BLACKSTONE & CARMEN MOORE

Say this about “Blackstone”: It doesn’t pull any punches. Barely two minutes into the pilot episode, a reserve elder (played by a real-life elder among actors, Gordon Tootoosis) maps out the terrain on which this series will play out: “Our culture is on display every day.
Family violence. Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Incest. Suicide. That’s our culture now.”
“Blackstone” began its first season Jan. 25 on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Jan. 28 on Showcase with an abbreviated version of a two-hour TV movie that ran last year, which included almost all the woes itemized in Tootoosis’ character’s speech. The first new episode of the first season airs Tuesday, Feb. 1, on APTN and Friday, Feb. 4, on Showcase, and it jumps off into a world of political intrigue and conflict between the rulers and the ruled on a corrupt Native reserve.
Ron Scott, co-creator of “Blackstone” with Gil Cardinal (who wrote the TV movie), says the inspiration was the cable drama “The Wire.” “This was crafted to be something unlike anything we’ve seen on Canadian television, as far as this kind of voice is concerned,” he says. “We wanted it to be fly-on-the-wall, or voyeuristic. You’re watching these people from inside their world.”
“Blackstone” focuses on the struggle by one Native band to wrest its destiny out of the hands of a corrupt chief and his toadying band council. At the center of the action is the conflict between newly elected chief Leona Stoney (Carmen Moore) and the man she defeated, reserve boss Andy Fraser (a wonderful blend of menace and charm from Eric Schweig). “The heart of the show is to go places where Native television hasn’t gone,” Scott says. “The cameras have never been pointed by aboriginal people at themselves in a drama like this. “Things like (the early-1990s hit series) ‘North of 60’ were crafted and presented and perceived by a non-Native audience.
Although there are some tough elements to the show, I think that in the end, the truth sometimes comes in ugly packages.”
To a certain extent, the series is the culmination of two decades of development in the First Nations film and TV industry, Scott says.
Many of the cast and crew — including Cardinal, Scott, Moore, Tootoosis, Schweig, Michelle Thrush and Nathaniel Arcand — are veterans of such series as “North of 60” and “Moccasin Flats” and a slew of TV movies and films that have been made in the past two decades.
“ ‘Blackstone’ couldn’t have been made by a nonaboriginal cast and crew, Scott says, because non-Natives wouldn’t have felt free to be tough enough with the material. “Gil, in his pilot, really wanted to go after corruption,” he says. “That was his goal. “I think one of the things has been, when there are non-Native producers, maybe they don’t want to go to certain places — where I and Gil Cardinal felt this was such an interesting story world. We wanted to be the kind of show where people say, ‘Did they just say that?’ ”
Moore’s character is an urban aboriginal who comes home to the Blackstone reserve and gets drawn into the political struggle against her will — and despite the fact that she knows almost nothing of reserve politics. The character isn’t very far from her own reality, the actress says.
Growing up in a Vancouver suburb, Moore says, she had almost no contact with her culture until she joined an aboriginal theater troupe in Vancouver when she was 17. “I certainly knew of the dysfunction and the problems Natives on reserve still face,” she says. “But I definitely hear stories that still shock me.”
The options for young Native people, she says, are to stay on the reserve — and choose between being political predator and being prey — or move off to find opportunity and lose their culture.
“You have no idea of who you are. I didn’t really have an identity as a First Nations person. I grew up in Coquitlam, and … I kind of fit in in some circles, but whenever any of that teenage stuff kicked in, they’d call me things like ‘squaw.’ “My grandmother still won’t acknowledge that she’s First Nations.”
“Blackstone,” she says, is something of a caricature, constructed to embody all the evils and limitations of reserve life. “People say First Nations people get money, houses, and their schooling paid for and all that,” Moore says. “And yes, there is money available to a certain extent, but it means that you have to stay on-reserve. “And it’s still shuffling the Indians off to really bad pieces of real estate and saying, ‘Go there and die.’ Sadly enough, that’s what happens. When you stay on reserve — if the reserve is one like Blackstone — you stay there to die. It’s that harsh. You don’t get out. You’re stuck in all that stuff forever.”

MARLEE IS A WOMAN FROM GRISSOM’S PAST

As hard-core fans of CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” know, former CSI boss Gil Grissom (William Petersen) had deaf parents and therefore is adept at American Sign Language. They also know he married fellow CSI Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) and is still in their honeymoon spot in the jungle doing research, while Sara is back in Las Vegas working crime scenes. But what they probably don’t know is that Grissom had another woman in his past, something that Sara discovers in a rather uncomfortable way.
In the episode “The Two Mrs.  Grissoms,” scheduled to air on Thursday, Feb. 3, after a murder at Gilbert College, a school for the deaf, Sara is caught between her mother-in-law, Betty Grissom (Phyllis Frelich), a professor at the school, and Julia Holden (Marlee Matlin), another deaf professor who doesn’t know Mrs. Grissom just from work. “The relationship between me, Julia, and Sara is interesting,” says Matlin, speaking sign language through an interpreter in her trailer between scenes, “because there are some surprises that arise during the episode. I know her husband; we had a past; we were intimate.
“At the same time, Sara has a lot on her plate, not only about her husband but trying to figure out if I’m the murderer or not. She’s straddling the fence as to whether she should trust me as a woman who says she didn’t do anything wrong.”
Even though Petersen is no longer on the show, the character of Grissom has been kept very much in everyone’s minds, especially in this episode. “When we were talking about doing this show,” Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) says, “I did call him, because I wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with this. “We do talk a lot about him, really. We couldn’t do this episode without the character of Grissom, and yet he’s not in the show. I wanted to make sure that he was OK with that. He’s great about it.”
While there’s no word whether Julia might return on “CSI,” Matlin has had a good experience.  “This is really one of the best jobs I’ve ever had,” she says. “It’s just too short. It’s a family here, and I’m entering their territory. But they are so welcoming, with open arms, open hearts, open minds.

SECRETS & SPIES

Premiering Sunday, January 30 at 8pm Discovery presents “Assault and
Rescue: Operation Thunderball,” a fascinating new Canadian special revealing for the first time what really happened on that harrowing mission – details that have been classified for 35 years. Following the World Premiere of “Assault and Rescue: Operation Thunderball,”
Discovery Channel presents the Canadian Premiere of “Spy  Wars” at 9pm, a thrilling new special exploring the world of high-tech espionage and the unsolved murder of Saddam Hussein’s top weapons expert, Canadian-born scientist Gerald Bull.
These gripping tales don’t star Harrison Ford or Matt Damon, but are every bit as dramatic. Breathtaking and shockingly real, the two new back-to-back one-hour specials delve into top-secret files, international relations and the leading-edge science and technology at the centre of the world’s most elite intelligence and military agencies. Top hostage rescue forces from around the world base their strategy and tactics on a sophisticated body of knowledge secretly developed and shared between them, known as The Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) Playbook.
“Assault and Rescue: Operation Thunderball,” an original Canadian production by Frantic Films, cracks open the Playbook in an extraordinary moment-by-moment case
study:  The 1976 Entebbe hostage crisis. Bound from Tel Aviv to Paris, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked on June 27, 1976, by a group of Palestinian and German terrorists and flown to Entebbe, Uganda. There were 246 passengers and a dozen crew on board – more than half of them Israeli citizens. After several days, all non-Jewish passengers were released; secretly, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) prepares to mount one of the most complicated – and radical – missions ever to rescue the 102 hostages who remained.
Nearly 35 years later, while much has been reported and dramatized about the incredible Entebbe hostage rescue mission, the logistics of the operation remained classified until recently – even the internal Israeli Defense Forces report on Operation Thunderball was not completed until 2004. With gripping re-enactments and first-person accounts with the commandos, pilots, strategists and covert intelligence gatherers, “Assault and Rescue: Operation Thunderball,”
goes inside the situation rooms, assault staging areas and deadly firefights that made the seemingly impossible happen.
Following the incredible Thunderball mission that saved more than 100 lives, Discovery explores a decades-long murder mystery in the premiere of “Spy  Wars” at 9pm.
In March 1990 – the eve of the Gulf War – Saddam Hussein’s top weapons scientist, Canadian-born Gerald Bull, was hard at work on a secret supergun when he was  assassinated in Belgium. The prime suspects? The world’s premier spy agencies: Mossad, MI6.the CIA – but the killer was never caught. Now, for the first time, former Israeli and U.S. spies reconstruct the assassins technology and tactics in an attempt to solve a mystery that’s lingered for 20 years:  Who killed Gerald Bull?

JANN ARDEN

On Bravo! Saturday, January 29 at 4pm. In this doc Arden gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at the mounting of her show, shares raw rehearsal performances, and engages in frank conversation about her career and struggles. Through performances of some of her greatest hits, including “Insensitive” and “Unloved”, she recounts the years of dive bars, alcohol abuse and bad decisions before finally making her major label debut at age 30. Now with her tenth album, a new band, new producer and new manager, Bruce Allen, and a return to her songwriting roots, Arden is attempting to redefine her role in an evolving pop music industry. And find a little personal peace along the way.

HOW THE RECESSION STOLE MANHOOD

The recession was man-made, and men were the hardest hit. As if that weren’t enough, a further twist is that the economic collapse may have done a big favor for the male of the species. That is the optimistic message of the hour long doc, “End of Men,” airing on CBUT’s “Doc Zone” Thursday, Feb. 3.
The film looks at how changes in masculine identity have been accelerated by the financial meltdown of 2007-09. “It was testosterone that tanked the global economy,” says filmmaker Marc de Guerre. “That was the way it was being read at first. “There was this link between risky behavior and testosterone. But when the recession finally got rolling, within a few months, there was this other narrative that emerged, that it was mostly men who were being affected.”
De Guerre says he was intrigued by the fact that there wasn’t a single female name in the news linked to the meltdown. Yet, as the narration points out at the beginning of the film, some 80% of the jobs lost were men’s.The Toronto filmmaker says he focused on the U.S. because of its cult of optimism and individualism and on the Rust Belt because of how hard it has been hit by economic and social upheaval. “The weird thing about the U.S. is the men don’t even feel they’re entitled to ask for help,” he says.  “They’ve been brainwashed into believing that if they fail, it’s their fault. Nobody believes anymore that guys are capable of ethical behavior,” de Guerre says. “But they are. There are tons of men who live highly ethical lives, but there doesn’t seem to be public space for them anymore. Everyone is just so cynical. We always think there’s some corruption behind everything. “Everybody I interviewed for this film was a good man. These guys are just trying to get by.” Despite all of this, we may be living in a hopeful time, Pollack says. If men can allow themselves to mourn for the loss of the traditional postwar image of the man as silent, stoical head of the household, they can evolve into something that incorporates the male virtues and adopts some of the female ones — such as empathy, emotional honesty and consensus building.
Yet as the film points out, one of the stumbling blocks may be the way men have rigged the game against themselves. As several experts note, women have found it easy to adapt and take on male characteristics because the male-dominated society has always presented being male as something superior. Men, on the other hand, find it difficult to change — for exactly the same reason. “The dirty little secret about the boy code and the masculine code, about the stoicism, what it all costs — push everyone else down, be on top — the truth of the matter is that only a small number of men can rise to anywhere near the top,”
Pollack says. “Most men buying into traditional hierarchical systems are losers, not the women. The only way they can feel positive is to feel they’re fulfilling their roles traditionally or even worse, that they can be superior to women. “It’s a terrible situation.”

WHEN THE DEVIL KNOCKS

“For years, my alters went to therapy and I wasn’t there for more than five minutes.”  – Hilary Stanton “I knew immediately I must befriend Tim. You want the angry hostile alters to be your assistants. When the devil knocks, invite him in for tea.”
– Cheryl Malmo, Hilary’s psychologist
“When The Devil Knocks,” premiering on CBC News Network The Passionate Eye on Wed, January 26 at 10pm, is a real life “United States of Tara”
- the intimate story of a woman suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder.
Hilary Stanton gave filmmaker Helen Slinger unlimited access to more than 40 hours of videotape of her psychotherapy with therapist Cheryl Malmo, filmed over 10 years. The therapy tapes reveal a cast of supporting characters, “alters”, who kept Hilary alive by taking over from her during times of crisis. As Hilary says, “For years, my alters went to therapy and I wasn’t there for more than five minutes.”
 Until her mid-40s, Hilary Stanton lived with big gaps in her memory that she thought were normal. Then Hilary had a breakdown, started therapy, and gradually discovered that – during those gaps in memory that she thought were so normal – other personalities (“alters”) were taking over from her.
“When The Devil Knocks,” opens as Hilary barrels down a prairie highway towards a family reunion. Alter Tim takes over the wheel and makes a u-turn at high speed. Hilary ‘comes to’ as she’s losing control of the car. Tim was one of the most dominant of the 35 alters who would finally make their presence known, a phalanx of inner children who fought to protect Hilary’s core self from memories of horrific childhood abuse. It would be the job of therapist Cheryl Malmo to convince each of these alters that the abuse was in the past:
it was safe to give up their memories to Hilary and, finally, to merge their personalities with hers.
The therapy sessions were initially videotaped to train therapists in the treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder. They are shockingly intimate; taking us inside a mind in the throes of a fascinating disorder and revealing the power of the human mind to protect the self by disconnecting from traumatic memories.
“When The Devil Knocks,” marries therapy videotape with carefully-constructed dramatic re-enactments. “Having access to a decade’s worth of psychotherapy tapes was both a blessing and an enormous responsibility,” says director Helen Slinger. “The challenge was to imagine what it looked like inside Hilary’s brain; how to show her inner world. She was very clear about how each alter looked, even down to how they dressed, so it wasn’t difficult to find actors to play the different parts – the different parts of Hilary.”
The film goes to the heart of our instinctual fascination with the idea of one person presenting multiple personalities. In “When The Devil Knocks,” we see the real thing.
A month after a truly triumphant personal appearance at the Vancouver Film Festival, Hilary died in a car accident in Mexico. Filmmaker Helen Slinger: “As Hilary went through so much to get healthy and whole, it seems desperately unfair that she didn’t have more time. But at least she was finally truly happy. Hilary found real pleasure in the making of the documentary and, as the credits rolled at the premiere screening in Vancouver, she glowed in the warmth of an absolutely thunderous standing ovation. Hilary was very brave to lay open her life in the way that she did and she was proud of the resulting film, now her legacy. More at www.whenthedevilknocks.com

