Canada’s movie critics didn’t generally like Run This Town, which uses the real-life backdrop of the Rob Ford crack scandal for a journalism parable featuring millennial actors who can play in America. This fusion of fact and fiction must’ve helped tick the boxes required for its financing, even if Telefilm Canada only furnished $1.3 million of it.
Quibi arrives for the quibbling
Bell Media leveraged all its outlets to announce a new partnership with an American mobile video platform—a concept Bell itself tried two years ago—in a tradition dating back to every abuse of the word “webisode.” But with Quibi, you get a subplot of snark over whether anyone wants another excessively funded subscription service.
“Why is the CBC strangling print media?” The latest such missive published in the Toronto Star is by Tristin Hopper, the erstwhile National Post goofball now helming a Victoria, B.C., news startup, The Capital. Hopper highlights the CBC News habit of adapting stories from other outlets without credit, which tends to annoy originators.
The legal weed boom rewinds
Canopy Growth Corporation announced its “production optimization plan,” which involves laying off 500 workers, closing two greenhouses, and a writedown of between $700 million and $800 million. The cuts come after similar measures at rival Aurora Cannabis. But maybe fortunes will improve when more folks start drinking the stuff:
Alex Trebek gave an update on his pancreatic cancer. A video via Jeopardy found its host noting how he’s beating the odds of an 18 per cent survival rate a year after being diagnosed at Stage 4. Trebek also described his periods of despair.
New landlord at the Gladstone
Two decades after the derelict 1889 Toronto building sold for $2.3 million, prior to its boutique restoration, the Gladstone Hotel has been purchased for an undisclosed few dollars more—by a development team that promises to keep its cultural legacy intact:
Total eclipse of the Toronto alternative rock station. The latest radio ratings via Numeris show that Indie 88.1 definitively pulled ahead of 102.1 the Edge, as the latter attempts a morning restoration strategy. Meanwhile, the Toronto sports station battle shows that TSN 1050 has now generally landed in the same ratings ballpark as Sportsnet Fan 590.
Finally, our socialist rock star
U.S. Girls, the pop project of Meg Remy, is receiving extensive U.S. critical coverage, which invariably notes that she’s an American artist who just moved to Toronto. A big question is whether she can still be anti-capitalist while sounding ready for fame:
