MATTHEW HALLIDAY / matthew@vueweekly.com

I’ve never quite understood late-night talk shows. Some famous person makes an appearance to plug their latest movie or record or TV show, and chat with the host about it. But more often than not, the conversation wanders into personal territory, the celeb in question talking about something funny that happened earlier that day, or something their cute niece did, or something similarly and wholly unrelated to the movie/record/whatever in question.
 

Of course the conversations are planned out in advance, but that just makes it even stranger. They plan to talk about the banalities of their personal life? Who cares?
 

Fledgling talk show host Tom Bernier thinks he knows the answer: just about everybody.
 

“People have a bit of craving, I think, for watching other people talk. If you’re a good speaker, it almost doesn’t matter what you’re talking about.”
 

Bernier, founder of the Edmonton Film School and a longtime fixture on the city’s arts scene, is now the host of Edmonton Tonight, a late-night talk show produced for a studio audience at Metro Cinema one Friday a month (the next episode will take place this Fri, May 16). It follows the standard late night format: intro, guests, musical interlude, a desk, a couch, some banter. But unlike Letterman and Leno and the like, no Hollywood A-listers will be gracing Bernier’s set. Instead, he’s got a more interesting and eclectic assortment of regular folks from the streets of Edmonton: rock bands, the Edmonton Fencing Club (to be featured in this week’s episode), and any normal folks whom Bernier can manage to wrestle a good story out of.
 

Edmonton Tonight will also feature some relatively famous faces, including local musicians, actors, artists and business people, but the focus isn’t on celebrity, even that most dubious of distinctions, “local celebrity.”
 

“I’m fascinated just by the stories that average people have. You look around at a crowd of 20 people and start asking them questions and you find out some amazing things. One women was a nurse in Bosnia, another person has some bizarre job, another is going through some kind of personal crisis and has a moving story to tell.”
 

Edmonton Tonight differs from its televised ilk in one crucial other way. Though each episode is filmed, hopefully for broadcast or webcast at some future date, the show is first and foremost a live experience.
 

“There are no retakes or phony applause,” Bernier says. “The audience isn’t there as backdrop for whatever we’re doing ... It’s kind of a town hall feel. I really like that at the end of the first two shows, people didn’t leave. They just milled around and talked. It became a social event, and that’s what I’d hoped to achieve all along.”
 

 

 

OMAR MOUALLEM / omar@vueweekly.com

If there’s one movie to piss off Republicans this summer, it’s Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Not because he takes shots at Republicans, or neo-cons or the Bush administration, but because he doesn’t. He may be the first critic of the War on Terror to aim away from rightists, and because he never lends them the ammo of being “Liberal propaganda,” they’ll be irked to have to work for their counterpoints.
 

But fear not my right-winged angels, the film is faulty.
 

Just 14 weeks away from “Operation Special Delivery,” Spurlock seeks to learn what kind of a dangerous world he’s bringing a child into. To exterminate the biggest threat to his family, terrorism, he makes the search personal. Through Afghanistan, Jordan, Palestine and Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Spurlock hunts big bad bin Laden with wryness, and intersperses his investigation with cartoons and faux video game sequences.
 

But Mr Spurlock is not actually looking for bin Laden. Instead, the Most Wanted Man is a red herring leading Spurlock to Muslim-world neighbourhoods, where he knocks on doors and asks, “Do you know where bin Laden is?”  then gets invited in for Turkish tea and baklava, so he can learn about socio-economic issues.
 

This very funny, very playful investigation is also very one sided. Granted, it’s the side of the moderates in the Arab and Muslim world—one seldom explored. But by ignoring actual radicals (with the exception of a short stint in Saudi Arabia), he acts as if they don’t exist. He takes his argument that terrorism is exaggerated and turns it into one that all but denies its existence. His fearlessness actually invalidates the issue. (Ironically, the one time he is fearful is when he’s in a Hasidic Jewish community.) From my personal experiences in Lebanon, I can tell you that, although terrorism is indeed exaggerated, it is still very real, and very scary, too.
 

Spurlock approaches Where in the World ... ? in much the way that he did Super Size Me, by diving in headfirst and making himself the experiment’s subject. But what worked for Super Size doesn’t quite work here. When consuming vast amounts of grease and sugar, the viewer witnessed vividly the change on the subject; in Where in the World ... ?, Spurlock consumes vast amounts of knowledge and perspective, but the change in him is hardly visible. In fact, it appears contrived, as if he’s acting as if he didn’t know about the Muslim world’s zeitgeist. When he comes to his “revelation” at the end, it’s not only a total put-on, but a total let-down, too.
 

Still, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? offers something most post-9/11 terrorism documentaries can’t: simplicity. His playfulness and cheekiness help lubricate a complicated manor. Although he glosses over some major points (the cultural importance of martyrdom, the evidence of culture-envy and influence of camaraderie–all of which rub against his argument), he does a fantastic job at exposing most Muslim’s true perception of the West. His lightweight journalism is definitely not something worthy of study in poli-sci classes, but possibly anthropology studies at a community college.

 

 

 

 

JONATHAN BUSCH / jonathan@vueweekly.com

Ashton Kutcher is the Cameron Diaz of the white Hollywood leading man set, unafraid to pluck hairs, tan his bod and flash his pearly whites at the crowd to better his career, all the while prepared to admit the emasculating sense of humour within the whole process. Diaz, conveniently enough, is the Kutcher of her famous female counterparts, not shy to fart, walk into doors and drink her face off to remind everyone that nobody is a greater life of the party than herself, even as she flawlessly pulls off a Chanel minidress.
 

Needless to mention, combining them in a romantic comedy is playing with fire.
 

What Happens in Vegas ... kicks off with Jack (Kutcher) and Joy (Diaz) on opposite ends of New York City, realizing the failure of their ways in career and love, respectively. To abandon their woes, both are convinced by pals to skip town and party it up in Las Vegas. Soon, Jack and Joy cross paths, hit the strip together, and after a couple dozen Sin City clubs and hotspots, wind up in bed together and much worse, married. 
 

Jack, a misguided slacker, and Joy, calculated but sensitive, immediately confirm their dislike for each other. By accident, $3 million of cold, hard Vegas cash falls on their lap, and before they can get a divorce and split their winnings, a court judge (Dennis Miller) freezes the dough and commands them to live together for six months in a “real” marriage. In front of both Jack’s parents and Joy’s boss, they shack up in Jack’s bachelor pad, consistently scheming with hopes that one of them will crack under pressure. But as the months pass, could Jack and Joy realize, as two stunning alpha prototypes of their Caucasian species, that they are secretly in love?
 

I was too shy to ask the grey-moustached man in the Coors Lite cap behind me in the theatre if he studied genre theory, but in his joyous reaction to What Happens in Vegas I sensed a spirited combination of romance and vulgarity taking effect. Diaz and Kutcher play it like nobody’s business, quickly pounding out sexy jokes and consumer accessibility, though gracious enough to not pretend like they achieve a higher consciousness than the menu at Earl’s. But something clicks, especially when they take their clothes off, and I left the theatre feeling modestly spirited emotions. Mind you, I used to watch Friends. V