April 8, 2023
It’s become a MediaPolicy.ca habit to point out good CanCon-funded movies when they are released. In the last couple of months we’ve done well: Brother (94% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), BlackBerry (96%) and Viking (100%).
I have actually seen ‘Viking’ thanks to Air Canada (first 45 minutes) and Crave (second 45 minutes) and loved it. Off beat, quirky hilarious, and made for about $3 million in my guesstimate. That’s about $30,000 ‘perfresh tomato’ which is a metric we ought to be using more often.
In the interest of balance let’s note the release of another certified Canadian movie, Simulant, a sci-fi thriller starring Toronto talents Simu Liu and Robbie Amell.
It just hit theatres. There aren’t enough reviews yet to earn a Rotten Tomatoes ranking, but it’s not looking good. Chris Knight of Original Cin gave it a B-minus and observed that it was a tad derivative of the 1982 Ridley Scott classic ‘Blade Runner.’ Then Barry Hertz of the Globe ripped it and, rubbing in the salt, described it as a ‘Canadian genre cinema’ film. That wasn’t intended as a compliment. He also noted some cheap production values.
You can’t win ‘em all. Just ask IMDB about their all-time Hollywood flop list. Those are different metrics, the kind that means you’ll never have another one:
***
Over at Fox News Tucker Carlson was back at it, in character and ugly about trans Americans.
The Canadian advocacy group Egale published an Open Letter to the CRTC demanding Fox be booted off Canadian cable.
If a formal complaint is filed, the CRTC will have another ‘Russia Today’ situation on its hands. Although the censorship issue isn’t identical, it’s close enough.
Unlicensed programming services like Fox News and Russia Today are carried at the pleasure of the Canadian cable companies, rubber stamped by the CRTC.
At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, our cable companies took the Russian propaganda service off the air on their own initiative. But Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez wanted to make a statement and publicly demanded the CRTC Commissioners —-whom he appoints— consider a formal ruling to confirm what the cable operators had already done.
You guessed it: the Commission complied in a ruling that was, in the view of MediaPolicy, thin on evidence. Also, since the CRTC television code’s rules on abusive comment and misinformation didn’t apply to unlicensed channels, the CRTC had to resort to a vague policy of ‘the public interest.’
A pleasing result but a bad process.
The Commission needs to develop a proper code for unlicensed channels and perhaps update the television code proscription against ‘misinformation’ for this post-Truth era we seem to be in. (A note: Bill C-11 does not extend the television code to social media uploads).
***
Your recommended weekend read: Michael Coren’s reflections on fellow conservative apostate Charles Adler and what it’s like to change your mind.
***
If you would like regular notifications of future posts from MediaPolicy.ca you can follow this site by signing up under the Follow button in the bottom right corner of the home page;
or e-mail howard.law@bell.net to be added to the weekly update;
or follow @howardalaw on Twitter.
MediaPolicy.ca 
This is an old one … as
LikeLike
Yes I had to republish it (note the date) because of a publishing system glitch that deleted the original pst.
LikeLike