Friday, March 5, 2021

"(Shonda) Rhimes has her reasons"/ "Self-study courses aren't suitable for everyone"

 In honor of Mar. 8 being International Women's Day, I'm posting this article that profiles a female TV writer and producer:



Apr. 26, 2017 "Rhimes has her reasons": Today I found this article by Lynn Elber in the Edmonton Journal:



Shonda Rhimes, the TV mastermind whose hits include Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, keeps a lid on plot twists.

But she’s giving aspiring screenwriters a behind-the-scenes look at how to succeed in her craft.

In six hours of online classes, Rhimes offers lessons on writing scripts, pitching pilots, and how series’ writers work together to create stories and screenplays. Scripts from Scandal and the “story bible” that laid out the characters and structure of Grey’s Anatomy are part of her masterclass.com course. So why spill?

“I love the idea that for $90, somebody who couldn’t afford to go to film school would get to take this class,” Rhimes said. “No matter where you are, what you were doing, where you were in life, you could stop for a little bit of time and take this class and get this education.”


“It felt like an equalizer to me, and that was great,” she said of the project from San Francisco-based company Master Class, adding, “I’m also the child of professors, so it seems to be the way to go: You teach things.”

The so-called second golden age of television with its expanded number of outlets, including streaming platforms, has created new but not unlimited opportunities. Breaking into the competitive field requires creative thinking on and off the page, Rhimes suggested.

She went the “film school route,” she said, but there are other ways to get started.

“I would suggest getting a job as a PA (production assistant), anywhere, because it is a way in and lot of this is about knowing people,” Rhimes said. 

Entering — and winning — the many available writing contests is another path, she said.

Keep in mind the advantage of writing over other entertainment industry occupations, Rhimes said.

“For young TV writers trying to get in, writing is the only job you can do in this business when no one is hiring you to do it,” she said. “You can sit at your computer or your legal pad and write a script ... and have a calling card.”

And there are jobs to be had, she assures the hopeful. That includes I love the idea that for $90, somebody who couldn’t afford to go to film school would get to take this class.” 

Shonda Rhimes at Shondaland, her production company that also is behind How to Get Away with Murder.

“We’re always looking for people not from here (the industry), because they have new and fresh voices,” Rhimes said.

Grey’s fades to black

With the season 13 finale of Grey’s Anatomy hurtling toward its May 18 airdate, hints about what to expect on the ABC/CTV medical drama are leaking out like mysterious fluids in an IV bag.

“There’s actually two events going on at the same time that are pretty big that affect the entire hospital community,” executive producer Debbie Allen told TVLine, teasing that many relationships will be affected.

“You should be worried. There’s cause for worry. There’s an amazing cliffhanger that will have everybody thinking, ‘Wow, where is this going?!’ ”

Descendants sequel pushed

The Disney Channel is giving a big push to its sequel for the Descendants movie in July, premiering it simultaneously on five television networks and online.

Disney said Tuesday Descendants 2 will air July 21 on ABC, the Disney Channel, Lifetime, Freeform and Disney XD, as well as on those networks’ apps. The original Descendants, about the teenage sons and daughters of some famed Disney villains, ranked as the fifth most-watched cable TV movie when it came out two years ago.

Disney executive Gary Marsh said the passion for the movie is unlike anything they’ve seen since High School Musical. It has inspired spin-off books, a music video and other merchandise.

The movie stars Dove Cameron, Cameron Boyce, Mitchell Hope, Sofia Carson, Booboo Stewart and Mitchell Hope.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-london-free-press/20170426/281878708263299

Oct. 30, 2017: Today I saw this ad for Samuel L. Jackson teaches acting.  Then I found this.  Then I see that I already did read about Shonda Rhimes teaching writing for TV.


https://www.masterclass.com/classes/shonda-rhimes-teaches-writing-for-television

Dec. 29, 2019 My opinion: I'm rereading this article.  I have seen a few eps of Grey's Anatomy when it came out and stopped because I wasn't really into medical dramas.  I saw the How to Get Away with Murder pilot and thought it was average, and never watched it again.

It's good that anyone who is interested in screenwriting can take that class.  There are lots of online classes about writing too.  

I learned Professional Communication and graduated with a 2 yr diploma at MacEwan University.  When I started pitching my script from 2008-2012 to TV production companies (TV producers, writers, and readers) and Writer's in Residences at the Edmonton Public Library, I got a lot of feedback.

I was actively watching TV and writing and learning.  When I got feedback on my scripts and writing, I learned a lot more.


Oct. 24, 2019 "Self-study courses aren't suitable for everyone": Today I found this article by Uzma Jalaluddin in the Star Metro:


I was generously gifted a year’s subscription to the popular Masterclass online virtual classes, and my initial excitement has turned wildly mixed.

If you are in the market for online self-study, Masterclass is impressive. Want to learn basketball from Steph Curry? How about cooking from Wolfgang Puck, or photography from Annie Leibovitz? I felt a definite thrill viewing the Masterclass rock star lineup of writers: Malcolm Gladwell, Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman, among others. 

My husband, who has a lifelong passion for film scores, was excited when I told him that even Hans Zimmer did a Masterclass.

But the actual experience of taking a Masterclass course has, so far, been disappointing  should be planned out and taught, how to do this concisely, and with better visual aids.

Yet despite allowing for this shortcoming, every time I hit “play” on a lesson, my mind began to wander.

I could blame social media and smartphones for my lack of concentration, but I am capable of deeply immersive work. Case in point: I routinely mark class sets of essays. Written by teenagers. I’ve also written a novel, or three.

So far, watching experts I admire talk about things they are brilliant at hasn’t been very enlightening, and I think I know why: It is very difficult for people to talk about how they achieved their expertise.

Sure, they have a story to tell. Yes, they can point to habits they’ve picked up, and impart impressive anecdotes. 

But it is quite difficult to reverse engineer your own success, beyond the unhelpful but-true advice of: work hard, accept critiques, fail.


Long time, and sometimes it doesn’t come naturally to me, either. a complicated top take has the nitrogen cycle, to write an Academy Award winning movie, and it down into a “how-to”  is not easy. If it were,  my students would perfect on my tests, and one would win an Oscar. Popular TED talks attempt part 15-minute wisdom ll.

Known Crashcourse series of Youtube videos, in my classroom. In my experience, they are effective introductions to certain concepts, but their effectiveness lags after repeated views.

 At the start of the semester, when I trot out a short video clip, my class is usually appreciative of the break from a lesson. By the 10th clip, they are bored and barely paying attention.

Attention span is a tricky thing. Humans are easily entertained, and just as easily
distracted. 

Even while writing this column, I confess I stopped to check my text messages, read a thread on twitter and watch another Masterclass video, before returning to this sentence, and sentiment. Now, where was I?

In classrooms, teachers are encouraged to use an arsenal of strategies to engage different types of learners, who are broadly categorized as visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, reading/writing.   Most people are some combination of all four.

My inability to concentrate on videos might be because I am largely a reading/writing learner, with some auditory thrown in. Or it might be because the nature of self-education — pretaped, spoken to an audience of perhaps millions — is too generic to land with any force.

It is difficult to get around the fact that classrooms, with an effective and engaged live facilitator, remain the best way to learn, particularly for formative concepts. 

Which, on a side note, makes the Ontario Ford government’s insistence that every student earn four high school credits via online courses even more mystifying.

While self-directed online classes might be enough to, say, help gain a surface understanding of cognitive dissonance theory (the last video I watched in its entirety), it certainly isn’t enough to gain any level of mastery over craft or art.

Here’s the bottom line: self-education services such as Masterclass, TED talks, or Crashcourse can be useful and inspiring, so long as you keep them in the “infotainment” portion of your personal learning curve.

Authentic, immersive education, on the other hand, requires the type of self-sacrifice, hands-on training, and persistent effort that simply can’t be found at the push of a button.


Mar. 15, 2020 Work from home job: The above is about online classes.

When I was going into a work from home job, there is an online training class that needs to be taken, and then you have to pass the test.  After you pass, then you can start working.



This week's theme is about women in the entertainment industry:

"The feminine mystique of Underworld and Resident Evil"/ "Dear Angelica moves viewers to tears"



"Lilly Tube" (Lilly Singh)




My week: 

Feb. 27, 2021  "Muslim woman targeted in racist attack says call to Edmonton police left her doubly traumatized": Today I found this article on Yahoo.  Here are some excerpts:

A Black Muslim woman who was threatened and subjected to racial slurs at a south Edmonton LRT station says she has been doubly traumatized — by her assailant and city police.

The woman, a student in her 20s who wears a hijab, says she remains terrified after the racially-motivated attack earlier this month.

She said a member of the Edmonton Police Service discouraged her from filing an official report on the attack, a rejection she feels was motivated by her race and religion.

"I'm dealing with two sets of trauma," the woman said Thursday in an interview with CBC News. "I'm dealing with the trauma of the attack and I'm dealing with the trauma of that EPS officer that day that I called, that kindly rejected me."

Due to the woman's concerns for her safety, CBC News has agreed to keep her identity confidential and will only identify her as M.W.

She was waiting for a bus at the Century Park LRT Station on the morning of Feb. 17 when she was approached by a stranger who was flailing his arms. He made a fist and swore at her, threatening to physically assault and kill her, she said.

"I've never, ever seen that type of violence. I was scared for my life," she said. "I had nowhere to run to. I couldn't run away from this person. I couldn't move."

The EPS Hate Crimes and Extremism Unit is investigating. An EPS spokesperson said city police have repeatedly condemned violent racism and are investigating the possible "customer service issues."

Two hours after the assault — upset, confused and seeking advice — she called the non-emergency EPS line.

She said an officer told her there would be "no point" in filing a report and, as the conversation came to an end, laughed at her.

"He told me in that phone call that I should be satisfied with what the peace officers did. And he didn't want to help me.

"I am just trying to do the right thing and be of the service to the city and report it. You know, that's what we're supposed to do if we can do it. And he laughed at me."

The woman said peace offers at the LRT station told her police would likely investigate her attack as harassment.

She wanted to put her account of the incident on record.

"He did not allow me to file a report," she said of the EPS member she spoke to on the complaint line. "He discouraged me.

"I told him that I wasn't satisfied with just the harassment charge that the peace officers could file," she said. "I told him it was more than harassment. Threats were uttered to me. My safety was put in jeopardy. And that's not OK."

The woman said she finally received the support she needed after emailing her city councillor's ward office.

The mayor's office then put her in touch with an EPS official who helped her file a report on Feb. 19. She has since been in contact with investigators and feels her case is being taken seriously.

"I do have compassion for my attacker, but I still want to stand up for myself and I want to stand up for the other women that have gone through this."

Muslim woman targeted in racist attack says call to Edmonton police left her doubly traumatized (yahoo.com)

My opinion: Yeah, well at least the woman got help and filed a report even though it was a little bit later.

"2 Vancouver police officers caught on video posing with dead man on Third Beach": If you think the above news story was a bad example of policing, then here's another:

Two Vancouver police officers who were videoed posing in front of and taking photos of a dead man lying on Third Beach in Stanley Park are now facing a Police Act investigation.

Const. Tania Visintin, media relations officer for the Vancouver Police Department, said the video has been sent to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) and that the status of the officers is also under review.

"I can tell you that the VPD does not condone and strictly prohibits officers taking photographs without an authorized purpose," she said. 

Visintin said the man's death is not suspicious and that the officers were assigned to secure the site until the coroner arrived.

Videographer Zachary Ratcliffe came upon the scene while walking toward Third Beach around 10 a.m. PT Wednesday.

"I heard some laughing and looked over and saw some police officers on the rocks ... and the body," he said. "I recorded ... the police officers looking at photos and kind of laughing and posing and continuing to show each other photos.

"I can't really explain why these officers were doing this, but to see them laughing and clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation, and not providing the dignity and respect a deceased person would deserve, it struck me as an insensitive act," said Ratcliffe.

2 Vancouver police officers caught on video posing with dead man on Third Beach | CBC News

Here's the videos:

Vancouver man films police posing for photos with dead body on beach (citynews1130.com)

Conduct of VPD members under investigation after actions caught on camera by bystander | Watch News Videos Online (globalnews.ca)

My opinion: Now, wait just a minute.  I would have to see the photo taken.  Was the cop standing in front of the ocean and the dead body is not in the photo at all?

However, I guess that would seem unprofessional that they're taking pictures of themselves at the beach while guarding a body.

I don't have a problem with the police in general: If you're in real and present danger, then call them.  If you want to report a crime, then call them.

"Gorilla loses appetite, lions develop cough after catching COVID-19 at Prague Zoo":


PRAGUE (Reuters) - A gorilla and two lions have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Prague Zoo, which is closed amid lockdown restrictions in the country.

"Lions Jamvan and Suchi and male gorilla Richard tested positive today. Their symptoms have been mild so far. The lions have a cold and cough. Richard is tired and lost his appetite," Director Miroslav Bobek said on his Facebook account.

The animals were mostly likely infected by staff and other animals will be tested, Bobek said. Prague Zoo was in touch with other zoos that have seen COVID-19 cases.

In January, a troop of gorillas at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park suffered from an outbreak of COVID-19 that sickened several of the group's eight members.

The Czech Republic has faced a renewed surge in COVID-19 cases that has pushed its infection rate among the highest in the world on a per capita basis. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Gorilla loses appetite, lions develop cough after catching COVID-19 at Prague Zoo (yahoo.com)


Feb. 22, 2021 "Woman loses $340K in wire transfer scam — alleges 4 banks did little to stop it": Today I found this article by Erica Johnson on CBC news.  Here are some excerpts.  I will post the whole article and write more later:

Vivien Zheng says she will never forget the phone call that led to losing her family's entire life savings — $340,000.

Vivien Zheng says she will never forget the phone call that led to losing her family's entire life savings — $340,000.

"I had suicidal plans," she confided, explaining that the May 2018 crime affected her so badly she is only now able to speak publicly about it.

It's a crime, Zheng argues, that could have been prevented if the banks had better systems in place to protect customers — and financial fraud expert Vanessa Iafolla agrees.

"They're [banks] the last line of defence," said Iafolla, an assistant professor of criminology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. "A secondary check … would go a long way to protecting people."

The supposed consulate employee told Zheng she was transferring the call to a Hong Kong police investigator, who was also in on the scam and accused her of selling her bank account information to criminals.

The "investigator" told Zheng she would be arrested, sent to Hong Kong and thrown in jail indefinitely if she didn't co-operate. He texted her a fake arrest warrant, that included the photo from her driver's licence.

"I totally believed these are international Chinese police calling me," said Zheng, adding that the call appeared to be coming from 110, an emergency number in China similar to 911. "So I trust everything is true." 

Woman loses $340K in wire transfer scam — alleges 4 banks did little to stop it | CBC News

My opinion: I feel really sorry for this woman.  However, at least she's going public and forewarning everybody on what happened and how to avoid this kind of scam.