THE SECOND COMING OF MARILYN DENIS

They say a change is as good as a rest — but sometimes a rest is as good as being reborn. To a certain extent, that’s the situation for Marilyn Denis, who recently returned to doing a daytime talk show after a two-year hiatus. “The Marilyn Denis Show,” airing weekdays on CTV, has arrived as a brand-new chat show — even though its host is a veteran of almost two decades of just such a show on Toronto’s Citytv: “CityLine,” which she left two years ago. The break, she says, has allowed her time to rethink, retool and refresh herself. “It was good, because I got some downtime to think about all sorts of things, both personal and professional,” she says.
She was constantly being reminded about her old life, which forced her to take stock of what it was exactly she thought a talk show should be. “Every day, there would a connection with somebody somewhere saying, ‘We miss you; we want you to come back.’ That always made me think.”
The new show relies on guest experts, many chosen through an open audition in October, which drew 800 wannabe TV personalities to CTV’s downtown Toronto headquarters, as well as another 2,500 online applicants.
People came from across the country and arrived at 5am to take their shot at advising Canadians on everything from gardening to relationships.
From the casting call, five resident experts were signed: fitness guru Brent Bishop, caterer La-toya Fagon, family therapist Ashley Howe, beauty specialist Bahar Niramwalla and landscaper Owen Reeves. In addition, the show has a stable of regular advice columnists, which include a family physician, fashion expert, financial adviser and teenage tech wizard.
As for why it took so long for the new show to be launched, Denis’
answer is simple, “The economy. I made the transition from the previous place,” she says. “And as we were gearing up and getting things discussed, the economy tanked, and we decided it wasn’t a great time to launch.”
Finally, last fall, CTV announced the return of “The Marilyn Denis Show” but quickly followed with another announcement that the show had been put on hold. This time, Denis says, it was because the new studio — a renovated space at CTV’s downtown location — wasn’t ready.
Looking at it now, it’s easy to believe that the extra time was put into attention to details. The studio, as Denis says, “Is truly beautiful. It’s beautiful hardwood floors and exposed brick — just a big open space. I was saying to somebody that if I were looking for a big penthouse condo, I’d move here.”
Over the two years that Denis was off TV, she says, CTV executives “never wavered” from their intent to put her in a new daytime show. As it turned out, Denis says, it was a good thing the show was put on hold, because her mother became very ill, and she spent a year more or less commuting home to Calgary. “I was able to travel back and forth to be with my dad and my sisters. My mom passed away a year ago July.
So in a way it was kind of a blessing, because I was able to be with my family.”
For a variety of reasons — such as Oprah Winfrey’s new network, which comes to Canada in March, and “Steven and Chris” — the landscape for daily chat shows has changed since Denis went off the air, which she says concerns her not at all. “There’s more choice, and I think that’s great,” she says. “But it’s the people being available to tell you how they feel about things, through different platforms. And that changes the landscape.
“People are telling me what they want and how they feel about things.
If I go back 20 years, that wasn’t available at all. Now people have to be heard.”

TURNING DUMPS INTO DREAMS

You don’t often see real estate shows that feature houses with mousetraps or cockroaches creeping across the carpet. But considering the cost of housing in most Canadian markets, maybe it’s time we did. “Property Brothers,” airing Tuesdays on W Network, features twin brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, who specialize in finding and renovating fixer-uppers for couples whose taste exceeds their budget.
One episode featured a Toronto teacher and his wife who are fed up with having to commute three hours a day so they can own a house large enough for them and their four kids. Their budget: $700,000 for purchase and renovation.
First, real estate agent Drew finds them the home of their dreams.
It’s huge, with one floor for the kids, one for the adults and a third for the family, and it has every imaginable amenity. And it’s 20 minutes from work.
The price tag: $1.3 million. Once they’re brought down to earth with a crash, Drew helps them look for something within their means, and this is a very sobering experience. To find something near downtown Toronto, close to work, the choices are to take out a huge mortgage or call in the exterminator and the wrecking ball. Then Jonathan the renovator steps in with plans that show the potential of the various fixer-uppers — and the budget for renovating them. The brothers’ game is teaching people to be predators when they shop for properties: Look for water damage, bugs, mildew and other things that can be fixed, patched, drained or gassed. After you drive the price down, you come up with a reno plan, do as much of the work as you can manage yourself — and go from dump to dream home.

