Toronto: In the Media and Pop Culture

[rick1016]

Born and raised in Toronto. 100,000 is actually a pretty small number. That's even a fraction of the viewers the local news in Toronto alone gets.

EDIT: Speaking of which, do you have a link to verify the ratings?

[Taller, Better]

To me it seems obvious that in a country where our head of state is the same Queen as the one in Great Britain, that the ties to that country would be greater than those in a republic who severed ties with Britain in 1776 with a revolution. In the same way, ties between Australia where you are, and Britain are closer than those of the USA and Britain. Or, the ties to France are stronger in Quebec than they are in New Orleans.

By the way, the CBC doesn't consider it a small audience. That is why they moved it to prime time evening slots during the week, with the omnibus selection remaining on Sunday mornings.

[rick1016]

Your right. Our head of state is the Queen. But Canada has stronger "Social" links with the US than it does with Britain. Most Canadians can identify with the Americans more than they can with British. Which is one of the primary reasons why American television programs have much higher viewer ship than British programs, much like Coronation street. (For the record, I don't have any Canadian friends that watch British shows, but then again, I haven't asked them...maybe I will?)

I don't have a hard time believing CBC does consider 100,000 to be a pretty high audience share...it's the CBC, their ratings aren't too spectacular outside of HNIC and other sporting events. (Speaking of which, are you going to show me the link or what?)

[Taller, Better]

Who said Canada has stronger social ties to Britain than to the US? That is not what I was saying at all. Of course our social links to our neighbour to the south are stronger. I said our social links to Britain are stronger than the USA's social links to Britain.
I have no link... the figures have been high for CBC for Coronation Street since the day they began back around 1965. I heard the figure 100,000 a few years back and then CBC made the decision to bump it to prime time from 3 in the afternoon.

[rick1016]

Originally Posted by Taller, Better

Who said Canada has stronger social ties to Britain than to the US? That is not what I was saying at all. Of course our social links to our neighbour to the south are stronger. I said our social links to Britain are stronger than the USA's social links to Britain.

Right. We can agree on something.

Originally Posted by Taller, Better

I have no link... the figures have been high for CBC for Coronation Street since the day they began back around 1965. I heard the figure 100,000 a few years back and then CBC made the decision to bump it to prime time from 3 in the afternoon.

Well it's all relative I guess. This whole argument started when Urban 2.0 said that Americans can't seem to watch foreign shows. I'm simply trying to get the point across that Canadians aren't that different. And even then, foreign shows are available to US and Canadian viewers, the number of people watching is just usually significantly lower.

Down here where I am right now, Australian TV networks produce quite a bit of local homegrown content and it does quite well (Quite often probably even better than US programming). It's not a good thing that Canadians don't see a lot of homegrown programming, it's just the way it is up there.

[Taller, Better]

Isolated markets like Australia are always going to rely more heavily on their own product (and remember that traditionally Australia has been one of the most isolated countries in the world due to its geography).. the same holds true to a certain degree in Quebec where there is a culture that is relatively isolated within a larger majority of English speaking people. You will very rarely see subtitles on outside English language shows brought into Quebec.. almost always they are dubbed, because people are naturally more comfortable hearing their own dialect. Quebecers watch lots of dubbed shows from elsewhere. Canadian and northern American dialects are very similar, and people here are quite comfortable with that. There is a surprising amount of Canadian content on television, and sometimes people watching don't even know it is Canadian. We have to support that kind of programming so that there will be more of it! Australians do watch a lot of American and British shows too, and really this is not a bad thing to be exposed to the outside world. None of us lives in a vacuum in 2008; we have to see what is happening in the rest of the world.

as an aside, I remember with pleasure the Golden Age of Australian film back in the early 80's, we and the rest of the world enjoyed the wave of films coming from Down Under.

[Taller, Better]

Originally Posted by elliot

Don't forget that one of the biggest feature films of the year is about to open, "The Love Guru", which is basically a hilarious Mike Myers love letter to Toronto (or more specially/painfully... to the Toronto Maple "leaves").

How right you are! This is definitely a film that my friend habsfanman from Montreal will not be going to see! No doubt when the Post reviews it, no mention will be made of the fact it was filmed in Ontario, to make it easier to use the same review for the Gazette.
From the Globe and Mail. Link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...rtainment/home


Steeped in Bollywood, flavoured with maple syrup

BOB STRAUSS

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

June 14, 2008 at 1:25 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES — In The Love Guru, he plays an American guy who was brought up in India and is trying to make it big in Hollywood. But if Mike Myers wasn't Canadian through and through, the madcap multiculti comedy might never have occurred to him.

