ANOTHER CBC TRIBUTE TO THE LEFT
Tonight the CBC is airing part 2 of Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story.
This follows other fine works (barf) such as Trudeau: The Man, The Myth, the Movie and Trudeau 2: Maverick In The Making.
Some of the Tributes in their archives are also just hilarious.
Next on the horizon we have:
1) "Nice Comfy Fur - The Ujjal Dosanjh Story."
2) "Above The Law - The Legend of Svend Robinson."
3) Belinda Stronach in "The Complex Portfolio".
4) Stephen Harper in "Hidden Agenda - We're Not Making This Up".
5) "Trudeau 3: The Welfare State is a Good Thing - Really."
6) "Canada's Next Saviour: The Rise of Bob Rae"
This follows other fine works (barf) such as Trudeau: The Man, The Myth, the Movie and Trudeau 2: Maverick In The Making.
Some of the Tributes in their archives are also just hilarious.
Next on the horizon we have:
1) "Nice Comfy Fur - The Ujjal Dosanjh Story."
2) "Above The Law - The Legend of Svend Robinson."
3) Belinda Stronach in "The Complex Portfolio".
4) Stephen Harper in "Hidden Agenda - We're Not Making This Up".
5) "Trudeau 3: The Welfare State is a Good Thing - Really."
6) "Canada's Next Saviour: The Rise of Bob Rae"
posted by Toronto Tory at 5:55 PM
11 Comments:
The Tale of the Giant and the Pygmy.
What a contrast – Tommy building a health care system to take care of the people, and Ralph in his swansong days doing his best to trash it.
It is obvious which one history will regard as a giant and which one as a troublesome pygmy.
Curiosity- Yes, because God forbid someone be able to use their own money to ensure they can receive proper care rather than die waiting for "free" care!
I'd take Ralph Klein over Tommy Douglas.
I'd take both over today's NDP.
And don't forget "Paul Martin - Let me be clear"
A sure-fire tear-jea\rker.
I don't think the CBC should be producing political biographies either - they also tend to fairly lousy (at least the Trudeau movies were.) Especially, Trudeau is even living memory for a young man like me - whether the point of view is negative or positive, recent politics makes for bad entertainment - unless, of course, the movie is written as a polemic, in which case it might be quite good. (I think here of a recent Korean movie about the murder of General Park).
There was a soap in Korea recently that took the politics of the 1980s as its theme. In so far as I watched it, it seemed to have fairly little in the way of a political slant (beyond vague hostility to dictatorship), but the acting was wooden and the dialogue weak. Even the actors, I expect, froze up when they tried to represent people who, in some cases, were still in politics five years ago. Much the same could be said of the Trudeau movies. Inevitably, they were slightly more flatering to Trudeau than his own autobiography (the fact that both Martin senior and Chretien appeared in the movie surely didn't help.)
On the other hand, I wouldn't worry. Stephen Harper "The Hidden Agenda: We're not making this up" might give the Conservatives more votes. It would make Harper seem quite a bit more interesting than the awfully flat image of Trudeau that viewers received from the Trudeau movie.
One big problem with these political movies is that they inevitably paint with too wide a brush. We get a list of all the wonderful things that x politician is supposed to have done, with a few personal events to make him seem human. I can imagine a movie involving a politician who is decently ancient (Trudeau is still too recent, but Douglas, or Dief, or Aberhart I think, might be fine) working, provided that political biography is not the main purpose of the movie. The Trudeau movies made me realize that the corny lines in Forest Gump may have saved an awful movie from being utterly ghastly.
You didn't like Forrest Gump?
Rick Mercer's show proposed a new wave of miniseries (the skit is archived on the website), including:
- Preston: Man of Vision
- Stockwell: Day of Strength
- Debora Grey: Woman of Principle
- A Beautiful Mind: The Myron Thompson Story
It also included clips from the Preston one, with Rick as Preston ("The winds of refoorrm are blowing across the country, but one thing must never change: Senior Management at the CBC!" "They should not be fired.")
Don't forget Linda McQuaig: Distaff Chomsky
and
Jane Jacobs: Saint
or
Milwaukee: Toronto in the 21st Century
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Funny.
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