ICONS IDOL’-IZED

Steven Tyler didn’t watch “American Idol.” He was too busy being one. Jennifer Lopez watched religiously and picked all but two winners. And Randy Jackson experienced every pitchy note and brilliant performance since it started. “Season 10 returns to Fox Wed., Jan. 19. Host Ryan Seacrest and judge Randy Jackson return with new judges Lopez and Tyler. What other show heading into its 10th season can expect top ratings? What other show has people gossiping about what will happen six months before it airs? And what other show consistently turns out new stars? Lopez explains why she became a judge. “To be in one place, with my babies and have some semblance of a normal life, even if it’s just for six months.”
“It has been so good,” says Tyler, the Aerosmith frontman. “When I met Randy, it was like we were separated at birth. He is so open and has a great sense of humor.”
“We picked the two right ones,” says Jackson, “We hit it off right away.”
People are bound to liken Tyler to Simon Cowell simply because Tyler doesn’t mince words and is funny. Tyler even takes a dig at Cowell.
“It’s not about someone being in a bad mood for singing country-western,” Tyler says, adding that the couple of snippets of “Idol” he had caught featured Cowell dismissing a singer because he didn’t like the type of song. “What kind of judge is that if someone doesn’t like the same music?” he says.
It’s not the choice of song but the singer’s abilities, the judges say. And what they say to one another, secretly, may well be the best lines.
“You do not want to hear what goes on when we’re whispering,” Tyler says. “They walk across the stage in front of us, and we say, ‘What do you want to sing?’ And then they sing, ‘To Dream the Impossible Dream.’ And I ask, ‘Did you bump your head on the way in, or did you eat a lot of paint chips as a child?’ I am being brutally honest with a 15-year-old who spent the last 10 years watching ‘Idol’ and Mom and Dad telling them they are really good.”
Lopez laughs as she talks about Tyler’s reactions to the hopefuls. “He says things that make my head spin,” Lopez says. “He is unpredictable and off the wall, but he’s really great at what he does.”
Lopez and Tyler both mention that they think about the hopefuls long after the auditions. “I was in that position many times, and my heart goes out to them,” Lopez says. “Steven and I have a compassion that Randy doesn’t because he’s the industry type.”
Still, Jackson has long worked as a musician. He knows theory and history, throwing Bartok and Beethoven and Aretha Franklin into conversation. He loves finding new talent. “Simon gives truth like a drill sergeant,” Jackson says. “I give truth like someone’s mother.”
Sometimes these acts only mothers could love.
“When a kid comes on and can’t sing, Randy starts laughing,” Tyler says. “I am a transmute. I saw it first on ‘Star Trek.’ I empathize with their feelings. Jennifer is very street, very matter of fact and to the point. It’s not about kicking their ass like Simon did.
I got more heart. I am hoping that compassion and love is the new black.”
Jackson says, “I believe we have the best talent we have had in many a year. I think someone amazing will win this year, someone completely different from the last few years.”
“We just want to find real artists, people with staying power and who will make a mark in the music world,” Lopez says. “We feel we know the combination of different traits it takes. Ultimately, the next “Idol” will “make you feel, make you think and stand up,” Lopez says. “You will cry and cheer and laugh and scream.”

COOKING FOR THIN

‘Cook Yourself Thin’ shows how to eat well, not big. Finally, a weight-control show that isn’t run by taste-deprived sadists and slave drivers.
In “Cook Yourself Thin,” Fridays on Food Network three chefs show how to replace dieting with the joy of cooking smart. Those three chefs, Harry Eastwood, Allison Fishman and Candice Kumai are all slim, sexy gals who look as if they’ve never had to shed a pound in their lives.
This is a common-sense guide on how to kill off bad eating habits and shed pounds without pain and deprivation. And what they cook looks delicious. One episode involves a woman who never had to worry about what she ate until she turned a certain age, and then the flab started to pile up. As she says, “I eat what I want, which is why I look like a linebacker.”
A typical daily diet for her consists of fried eggs and bacon on a croissant for breakfast; cheeseburger, fries and shake for lunch; a pizza for supper. The challenge? To take the 5,000 calories of this diet and turn it into the 1,400 she can eat to lose weight. The answer is healthier food: the cheeseburger with mayo becomes a turkey burger with avocado; the fries become sweet potato fries; the pizza becomes a homemade veggie pie. It all looks sensible, healthy and delicious.
The problem is it also looks really time-consuming to make your own turkey patties, pizza sauce and oven-fried sweet potatoes every day.

Next Page »