CHUM Ltd. and Alliance Atlantis are pulling advertising for the controversial movie Karla, based on the crimes of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo.
The networks said the 30-second television ads, which had been running since Jan. 10, would be inappropriate for their channels.
CHUM owns 33 radio stations, 12 local TV stations and 21 specialty channels including MuchMusic and Bravo! Alliance Atlantis has 13 specialty channels including the Life Network and Showcase. Officials from the networks have not indicated whether they were under pressure or received complaints.
"We're surprised about the boycott of the ads and we don't agree with that," said Sylvain Gagne, vice-president of Christal Films in Montreal, which is distributing the movie in Canada.
Gagne said his company was planning to buy air time for about 500 commercials in Ontario, only to be shown after 9 p.m.
Gagne told The Globe and Mail that the TV spots were "soft" and "well-intended."
Karla is set to debut Jan. 20 and will be shown in 100 theatres across the country, except in St. Catharines, Ont., where the crimes were committed. Karla Homolka is played by Laura Prepon from the TV series That '70s Show.
Homolka and her husband Paul Bernardo were convicted in the sex slayings of teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in the early 1990s. Bernardo is serving a life sentence while Homolka completed her 12-year sentence in July.
The Ontario Film Review Board recently gave the movie an 18A rating, which means anyone under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
As I said in a previous post on the subject of this movie, I may not agree with censorship but, the subject matter of this movie has left this country with too deep of a wound to allow this movie to be a comfort to anyone. I applaud CHUM Ltd. and Alliance Atlantis decision.
Actress Shelley Winters dies
Actress Shelley Winters has died of heart failure at the age of 85, according to her publicist in California.
Shelley Winters poses with her Oscar backstage at the Academy Awards, April 4, 1960. Winters won best supporting actress for her role in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' (AP Photo)
Dale Olson said Winters died early Saturday in Beverly Hills. She had been hospitalized in October after a heart attack.
An outspoken star who went from a young blond bombshell to acclaimed dramatic actress, Winters captured supporting actress Academy Awards for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965). She donated her 1959 Oscar to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.
A history of literary hoaxes
Earlier this week, news broke of two literary fakeries. On Sunday, an exhaustive exposé on the Smoking Gun website alleged that bad-boy writer James Frey exaggerated and fabricated details in his best-selling addiction-and-redemption memoir — and current Oprah Book Club pick – A Million Little Pieces. It seems Frey’s violent and drug-addled youth — which the book at once embraces with a macho swagger and denounces with pious contrition — might not have been as harrowing or eventful as written.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that HIV-positive, androgynous author JT Leroy was himself a fictional creation. It appears 25-year-old Leroy’s “autobiographical” fiction about his life as a truck-stop hustler and homeless drug addict is actually the work of Laura Albert, the 40-year-old woman Leroy claims rescued him from the street. Meanwhile, Albert’s sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop, has been exposed as the mysterious figure in wigs and sunglasses that makes public appearances as Leroy, who along the way has befriended celebrities like Courtney Love, Billy Corgan and writer Mary Gaitskill.
Writers with a hard-luck memoir in the works may want to wait until the dust settles before approaching a publisher. With both of these swindles, industry insiders have spent the week alternately claiming they “suspected all along” that something was up and nervously defending their fact-checking processes. As for the rest of us, we can sit back and relish the juicy details of the latest incidents in the long, illustrious history of literary hoaxes.
Lampooning the Group of Seven
The Group of Seven is the epitome of established art, the oil-on-canvas equivalent of O Canada. It’s this air of respectability that Winnipeg’s Plug In ICA can’t resist. The gallery has rounded up works by 75 artists from across Canada for Fabulous Fakes With a Twist, an acerbic homage to the G7.The exhibition is a telling 21st-century comment on Canadian identity; the artists mess with the Group’s nature/culture divide, subvert its rugged, manly virtues with feminist comment and give some multicultural dimensions to its predominantly beef-eating British-Canadian outlook.
The works include, Early Snow with Bob and Doug, by Diana Thorneycroft
Diana Thorneycroft celebrates a more recent incarnation of Canadian nationalism in this intricate little photo work, which features SCTV’s McKenzie brothers splitting a two-four against a backdrop of wintry Group of Seven poplars and pines, oblivious to the circling wolves. (Thanks to the Group’s efforts in the cause of populist art education, even your average hoser can appreciate its works, eh?)
And, Jack Pine with Approaching Sasquatch, Steve Gouthro
Several of the show’s artists try to slip humans — or, in this case, humanoids — into the Group’s famously depopulated wilderness. Here, Steve Gouthro gives a tabloid spin to Tom Thomson’s iconic jack pine. The Winnipeg painter claims to have found the painting preserved in a peat bog near Canoe Lake, and suggests that it offers “an alternative explanation to the sudden demise of Canada’s greatest painter, Tom Thomson.”
Later,
Kenaz
