live on. This week I'm looking at two historical dramas about lesser-known cases. There's a German attorney in the 1950s stymied in his attempt to prosecute war criminals; and an American holocaust historian, sued for libel by a man who denies it ever took place.
Dir: Mick Jackson
Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) is a university professor at a Georgia university. She specializes in Holocaust studies, the history of genocide under Nazi Germany. She has a special interest in holocaust deniers, writers from the extreme right who claim the holocaust never happened, any deaths were incidental, and there were no gas chambers. She says she won't debate ahistorical demagogues but she does provide ample academic data verifying her work. So she is surprised one day when a strange man appears, uninvited, in her classroom, shouting accusations at her, all recorded with a video camera. It's David Irving (Timothy Spall), a UK author and a great fan of Hitler and Naziism. She has mentioned him in one of her books on Holocaust deniers.
Not long after, she receives a legal notice: David Irving is suing her for libel. Her book, he says, has damaged his credibility as a historian. If she settles out of court he will appear to be justified. But if she loses the case it could serve as a triumph for neo-nazis and white supremacists across Europe. So, in an odd judicial quirk, it's up to her to prove (before a disinterested judge) that the holocaust took place.
With the help of well-known barristers and solicitors (played, respectively, by a cold Tom Wilkinson and a sly Andrew Scott) she pleads her case in court. Who will win the case?
Denial is principally a courtroom drama. Rachel Weiss is believable, with an excellent New York accent (she is British), but she is stifled by the role. Because her lawyers tell her not to testify, so she can't speak in court. Instead, she spends much of the movie making gestures and sighs of anger, shock or frustration. Timothy Spall has more latitude. He plays a lawyer defending himself. Irving comes across as a self-important but wormy man who, deep down, just wants respect and love. He gets neither. So, while this is an exciting topic, the movie itself comes across as plodding and a bit dull.
The People vs Fritz Bauer (Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer)
Wri/Dir: Lars Kraume
It's the late 1950s in cold war West Germany. Fritz Bauer (Burghart Klaußner: Goodbye Lenin, The White Ribbon) is a State Attorney General in Frankfurt. The country is economically booming but politically moribund. It still holds many laws enacted under Nazi rule, and the civil service is riddled with former party members. Bauer takes it upon himself to expose war criminals and bring them to trial. But he is stymied at every turn.
Before WWII, at age 30, he had been the youngest judge ever, but was jailed by the Nazis when they took power. He survived the war in Denmark and Sweden, and later came back to Germany to continue his work. But he has few allies there. He has three strikes against him: Jewish ancestry, Socialist politics, and he is secretly gay, still illegal in Germany at the time.
Karl Angermann (Ronald Zehrfeld: Phoenix, Barbara) is a young prosecutor fresh out of law school with a young wife and a conservative family. He's handsome, idealistic and devoted to the cause, with secrets of his own. And like many younger Germans, he feels alienated from his own country. He finds harsh laws punishing consensual sex to be cruel and outdated. Unlike most of his office, he finds Bauer an inspiration, a reason to strive for a new, progressive and democratic Germany.
Bauer receives a letter from a German in Argentina who says Adolph Eichmann is still alive, living nearby in plain sight. Eichmann is the notorious Nazi leader responsible for transporting millions to death camps. Bauer contacts Interpol and the German government, but they brush him off: We don't pursue political crimes. Bauer's one wish is to try war criminals like Eichmann under German Law, and within German courtrooms.
Can Bauer and Angermann shake up the establishment, reform its laws, and bring war criminals to justice? Or will the network of Nazis still in power stop them from their goals?
The People vs Fritz Bauer is a really interesting biopic and drama about a fascinating character. It has intrigue, suspense, and a few surprise twists. Klaußner plays Bauer as a hotheaded idealistic loner fighting the establishment, like Bill Murray playing Barney Frank. And Angermann is great as his conflicted devotee (with a secret lover). The movie is based on records released many years after these events. And it's a great follow-up to 2014's Labyrinth of Lies, another German movie that picks up where this one ends.
Denial opens today; check you local listings. The People vs Fritz Bauer starts in Toronto on Oct 21. Also opening today is The Stairs, a great documentary about Toronto's Regent Park.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
It Takes a Thief. Movies Reviewed: Mona Lisa is Missing, The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, The Rover
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Pickpockets, muggers, robbers and burglars… are people, too. Or so say these movies. This week, I'm looking at films with sympathetic portraits of thieves. There's a car thief in Australia, a jewel thief from the US, and an art thief from Italy.
Mona Lisa is Missing
Dir: Joe Medeiros
Vincenzo Perruggia is a name that lives on in infamy as the man who stole the Mona Lisa in 1912. This documentary looks at the theft with a new eye.
Peruggia is an Italian migrant in France in the early 20th century. He works as a house painter – a very dangerous job, because of the constant exposure to lead paint. Some people say it made him addle-brained. Later, he takes a job as a security guard at the Louvre in Paris. But Parisians look down on Italian labourers, calling him "macaroni" and treating him like a fool.
But he shows them. He single-handedly walks out of the museum carrying Leonardo Da Vinci's La Giaconda – now known as the Mona Lisa – under one arm. He keeps it hidden for two years, evading the most famous detective in Paris. He is only caught when he tries to repatriate it back to Italy.
Is he an idiot? Or a genius? An Italian patriot or just in it for the money?
This documentary has a light, humorous tone, but is meticulously researched. The filmmaker goes back to the original sources – letters, police files, period photos – and even tracks down his 80-year-old daughter, Celestina. What I found most interesting is that the Mona Lisa's current fame is, in a large part, due to the publicity generated when it was stolen. Before Peruggia, it was just one painting among many. Now, it's The Mona Lisa.
The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
Dir: Kirk Marcolina, Matthew Pond
Doris Payne was born to an African-American father and a Cherokee mother in a poor, coal-mining town in West Virginia. She's a beautiful child – too beautiful. Her dad tries to beat the prettiness right out of her. So she vows to get out of there, erase her past and create a new one.
She establishes herself as a gentle, elegant, upper-class woman. And how does she support herself? As an international jewel thief, jet-setting to London, Paris and Monte Carlo. She's a lover, not a fighter. No one is harmed, no weapons, no hold-ups. She steals from famous stores, never individuals. She's actually a con-artist, and when things go right, the jewellers don't even know something is missing until after she's long gone.
Her techniques are fascinating. She's like a magician, moving the jewelry around, palming but never pocketing her prey. As long as the jewel is in her hand she can always dispose of it. She tells stories about her past adventures, like a clever escape involving a nun, a pair of scissors and a needle and thread. She's a master of disguises.Using merely a scarf or a wig she can turn herself from a haughty aristocrat into a humble nurse in seconds.
If her life sounds like a Hollywood caper, that's because it is – or will be. They're developing a film about her (starring Halle Berry). The screenwriter tells part of her story. But this is a documentary about — and starring — the real Doris Payne. And her current life is far from glamorous.
She's still stealing jewels, at age 80! The movie follows her – and her defense lawyer — during a trial about her latest alleged theft (she denies everything, of course.)
Will Doris ever come clean? Has she really given up that life? And what can she do without the thrill of the Steal? This is a fascinating documentary, about a strong-willed and unrepentant black woman, and her rise and fall as the world's best jewelry thief.
A grizzled, angry man (Guy Pearce) sits in his dusty car by the side of the road. It's the Australian outback – mining country: vast deserts punctuated by ramshackle aluminum huts. (Not a kangaroo in sight, just menacing birds of prey.) He goes into a roadside shop to wash up. At the same time, a jeep is powering down the highway, with three men inside having it out. They're fighting. One of them, Henry, wants to turn back to save his brother. They left him dying on the road after a shootout. The others say no. And in the scuffle, the jeep plows through a pile of roadside junk. It's stuck. So they steal a nearby car – the one left by grizzled, angry man – and off they go.
Out comes the first guy — he wants his car back. He climbs into the stalled jeep and gets it moving again. And so begins a violent, 90-minute road movie/chase scene/shoot out. On the way, he passes your typical outback attractions: gambling dens, gun runners, an all-male brothel, a crucified man… Wait. What?!
That's where you realize: this isn't normal Australia. It's some futuristic, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max Australia. Only US dollars taken here. Chinese is the language of commerce. And if you kill someone there is no police, no army there to arrest you. It's like the old west, but without any White Hats.
On the way he meets Rey (an uglified Robert Pattinson) the brother left dying on the road. Grizzled guy would just as soon shoot him as save him, but he needs information. So he brings him to a doctor and nurses him back to life. The two of them form an unwitting pair of road buddies – the angry and bitter older man, and the younger, idealistic slow-talker. (Rey's a hapless oakie looking for a new father figure.) Will they find the three men – and the missing car?
This is a chilling, eerie and extremely violent movie. It feel like a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. Pearce is excellent as the nameless, hollow-hearted drifter. Pattinson (the Twilight heartthrob) is unrecognizable as Rey — and I mean that in a good sense. Even though the story makes you want to curl up and die — is that all there is? — it's still worth seeing.
The Rover and The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne both open today in Toronto – check your local listings. The Mona Lisa is Missing played at the Italian Contemporary Film Festival. Go to icff.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Secretive Groups. Movies Reviewed: Pussy Riot, Kill Team, Pain & Gain PLUS Hot Docs!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Hot Docs – Toronto's legendary Film Festival that shows over 200 documentaries in one week – is on now. It brings cutting edge documentaries from around the world, the filmmakers, and subjects, It's centered on the Hot Docs cinema on Bloor St, but runs movies and events all around the downtown. And if you're a student or a senior, you can get free rush tickets for any daytime screening.
What do conspiracies look like? They can be a group of well-meaning protesters, a gang of thieves, or a secret cabal of soldier killers. This week I'm looking at three films about secretive groups whose actions run up against the law and morality. One's about Russian feminist punks who run into trouble with Putin and the Russian Orthodox church; another's about a whistleblower in the US military who gets charged with murder; and a third is about some ambitious bodybuilders who want their slice of the pie – and will do whatever is necessary to get it.
Dir: Dan Krauss
When the photos of Abu Ghraib hit the papers, people were shocked at the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. But a series of incidents in Afghanistan , even more shocking than Abu Ghraib are the subject of a new expose. Here's what happened.
Winfield, a young skinny marine, the smallest in his unit, notices a strange shift in his unit when a new commanding officer, Gibbs, arrives. Gibbs has a reputation for violence during his term in Iraq. And now he was demanding his soldiers take down Afghan civilians – boys and yound men — in their area. Gibbs forms an elite squad, a "Kill Team", who are sent out on "drop weapon" missions. This means they would surprise someone, kill him, and then drop a weapon they had brought for that purpose beside the dead body to justify the killing. And then pose for smiling souvenir photos.
So Winfield becomes a whistleblower, sending out word of these heinous murders to his family, asking them to report it. But, through a series of events that the film reveals, the whistleblower ends up being arrested and charged with murder for the very events he was trying to prevent. The movie tells the story of the various marines involved in this particular unit, as the trials and court-martials are prepared. This disturbing documentary also suggests that these practices were not restricted to that one unit but are common practice among soldiers in Afghanistan. They were just the only ones caught. While mainly talking heads – the various soldiers telling their stories – and with a few too many scenes involving negotiatins with lawyers – it is a serious, important film. The Kill Team puts the integrity of the entire Afghan mission into question.
Dir: Maxim Pozdorovkin, Mike Lerner
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk band. They perform their protest pieces wearing neon-coloured balaclavas to cover their faces, playing guitar and singing about government corruption, human rights and freedom of expression. But something happened when they choose to sing about Putin's ties to the Russian Orthodox church's patriarchy on the actual altar of a famous cathedral. Within seconds police swarm the stage and arrest three of them for trespassing and defaming religion.
And so begins a lengthy trial followed around the world. The movie interviews the three prisoners – Nadia, Maria and Ekatarina – their families, co-performers and friends. Performance art, public satire and the avant garde, while familiar in the west (where it's met with yawns or raised eyebrows) are new and genuinely revolutionary in Russia. Somehow, the filmmakers got their cameras and microphones into the trial itself, with perfect views of the three women boxed into a glass cage, as if they were Hannibal Lecters on trial for mass murder. It's a rare glimpse into the Russian justice system, where playing a simple protest tune still holds the threat of a term in a Siberian prison camp.
Pussy Riot is a must-see at Hotdocs.
Dir: Michael Bay
Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is a musclehead personal trainer. He's given to mindless slogans to inspire him. He's all about the American dream, being a doer not a don't-er, and yo, bitches, his body is his temple, his muscles a shrine to physical power ("no homo!"). It's Miami in the 90's. This is America — a buff, pimpin' nation! Or so say the men with fake orange tans at Sun Gym.
But Danny just isn't making enough money – and he wants to have it all. So he gathers a team of ex-cons to kidnap his client Pepe, an obnoxious, middle-aged Jewish guy from Colombia. After some trouble and some violent episodes, their scheme pays off – they're rich! They have everything now: a mansion, a sportscar, a yacht, cocaine, a Romanian girlfriend, penile implants… But a persistent P.I. (Peter Weller) is on their trail. Will he catch them in the act?
Pain & Gain is a mildly interesting comedy /action movie. It's just not that funny, or that interesting, and without much action. The main characters are all caricatures – Dwayne Johnson ("the Rock") is OK as a sub-normal, born-again body-builder; Tony Shalhoub is great as the world's most annoying kidnappee; and Mark Wahlberg does his wannabe criminal mastermind very well. But the characters seem to be there just so the audience can laugh at how stupid they all are. (It's also a weirdly structured movie. The plot repeatedly screeches to a halt to give each character a freeze-frame and an extended voiceover explaining their backstory, out loud. Why?) Pain & Gain is intentionally kitschy, mildly offensive and aims for the lowest common denominator… but it still entertains.
Pain and Gain opens today, check your listings; and Hot Docs is on now: for showtimes of movies like Pussy Riot (screening today) and Kill Team, go to hotdocs.ca.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .
September 23, 2011. TIFF aftermath. Films reviewed: Where Do We Go Now?, Drive, Limelight
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies, for culturalmining.com and
CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult,
foreign, festival, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies
with good taste, and movies that taste good, and what the difference
With the closing of this year's TIFF — with all of its orgiastic
excess of filmic stimulation, eye candy, and brain prods — you may be
suffering from withdrawal. But have no fear — there's no need to go
cold turkey, because Toronto's Fall festival season is positively
brimming with good smaller film festival to keep your addiction alive.
Coming soon are: Toronto After Dark, the Toronto Palestinian Film
Festival, Planet in Focus, the Real Asian Film Festival, and the
European Union Film Festival, among others. And TIFF itself continues
on all year, showing their programmed films at the Lightbox. So if you
missed a good movie at TIFF, even if it doesn't get a wide release,
you may be able to catch it later on in the year.
But first, the awards. Phillipe Felardeau won the Toronto Best
Canadian feature prize for Monsieur Falardeau — and it's already gone
on to become Canada's entry for a Best Foreign language Film Oscar.
The People's Choice Award at TIFF is often used as an indicator of
who's going to win a Golden Globe and later get nominated for an
Oscar. Past years' winners include Slumdog Millionaire, The King's
Speech, and Precious. It's voted on not by a panel of judges, but by
the moviegoers at the festival themselves. What this also means is
that sometimes a completely unknown movie — one with no "buzz" at all– can come out of left field, and take this award.
This year's surprise is a film out of Lebanon, called:
Where Do Go Now? (Et maintenant, on va où?)
Dir: Nadine Labaki
The movie takes place in a small village, a town divided equally
between Muslims and Catholics. It's surrounded by landmines, and all
too often, people get shot or blown up. Up at the top of a hill is the
graveyard where women dressed in black from both sides meet to bury
the dead. The town itself is peaceful, and after some brave kids
weather the landmines to set up an antenna, the mayor declares it's TV
night in the town square, and everyone gathers to watch the blurry
The danger, though, is that the fragile peace will break, and the men
will start killing each other again in reprisals. So the women of the
village formulate a plan: anytime news about violence reaches the
village, they will hide it or distract the men. Gradually — with the
cooperation of the Priest and the Imam — their plans escalate and
their schemes get more and more elaborate. They stage religious
miracles, and even secretly bring in Eastern European strippers –
anything to hide the fact that someone in the village was killed in an
Will it work? Can they create an island of piece in turbulent Lebanon?
And will their final, shocking surprise serve to jolt the men away
from their never-ending violence?
I thought the movie had an extremely slow beginning, with a handmade
feel to it – sort of like an even-lower-budget Big Fat Greek Wedding
meets Little Mosque on the Prairie. It's a comedy, but a lot of the
jokes fell flat. And it's a musical, but some of the songs just don't
translate well. The ensemble plot, with dozens of characters, leaves
you confused until you can figure out who everyone is.
That said, in the second half, when the pace picks up and the story
gets interesting, it becomes good. And the ending is just great –
clever and imaginative, and leaves you with a much better feeling
than you came with. Nadine Labaki – who is also a member of the cast – is
the first female director to win the TIFF People's Choice award, and
it's nice to see her touching story about an important topic given a
boost. I'm curious as to where the movie will go now.
Another movie that opened at the festival is
Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn
Ryan Gosling plays this guy in a satin jacket who drives cars around,
plain-looking cars but with souped-up engines that can outgun any
police car. He can tumble a car, flip it over on a highway, and
still remain absolutely calm, a Japanese toothpick still in his mouth. He's the
strong silent type, good at heart. By day, he works in a garage, and
is sent out by his shady boss Shannon (Brian Cranston) to do movie
stunts. (This is LA, so, of course, it's always about the movies.) And by night, he
serves as the driver for bank heists and robberies.
He falls into almost a family relationship with pretty waitress Irene
(Carey Mulligan), and her son, little Benicio, and takes them for
drives around the city. But when her husband, Standard, is released
from prison, his good life starts to fall apart and the violence
builds. He becomes embroiled in a scheme involving sinister gangsters
Rose and Nino (Albert Brooks and the great, neanderthalic Ron
Perlman). He ends up holding a dufflebag with a million dollars in
stolen money. What should he do with it? Will he settle down as a
champion stock car racer? Or will violence rule the day?
This is a fantastic — though sometimes horrifically violent, and
weird – movie. (Every once in a while you think – what is this? Is
this for real? Who are they trying to kid? You lose the connection for a moment, but then you slip right back into it.) It looks like a rejig of an 80's movie like Thief,
with the driving bass (bubbadubba dubbadubba bubbadubba…) background music, and the
night scenes with glowing lights all around. The movie titles are
scribbled, Andy Warhol-style, in hot pink, and strange Eurodisco
dominates the soundtrack. The violence is almost comical, though
bloody. This is NOT your usual action thriller, but a clever, Danish
take on LA film noir. Great movie.
Next, another look at the louche underculture, this time in Manhattan
in the 90's. A documentary
Peter Gatien, a Canadian nightclub promoter who lost an eye in a
hockey game as a kid, was known for his black eye patch, his canny
business practices, and how he had his hand on the pulse of all of New
York clublife in the 80's and 90's. He was a behind-the-scenes guy,
but he brought in demimonde celebs – the club kids – to bring in the
cool crowd. He opened famous places like Tunnel, the Palladium and
Limelight (not so affectionately known as slimelight by clubgoers) a
club opened inside of a church.
