Like seemingly everyone I know, I watch House MD. I love House – both the show and the character – for their wit and intelligence. So when I heard that David Shore, the show’s Canadian creator, was going to be interviewed on CBC’s Q, I stuck around on my couch to listen. Then Shore started talking about Cutthroat Bitch.

Okay, so maybe this requires a little background. One of this season’s new characters is a young doctor named Amber. She is competitive, ruthless even – she works very hard, but she also misses no opportunity to mess with her coworkers to get the job. Other characters on the show often refer to her as Cutthroat Bitch, as if it’s her name. So does David Shore, with a self-satisfied smirk on his voice.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether sexist comments in a script reflect the opinions of the show’s creators, or are just there to develop an unlikable character – House is every sort of misogynist, and I think we’re usually supposed to laugh at him. But my perception of this show is changing.

Let’s talk about women in House. The other new female character is emotionally stunted and nameless – they just call her “13.” Cuddy, the Chief of Medicine, is both unable to control House, and usually in the wrong, frequently slowing down the real doctors’ lifesaving work. Because Cuddy has so much power, she is also unable to get so much as a boyfriend, let alone a partner. Her attempts to start a family are ridiculed and then forgotten. Cameron is probably the best developed female character, but then she was pathetically in love with her unavailable boss.

Coming from a supposedly boundary-smashing show, this is really tired stuff. Women on television who get ahead almost always do it at the expense of family or morals. Sure, go to medical school – you might be good at what you do, but you’ll die sad and lonely.

Apologies to Ellen Page if this costs her a shot at spokeswoman for Minty-White International, but in her pre-Oscar interview with Barbara Walters it was clear that she had not succumbed to bleaching her smile. Her teeth looked good - healthy, normal - but also kind of weird for TV. The person I was with (who does not obsess over teeth as much as I do) actually pointed it out first.

We’re so used to seeing bleached teeth on screen that regular ones stand out like a wad of spinach. If you find yourself with the kind of free time necessary to start watching for this, you’ll see what I mean.

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I know I’ve mentioned this film before but now I’ve actually seen it! Yesterday I joined about 100 high school students, their teachers and a small number of other adults at the Revue for a screening of A Winter’s Tale followed by a Q + A with two of the film’s actors.

I had expected this film to be a poorly made but very well-intentioned piece of social commentary. What I actually experienced was an amazing piece of film-making. From the opening note of pounding, perfectly chosen music to the flawless acting, excellent script, powerful story and tight conclusion this film is a truly awesome piece of cinema. The Q + A session echoed some of the issues in the film; gender stereotypes, racial profiling, community responsibility, masculinity, drug dealing and more.

Filmed in Toronto’s Parkdale community A Winter’s Tale tells a simple story.

Shots ring out one winter night and a bullet meant for a local street dealer kills a ten-year-old boy.

In the downtown Toronto community of Parkdale, grief and suspicion hang heavily in the air, while the nightly patrons at Miss G’s Caribbean TakeAway resume their ritual of beer and banter.

But one of them, Gene Wright, cannot go on. He begs his friends for help. In a most unusual development, six Black men make a pact to form a support group in hopes of salvaging their broken spirits and redeeming their besieged community.

I highly encourage everyone to go see this film. To find out about showtimes and to see a trailer check out A Winters Tale.

Over the past few days I’ve started writing a few different posts for today’s Film Friday feature. One was about up and coming Oscar nominee Ellen Page, who I love. Then, in response to Megan’s blog piece about the lack of women directors, I started a little data compendium of the Oscar nominees broken down according to gender, Guerilla Grrrls style. Then I found someone had already done that here. So check it out.

However, I’m not really a big movie person. I don’t watch or care about the Oscars. I am much more interested in smaller documentaries, indie films, and my local community. And one pathway to those cherished things is now no longer: Suspect Video.

Goodbye, Suspect Video. You can my regular parking spot right outside. For my bicycle, that is. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyliepoon/)

Many of you have seen the nation-wide coverage of a six-alarm fire at the corner of Queen and Bathurst. About 10 different stores were totally burned out and many people living in the apartments above were lucky to escape alive.

It was only two short blocks from my home. Yesterday I finally got a chance to walk through my neighborhood and finally got a look at the smoking wreckage. I was surprised by the intensity of my reaction seeing such devastation. I was holding back tears.

I watched coverage on the teevee news on Tuesday night and it focused on Duke’s, a bicycle shop that I also frequent, which had been a family business in that exact location for 80+ years. While I do mourn the loss of the bike shop (I just bought a new Ulock there last week), what I’m really going to miss is Suspect Video.

Now I don’t suppose that a national teevee news show could talk about what kind of stuff Suspect Video did for this community of freaks, geeks and punks and queers. Suspect Video probably couldn’t be described as an upstanding community member. Their windows were always full of garish and freaky figurines with cobwebs hanging all around, both real and fake for effect. When you went in the store, no salesperson greeted you. Instead the guy or girl munched on their pizza and watched some cheesy zombie flick on the screens above the merchandise turned at ultra high volume, shrieks and moans galore. I admit that many times I went into Suspect to just be treated with disdain and humanness. No perky falsity around getting my dollars here.
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Diana Rigg has had a long and storied career as an actress. She’s performed in numerous stage plays, married James Bond, and had her prized diamond necklace recovered by Muppets. But the role she’s best known for is the surefooted, quick-witted British agent Emma Peel on the 60s-era landmark spy series The Avengers.

John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) track down a killer who’s fond of kittens. No, really.

Every bit the equal to her crime-solving companion John Steed, Emma Peel was far from the typical damsel in distress of most spy fiction. She knew several martial arts and could dispatch any number of evil henchmen with ease. But more than just a lethal weapon, she also had a solid scientific background and often proved herself more intellectually capable—and quicker with a finely turned witticism—than Steed. Rigg played the part of Mrs. Peel with an elegant charm, lending her character a certain dignity that raised the show above its occasionally camp origins. Though Honor Blackman was the first to star opposite Steed as one of his female partners, the very capable and independent Catherine Gale, it’s Emma Peel that everyone remembers so fondly.

Sadly, though the producers of the show were ahead of their time in creating a liberated female protagonist, they weren’t bright enough to extend that same philosophy to Diana Rigg herself. She left the show after two successful seasons partially because she was fed up with how the producers treated her. It’s said that twelve episodes in, Rigg discovered that she was paid less than the cameraman. Reportedly, Rigg also had few friends on set. One of her defenders was none other than John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, who tried to convince Rigg to stay—but to no avail. And though Rigg eventually moved on to other marquee projects, The Avengers lasted just one more season with the somewhat naive and innocent spy-in-training Tara King by Steed’s side—in many ways a watered-down wallflower version of Emma Peel.

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I’m not big into high school movies, or song and dance movies, or remakes. So was Hairspray ever fighting an uphill battle with me.

A friend of mine gets teen swag and sent some my way, in the form of the 2007 Hairspray DVD. I probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, which is good and bad, because if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have all these damn songs in my head.

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Update: Whoops! I originally posted that Raya Green was played by Vanessa Oryema. I was wrong - she’s played by Rutina Wesley. Sorry!

Ok, I’ll admit it, I kind of have a teen dance movie problem. One of my favourite movies of last year was Stomp the Yard (I will make an honest case for why I truly believe it is a passionate appeal for gender and racial equality! Also it is full of hot babes).

But while I understand why some might not quite agree that Stick It is among one of the most rousing and anti-establishment pieces of cinema of the early ‘00s, with ZERO guilty pleasure quotient I highly, heartily recommend How She Move.

In a word, what distinguishes How She Move from all the other teen dance movies that I hold dear to my heart, is how Real it is. And Realness is pretty unusual for a genre that can rarely hold itself back when it comes to fulfilling stereotypes about poor neighbourhoods, teenagers, men and women and physically impossible dance sequences.

Both the female and male characters span a broad spectrum of personalities, instead of falling into socially sanctioned roles of what it means to be a man or a woman. Or when they do fall into those roles, the motivations and reasons for why they choose to follow that path is clear - demonstrating (intentionally or not) that gender is learned rather than biological. That’s a pretty hefty topic for a movie featuring Keyshia Cole in a cameo.

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The Guerrilla Girls take on the problems of Hollywood. (gurerrillagirls.com)

A few weeks ago, filmmaker Erin Laing sent me an e-mail about the lack of attention female directors have been getting by mainstream bloggers. What pissed her off, specifically, was Filmshowing’s list Why 2008 Will be an Awesome Year for Movies. Fifty-four films, and not a one made by a woman. (You can read Erin’s own blog about the list here).

Other most-anticipated lists are not very different. Slash Film’s list of 55 must-see films does include one woman: Mira Nair’s film Shantaram, set for release this fall. At least The Times’ list of 50 biggest movies of 2008 includes a whopping three pictures: Persepolis, 27 Dresses and Mamma Mia!)

Clearly, the criteria used to make these lists are, well, pretty subjective. (I know I can’t wait until the April release of Repo! The Genetic Opera!, a paranoid apocalypic musical starring Paris Hilton [no, not really].)

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I’m a lucky guy. As part of my job this week I was creating a workshop for teens about images of masculinity in the media. Someone I know from the school board asked me if I’d seen Byron Hurt’s documentary, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” because they now had a copy if I wanted to check it out. Well…I’ve been wanting to see this film since I first heard about it a couple of years ago.

If you have any interest in masculinity, music, hip hop, life as we know it, you should see this film. I was blown away.
Byron Hurt has been educating around gender and masculinity for years but was always sticking up for hip hop music because he loved it so much. At some point he started to feel like a hypocrite for speaking out against sexism but still listening to and supporting artists who spout hateful lyrics. He decided to make this film to explore issues of masculinity, homophobia, violence, and sexism in the musical genre he loves most.

With amazing access to hip hops biggest music producers and some of its biggests stars, as well as academics and activists he tackles these issues head on without being preachy or self-righteous. I was nervous that this film might support, what I see as, racist attacks against hip hop but Hurt addresses this and clearly shows how much of the messaging in music is driven by the industry and money rather than black American culture.

In a society where sexism is almost never addressed in the mainstream, and even more rarely examined in relation to homophobia and race, this film is a must-see and a must-share.