The seeds were planted when he was still a kid, devouring everything local television had to offer.

“As long as I can remember, as long as there was cable, there have been Bollywood movies on Toronto TV,” says the native of the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. “They were on Channel 47 at two o'clock in the morning. I'm an insomniac and I have been since the age of, like, 11. I can't remember his last name, but Rakesh would come on and it would be Indian Cinema Night and he would say things like, ‘Still awake? This next adventure . . .' and I would watch it and go, wow. This is just a tapestry.

“I thought it was so amazing that I lived in a country that views itself not as a melting pot, but as a salad bowl,” Myers, 45, adds. “A country that has a ministry of multiculturalism and they have a multicultural channel and at two o'clock in the morning I got to see Indian movies.”
Mike Myers shakes hands with Sidney Crosby after Myers dropped the puck before a Leafs game against the Pittsburgh Penguins last year.

Mike Myers shakes hands with Sidney Crosby after Myers dropped the puck before a Leafs game against the Pittsburgh Penguins last year. (Getty Images)
The Globe and Mail

The Bollywood influence is, naturally, all over the new movie (which opens next Friday) – Myers's Guru Pitka aspires to be the next Deepak Chopra, and it's got dance numbers that come out of nowhere, elephants, weird scenes inside the ashram, you name it.

The primary inspiration, however, came from Myers's Liverpudlian father, Eric, who instilled a love of British humour that propelled Mike directly from high school to Second City, then on to Saturday Night Live and movie superstardom as Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers and Shrek. It was the elder Myers's death 17 years ago that got his son thinking about the meaning of it all, checking out Indian philosophy and finally coming up with the wacky Pitka.

“My friends would ask, ‘What are you reading?' and I would say, ‘This wonderful thing called The Only Way Out Is In,' Myers says in a mellifluous, South Asian accent. “This voice started happening and I went, ‘Huh. What?' Then friends would call me up and say, ‘I'm feeling depressed. Talk to me in the voice.' I'd tell them, ‘You're a beautiful creature. The universe loves you.' ”

However cosmopolitan its origins may be, make no mistake; The Love Guru is the most Canadian movie Myers has ever made, even if it does co-star Jessica Alba as the owner of the Maple Leafs and Justin Timberlake as a goalie from Quebec.

The film was shot entirely in Ontario (even the India sequences); remarkably, for a guy who has a street named after him in Scarborough, he's never done that before.

“I shot half of 54 in Toronto, but otherwise this is the first time,” says Myers, who resides in New York now. “It was awesome. I got to skate at the Air Canada Centre. But I worked the whole time, so it's one of those ironies. I found myself in a room either performing or rewriting, as you do, when you make movies like I do. I actually didn't get out much. I went to some restaurants and at the one Leafs game I went to, I dropped the puck, which was a huge honour.

“But things are always bittersweet for me, only because I wish my father could see it,” adds the comic actor, who invokes his dad's memory so often it's as if the man just passed. “So that was a sad night for me. Happy to do it, honoured to do it, but this is the sort of stuff that would have delighted my father. This often happens in my career. When great things happen, there's a little bittersweetness about it. But I'm very grateful and happy for how great it's turned out.”

Torontonians may share in that happiness, if only because – and if you don't want the predictable climax of a hockey comedy spoiled, stop reading here – Myers now has the clout to make every Leafs fan's 40-year-long wish come true.

Sort of.

“The Stanley Cup is in the film,” he says proudly (yes, it's the real thing; The Love Guru was made with the National Hockey League's full co-operation). “I wouldn't touch the Stanley Cup until . . . I barely could look at it! But when the Leafs actually win the Stanley Cup, one of my fantasies would be to hoist it over my head and join the celebration on Yonge Street.”

Even though Myers takes his sweet time between film projects he can obviously do almost anything he wants to. As with so many things, the comic cash-magnet expresses an almost childlike, yet convincing, air of wonder about how far he's come from . . . well, not exactly nowhere, but Scarborough.

“I had no idea it would turn out so great when I was in Toronto wishing that I could do this stuff,” Myers recalls. “I saw Saturday Night Live when I was 11. Gilda Radner had played my mother in a TV commercial two years earlier, and there she was. Fourteen years later, Saturday Night Live was still there and I got a chance to be on it. It's just been a series of these miracles.”

