Today's tonic: "How the numbers undermine Doug Ford’s flight of fancy on Billy Bishop and jets"

Before everyone jumps on Doug Ford's bandwagon (like doing that got us anywhere good in the past!?) about bringing "jets" to the Toronto Island airport, give this piece by the Toronto Star's Matt Elliott a read: 

"The report lists around a billion dollars worth of changes that would need to be made at the airport to get jets flying, including $50 million to somehow add 1,000 parking spaces. (“This is probably quite conservative,” the report warns.)

The final assessment of the report is blunt. Billy Bishop, the report says, “is not physically capable of serving as a Pearson on the lake. It cannot and need not become a full-service airport.”

Whatever you think of the idea of expanding the airport, it seems reasonable to demand that proponents provide evidence that they have a plan to address these business and infrastructure issues. Show us projections. Show us a business case. Show us any indication that the rationale for this change goes beyond “jets are cool.” There’s a hell of a lot on the preflight checklist before this flight of fancy gets cleared for takeoff."

“Why Sinners should win the best picture Oscar"

Michael B. Jordan as twins in Sinners

As many already know, I'm a bit of a film nut.   

My favourite film of 2025 was Ryan Coogler's Sinners, a great masterpiece that should be remembered for years to come.   It moved me in ways I haven't felt from a feature film in years.  Its complex and layered storytelling, exquisite acting and the out of this world directing was an astonishing accomplishment, the best of the year, in my opinion.  

It received an historic 16 Oscar nominations earlier this year, the most ever for one film.  Every branch of the Academy honored its greatness, so thorough was its artistic achievements.  

Yes, it's a scary horror movie.  But it's SO MUCH MORE than that.  It's a penetrating social commentary on the history of racism in America, placing its story in 1932 Mississippi where we meet unforgettable characters, mostly Black, trying to make their lives better.  The invasion of vampires is an allegory for the  Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its destructive impact on Black lives.  The symbolism bites, pun intended, and leaves the viewer with aching sympathy as the story explores issues of subjugation, violence, and cultural appropriation.  The vampires don't just want to kill everyone; they want to steal their lives, their music, everything that is good about them, and leave them captured in an evil system from which they can never escape.    

That's their plan anyway, however the humans fight back, led by Michael B. Jordan, who plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack, the owners of the juke joint where the survivors keep refuge, refusing the invite the vampires inside.  The tension builds to a stunning conclusion that ties together the elements with pathos, exhilaration, relief and satisfaction.  

When you watch it (please say you're going to watch it), stay for the end credits and the incredibly poignant final scene.   

No other films meant this much to me last year, although Hamnet came close.  I don't get the support for One Battle After Another, an entertaining film that doesn't quite ring true for me on many levels.  I appreciated the touching relationship between adoptive father and teenage daughter as they run from a racist, psychotic cop trying to destroy the last proof of his dalliance with a black woman years ago.  It's fascinating with some truly incredible cinematography (particularly the final car chase scene across the desert).  

But a second viewing of One Battle left me irritated and feeling empty.  I just think there are so many vivid examples of racism in America, the writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson didn't need to concoct this heavy-handed, far-fetched story about a guy trying to kill his own mixed race daughter so he can join the fictitious Christmas Adventurers Club.  The director mostly played it all straight, as if this story was some truth-telling commentary on real life America (unlike the obviously supernatural storytelling of Sinners).  The banter back and forth between Leonardo Di Caprio and the unseen revolutionary phone operator, for example, about the secret rendezvous points was amusing in the first viewing, but let's face it, just plain dumb and concocted to merely show off acting and writing skills.  I've never liked Paul Thomas Anderson's films much - perhaps There Will Be Blood was the most memorable, but the rest were just not my cup of tea.  He hasn't won an Academy Award before because he just didn't deserve one before, in my humble opinion.  He'll probably take the Oscar on March 15th for Best Adapted Screenplay for his script.  But I hope that is it for him.  

Nah, I think it's time for Ryan Coogler to take Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture.  And many more for Sinners.

The precursors leading up to the Oscars have first favoured One Battle After Another, but lately with the BAFTAs and last weekend's SAG Actor Awards, the tide seems to be turning in favour of the film most people truly love, Sinners, over the film they respect, One Battle.  

I've had a spidey sense that Sinners would pull this out and take the top prize for weeks.  I think a lot of people did too.  16 nominations was always going to mean something.  

Please don't take my word for it, give this article by Guardian writer Steve Rose a read too.    

 

Today's tonic from Lloyd Axworthy: "Canada once rejected America’s aggressive, unlawful foreign policy. Today Mark Carney embraced it"

If you are one of those Canadians who supported former Prime Minister Jean Chretien's rejection of America's illegal and immoral military aggression based on lies of WMD in Iraq in 2003, but today support Mark Carney's kowtowing to Joker Maniac President Donald Trump's latest attempt to distract from the Epstein files with his illegal and hypocritical military attack on Iran (dubbed Operation Epic Fury, which sounds like a teenager's video game fantasy), then you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.  

There was no imminent threat of Iran completing nuclear weapons (that threat may now be strengthened by these attacks which will fortify extremist power in Iran under new leadership and hand that horrible regime much moral authority).  In fact, it was Trump who tore up the anti-nuclear agreement that his predecessor had signed with Iran, refused to negotiate seriously to replace it, and chose once again the option of might over right.  Even if this regime is toppled after months or years of war, does anyone who’s not a crazy conservative actually believe this will lead to something stable and peaceful in the region?  How can we forget so easily the extremist Islamic State that eventually replaced Saddam Hussein leading to years of more conflict paid for by U.S. tax dollars?

Today, I'm happy to share some brutal honesty from former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy with this column published in the Toronto Star this weekend:   

"Canada’s response to the U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran exposes a fault line at the heart of our foreign policy.

"We invoke international law and the “rules based international order” when adversaries engage in unlawful actions, but abandon those same rules entirely when it’s the Americans — whose current government 60 per cent of Canadians now see as a threat — doing the bombing. For a country that depends on law more than force for its own security, that is not realism; it is recklessness...

"We have been here before, and once knew better. In 2003, Canada refused to join the American invasion of Iraq because there was no Security Council resolution, and the case for war rested on preventing a hypothetical future WMD threat. Today, by endorsing preventive strikes on Iran during ongoing diplomacy and after Washington itself shredded the previous agreement, we are embracing the very doctrine we used to reject...

"The contrast with our language on Ukraine is stark. For four years, Canadian officials have rightly called Russia’s invasion an “unprovoked,” “unjustifiable,” “illegal” violation of the UN Charter and of Ukrainian sovereignty. Yet when the United States and Israel launch large scale strikes without UN authorization, Ottawa drops the legal vocabulary entirely. No talk of aggression, no warning about Charter erosion, no insistence on emergency debate in New York. The double standard is obvious: when Russia uses force without lawful grounds, it is condemned as an outlaw; when the U.S. does something legally analogous, we kowtow in an effort to curry favour."