So everything's going good, until Giuliani, the law and order supreme,
was elected mayor of New York. But when the drug of choice changed
selfish and driven, to touchy-feelie, to insane. Giuliani vowed to
"clean up" the city. And he despised nightclubs, sex and dancing as
musch as drugs. Used to be the people in the burrows and New Jersey
would travel into the city on weekends for fun. By the end of his
reign, the term bridge and tunnel crowd seemed to be a better
description of the people in Manhattan who were so desperate they'd
migrate out of the city just to dance all night.
Well, Giuliani chose Peter Gatien, as his nemesis, and launched a
full-scale attack, an elaborate scheme to paint him as a drug dealer
and criminal. This movie traces, in minute detail, all the players
involved in his trial – the rats, the dealers, the feds, the femme
fatale, and the legendary club kids like murderer Michael Alig.
It's an interesting movie, about a fascinating topic, with a great
segment giving a history of the evolution of music, nightclubs, and
drugs, worth seeing, but it's just too long. It gets bogged down with way too many
talking heads against acid-green lighting.
Drive is playing now, Limelife opens today, and Where Do We Go Now?
won the 2011 People's Choice Award at TIFF.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web
site, Cultural Mining . com.
Fighters! Hotdocs Documentaries Reviewed, 2011. Better This World, Fightville, Open Secret, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Recessionize! For Fun and Profit! PLUS Alan Zweig
Hey, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies, for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto's Hotdocs, which starts today, is one of the best documentary festivals in the world.
It features recent docs, including Canadian and world premiers, as well as exceptional films from the past. This year the festival is running a retrospective of Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig's work, including favourites like I, Curmudgeon and Vinyl, as well as the excellent and moving A Hard Name which follows the difficult lives of seven ex-cons released back into the city.
Many documentaries are about people facing a conflict; they choose either to fight it or to learn to accept it. Today I'm going to talk about movies playing at Hotdocs — films about fighters, people who like to fight, and people who are fighting the Powers That Be; and others who take the opposite route, the path of least resistance.
Dir: Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
When I read about stories like the seven guys in Miami who were arrested for conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago for Osama bin Laden – even though they've never even been to Chicago and have no connection with Al Qaeda; or the Somali-American kid in Portland Oregon labeled as a Christmas Tree Bomber; or the Toronto 18 who were accused of plotting to blow up the Parliament building, I start to wonder how big a role did the government informants play in these stories, and whether anything at all would have happened had it not been for the government instigator.
Two young, idealistic best friends David McKay and Brad Crowder, who grew up in Midland, Texas, went to Minneapolis to protest the Republican Convention two years ago. You might have seen the footage of the police there clubbing, tear gassing and arresting hundreds of protestors, students and even journalists, while, inside the buildings, people like Sarah Palin were talking to sea of middle-aged, white, soon-to-be tea-partiers. Well, within the crowd outside were three guys – the two young best friends, and a supposed radical, Brandon Darby. The two friends were arrested by the FBI and called criminals and anarchist-terrorists, mainly by the much older FBI informant, Darby, who claimed they were there to blow up people – including sleeping policemen – using Molotov cocktails as part of their anti-war demonstrations.
This movie explores the events leading up to Brad and David's arrests and the subsequent trials, including the use of government informants to create the supposed conspiracy, push it toward some yet-to-happen act of violence, and to entrap them into saying aloud some hypothetical phrase of intention.
This is an excellent — though at times extremely disheartening – documentary about how governments manufacture to order "criminals" where none previously existed, merely to fit into their quota of "War on Terror" political prisoners. Makes you want to cry…
Another type of fighter are the ones featured in the movie
Dir: Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker
Directors of the fantastic Iraq War documentary Gunner Palace and its good sequel How to Fold a Flag are again dealing with young, poor American men; in this case, aspiring Mixed Martial Arts fighters from Lousiana.
Also called cage fighting or Ultimate Fighting, MMA has a reputation as an extremely violent sport akin to pro wrestling, without any referees, where the two fighters kick, punch, and beat each other up until one is nearly dead. This is its mythology, but none of it's true. It's actually safer than heavyweight boxing – the fighters wear smaller, lighter gloves, though because of the nature of the sport, does lead to small cuts and bruises, but not to the head injuries you get in boxing. It's played in closely refereed rounds, with a match ending with a knockout, one player's submission, or by a judgement. It looks like a combination of boxing, grappling, Brazilian jujitsu, muai thai kick boxing, and traditional wrestling down on the mat. In my opinion it's the most interesting kind of fighting to watch, since it involves so many skills and so much training and strategy on the parts of the fighters.
This beautifully shot movie dispels the myths about Mixed martial arts, as it follows two amateur fighters, Dustin and Albert, as they try to make it from an amateur farm team to professional status. Will either of them make it to the pros? While not that dramatic a sports story, Fightville takes you behind the scenes, through all the stages of training and preparation for a fight, and shows Dustin and Albert both in their ordinary lives, and within the ring, with all the glamour and excitement that comes from an actual match.
Dir: Steve Lickteig
Steve Lickteig, an NPR brodcaster, grew up on a Kansas farm and lived his whole life knowing that he was adopted… but not knowing the open secret about his birth parents. The movie investigates his search for the truth that he was never told about as a child.
His oldest brothers and sisters were sworn to secrecy, and the younger ones were kept in the dark. The movie reveals part of the open secret in the first few minutes of the movie, so it's no spoiler to say that he was actually an older sister's child, and his parents were really his grandparents.
The movie follows him returning to his family – his sister/mother, and his parents aka grandparents. He also wants to know the truth about who his father was, what the reasons were for the strange arrangement, and more about his actual birth parents, his background, and whether he has other relatives.
Open Secret is above all a family memoir with the various members fighting and arguing, holding grudges, or reconciling, meeting or refusing to meet. If you're into these types of daytime TV family stories, or if you're familiar with the NPR personality who made it, then this is a good movie for you, but I have to say it didn't do much for me.
Let's move away now from fighting, resisting, and quarrelling and toward the opposite spectrum, to movies about buying into the system and going with the flow.
Dir: Morgan Spurlock
I can't stand product placement on TV or in movies – it's a pet peeve. Whether it's as banal as working a brand name into an answer on Jeopardy!, or the ubiquitous Mac laptop magically appearing in most movies, it's annoying, obnoxious, and intrusive. So Morgan "Super Size Me" Spurlock decided to make a movie in which every scene, every shot, and even the movie's title itself, would have at least one product placement in it – and he would use product placement both to pay for the movie, and to provide its plot. It's a very amusing, fast paced, and light comic take on advertising. Some of its cleverest moments is where he interviews people like Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader about product placement, without them realizing there's a brand name – a shoe, an underarm deodorant, a soft drink – appearing right beside them. And just because you know it's there, it doesn't mean it's not working. Honest to God, I walked out of this movie with a strange desire to buy a bottle of pomegranate juice!
In a similar vein, and just as entertaining, is the Canadian documentary
Recessionize! For Fun and Profit!
Dir: Jaime Kastner
In a tongue-in-cheek look at the present-day grim effects of the economic meltdown and the recession that followed it, Kastner decides to look at the bright side instead. There's money to be made out there, even in bad times, so he tracks down some unusual people adapting to the new economic realities. One of the more clever ones include a smartly dressed and perfectly coiffed woman who lives in a deluxe mansion with her family. The catch? She's only there to make it look lived-in for potential real-estate buyers, and will have t move out the moment it's sold. What does her teenaged son think about living in a place that has to be kept spotless? He says it's major OCD territory!
And there's also a great French guest house where people who feel their career is a rat-race can live for a weekend like a hamster, running in a giant wheel! Recessionize! is a lot of fun – an amusing, up-beat and fast-paced, TV style variety documentary.
The Hotdocs festival runs from Thursday April 28th to May 8th, and is free – no charge! – for rush seats during the day for anyone with a Student or Senior ID. Check this out online hotdocs.ca I think everyone should try to see at least one documentary, and Hotdocs is the best place to see them.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site, Cultural Mining dot com.
Movies that make you go Hmmm… Fair Game, Client 9: the Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer, Inside Job, My Suicide, Golden Slumber, 127 Hours PLUS Film Festivals: Rendezvous with Madness, ReelAsian, Waterloo Animation
Movies that make you go hmmm…
If you look back at the past decade and wonder what the hell was that all about? there are three good movies that provide some explanations.
Valerie Plame is a tough cookie. She works under deep cover for the CIA, recruiting local snitches around the world to gather intelligence on those inscrutable terrorists. She's part of the group looking into the threat of a nuclear weapons in Iraq. She's known as the agent who can't be broken, even by torture. She's married to a hothead, former diplomat, Wilson, a West Africa expert, who the CIA enlists to investigate rumours about yellowcake uranium coming out of Niger.
But their conclusions (they all hate Saddam Hussein too, but there are no weapons of mass destruction) do not sit well with the conspirers Cheney, Karl Rove, and their attack dog Scooter Libby. The movie traces what happens to Valerie and her family (and the drama sticks pretty close to the true story) when they expose her cover, and start to assassinate her husband's character.
This movie's a good historical take on the US government's WMD scam (which led to the invasion of Iraq, more than a hundred thousand civilians dead and 4 million refugees). It tells a story where even the CIA comes across as one of the good guys. And Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are fun to watch, and the thriller aspect – of a spy escaping her foes – is not bad either.
So… a couple years after all this happened, things were brewing in New York City, on Wall Street, to be exact. The next movie, a documentary:
Client 9: the Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer
Dir: Alex Gibney
… looks at the case of the former Attorney General, and later Governor of New York, who was brought down in an embarrassing scandal involving a prostitute he slept with.
So what actually happened there?
Spitzer was, with great media and popular success – attacking the crooked dealers in the financial industry. He started low, but gradually worked his way into the belly of the beast. But, of course, he was getting on the nerves of some of the bigshots of Wall Street:
Crooked stock analysts at Merril Lynch; insider traders; NY Stock Exchange director Kenneth Langone; and the head of AIG, Hank Greenberg. (This documentary gets to interview everyone!)
As state governor, he added to his list of enemies – he sought out the fights and confrontations. But, of course, the bad guys fought back and cooked up an elaborate scheme using the sleazy, but fascinating, dirty trickster Roger Stone, to bring him down. Compiling published newspaper and magazine articles, interviews with the players, including the prostitutes and politicians involved, this compelling example of real investigative journalism traces the elaborate set-up to bring down the enemy of Wall Street, Albany, and Washington.
Inside Job
Dir: Charles Ferguson
Narrator: Matt Damon
…takes up the story right where Client 9 ends. It traces the bigger picture of how the real estate and financial bubble led to the collapse of the world's, and the later bailout and payoffs to the very men whose out-and-out conniving and fraud led to these problems. Politicos, Investment banks, and, interestingly, university professors are taken to task for their involvement. This is also a great documentary, but not as good as Client 9 in getting interviews with the players from both sides of the story.
Does all this stuff make you mad? Well, check out Rendezvous with Madness – a film festival that deals with addiction and mental health by showing some interesting movies, documentaries, and experimental films, combined with discussions right after the screenings.
One movie that caught my eye is called:
My Suicide
Dir: David Lee Miller
This is a fictional blog in movie form. A blog-movie. I'd call it a Bloovie.
Archie is pretty pissed off. He goes to high school, but doesn't much like it. He has a crush on a beautiful girl named Sierra, and feels alienated from his parents. It's a 90210-type high school, but he's not one of the popular kids. So when his classmates are all told to make a movie (everyone in this film seems to have a video camera), he tells the class: He's going to film his own suicide. He immediately gets driven away by a cop, and passed on to a parade of counselors, social workers and shrinks. But he also unwittingly becomes an underground antihero in the school, with lots of kids vowing to follow his example; and he finally meets up with seemingly perfect Sierra, the girl of his dreams.
This is a frenetic movie: It feels like an earnest episode of Degrassi, cranked up on a six pack of red bull. It's also much dirtier, with sex, drugs, and some sad stuff too. It quotes TV news, commercials, educational films, and some excellent animated sequences – basically anything you can fit on a green screen behind the main character. A sad and shocking topic, but with an interesting and comic way of telling the story of teenage angst. It's on tonight at 9; check out the details on http://www.rendezvouswithmadness.com
The Toronto ReelAsian International Film Festival shows great films from east and southeast Asia, including Japan, China, Korea, HK, and Vietnam, as well as movies from around the world.
The festival opened with the enjoyable retro kung fu flic "Gallants". One interesting movie (that screens tonight) is:
Golden Slumber
Dir: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Aoyagi (Masato Sakai) is a friendly, ordinary, mild-mannered deliveryman. He was in the Food Culture Research Youth Group (dedicated to "friendship through fast food") at university, lives in Sendai, and once was famous for 15 minutes when he rescued a pop star by tripping her attacker. He is bamboozled into going on a fishing trip with an old classmate which soon turns into a massive JFK/ Lee Harvey Oswald assassination plot to kill the Japanese PM. And he discovers that he's the Oswald, and a whole lot of shady characters driving black cars are after him, as well as the even more bloodthirsty and venal press corps.
A pint-sized, teenaged serial killer becomes one of Aoyagi's many de facto rescuers as he tries to clear his name. "Trust", Aoyagi believes, "is mankind's greatest strength.'
This is a neat movie: 50% paranoid conspiracy drama, 50% quirky black comedy, that follows Aoyagi and his various former college friends as the story unfolds in an unusual way. I love this kind of movie.
Another story of a man stuck in a hard place is the very enjoyable
Danny Boyle, of course, is the guy who brought us Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting; all his movies are fun to watch, but totally different from the last one he directed.
This one is an hour and a half of an adventurous, solo mountain climber (James Franco) who's arm is pinned in a fissure by a big hunk o' rock… in the middle of nowhere.
And the only way out might be by cutting off his own arm. This is a true story, so if you've seen pictures of the guy (Aron Ralston) you'll know what he did in the end. So how does he keep your attention? A guy stuck in a rock for an hour and a half? Well this is a great movie, that isn't trapped in the tiny space. I don't like overly claustrophobic, squashed-in movies. This one reaches out, it goes wherever Aron's mind, dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, and memories take him. There is an extended episode of extreme grotesquerie, but other than that, it's a greatly enjoyable movie about a man attempting to overcome nature using his will and logic, without resorting to prayer and salvation.
And if you're in the Kitchener/Waterloo area, be sure to check out the 10th annual Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema – it's filled with animated features from places like Eastern Europe and Japan, ranging from anime, to fairy tales to psychedelia – sounds pretty cool. Look for the details on wfac.ca
Hallowe'en Special! Movies reviewed: My Soul to Take, Hereafter, The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest, LA Zombie, Cold Fish
Toronto is a scary place – and I don't just mean the city elections this week. Our new mayor is… Biff Tannen! And I saw a couple hundred zombies marching through Kensington market last Saturday. But it's about to get even scarier — this is Hallowe'en weekend, when everyone wants to see a scary, gory, spooky, otherwordly, gripping, chilling, or thrilling movie. So today I'm going to look at five Hallowe'eny movies: a slasher-horror pic, a spooky drama, a gripping thriller, and two more that played at TIFF this year.
My Soul to Take
Dir: Wes Craven
Like the Agatha Christie classic Ten Little Indians, this slasher pic has seven seventeen-year-olds each wondering who's going to get killed next. You see, 17 years ago a crazed, serial killer kicked the bucket just as his widow was giving birth prematurely. And at the same hospital, six others were born the same day… they became a nerd, a jock, a Jane Austen Christian, a blind guy, a snobby girl, a family kid, and one more, Bug, who is slightly whack: he periodically slips into a Tourettes-like state where he imitates the voices of the other six preemies. So which one's the slasher? Or is he possessing someone? Or maybe the original killer's still alive and hiding in the woods?
And you know what? It doesn't really matter in the end; getting there is most of the fun. It's a Wes Craven movie – (the guy who directed the Scream series and wrote A Nightmare on Elm St) so you can be there'll be lots of bathroom mirror scenes, shadowy killers in costume, and an equal number of red herrings. It's interesting to watch, the characters are funny, and even though it's mainly formulaic, it's enjoyable. It's also bloody and violent. What it wasn't, though, it wasn't especially scary.
My Soul to Take is a fun one to watch with a group of friends on All Hallow's Eve.
Dir: Clint Eastwood
What happens after you die? And if life goes on, is there any contact between life and the afterlife? This movie (very, very slowly) follows three separate story lines trying to answer this question. Matt Damon plays a San Francisco psychic who thinks his gift is a curse: every time George touches someone else skin, he is hit by a vision of the dead who want to talk to her. So he decides to work instead in a sugar warehouse. Meanwhile, Marie (C»cile De France), an intelligent Parisian tele-journalist and her producer/lover encounter disaster in the tropics, and her near-death experience leads her to explore the boundary between life and death. Finally, a pair of somber, identical twin brothers, being raised by a junky mother in London, encounter death as well. Will they ever be able to communicate again?
OK, Herafter is not a bad drama, and I'll watch practically anything with a hint of magic or the supernatural, but its glacial pace, and lugubrious tone combined with a non-religious angel motif, make it feel mostly like a big-budget episode of Ghost Whisperer ("He says he forgives you… now, walk into the light"). The three storylines eventually come together, but at least for the first half hour, I wondered is it going to go on like this for whole movie – unfinished story after unfinished story? It's not really scary at all, it's Clint Eastwood, at the age of 80, telling a relaxing tale of people pondering life and death. See it if you like sipping warm cocoa on Halowe'en.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Dir: Daniel Alfredson
Lisbeth Salander and journalist Blomkvist are back again for part three of their story. Lisbeth, is a fantastic character, a cross between Steve McQueen and Tank Girl. She's tuff, she's rough, she's stone cold. She's a punk, she's a loner, she's an ex-con, she's a computer genius. And Blomkvist, the committed leftist investigative journalist at the Swedish magazine Millenium, will do anything he can to help her. The last movie ended with a bloody shoot out, and this one starts up immediately afterwards, with Lisbeth, near death in a hospital, charged with attempted murder, and Blomkvist on the verge of uncovering a cold-war era conspiracy involving government, police, and psychiatry.
So the two sides gear up for the long fight, culminating in a bug trial. On one side they're all trying to uncover the truth about the conspiracy and get it to print before the trial. But the bad guys – mainly a bunch of old Swedish guys in suits – will stop at nothing – including murder, intimidation, and character assassination – to keep the secrets secret. The pale blue-eyed and goateed psychiatrist, Dr Teleborian, is especially sinister, with his plans to use the veneer of psychiatry to hide his true motives.
And then there's the wildcards on both sides, including Niedermeier, the giant blond thug who can feel no pain, and Plague, the shy, secretive computer geek extraordinaire.