Maybe she can put start a GoFundMe campaign.

Restaurants that closed down: I was looking up these restaurants.

V Sandwiches on Rice Howard Way

Swiss Chalet on 109 St.

Chix Shack Thai Chicken on 109 St.

Smoothies Basic on Jasper Ave

Mar. 1, 2021 "Ontario family forced to pay $3,458 hotel quarantine bill for one night stay after returning to Canada from father's funeral": I found this news on Facebook from CTV.  This is by Sean Davidson:

An Ontario woman who went overseas to attend her father's funeral says she feels gouged by the government's "ill-conceived" hotel quarantine plan that cost her $3,458 for a one-night stay.

Teixeira arrived back in Canada, along with her brother and daughter, on Feb. 27 after spending about a week in Portugal.

She said it was impossible to get any answers about the hotel quarantine program while overseas and wasn't able to book a room until she landed in Toronto.

Teixeria asked officials in Toronto if her family could be exempt from the hotel program for compassionate reasons but her request was denied. She said she was told to call the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel to book a room.

"We told the Crowne Plaza the situation and that we needed to book a hotel," Teixeria said. "The guy said the rate would be $369 per night and you have to book a minimum of three nights."

Teixeria said they booked a room with two queen beds and waited more than a hour for a shuttle to arrive. When it didn't arrive, they were eventually told to take a taxi to the hotel.

"When we got there to check-in all of a sudden our price went up from $369 per night to $769 per night plus tax," she said. "They knew there were three off us. They didn’t give us the right information."

With all taxes and additional fees included, Teixeria's credit card was charged $3,458 to stay in the hotel between Feb. 27 and March 1, which is slightly lower than the $3,945 they were quoted when they first arrived at the hotel.



My opinion: That's price gauging.  This is from my Counselor #1: "If something gets you angry, then what is the lesson here?"

Don't go traveling/ flying out of the country unless you absolutely have to like a funeral.  If you fly back home, there is going to be really expensive to stay at a hotel.

At least this family is telling everybody about what they went through and we can learn from this.

I want to Las Vegas, but I was like: "How is that like?"  I will wait when the pandemic is over.  I can still have fun in Edmonton.

Here's an article: 


Posted by at No comments:

"Lilly Tube" (Lilly Singh)

In honor of Mar. 8 being International Women's Day, I'm posting this article that profiles a female talk show host and actress:



Mar. 25, 2017 "Lilly Tube": Today I found this article by Simon Houpt in the Globe and Mail:


Here’s the thing about success. You can be an online phenom with more than 11 million YouTube subscribers; have a gaggle of William Morris agents working their Beverly Hills phones to score you parts in TV shows and movies; get ready to launch your very first book, an advice guide called How to Be a Bawse which features dozens of photos of you looking very boss – er, bawse-like; and be BFFs with your childhood hero, Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson. 

But when your extended family is flying in from Toronto to spend a week in the shiny new L.A. house you bought a few months ago, and you’re a certain kind of daughter and sister and aunt, it’s just a fact that you’re going to be up until 6 a.m. unpacking boxes, assembling furniture, child-proofing drawers and mopping like the control freak you are. (Mind you, a video editor who works for a company that manages some of your YouTube business affairs will help you mop until you both pass out from exhaustion; but still.) 

And so Lilly Singh, a Scarborough-born 28-year-old known to her online fans as Superwoman, looks anything but super on this blue-sky L.A. morning as she pads down the stairs in a sweatshirt and jeans, nestles her small frame into a living room chair, and takes a bite of an egg-and-spinach breakfast wrap Postmated here moments ago. 

“You’re meeting Sleepy Morning Lilly,” she murmurs sheepishly, adding later, “You’re also seeing me without my eyebrows filled in.” (She’s even missing her trademark nose ring.)
The family visit is just one of many pressing commitments Singh is juggling.

At the end of the month, she’ll embark on a 12-country, 34-date promotional tour for How to Be a Bawse (subtitle: A Guide to Conquering Life), bringing a one-hour show of “stand-up mixed with inspirational, motivational stuff” she’s calling “a comedic TED Talk” to her sometimes-screaming fans. 

For almost five years now, those fans been eating up Singh’s twice-weekly videos: energetic jump-cut observational monologues delivered straight to camera ( Types of Kids at School, Types of People on Instagram, Annoying People in Public Washrooms), send-ups of pop culture and gender stereotypes (What Clubbing Is Actually Like, If Boys Got Their Period) and skits trafficking in gentle racial humour (The Difference Between Brown and White Girls) featuring Singh playing a bevy of characters loosely drawn from her life as a child of Punjabi immigrants growing up on the outskirts of Toronto.


 (She also makes less polished behind-the-scenes daily diary videos, where everybody can see her without her eyebrows filled in.) 

Some of Singh’s most popular videos include fictional versions of her parents – wannabe-player dad Manjeet and prim, tea-drinking mom Paramjeet – reacting with slowly growing horror as they watch, say, a sex-spackled Ariana Grande music video. 