Life isn't perfect, though; a lesson Myers learned from playing Guru Pitka.

“I do go up to visit my mom and my brother,” he says, “and I try to see as many games as possible when I'm there. It was another one of those ironies, though; I was only able to see one game this year because I was busy making a movie about the Toronto Maple Leafs!

“But I love the atmosphere. If you're Canadian, there's just something about going to a hockey game in Canada. It's beautiful.”

Special to The Globe and Mail

[York Transit]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B478uVARKQg
Here's a CBS Promo for Flashpoint

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Seg6SkOrIQo
And a bit of The Listener

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by leaf345

Actually, I found the name. Its called ReGenesis. Apparently its been on The Movie Network for a while now, but they began syndication just last year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReGenesis

I just downloaded and watched the entire series, and I must say it was pretty damn good - even by the standards of big bucks US/international productions. It has a certain polish and dazzle to it that I've never really seen in a Canadian show before. And having it set in Toronto felt totally natural and comfortable to me. But of course, there was a fair amount of American and international content in it so it wasn't as totally Canadian as many US shows are totally American.

As far as how Toronto is portrayed, they didn't do a great job with the skyline shots, but there were a lot of great street level, hustle/bustle shots tha made up for it. I'm really looking forward to the new shows.

[Gil]

So did anyone see the pilot/premiere of CTV/CBS' Flashpoint? I'm not all that into police dramas but I watched it anyway just to see what it was like. On first impression its all so familiar, but there's something a bit off. They've changed the name of Commerce Court, the police badges have been changed as well. I guess to protect the originals in both instances, but the actual Toronto Police logo is seen once or twice. Funny how they take artistic license in the route from the airport to downtown!

Anyway, it seemed OK, definitely enough adrenaline going through the scenes. After seeing it and figuring out the whole reason for the Security Response Unit (basically an Americanized ETF) I wonder how many different scenarios can they come up with? In the end, will this wind up portraying Toronto as a place where things like this happen on a weekly basis? Personally, it's still too early for me to make a call on this show.

[isaidso]

I've said it once, but it's worth repeating. There's never been a talent deficiency. Canadian talent in this industry has simply made US television and film in the USA. It's great to see the tide turning.

Flashpoint looks promising. The quality of Canadian programming is definitely much better than it has ever been. I doubt we'll ever go back to the days where ALL of our best worked in a foreign country.

[DENTROBATE54]

The premiere's main plot was literally ripped from the headlines. About two years ago a man shot his wife and took another woman hostage in the CBD, with snipers eventually taking him out. The only diff, this show substituted the blacks involved with Croats. There also wasn't a crazy running out into the line of fire !!

It seems promising though. If it's anything like Regenesis, Da Vinci's Inquest or Blue Murder it'll showcase the city and Canadian way-of-life well, whilst providing high octane drama.

[isaidso]

Based on the clips I've seen, this drama promises to be slicker and exciting than those other drama's you've mentioned. Da Vinci's Inquest is ok, but is too dark and grim. People want to be engaged and entertained, they don't want to have to call a shrink after watching one episode.

[vid]

Teletubbies is engaging and entertaining...

Just saying is all!

[Filip]

I found it awful... Sorry, but this isn't gonna fly longer than one or two seasons at most...

[Taller, Better]

Can a person view the episode on the internet? I'm curious now as to what it is like.

[b13]

it will be on sunday night at 10 again!

[Grey Towers]

I found it slickly made but incredibly pedestrian. Hard to differentiate from many like-plotted American shows. Photogenic people, flashy, cold directorial technique, and dialogue no one in real life would ever use.

[Filip]

It was a very cold, lifeless, emotionless show... I just can't explain it, but it felt wrong to me... I saw no reason to watch it again (while the CBC production, The Border, kept me hooked). I also read that in the entire show it will never be explicitly said that it's in Toronto, which is why I think this show doesn't really deserve any Toronto area viewers, watching it just because it's 'home'.

[Jaye101]

It's like Toronto is a bad word. In the Disney show Life With Derek, they'll say "let's go to a leafs game," or "I can't believe we moved from our condo in Downtown Toronto." But they will never say they live in Toronto. There's also another show, Naturally, Sadie, which is tapped in Riverdale and set in WHITBY!