Week of May 20, 2010, Issue #761
COVER
PUBLIC ENEMY: Fear of a hack planet
Eleven years ago, Public Enemy released There's a Poison Goin' On ... online months before the CD would be in stores. Remember, this is 1999. To most people, the word "MP3" sounded more like a car model than music. Today, iTunes allows people to buy an album on their phone with credit, and own it in minutes. PE's album, one of the first by a major group sold on the Internet, required buyers to go to atomicpop.com, download a 48-megabyte file, pay $8, check their emails for a purchase code that would unlock the file and—voila!—14 brand new songs. read more...
Omar Mouallem / omar@vueweekly.com
FRONT
TAR SANDS: The dilemma of the ponds
Last week a lawyer for Syncrude, Robert White, told provincial court Judge Ken Tjosvold that Syncrude can't be legally responsible for the birds that land in its tailings ponds as preventing all birds from touching the contaminated water is impossible. If Syncrude is guilty in the case of the 1600 ducks that died in its tailings pond in April 2008, White argued, so is every other company with a tailings pond. read more...
VUEPOINT: Prevention not prisons
Samantha Power / sam@vueweekly.com
NEWS ROUNDUP: Elections funding
Mimi Williams / mimi@vueweekly.com
NEWS ROUNDUP: Ducks in the tar mine
Samantha Power / sam@vueweekly.com
INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND: Cancer alley
Citizens call attention to tar sands impacts north of the city - Mike Angus / mikeangus@vueweekly.com
Faith in privatization creates bigger provincial debts - Ricardo Acuña / ualberta.ca/parkland
Who leads and who pays for Canada's developing digital strategy - Michael Geist / mgeist@vueweekly.com
Euro suffers influx of difficult economies - Gwynne Dyer / gwynne@vueweekly.com
DISH
PARKALLEN RESTAURANT: The more things change ...
Parkallen Restaurant has been around for over 25 years, in one form or another. It started out as a simple pizza place, Parkallen Pizza & Donair, and over time evolved into a full-scale restaurant, offering what some say is the best Lebanese cuisine that our very un-Mediterranean city has to offer. But early this year, owner Joseph Rustom embarked on yet another transformation, and for almost three long months there was no pizza tossing or kabob-grilling happening in that once-busy kitchen. It did see power tools galore, though. read more...
DANILO'S ITALIAN CAFÉ: Authenticity
Pizza brought back to its roots - LS Vors / vors@vueweekly.com
VENI, VIDI, VINO: Silver lining
A weak Euro means great things for wine lovers this summer - Mike Angus / mikeangus@vueweekly.com
ARTS
GARAGE ALEC: Communication breakdown
Sure, we live in a bilingual country. But having a general population that actually speaks both English and French seems truer in Central Canada. Less so out west: get far enough away from Quebec and French seems less of an official language and more just a school course that became optional after junior high. read more...
MOURNING DOVE: The biggest question
Mourning Dove even-handedly questions the unthinkable - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN: Divine discombobulation
BFA cast add charm to Good Woman of Setzuan - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
KNOWLEDGE BOX: Uncertain knowledge
Knowledge Box's stretched sounds go beyond recognition to inspire dance - Fawnda Mithrush / fawnda@vueweekly.com
CRADLE TO STAGE: Finding their feet
The Walterdale presents a mini-fesitval of new works - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
SPRINGBOARDS: Keeping it local
Developing scripts find their first audiences at Springboards - Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com
Henry Rollins returns to the road - Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com
Nightmare Alley offers strange visions of human folly - Josef Braun / hopscotch@vueweekly.com
FILM
ZOOEY AND ADAM: Trauma in the shadow of a trauma
Zooey and Adam opens with its titular couple enveloped in joyous, married, procreative sex. They're trying to conceive, and having a great time of it. Nothing could seem more buoyant, less ominous. But a copy of John Krakauer's Into the Wild near their bed constitutes a subliminal harbinger of things to come. The pair go camping near a lake famed for the meteor said to lay at its bottom, and like a meteor striking the earth their idyll will be interrupted by a seemingly random collision with violence. The desired pregnancy manifests, but is it the result of their coupling or of sexual assault? Does it matter? The question upsets the harmony of their bond, and the lingering ambiguity surrounding their child's paternity becomes an entropic catalyst. read more...
SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION: Just push play
Rerecorded protest songs don't capture the revolutionay spirits of the originals - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
Little means a lot: Little means a lot Though particular, Tokyo Sonata has something to say to all of us - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
The Missing Person manages to transcend the noir genre - Josef Braun / josef@vueweekly.com
Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com
Josef Braun / josef@vueweekly.com
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
Brian Gibson brian@vueweekly.com
MUSIC
THE SADIES: Good to great
'Forgive me for rambling, but I'm still kind of excited because the record isn't quite out yet and people are already responding really positively to it," the Sadies' Dallas Good enthuses over the phone. "I'm just happy to talk about it." read more...
Rock bands should tackle the classics more often - Steven Sandor / steven@vueweekly.com
BRONZE LEAF AND JOM COMYN: The sound of history
Music and hors d'ouevres at Rutherford House - David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
CHRISTINA MARIA: Down the Straight Line
Christina Maria's latest a work filled with challenge - Heather Skinner / skinner@vueweekly.com
Desiderata goes placidly amidst the noise and haste - Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com
On the record: ELIZABETH SHEPHERD
Elizabeth Shepherd's Heavy Falls the Night - Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com
VUE Staff
The Classical Score: The Sounds of Movies
ESO plays silver screen classics - Maria Kotovych / classical@vueweekly.com
jprocktor / jprocktor.com & Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com
ALBUM REVIEWS
New Sounds: The Rolling Stones
There's not a lot of point in arguing the merits of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St: nearly 40 years after its debut, the double album has gained a legion of fans, its dirty, rough-and-tumble rock 'n' roll standing the test of time to the point that it's finally seeing a re-release, remastered and with a bonus disc of unearthed tracks from the same period ... sort of. read more...
Lewis Kelly / lewis@vueweekly.com
David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com
David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com
New Sounds: Prince & the Revolution
David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
Whitey Houston / quickspins@vueweekly.com