So, I liked it a lot, as a conclusion to the three-part movie series. I think it's much better to see the first two before you watch this one. I also missed the beautiful cinematic camerawork of Dragon Tattoo – this one was much more indoors, with pedestrian TV-like scenes, and without all of the unexpected plot revelations of the first two.
But it's still worth seeing. I love rooting for the heroes when they barely escape a killer, and mentally cheering when the villains mess up. (The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest feels more like a BBC detective miniseries — not a bad thing to be) This movie is two and a half hours long, so be prepared for a slow start with a good payoff. You'll need lots of Hallowe'en popcorn for this one.
LA Zombie
Dir: Bruce LaBruce
A muscle bound monster emerges out of a Pacific beach like a creature from the black lagoon. All around him is violence – shootouts in the ravines, murder in drug deals gone wrong, cars spilling off the highways, and the slow violence graduaully crushing the homeless and undocumented of downtown Los Angeles. The zombie monster (porn actor Francois Sagat) is observing all and is saddened by it.
But unlike the voraciously eating- zombies we usually see, who inflict their condition on the living, this one is a sort of a messiah. Through the disgusting – but gentle – sex he has with all the newly dead corpses he encounters – and it's always gay sex with male corpses, by the way – he brings the bodies back to life. The strangely-coloured semen that comes out of his grotesquely-shaped penis is a panacea: ejaculation equals rejuvenation.
L.A. Zombie is a violent and gory zombie movie, with very few lines, but with lots of colourful, pornographic gay sex between a gentle zombie and the spilt organs of fresh corpses. More than anything else, it's also an experimental art film, at times quite beautiful, with extended tableaux, urban landscapes and sunsets, and some documentary-looking footage of the marginal and lost beings of Los Angeles. By the end you get the impression that the zombie scenes are just the imaginary fantasies of a destitute, muscle-bound, mentally-ill homeless guy.
L.A. Zombie turns the Hallowe'en monster-as-villain paradigm upside down, and shows that the real monster… is us.
Cold Fish
Dir: Sono Shion
This movie also played at the Toronto Film Festival. I see a couple hundred movies every year, and I don't normally leave a movie shaking, googly-eyed, saying "what the fuck was that?!" to total strangers. But I did after this ultimate, extreme Japanese exploitation film about a mild-mannered Shizuoka tropical fish dealer who is pulled into the sway of an aggressive entrepreneur and serial killer.
Based on a true story, Shamato is a wimpy widower who owns a tropical fish store. His young, second wife shops with her eyes closed and cooks rice in a microwave. His teenaged daughter Mitsuko is dating a hood and shoplifts for fun. He seeks solace in the peace of the local planetarium. But soon his miserable existance is altered by a hyper-enthusiastic entrepreneur, Murata, who tells him "Business is entertainment!" Soon, Mitsuko is living in his big box store dorm working as a glamour fish salesgirl wearing hotpants and a tanktop, and his wife is also on Murata's side (after an attack/rape scene that "pulls her out of her wretched life…") All is not well.
Shamato is soon made an unwitting accomplice in a crooked fish scam, bilking investors in a "rare", ugly amazon fish venture. Soon he discovers Murata and his wife don't just defraud investors, they also kill them in a most awful way, inside a tiny church. They glory in the blood and guts, sexually playing with their organs and body parts, and joyfully disposing of the remaining flesh and bones, drenching them with soy sauce and roasting them in an outdoor barbecue!
It's up to milquetoast Shamato either to become a willing part of their awful lives or to fight back and stop it forever.
What can I say? This has got to be the most depraved exploitation film I've ever seen. It's joining of sex and death makes even Miike seem tame, and LA Zombie is like a gentle glimpse of flowers and rainbows in comparison. Definitely one of the most horrific movies ever, Cold Fish retains its credibility (without sinking to the "Saw" level of pornographic torture.) The most shocking and disturbing movie of the year.


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Our traditional alpine flower hiking week with local mountain guide and wildflower specialist, Osi Steffen. Included are the Bernerhof Card and all Bernerhof amenities
7 nights from CHF 1425.—
Or: if you book single days, from CHF 225.— per day.
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Need-To-Know for Ramen Fancier! How to buy meal coupons?
Ramen is Japan's national food, and has the same high popularity with sushi and tempura!
There are many ramen restaurants throughout the Japan so that you can enjoy delicious ramen anywhere. But for foreigners, it is still a bit difficult to eat authentic ramen...!
So the meal coupon shall be the solution to solve the problem! Now, ordering ramen by meal coupons has become the mainstream operation method for Japanese ramen restaurants.
Next step I will introduce to you the purchase method and the process of such meal coupons.
This time we had the help of "Oreryu Shio-Ramen Jingumae"! This ramen shop is in Harajuku, whether in weekdays or in holidays, there are many foreigners coming to this restaurant.
Generally, the ticket vending machine is near the entrance to the shop, but the machine of this shop is outside the shop, so you need to buy the coupons before entering the shop.
After putting the cash in the ticket machine, you can choose the ramen you want to eat.
There are a variety of different kinds of ramen, so you can choose your favorite flavor!
After adding dishes, you can get big portion of ramen, toppings and subsidiary food!
Press the button, there will come out a corresponding meal coupon!
After entering the store, please hand over the meal voucher to the clerk. If you want to eat at the table, a clerk will come and collect your meal coupons; if you want to eat at the counter seat, you just need to give the meal coupons to the clerk in sight.
Then the clerks will ask you about your taste-"tender or hard", "thick or light", "how much oil" and so on, so you need to answer
"KATAME(harder), FUTSUU(moderate), YAWARAKAME(tender)"
"KOIME(thicker), FUTSUU(moderate), USUME(lighter)"
"OOME(more oil), FUTSUU(moderate), SUKUNAME(less oil)"
to express your preferences.
The sauces on the table can be enjoyed for free! If you really don't know how to buy the meal coupons, you can ask the clerks to experience the fun for wonderful ramen life! And we will launch other articles about ramen!
Modern Nostalgia!? Ramen Cart Detectives!
Fukuoka Travel Guide -Ramen
Japanese Local Ramen Map !
Oreryu Shio-Ramen Jingumae
Address: First floor, Misuzu Tower, No.6-9-14, Jingumae, Shibuya
Postcode: 150-0001
Opening Time:11:00 ~ 24:00(no fixed rest days)
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Homologous recombination requires nucleolytic degradation (resection) of DNA double‐strand break (DSB) ends. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the MRX complex and Sae2 are involved in the onset of DSB resection, whereas extensive resection requires Exo1 and the concerted action of Dna2 and Sgs1. Here, we show that the checkpoint protein Rad9 limits the action of Sgs1/Dna2 in DSB resection by inhibiting Sgs1 binding/persistence at the DSB ends. When inhibition by Rad9 is abolished by the Sgs1‐ss mutant variant or by deletion of RAD9, the requirement for Sae2 and functional MRX in DSB resection is reduced. These results provide new insights into how early and long‐range resection is coordinated.
The checkpoint protein Rad9 inhibits the Sgs1/Dna2 long‐range resection machinery and thereby increases the requirement for MRX/Sae2 activities in DSB resection.
The Sgs1‐ss mutant variant suppresses the sensitivity to DNA damaging agents and the resection defect of sae2∆ cells.
Rad9 limits the action of Sgs1/Dna2 in DSB resection by inhibiting Sgs1 binding/persistence at the DSB ends.
The escape of Sgs1 from Rad9 inhibition reduces the requirement for Sae2 and functional MRX in DSB resection.
DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) can be repaired by homologous recombination (HR), which uses undamaged homologous DNA sequences as a template for repair in a mostly error‐free manner. The first step in HR is the processing of DNA ends by 5′ to 3′ nucleolytic degradation (resection) to generate 3′‐ended single‐stranded DNA (ssDNA) that can invade a homologous template [1]. This ssDNA generation also induces activation of the DNA damage checkpoint, whose key players are the protein kinases ATM and ATR in mammals as well as their functional orthologs Tel1 and Mec1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae [2].
Initiation of DSB resection requires the conserved MRX/MRN complex (Mre11/Rad50/Xrs2 in yeast; Mre11/Rad50/Nbs1 in mammals) that, together with Sae2, catalyses an endonucleolytic cleavage of the 5′ strands [3], [4], [5]. More extensive resection of the 5′ strands depends on two pathways, which require the 5′ to 3′ double‐stranded DNA exonuclease Exo1 and the nuclease Dna2 working in concert with the 3′ to 5′ helicase Sgs1 [4], [5].
Double‐strand break resection is controlled by the activity of cyclin‐dependent kinases (Cdk1 in yeast) [6], which promotes DSB resection by phosphorylating Sae2 [7] and Dna2 [8], as well as by ATP‐dependent nucleosome remodelling complexes [9]. Recently, the chromatin remodeler Fun30 has been shown to be required for extensive resection [10], [11], [12], possibly because it overcomes the resection barrier exerted by the histone‐bound checkpoint protein Rad9 [10], [13], [14].
The MRX/Sae2‐mediated initial endonucleolytic cleavage becomes essential to initiate DSB resection when covalent modifications or bulky adducts are present at the DSB ends and prevent the access of the long‐range Exo1 and Dna2/Sgs1 resection machinery. For example, Sae2 and the MRX nuclease activity are essential during meiosis to remove Spo11 from the 5′‐ended strand of the DSBs [15], [16]. Furthermore, both sae2∆ and mre11 nuclease‐defective (mre11‐nd) mutants exhibit a marked sensitivity to methyl methanesulfonate (MMS) and ionizing radiation (IR), which can generate chemically complex DNA termini, and to camptothecin (CPT), which extends the half‐life of topoisomerase I (Top1)–DNA cleavable complexes [17]. CPT‐induced DNA lesions need to be processed by Sae2 and MRX unless the Ku heterodimer is absent. In fact, elimination of Ku restores partial resistance to CPT in both sae2∆ and mre11‐nd cells [18], [19]. This suppression requires Exo1, indicating that Ku increases the requirement for MRX/Sae2 activities in DSB resection by inhibiting Exo1.
To identify other possible mechanisms regulating MRX/Sae2 requirement in DSB resection, we searched for extragenic mutations that suppressed the sensitivity to DNA damaging agents of sae2∆ cells. This search allowed the identification of the SGS1‐ss allele, which suppresses the resection defect of sae2∆ cells by escaping Rad9‐mediated inhibition of DSB resection. The Sgs1‐ss variant is robustly associated with the DSB ends both in the presence and in the absence of Rad9 and resects the DSB more efficiently than wild‐type Sgs1. Moreover, we found that Rad9 limits the binding at the DSB of Sgs1, which is in turn responsible for rapid resection in rad9∆ cells. We propose that Rad9 limits the activity in DSB resection of Sgs1/Dna2 and the escape from this inhibition can reduce the requirement of Sae2 and functional MRX in DSB resection.
Results and Discussion
Sgs1‐ss suppresses the sensitivity to DNA damaging agents of sae2∆ and mre11‐nd mutants
SAE2 deletion causes hypersensitivity to CPT, which creates replication‐associated DSBs. The lack of Ku suppresses CPT hypersensitivity of sae2∆ mutants, and this rescue requires Exo1 [18], [19], indicating that Ku prevents Exo1 from initiating DSB resection. To identify other possible pathways bypassing Sae2 function in DSB resection, we searched for extragenic mutations that suppress the CPT sensitivity of sae2∆ cells. CPT‐resistant sae2∆ candidates were crossed to each other and to the wild‐type strain to identify, by tetrad analysis, 15 single‐gene suppressor mutants that fell into 11 distinct allelism groups. Genome sequencing of the five non‐allelic suppressor clones that stood from the others for the best suppression phenotype identified single‐base pair substitutions either in the TOP1 gene, encoding the CPT target topoisomerase I, or in the PDR3, PDR10 and SAP185 genes, which encode for proteins involved in multi‐drug resistance. The mutation responsible for the suppression in the fifth clone was a single‐base pair substitution in the SGS1 gene (SGS1‐ss), causing the amino acid change G1298R in the HRDC domain that is conserved in the RecQ helicase family. The identity of the genes that are mutated in the six remaining suppressor clones remained to be determined.
The SGS1‐ss allele suppressed the sensitivity of the sae2∆ mutant not only to CPT, but also to phleomycin (phleo) and MMS, resulting in almost wild‐type survival of sae2∆ SGS1‐ss cells treated with these drugs (Fig 1A). The ability of Sgs1‐ss to suppress the sensitivity of sae2∆ to genotoxic agents was dominant, as sae2∆/sae2∆ SGS1/SGS1‐ss diploid cells were less sensitive to CPT, phleomycin and MMS compared to sae2∆/sae2∆ SGS1/SGS1 diploid cells (Fig 1B).
Besides providing the endonuclease activity to initiate DSB resection, MRX also promotes stable association of Exo1, Sgs1 and Dna2 at the DSB ends [20], thus explaining the severe resection defect of cells lacking the MRX complex compared to cells lacking either Sae2 or the Mre11 nuclease activity. Sgs1‐ss suppressed the hypersensitivity to genotoxic agents of mre11‐H125N cells, which were specifically defective in Mre11 nuclease activity (Fig 1A). By contrast, mre11∆ SGS1‐ss double‐mutant cells were as sensitive to genotoxic agents as the mre11∆ single mutant (Fig 1A). Altogether, these findings indicate that Sgs1‐ss can bypass the requirement of Sae2 or MRX nuclease activity for survival to genotoxic agents, but it still requires the physical integrity of the MRX complex to exert its function.
Sgs1 promotes DSB resection by acting as a helicase [4], [5], prompting us to investigate whether Sgs1‐ss requires its helicase activity to exert the suppression effect. Both the lack of Sgs1 and its helicase‐dead Sgs1‐hd variant, carrying the K706A amino acid substitution [21], impaired viability of sae2∆ cells [5] (Fig 1C). This synthetic sickness is likely due to poor DSB resection, as it is known to be alleviated by making DNA ends accessible to the Exo1 nuclease [18], [19]. The K706A substitution was therefore introduced in Sgs1‐ss, thus generating the Sgs1‐hd‐ss variant, and meiotic tetrads from diploid strains double heterozygous for sae2∆ and sgs1‐hd‐ss were analysed for spore viability on YEPD plates. All sae2∆ sgs1‐hd‐ss double‐mutant spores formed much smaller colonies than each single‐mutant spore (Fig 1D), with a colony size similar to that obtained from sae2∆ sgs1‐hd double‐mutant spores (Fig 1C). Thus, Sgs1‐ss appears to require its helicase activity to suppress the lack of Sae2 function.
Suppression of sae2∆ by Sgs1‐ss requires Dna2, but not Exo1
The ssDNA formed by Sgs1 unwinding is degraded by the nuclease Dna2, which acts in DSB resection in a parallel pathway with respect to Exo1 [5]. Thus, we asked whether the suppression of sae2∆ hypersensitivity to DNA damaging agents by Sgs1‐ss requires Exo1 and/or Dna2. Although the lack of Exo1 exacerbated the sensitivity of sae2∆ cells to some DNA damaging agents (Fig 1E), the SGS1‐ss allele was still capable to suppress the sensitivity to CPT, phleomycin and MMS of sae2∆ exo1∆ double‐mutant cells (Fig 1E), indicating the suppression of sae2∆ by Sgs1‐ss is independent of Exo1.
As DNA2 is essential for cell viability, dna2∆ cells were kept viable by the pif1‐M2 mutation, which impairs the ability of Pif1 to promote formation of long flaps that are substrates for Dna2 [22]. Diploids homozygous for the pif1‐M2 mutation and heterozygous for sae2∆, dna2∆ and SGS1‐ss were generated, followed by sporulation and tetrads dissection. No viable sae2∆ dna2∆ pif1‐M2 cells could be recovered, and the presence of the SGS1‐ss allele did not restore viability of sae2∆ dna2∆ pif1‐M2 triple‐mutant spores (Fig 1F). By contrast, tetrads from a diploid homozygous for the pif1‐M2 mutation and heterozygous for sae2∆, dna2∆ and ku70∆ showed that the lack of Ku70, which relieved Exo1 inhibition [18], [19], restored viability of sae2∆ dna2∆ pif1‐M2 spores (Fig 1G). These findings indicate that Sgs1‐ss requires Dna2 to bypass Sae2 requirement.
Sgs1‐ss suppresses the adaptation defect of sae2∆ cells
A single irreparable DSB triggers a checkpoint‐mediated cell cycle arrest. Yeast cells can escape an extended checkpoint arrest and resume cell cycle progression even with an unrepaired DSB (adaptation) [23], [24]. Sae2 lacking cells, like other resection deficient mutants, fail to turn off the checkpoint triggered by an unrepaired DSB and remain arrested at G2/M as large budded cells [12], [25], [26], [27]. To investigate whether Sgs1‐ss suppresses the adaptation defect of sae2∆ cells, we used JKM139 derivative strains carrying the HO endonuclease gene under the control of a galactose‐inducible promoter. Galactose addition leads to generation at the MAT locus of a single DSB that cannot be repaired by HR, because the homologous donor loci HML or HMR are deleted [23]. When G1‐arrested cell cultures were spotted on galactose‐containing plates, sae2∆ SGS1‐ss cells formed microcolonies with more than two cells more efficiently than sae2∆ cells, which were still arrested at the two‐cell dumbbell stage after 24 h (Fig 2A). Checkpoint activation was monitored also by following Rad53 phosphorylation, which is required for Rad53 activation and is detectable as a decrease of its electrophoretic mobility. When galactose was added to exponentially growing cell cultures of the same strains, sae2∆ and sae2∆ SGS1‐ss mutant cells showed similar amounts of phosphorylated Rad53 after HO induction (Fig 2B), indicating that Sgs1‐ss did not affect checkpoint activation. However, Rad53 phosphorylation decreased in sae2∆ SGS1‐ss double‐mutant cells within 12–14 h after galactose addition, whereas it persisted longer in sae2∆ cells that were defective in re‐entering the cell cycle (Fig 2B). Thus, Sgs1‐ss suppresses the inability of sae2∆ cells to turn off the checkpoint in the presence of an unrepaired DSB.
The adaptation defect of sae2Δ cells has been proposed to be due to an increased persistence at DSBs of the MRX complex, which in turn causes unscheduled Tel1 activation [26], [27]. We then asked by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and quantitative real‐time PCR (qPCR) analysis whether Sgs1‐ss can reduce the binding of MRX to the DSB ends in sae2Δ cells. When HO was induced in exponentially growing cells, the amount of Mre11 bound at the HO‐induced DSB end was lower in sae2∆ SGS1‐ss than in sae2∆ cells (Fig 2C). As MRX persistence at the DSB in sae2∆ cells has been proposed to be due to defective DSB resection, this finding suggests that Sgs1‐ss suppresses the resection defect of sae2Δ cells.
Sgs1‐ss suppresses the resection defect of sae2∆ cells
To investigate whether Sgs1‐ss suppresses the sensitivity to genotoxic agents and the adaptation defect of sae2∆ cells by restoring DSB resection, we used JKM139 derivative strains to monitor directly generation of ssDNA at the DSB ends [23]. Because ssDNA is resistant to cleavage by restriction enzymes, we directly monitored ssDNA formation at the irreparable HO‐cut by following the loss of SspI restriction fragments after galactose addition by Southern blot analysis under alkaline conditions, using a single‐stranded probe that anneals to the 3′ end at one side of the break (Fig 3A). Resection in sae2∆ SGS1‐ss cells was markedly increased compared to sae2∆ cells, indicating that Sgs1‐ss suppresses the resection defect caused by the lack of Sae2 (Fig 3B and C).
Repair of a DSB flanked by direct repeats occurs primarily by single‐strand annealing (SSA), which requires nucleolytic degradation of the 5′ DSB ends to reach the complementary DNA sequences that can then anneal [28]. To assess whether the Sgs1‐ss‐mediated suppression of the resection defect caused by the lack of Sae2 was physiologically relevant, we asked whether Sgs1‐ss suppresses the SSA defect of sae2∆ cells. To this end, we introduced the SGS1‐ss allele in YMV45 strain, which carries two tandem leu2 repeats located 4.6 kb apart, with a HO recognition site adjacent to one of the repeats [28]. This strain also harbours a GAL‐HO construct for galactose‐inducible HO expression. As expected, accumulation of the repair product was reduced in sae2∆ compared to wild‐type cells, whereas it occurred with almost wild‐type kinetics in sae2∆ SGS1‐ss double‐mutant cells (Fig 3D and E), indicating that Sgs1‐ss improves SSA‐mediated DSB repair in the absence of Sae2.
Altogether, these findings indicate that Sgs1‐ss suppresses both the sensitivity to genotoxic agents of sae2∆ cells and the MRX persistence at DSBs by restoring DSB resection. Interestingly, the effects of the SGS1‐ss mutation are opposite to those of the separation‐of‐function sgs1‐D664∆ allele, which specifically impairs viability of sae2∆ cells and DSB resection without affecting other Sgs1 functions [29].
Sgs1‐ss accelerates DSB resection by escaping Rad9 inhibition
The Sgs1‐ss mutant variant can bypass Sae2 requirement in initiation of DSB resection either because it allows Dna2 to substitute for Sae2/MRX endonuclease activity or because it increases the resection efficiency. To distinguish between these two possibilities, we asked whether Sgs1‐ss could bypass Sae2 requirement in resecting meiotic DSBs, where the Sae2/MRX‐mediated endonucleolytic cleavage is absolutely required to initiate DSB resection by allowing the removal of Spo11 from the DSB ends [15], [16]. A sae2Δ/sae2Δ SGS1‐ss/SGS1‐ss diploid strain was constructed and its kinetics of processing/repair of meiotic DSBs generated at the THR4 hotspot was compared to those of a sae2Δ/sae2Δ diploid. DSBs disappeared in both wild‐type and SGS1‐ss/SGS1‐ss cells about 4 h after transfer to sporulation medium, while they persisted until the end of the experiment in both sae2Δ/sae2Δ and sae2Δ/sae2Δ SGS1‐ss/SGS1‐ss diploid cells (Supplementary Fig S1). Thus, Sgs1‐ss cannot substitute the endonucleolytic clipping by Sae2/MRX when this is absolutely required to initiate DSB resection.
Interestingly, the Sgs1‐ss mutant variant accelerates both DSB resection and SSA compared to wild‐type Sgs1 (Fig 3B–E), suggesting that Sgs1‐ss might increase the resection efficiency by escaping the effect of negative regulators of this process. In particular, Rad9 provides a barrier to resection through an unknown mechanism [13], [14]. As shown in Fig 4A and B, both SGS1‐ss and rad9∆ mutant cells accumulated the resection products more efficiently than wild‐type cells, and the presence of Sgs1‐ss did not accelerate further the generation of ssDNA in rad9∆ cells. Thus, the lack of Rad9 and the presence of Sgs1‐ss appear to increase the efficiency of DSB resection through the same mechanism. Furthermore, cells lacking Rad9 displayed sensitivity to CPT and phleomycin (Fig 4C). Consistent with the finding that the SGS1‐ss and rad9∆ alleles affect the same process, rad9∆ was epistatic to SGS1‐ss with respect to the survival to genotoxic agents, as sae2∆ rad9∆ SGS1‐ss cells were as sensitive to CPT and phleomycin as sae2∆ rad9∆ and rad9∆ cells (Fig 4C).
Double‐strand break resection in the G1 phase of the cell cycle is specifically inhibited by the Ku complex, whose lack allows nucleolytic processing in G1 cells independently of Cdk1 activity [30]. RAD9 deletion does not allow DSB resection in G1, but it enhances resection in G1‐arrested ku∆ cells [31], indicating that Rad9 inhibits DSB resection in G1, but this function becomes apparent only when Ku is absent. To investigate whether Sgs1‐ss was capable to counteract the inhibitory function of Rad9 in G1, we monitored DSB resection in SGS1‐ss and ku70∆ SGS1‐ss cells that were kept arrested in G1 by α‐factor during HO induction. Consistent with the requirement of Cdk1 activity for efficient DSB resection, the 3′‐ended resection products were barely detectable in wild‐type G1 cells, whereas their amount increased in ku70∆ G1 cells that, as previously reported [30], accumulated mostly 1.7‐, 3.5‐ and 4.7‐kb ssDNA products (r1, r2, r3) (Supplementary Fig S2). By contrast, DSB resection in SGS1‐ss cells was undistinguishable from that observed in wild‐type cells (Supplementary Fig S2), indicating that Sgs1‐ss does not allow DSB resection in G1. Furthermore, while RAD9 deletion enhanced the resection efficiency of ku70∆ G1 cells, G1‐arrested ku70∆ and ku70∆ SGS1‐ss cells accumulated resection products with similar kinetics (Fig 4D and E). Altogether, these findings indicate that Sgs1‐ss is not capable to allow DSB resection in G1 either in the presence or in the absence of Ku. As Sgs1‐ss function in DSB resection depends on Dna2, whose activity requires Cdk1‐mediated phosphorylation [8], the inability of Sgs1‐ss to overcome both Ku‐ and Rad9‐mediated inhibition in G1 may be due to the requirement of Cdk1 activity to support Dna2 and therefore Sgs1‐ss function in DSB resection.
Rapid DSB resection in rad9∆ cells depends mainly on Sgs1
Generation of ssDNA at uncapped telomeres in rad9∆ cells has been shown to be more dependent on Dna2/Sgs1 than on Exo1 [32]. This observation, together with the finding that SGS1‐ss does not accelerate further the generation of ssDNA in rad9∆ cells (Fig 4A and B), raises the possibility that Rad9 inhibits DSB resection by limiting Sgs1 activity and that the Sgs1‐ss variant can escape this inhibition. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the contribution of Sgs1 and Exo1 to the accelerated DSB resection displayed by rad9∆ cells. As shown in Fig 5A and B, sgs1∆ was epistatic to rad9∆ with respect to DSB resection, as sgs1∆ rad9∆ double‐mutant and sgs1∆ single‐mutant cells resected the HO‐induced DSB with similar kinetics. By contrast, DSB resection in exo1∆ rad9∆ cells was more efficient than in exo1∆ cells, although it was delayed compared to rad9∆ cells (Fig 5C and D). Thus, the rapid resection in the absence of Rad9 depends mainly on Sgs1, although also Exo1 contributes to resect the DSB in the absence of Rad9. Consistent with the finding that Sgs1‐ss overrides Rad9 inhibition, SGS1‐ss exo1∆ cells resected the DSB with kinetics similar to that of rad9∆ exo1∆ cells (Supplementary Fig S3).
Rad9 inhibits DSB resection by limiting Sgs1 association at DNA breaks
If loss of end protection by Rad9 allowed Sgs1 to initiate DSB resection, which normally requires Sae2, then RAD9 deletion, like Sgs1‐ss, should suppress the resection defect of sae2∆ cells. Indeed, DSB resection in sae2∆ rad9∆ cells was as fast as in rad9∆ cells, which resected the DSB more efficiently than wild‐type and sae2∆ cells (Fig 6A and B), indicating that the lack of Rad9 bypasses Sae2 function in DSB resection.
We then asked by ChIP and qPCR analysis whether Rad9 limits Sgs1 activity by regulating Sgs1 binding/persistence to the DSB ends. When HO was induced in exponentially growing cells, the amount of Sgs1 bound at the HO‐induced DSB was higher in rad9∆ than in wild‐type cells (Fig 6C), indicating that Rad9 counteracts Sgs1 recruitment to the DSB. Interestingly, the Sgs1‐ss variant was recruited at the DSB with equivalent efficiencies in both exponentially growing wild‐type and rad9∆ cells (Fig 6C). These differences were not due to different resection kinetics, as we obtained similar results also when the HO‐induced DSB was generated in G1‐arrested cells (Fig 6D), which resected the DSB very poorly due to the low Cdk1 activity [6]. Interestingly, the amount of Sgs1‐ss bound to the DSB was higher than the amount of wild‐type Sgs1 in rad9∆ cells (Fig 6C and D), suggesting that Sgs1‐ss has a higher intrinsic ability to bind/persist at the DSB. Altogether, these results indicate that Rad9 limits the association of Sgs1 to the DSB ends and that the Sgs1‐ss variant escapes this inhibition possibly because it binds more tightly the DSB. Interestingly, the robust association of Sgs1‐ss to the DSB in G1‐arrested cells (low Cdk1 activity) did not result in DSB resection (Supplementary Fig S2) possibly because Sgs1 acts in DSB resection together with Dna2, whose activity requires Cdk1‐mediated phosphorylation [8]. Consistent with a contribution of Exo1 in promoting DSB resection in the absence of Rad9, rad9∆ cells showed an increased Exo1 recruitment to the DSB compared to wild‐type cells (Fig 6E).