All told, Singh has racked up more than two billion views on YouTube, prodding some to wonder if her success might hold lessons for Canada’s cultural industries on how to ride the current wave of technological disruption rather than be swamped by it. 

Part of Singh’s appeal is that her medium is the message: She embodies the DIY empowerment ethos of YouTube and has found a worldwide kinship storming the gates of legacy media from the basement of her parents’ home in Markham, Ont. In conversation, though, she reveals an old-school morality and a surprising skepticism of the very platforms that facilitated her rise. Now, Singh is trying to navigate the tricky path to a genuine mainstream breakthrough, even as she wades further into the fraught territories of politics and advocacy. 

If Singh is still in first gear here in her bright living room at 8:30 a.m., her Team Super industrial machine reached cruising speed some time ago. Behind her, a house painter with a hollow-cheeked Jackson Pollock mien and an embryonic man-bun stares coldly at a pair of fat vertical yellow stripes on the opposite wall. At the breakfast bar, just past the Ping-Pong table which dominates this main room, her bright-eyed personal assistant Kyle, and Misako, a social-media brand manager who recently joined the team, are quietly riding matching MacBooks. 

About half an hour earlier, they had posted a handful of videos from Singh and other celebrities (Charlize Theron, Lele Pons, Winnie Harlow) kicking off something called the Bra Toss Challenge, a mash-up of slacktivist feminism and the Ice Bucket Challenge in which high-profile women throw a bra at the camera in support of someone they admire and then call on another to do the same. 

It’s the latest undertaking for Singh’s #GirlLove project, which aims to end what she calls “girl-on-girl hate.” 

“It’s always such an interesting topic, because it’s so controversial. And I don’t think it needs to be,” she says. “Women are scared to use the word ‘feminism’ and identify as feminists.”

Singh had spent the previous afternoon mentoring a few female YouTube creators at YouTube Space LA, a former airplane hangar in the Playa Vista neighbourhood that is now a showpiece of the new economy. Decades ago, during a different era of American innovation, the building was part of Howard Hughes’s private airport; he constructed his Spruce Goose in a cavernous hangar across the road. 

In 2013, in an effort to instill a higher level of professionalism among its creators, the Google-owned video service turned the place into a collection of soundstages and edit suites done up in corrugated metal and lacquered wood and Silicon Valley lifestyle clichés.

 So there’s always a charging station available for your Chevy Volt or (in Singh’s case) Tesla Model S, the unisex washrooms use recycled water, a smiling barista will froth you up a free matcha latte and a foosball table in the airy reception area awaits creators needing to break their writer’s block. 

In one of the smaller studios, Singh sat on a red couch the colour of YouTube’s logo, chatting with a musical lesbian couple known as Bria And Chrissy, sharing advice on life and love and positivity like a latter-day Oprah. She told a story about how the collapse of a relationship had prompted a personal reckoning. “I do believe truly now that, to be part of a ‘complete two,’ you need to be part of a ‘complete one,’” she said, as Bria and Chrissy nodded intently. “The best version of yourself is when you’re happy, and you’re going to be happy when you’re yourself.” 

Later, Chrissy spoke of the thrill of working with Singh. “We’ve always had so much admiration and respect for any female creator who can gain traction and success, especially someone who is doing something different than stereotypically female norms,” she said during a brief chat in the parking lot. 

“Instead of doing, you know, makeup and beauty – which is all great, but it’s society’s expectation for women to do that – Lilly is doing comedy and empowerment. To get to spend time with her today, to see just how humble and kind and supportive and uplifting she is, it seems like she’s living the GirlLove platform thing every day of her life.” 

Singh’s positivity is conscious and hard-won: She began making YouTube videos as a way out of a deep depression. In 2011, after following in the academic footsteps of her older sister to earn a psychology degree from Toronto’s York University, she was in the midst of applying for a master’s program in counselling when she decided she just couldn’t go through with it. 

She’d already made a handful of videos, and though they were rough around the edges, the process had lifted her spirits. So she informed her parents that, rather than go to graduate school, she wanted to make funny videos for the Internet. 

This was not in their wheelhouse. “They were both immigrants. My dad came here first, sent for my mom, had to work the three jobs. I have pictures of my dad, like, posing with his first refrigerator, being like: ‘Electricity! Refrigerator!’” she says, laughing. (They currently manage a territory of gas stations in the north end of Toronto.) 

They gave her one year to make it happen. “I lived at my parents’ house, didn’t have to pay any rent, didn’t have to pay for any bills,” she says, adding: “Indian parents don’t make their kids pay for things.”

Singh soon found her voice, drawing on her upbringing to produce videos such as Sh*t Punjabi Mothers Say, How to Be the Perfect Brown Person and – in a hint of the gender politics that would become a mainstay of her humour and advocacy work – a slap-down of underminers called Girls Are Haters!
“YouTube for me is more than a platform, it is literally that thing that helped me when I was sad,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense, because it’s just a bunch of [programming] script, but I have an emotional connection to that.” 

If you were going to engineer a symbol of the new global culture (which, despite some ugly high-profile eruptions of nationalism, remains strong), you could do worse than a street-smart Indian-Canadian millennial woman with respect for tradition, a disruptor’s digital savvy, polished confessional authenticity and few firm lines between her professional and personal life. 

Singh’s climb has been impressive, jumping from one million subscribers in August, 2013, to five million in January, 2015; eight million last spring; and, this week, more than 11.25 million. By some measures, that puts her in the top 75 YouTube channels – a few notches below Selena Gomez, Beyoncé and BuzzFeed, but a good distance above Demi Lovato and The Late Late Show with James Corden.

Still, YouTube advertising is a game of tight margins. (And tighter secrets: The company does not publicly discuss the terms of its deals and prefers that creators stay mum on the matter, too.) Many creators reportedly earn CPMs – an industry term referring to the rate advertisers pay to reach 1,000 viewers – in the $2 to $4 range. (U.S. broadcast network TV fetches 10 times that.) Back-of-the-envelope math suggests Singh is likely making about $2-million annually from the ads on her videos. 

Like many YouTube creators, she is also in the business of being a “digital influencer,” signing promotional deals with marketers such as Coca-Cola Canada and the cosmetics label Smashbox, which last spring released a deep-red liquid lipstick dubbed “Bawse.” (Her deal with Skittles Canada includes a lifetime supply of the chewy candy; she pulls open a kitchen drawer to reveal about 30 oversized packages, in an array of four flavours.) 

And in early 2015, she orchestrated a 26-city tour to bring A Trip to Unicorn Island – a live stage show preaching positivity and empowerment through dance, music, comedy and earnest you-can-do-it-girl monologues – to fans in India, Dubai, Australia, Europe and North America. A documentary of the tour premiered on YouTube’s Red subscription service last year. 

Success begets success, and Singh has lately attracted increasingly big names to co-star in her videos, including Seth Rogen and James Franco, Selena Gomez, Kunal Nayyar and The Rock. She interviewed Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai about the importance of girls’ education, and last month talked with Bill Gates about development issues. 

So why, if she could become a global superstar while working out of a Toronto suburb, did Singh need to move to Los Angeles in the fall of 2015? (She rented a loft for a year before finding this dream home.) As the Canadian government looks to overhaul the antiquated system of laws, regulations and incentives that helped create our domestic media industry, is there something it could do to keep creators like her at home? 

“Do they have a way to stop winter yet?” Singh asks. (She’s only half-kidding: “I can’t express to you how much I dislike being cold,” she says. “I’m a different human being solely because of the weather. I’m, like, four times more productive in L.A. than I would be in Toronto.”) 

Eventually, Singh offers a real answer which is both promising and disheartening. “My content specifically is what it is, and my brand is what it is because I am from Canada,” she notes. 

“A lot of my success comes from this large idea of being multicultural: the very cultured parents that are on my channel, a lot of the cultural jokes I make – the fact that I can relate to such a vast array of people by making different language jokes and different dialect jokes – that’s a huge reason for my success, and that solely comes from Toronto and Canada. And so if I didn’t start in Canada, would I be as big as I am now? I don’t think so.” 

And yet. 

“Having said that, if I stayed in Canada, would I be as big as I am now?” She smiles benevolently, as if trying to let down a boyfriend gently, but firmly. “I don’t think so.” 

She continues: “It really did pain me to move to L.A., and I wish I could have stayed in Toronto, but it was getting to a point where, two or three times a month, I’d have to fly to L.A. to do something, or I’d be missing some opportunities to do something, because they’re like, ‘Oh! You need a visa. We’ll just find someone else.’”

Singh has landed a few bit parts in films, including last summer’s Bad Moms and Ice Age: Collision Course, but digital celebrity doesn’t count for much in this town. “I think Hollywood is just slow to catch on to change,” she says. In How to Be a Bawse, she notes that, two days after the splashy premiere of her Unicorn Island doc at the iconic TCL (née Grauman’s) Chinese Theatre last year, she turned up for an audition where the casting director didn’t seem to have heard of her. 

But one of the overriding themes of Bawse – a motivational handbook stuffed with business, social and relationship advice imparted with the snappy humour and giddy whimsy that animates Singh’s videos – is that you need to check your ego at the door. 

“My secret to success is exactly what most people don’t want to hear: It’s a ton of hard work,” she writes. 

In fact, there is a surprising touch of the old-fashioned scold threaded through the book. Singh repeatedly counsels her readers to free themselves from their phones, at one point noting acidly that “social media has made it easy to feel special for no reason at all.” 

She struggles with the promiscuities and solipsism enabled by the very tools that brought her to the world’s attention, typified by a moment in the Unicorn Island doc when a Dubai fan rushes the stage as Singh is deep in an earnest monologue, and then proceeds to take a selfie while the star looks on, quietly seething. 

“It happens all the time, in smaller ways,” Singh says. “I will be on the street and sometimes a fan will come up to me – just interrupt me, if I’m eating, whatever. I will shut it down sometimes.” 

And yet, she says, “I have a career that my fans made. It’s not that I auditioned for YouTube, or a record label came up to me and said, ‘Yes, we will sign you now.’ It’s literally: People watched my videos. So I try to remember that when those situations happen. But I don’t like to encourage people to be entitled.” 

It must be hard, though, for fans to resist feeling a kind of protective affection when they encounter Singh in person: After all, she has shared some very dark moments. In Bawse, she writes of the lacerating self-doubt of her early 20s, of being “depressed and wanting to end my life.” When, during her Unicorn Island show, she declared in what amounted to a war cry, “Happiness is the only thing worth fighting for in your life!” there was a whiff of the reformed smoker working feverishly to keep the cravings at bay. 

Many fans can apparently relate: In the opening moments of the doc, a teenaged girl says Singh is “showing millions of girls around the world, anyone can get out of depression.”

But while the sentiment may be commendable – and the comment sections on the videos where Singh shares her stories of depression are filled with gratitude – it is also a potentially dangerous notion to float. Not everyone can simply pull themselves out of depression by sheer force of will, as Singh suggests she did. 

She acknowledges that she was never clinically diagnosed. “I’m saying I was ‘depressed,’ based off me being a psychology student and having to study depression for so long, understanding that I was not in a healthy mind-state,” she says. She insists that “my through-line is always: To talk to someone. If you feel depressed, seek help, talk to someone. Because I’m not a doctor, I’m not a psychiatrist, and I would never tell someone that’s depressed: ‘Just be positive!’ Because someone could be way more depressed than I was, or differently depressed than I was.” 

Most of her self-doubt has disappeared, but Singh acknowledges that some hard questions remain. In the final pages of How to Be a Bawse, she recalls being 19 years old and fearing she would never make much of her life. 

So: Now what? How does someone recalibrate when they surpass their own dreams? 

“When I first started YouTube it was about – ‘Oh, I got 70 views!’ ‘Now I got 100!’” she notes. “‘Now [this], now [that], now – let’s go on a tour!’ There’s always been a natural progression.

 So it doesn’t feel unusual. But it definitely does feel confusing sometimes.” She quotes a lyric: “‘Success is the most addictive drug.’” 

“Sometimes I do fear that, if I’m being honest. I feel like, will there ever be a point in my life where I’m like, ‘That’s great. I have accomplished what I want to accomplish, I’m gonna hang up now’? I don’t know if that’s a thing. 

“I think once you get successful and you love what you do so much and get opportunities – I think that’s why movie stars continue to make so many movies.

 It’s because success is the most addictive drug, you get addicted to this idea that: ‘No, I want more. I want more experiences. I want more of this.’ Because your time is limited on this planet. So that is a real fear for me. And I haven’t figured that one out yet.” 

Lilly Singh appears at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on April 5. For other tour dates, see lillysinghbook.com.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/lilly-singhs-superpowers-one-youtubers-rise-to-the-top-of-theinternet/article34417932/

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"The feminine mystique of Underworld and Resident Evil"/ "Dear Angelica moves viewers to tears"

In honor of Mar. 8 being International Women's Day, I'm posting these 2 articles about women in film.



Jan. 6, 2017 "The feminine mystique of Underworld and Resident Evil": Today I found this article by Tina Hassannia in the Globe and Mail:

I have seen a 3 of the Underworld movies and I like the action.  

I have seen the first Resident Evil because my friend Leslie brought the movie to my house in 2004 (when I was 19 yrs old) and we watched it together.  I thought the movie was average and fun to watch.  I later watched Resident Evil: Afterlife on TV.  I didn't really like that movie.


Furiosa. Katniss. Foxy Brown. Cinema isn’t exactly devoid of action-movie heroines, but the pickings have been historically slim, and often problematic. For every Ripley, there’s a come-hither Catwoman. Outside of a few notable exceptions, such as Pam Grier and Michelle Rodriguez, few action heroines are women of colour, and rarely are they protagonists. Even more infrequent are action-heroine movies written and/or directed by women.

Which leaves most ass-kicking women as nothing more than ciphers – sexualized plot devices left to act as motivation for the male heroes, when not delivering blows in heels, as if that’s a real thing.

That was a criticism made against Charlize Theron’s Furiosa when Mad Max: Fury Road came out in 2015, triggering a slew of think pieces that either announced or denounced the movie as a feminist masterpiece. 

Two of the longest-running current movie franchises featuring action heroines are rarely talked about with that much fervour, though: Underworld, starring Kate Beckinsale as vampire warrior Selene, and Resident Evil, starring Milla Jovovich as zombie-killer Alice. Both are arguably feminist characters. But no one seems to care.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Underworld, whose next chapter comes out this weekend, it’s a vampires-versus-werewolves series that is surprisingly worse than Twilight. It focuses on Selene, a strident blood-sucker who defies the pecking order of her coven to unravel a conspiracy headed by a sinister patriarch. 

Over time, the Underworld series developed a few female characters who weren’t necessarily killed off or used as sex symbols, but the focus of the series is mostly on Selene as the lone heroine. (The franchise’s werewolves, a.k.a. the Lycans, have almost no female members, presumably because the idea of hairy women is too scary for movie executives.)

In the first two films, the sole friend Selene made is a guy she rescues named Michael, but then he becomes a hybrid of the two species and … sorry, I didn’t mean to put you to sleep. It’s a bad movie, and the subsequent films are even worse. Not much changes in this basic feminist formula throughout the series, though. 

Every film featuring Selene has her fighting the patriarchy in one form or another – if only it weren’t centred on a character constantly clad in a vinyl catsuit. 

Resident Evil is more complicated. Unlike Underworld, Resident Evil is teeming with female characters, both good and evil. The story, such as it is, revolves around a zombie virus that has overtaken the world. 

In each film (the sixth, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, opens at the end of the month), Alice must fight against Umbrella, the faceless corporation that created the virus, to get back her freedom in one enclosed facility after another, often saving her friends, too – or perhaps her foes. 

(The series constantly switches between having characters be good or evil, or back to good again, either because they’re brainwashed, a good clone, an evil clone, or some other sci-fi hack.) Paying homage to the Lewis Carroll classic, Resident Evil also features as its ultimate villain an artificial intelligence called the Red Queen, voiced by a chilly British girl.

But where the Underworld series wants to have its feminism exist alongside its mindless sex objects, the Resident Evil series has, at the very least, inspired some film scholars to argue for its legitimate feminist underpinnings. 

Female friendship is a large component of the films, while Alice’s use of silence as a power and survival strategy is the subject of entire essays. 

Others, meanwhile, have noted the sexualized nature of Jovovich’s outfits throughout the series (most of whose entries have been directed by Jovovich’s husband, Paul W.S. Anderson). But in the more public sphere of cultural journalism, we rarely encounter such debates, and Underworld is ignored almost entirely. Why do so many mainstream critics care about Furiosa and Ripley, and not give an iota of notice to Selene and Alice?

The fact that the latter two roles appear to be more cipher-ish can’t entirely explain it. Is it that the characters are not just empty, but forgettable? Adding to that problem is the franchises’ lack of critical esteem. 

The highest Rotten Tomato Scores either series have received were for their initial movies: Resident Evil (2002) with 34 per cent “fresh” reviews and Underworld (2003) with an even more paltry 31 per cent. Yet they continue to proliferate new films, likely because they still earn enough profit to justify their relatively low production costs, at least compared to more male-oriented blockbusters.

Underworld and Resident Evil are supposedly mindless films, but does that mean their portrayals of women deserve any less attention? 

In a way, their mediocrity actually make the movies more feminist. Why must we always focus our attention on representation in quality or prestige pictures, or franchises with legion fandoms like the Marvel Cinematic Universe? 

It would be a mistake to think that feminism only belongs in “important movies.” To be truly progressive, feminism should surpass aesthetic quality and cultural significance.

Critically appraised movies like Alien and Mad Max: Fury Road only come along once in a while. And the umpteenth think piece about Wonder Woman has already been written, well before the film has even come out. 

Just because we must lower our aesthetic expectations when we watch a movie like Underworld doesn’t mean we should lower our expectations of its portrayal of women, or ignore it entirely. 

Selene is by no means an engaging character, but at least she’s fighting against the patriarchy. That’s worth talking about – even if it means discussing vampires and zombie killers in earnest.




Jan. 27, 2017 "Dear Angelica moves viewers to tears": Today I found this article by Lindsey Bahr in the Edmonton Journal:

PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Film Festival is all about the shared experience of the theatre, so imagine the surprise of realizing that one of the most moving films at this year's fest most moving films is something that can only be seen inside of an Oculus Rift headset.

"Dear Angelica " is a 12-minute illustrated story about memory, movies and grief that premiered at the Festival last Friday. In the film, a girl, voiced by Mae Whitman, lies in bed writing a letter to Angelica (Geena Davis), a famous movie star who we also discover was her mother. 

We swirl around in her memories of Angelica, shifting between real life and images from movies she's been in and back again. The viewer spins around taking in all the environs with Angelica, whether she's in a shootout car chase or drifting into space. More than a few viewers shed some tears into the headset by the end.

It's the first animated experience created entirely in VR.

Writer and director Saschka Unseld, also the Oculus Story Studio Creative Director, wanted to tell a story about how both family and films help shape you as a person.

Unseld, who'd wanted to do illustrative VR for a long time, had always struggled with the coldness of computer animation.

"It's really hard to keep the human touch and texture in it," he said. "If something is directly illustrated, you feel more human touch, you feel more hand, you feel more character."

It's why he settled on illustrator Wesley Allsbrook to create the hand painted images. They had a coder develop a custom system so that she could draw directly into the program.

"In VR it's important to counter that tech coldness with artistry and the human touch," Unseld said.

"Dear Angelica" is already available for free for those who have Oculus headsets. For everyone else, it'll be a little more difficult to see, but not impossible.

"It's important to us to always be in places like Sundance or Tribeca or other place where we can show these things to people who haven't had interesting VR experiences yet," Unseld said. "It's still early times and there's a lot of preconceptions about what VR is and isn't."
"Dear Angelica" proves that VR is not just a cool immersive experience — it's also art form that's capable of pulling at your heartstrings.


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