Say, aren’t you…

(This is a post from The Studio Has a Few Notes, as are most of the entertainment-related ones from the last few days.)

Stretching the mandate of the blog once again, I’ve recently met two people who remind me strongly of movie and TV actresses.

First is London singer-songwriter Karla Rexer, who I initially (and still) think could be Rosalita Whyte‘s twin. When I saw her the other night, though, I realized that there’s another striking similarity, which Matt will appreciate: she’s got the same crooked smile as Tina Fey. (Who, by the way, wrote the script for Mean Girls, a movie which featured London-born actress Rachel McAdams, who I once met walking along Queen Street West in Toronto while I was there to see Lenni perform and stupidly didn’t think to invite to the show.)

(Whew, all the name-dropping and run-on-sentencing has tired me out!)

Second, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, I met Holly Rancher this evening. It doesn’t quite come out in this picture, but she could easily have doubled for Kirsten Dunst in the Spider-Man flicks.

Dear Harvard

My friend Claire Jenkins has placed three songs from her upcoming album, Crow’s Nest/Nid de Pie, in the pilot of a program called Dear Harvard. According to sources it’s a riches to rags drama about a privileged New York high school girl whose life falls apart when her father is arrested for insider trading. I haven’t been able to find much more online except for casting notices, a note that Danny Gerber will play Carter, and the information that it’s being executive produced by Anne Jarmain. I’d guess a network like CW is the likely target… and it just so happens there’s a Veronica Mars-sized hole in their schedule….

Speaking of CW, a few months ago I sang with—okay, near—Claire and James Carrington, whose song Ache appeared in a sixth-season episode of Smallville titled Noir. You can’t hear the result yet, though; that’s not because the song is on Claire’s unreleased CD, but because it’s on Lenni Jabour’s! Until you can listen for yourselves, remember: don’t go hustling people strange to you, even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pool cue.

Movie scripts

Dave Shea has found a number of typography + motion experiments on YouTube and elsewhere. Of the whole set that Dave links to I think the two movie clips are my favourites, because they’re not just about making the words move, they’re about telling the story with the type. (Note that the Brazil one isn’t related to the movie, which is disappointing; I’m sure there’s a “What does Marsellus Wallace look like?” scene that could be re-visualized to good effect.)

Slings and Arrows

Slings and Arrows was a 2003 miniseries about the goings-on—the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as it were—at a Shakespearean theatre festival which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Ontario’s long-running Stratford Festival. In a rare occurrence for a Canadian television series, particularly one with such a “highbrow” premise, it turned out to be popular, so much so that it was revived for two more six-episode runs.

Why do I mention it? Well, because it was cleverly written (by Mark McKinney, Susan Coyne and Bob Martin) as a darkly-comedic drama, well-acted by Paul Gross, Martha Burns and Stephen Ouimette, as well as a host of other talented Canadians including Rachel McAdams, Don McKellar, Colm Feore, Sarah Polley and William Hutt… and because the third-season DVD arrived in my mailbox today. Joy!

I kissed a clown tonight

The London Fringe Festival has been on since Friday, in case you’re wondering why the near-silence here has been replaced with a complete dearth of posts. If anyone who’s reading this wants some guaranteed fun later this week and over the holiday weekend, you could go further wrong than to check out these fantastic performances:

  • in the dark, performed by Eva Blahut. Two days after seeing it, even just thinking about this one brings tears to my eyes. The warning that This show […] might make some squeamish, especially if you are freaky about eyes is well-heeded, but in no way are the graphic medical descriptions gratuitous. Possibly the best show of the Fringe, and certainly the most affecting.
  • Poofy du Vey in “Burden of Poof”. The titular clown is sweetly vulgar and completely charming… and I’d say that even without the above-mentioned public smooching. 😀
  • The Truth According to Morro and Jasp. These clown sisters are equally smoochable, but unfortunately that’s not a part of their show. Jury duty has never been so hilariously fun!
  • Self. As I wrote to a friend, It’s a ride… to where I’m not sure exactly, but it’s a fun one. (Maybe Woodstock?)
  • one tiny pink petal on blue roof in hard rain and A Time to Dance. Two performances centered around movement; the former is best described as an experience, and the latter is an often-surprising biography of the performer’s great-aunt.

Thirty-four shows down, twenty left to go. Wish me luck!

Bye Shauna

Despite being dropped from CBC Radio earlier this year, the voice of Promo Girl (aka Shauna MacDonald) had still introduced most CBC podcasts. Sometime last week, however, she was removed from those as well, apparently related to a change in the intro text: instead of This is a CBC Radio One podcast it’s now simply This is a CBC podcast.

Here’s hoping that Shauna’s (currently dormant) stint as Micky Brooklyn gets slightly better shrift.

Al’s apocalypse

Hot on the heels of the news that Drive won’t see its final broadcasts comes this equally depressing update:

The Adventures of Apocalypse Al, the twenty part series of five minute radio plays we produced last year (written by none other than J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame), will NOT be aired nationally anywhere on CBC Radio.

It had been delayed several times, and even forgotten about, so this isn’t really shocking news. And all hope may not be lost—it’s been sold to other broadcasters including NPR and BBC, and may be released on CD “eventually”—but it’s still quite disappointing that it’s not going to be broadcast here.

SFFaudio.com has started a campaign to get one of the regions to broadcast Al; we’ll see if it has any effect. For what it’s worth, I submitted Joe’s post to Tod Maffin at Inside the CBC, but it apparently didn’t make the cut (odd, since Tod had recently complained about it being a slow news week).

Gone for a week, I’ve been drunk since I left

Am I really the only one who’s noticed that MySpace’s RSS feeds have been gone (i.e. 404 Not Found) for a week? There’s passing mention of something that might be the problem on their myspacehelp blog but no followup (which seems to be a pattern).

I bet the thousands of artists who rely on MySpace to communicate with their audiences are pretty pissed off right now, and if they’re not they should be.