In summary, we show that Rad9 increases the requirement for the MRX/Sae2 activities in DSB resection by inhibiting the action of the Sgs1/Dna2 long‐range resection machinery. Extensive resection in Rad9‐deficient cells is mainly dependent on Sgs1, whose recruitment at DSBs is inhibited by Rad9. By contrast, Sgs1‐ss, which suppresses the resection defect of sae2∆ cells, is robustly associated with the DSB ends both in the presence and in the absence of Rad9 and resects the DSB more efficiently than wild‐type Sgs1. These findings indicate that Rad9 inhibits the activity of Sgs1/Dna2 by limiting Sgs1 binding/persistence at DSB ends and that the Sgs1‐ss mutant variant escapes this inhibition possibly because it is more tightly bound to DNA. Thus, while Ku increases the requirement for the MRX/Sae2 activities in DSB resection by inhibiting preferentially Exo1 [20], Rad9 mainly restricts the action of Sgs1/Dna2. As MRX and Sae2 are especially important for initial processing of DNA ends that contain adducts, the Rad9‐ and Ku‐mediated inhibitions of Sgs1/Dna2 and Exo1 activities in initiating DSB resection ensure that all DSBs are processed in a similar manner independently of their nature.
Materials and Methods
Yeast strains
The yeast strains used in this study are derivatives of W303, JKM139 or SK1 (Supplementary Table S1). Cells were grown in YEP medium (1% yeast extract, 2% peptone) supplemented with 2% glucose (YEPD), 2% raffinose (YEPR) or 2% raffinose and 3% galactose (YEPRG).
Search for suppressors of sae2∆ sensitivity to CPT
To search for suppressor mutations of the CPT sensitivity of sae2∆ mutant, 5 × 106 sae2∆ cells were plated on YEPD in the presence of 30 μM CPT. Survivors were recovered and crossed to wild‐type cells to identify by tetrad analysis the suppression events that were due to single‐gene mutations. Subsequent genetic analyses allowed grouping the single‐gene suppression events in 11 classes. The five classes that showed the most efficient suppression were chosen and the suppressor genes were identified by genome sequencing and genetic analyses. To confirm that the SGS1‐ss mutation was responsible for the suppression, a URA3 gene was integrated downstream of the SGS1‐ss stop codon and the resulting strain was crossed to wild‐type cells to verify by tetrad dissection that the suppression of the sae2∆ CPT sensitivity co‐segregated with the URA3 allele.
DSB resection
Double‐strand break end resection at the MAT locus was analysed on alkaline agarose gels as described in Clerici et al [30]. Quantitative analysis of DSB resection was performed by calculating the ratio of band intensities for ssDNA and total amount of DSB products.
Synchronous meiotic time course and detection of meiotic DSBs
To obtain synchronous G1/G0 cell population, overnight liquid YEPD cell cultures were diluted to a final concentration of 1 × 107 cells/ml in 200 ml YPA (1% yeast extract, 2% bactopeptone, 1% potassium acetate) and grown for 13 h at 30°C. Cells were then washed and transferred into the same volume of SPM (0.3% potassium acetate, 0.02% raffinose) to induce meiosis. Genomic DNA was digested with EcoRI and separated on native agarose gels. DSBs at the THR4 hotspot were detected with a 1.6‐kb DNA fragment spanning the 5′ region of THR4.
Other techniques
ChIP assays were performed as described in Viscardi et al [33]. Data are expressed as fold enrichment at the HO‐induced DSB over that at the non‐cleaved ARO1 locus, after normalization of each ChIP signals to the corresponding input for each time point. Fold enrichment was then normalized to the efficiency of DSB induction. Rad53 was detected by using anti‐Rad53 (ab104232) polyclonal antibodies from Abcam.
Author contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: DB, MV, MPL. Performed the experiments: DB, MV, EG, CC, GT. Analysed the data: DB, MV, EG, MPL. Wrote the manuscript: MPL.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figure S1 [embr201439764-sup-0001-FigureS1.pdf]
Supplementary Figure S2 [embr201439764-sup-0002-FigureS2.pdf]
Supplementary Figure S3 [embr201439764-sup-0003-FigureS3.pdf]
Supplementary Table S1 [embr201439764-sup-0004-TableS1.pdf]
We thank J. Haber for strains. Michela Clerici and Giovanna Lucchini are acknowledged for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) (Grant No. IG15210) and Cofinanziamento 2010‐2011 MIUR/Università di Milano‐Bicocca to MPL.
FundingAssociazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) IG15210
- © 2015 The Authors


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The Calgary Barracuda Swim Club is a recreational competitive swim club for swimmers aged 5 to 18 (swimmers must be able to swim 25 metres unassisted - please refer to the Information Booklet in the Club Library for swimming qualifications.
We practice at the Calgary JCC, located at 14th Street & 90th Avenue SW (opposite Glenmore Landing).
Our season runs from September to April:
Monday and Wednesday evenings
6:45 to 8:00 pm
7:45 to 9:00 pm
Swimmers are expected to be changed and on deck 15 minutes prior to their swim time for warm up.
We participate in up to 5-6 swim meets with other Rec/Competitive swim clubs during the season. As well, we run a club Distance Swim in December and finish our season off with our Club Championships in April.
The registration for existing members will open in April, returning swimmers have priority registration until May 1, 2018, at which point wait-listed swimmer registrations will be accepted. Registrations can be mailed to the address mentioned on the form.
Click here to download the registration form.


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Swain County employees lose total of 149 pounds and improve health in program customized by Swain Community Hospital
July 19, 2017
BRYSON CITY, N.C. – Swain Community Hospital recently partnered with Swain County employees to design a wellness program aimed at improved physical health. County departments engaged in friendly competition throughout the six-month program with the Swain County Health Department achieving the top scores in weight loss, improved cholesterol, blood pressure, and heart score. A heart score is used to assess heart health based on diet, exercise, blood pressure control, and other lifestyle factors.
A pre-program assessment was performed in January and a post-program assessment was performed in June to determine the county department with the employees making the most progress. Employees received points for various healthy activities. Employees lost a collective total of 149 pounds.
"It is so rewarding to see results for our county employees through this program but it is even more exciting to watch the teams come together and provide support and encouragement for each other along the way," said Trish Hipgrave, RDN and public health educator for the Swain County Health Department.
The health department team included 12 members with a collective weight loss of 59 pounds. Nine members improved cholesterol, 10 improved blood pressure, and seven achieved an improved heart score.
The county administration team included eight members with two experiencing improved cholesterol, five with improved blood pressure, and six achieving an improved heart score.
The team from the Department of Social Services (DSS) had the most members with 22 and a collective weight loss of 90 pounds. Eleven had improved cholesterol, 14 achieved improved blood pressure, and 12 had an improved heart score.
April Goodwin with DSS was the overall top point winner in the program with 3,076 points followed by Sonia Monteith from DSS and Samantha Blanchard from the health department. The 'Veggie Award' went to the most-well-rounded individual out of the most-improved pool. Sheila
Sutton from DSS was the winner followed by Suzanne Smith from the health department as runner-up.
The county program was modeled after programs the hospital has designed for Swain County Schools and local employers over the last several years and focuses on key body metrics that contribute to overall better health.
"By working with our community partners in these unique, customized ways we can deliver on our hospitals' mission of making communities healthier. The wellness programs we have launched within our local schools, county offices, and employers bring us together to create benefits that extend far beyond these impressive individual accomplishments," said Steve Heatherly, CEO of Harris Regional Hospital and Swain Community Hospital.
The program concluded with a healthy lunch provided by Swain Community Hospital for all participants. Chef Brandon Cope with the hospital created the menu which was served on the hospital's patio last month.
The next phase of the program with Swain County employees began July 1 and ends in June 2018 and includes 52 employees.
Swain Community Hospital partners throughout the year with the Swain County Health Department on the top community health priorities identified in 2015 through the community health needs assessment performed every three years. The current priorities are heart disease, stroke and diabetes prevention, reducing substance abuse, and promoting a healthy environment.
For information visit: http://www.myswaincommunity.com/for-patients-and-visitors/community-health-needs-assessment


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Now for today's card! Today's card is all about the Happy Adventure Stamp Set. Here is the video explaining Watercoloring with our NEW Liquid Colors. If you are viewing this from your email, click here to see the video.
RIGHT NOW, YOU can GET A FREE DIE CUTTING MACHINE!!!!
Yes, that's right, the Amaze Die Cutting Machine (value is $149.95) is free with the purchase of the Banners and Bows Bundle WHILE SUPPLIES LAST…hurry! This offer is good starting May 1, 2018 and will end June 30, 2018 or WHILE SUPPLIES LAST. Not only do you get the die cutting machine free, you get all the dies in a bundle so you save there also! Run, don't walk to my website to purchase this deal of the century! www.funstampersjourney.com/debvalder and click on shop then add the code BD-0391 OR just click the link below! Happy Shopping!!!!
This machine is FREEEEE!!!!
Here is what is included with the Banner & Bows Bundle
to get your FREE Amaze Machine
It's WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
Plus Shipping and Tax
Banner Parade Die
Create a Bow Die
Gift Card Sleeve Die
Cupcake Liner Die
Bread Tag Die
Craft Glue
This is the BEST craft glue you will EVER use!!!
Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to spend a little of it with me. I appreciate each and everyone of you for your loyalty and patience. I always try to pay it forward with my Free PDF's. Thank you so much. Also remember to order your Annual Catalog.
I'm here if you have any questions.