Cate Blanchett’s red carpet is a webcam
Premiering halfway back to reality
The future of movie premieres might’ve been glimpsed at the one for Nightmare Alley, where Guillermo del Toro’s primary shooting location of Toronto was looped in with New York and Los Angeles, plus star Cate Blanchett hugely Zooming in from the U.K. The neo-noir 1947 remake sounds likeable enough to make the Oscars popular again.
A very Meta face-to-face
The Logic’s interview with the head of Canadian public policy for Meta reveals what he thinks of news media coverage of the company: Kevin Chan was a Liberal adviser before becoming the guy who talked to Ottawa about Facebook. Years of wrangling about social media compensating content is expected to pay off for publishers soon.
Looking at the lobbyists who double as talking heads on Canadian TV. Jacobin and Richochet journalists teamed up to catalogue six spring weeks of shows on CBC, CTV and Global. The professional interests of panelists described as “strategists” were typically undisclosed, although CBC’s ombudsman has advised more disclosure.
Pretendian story goes global
It’s been a over a month since CBC News exposed Indigenous health expert Carrie Bourassa for falsifying her identity, something she tried to spin her way out of while the University of Saskatchewan put her on leave. The investigation is the subject of increasingly international curiosity, as she’s become a main character for the tabloids:
“Management believes that in the absence of restructuring its debt and raising fresh capital, the Company does not have a sustainable future.” That line appears in financial results from Media Central, which acquired Toronto’s Now Magazine and Vancouver’s Georgia Straight in the months before the pandemic hit.
Finally, the steaks are raised
Jordan Peterson revived his stage act for a couple dates in the U.K., where he also flew to make up for a previously rescinded stint as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. It evidently went well enough for him to commit to spending much of 2022 touring the globe, albeit with a physicality that seems less furious than five years ago: