Program

Romantic comedies, Japanese reality television and New Zealand true crime: the best of streaming this September

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 30, 2023

We have never been more spoilt for choice when it comes to what we can watch on (streaming) television.

Key Points: 
  • We have never been more spoilt for choice when it comes to what we can watch on (streaming) television.
  • But the downside of this gluttony of riches is the sheer overwhelm that can come from having to choose your next show.

Glamorous

    • Netflix Kim Cattrall showed considerable savvy when, rather than rejoin the cast of Sex and the City, she opted to play Madolyn Addison, the dynamic head of beauty brand Glamorous.
    • On the surface this is even frothier than Sex and the City, and some critics have panned it.
    • Glamorous is as camp as Barbie, but far cleverer and more subversive: without a spoiler, it’s worth comparing the way the two end.

Starstruck season three

    • Last season ended with a moment that was equal parts romantic and absurd, as Jessie and Tom reconcile and make out in a pond.
    • But the new season opens with a montage tracing the subsequent two years of moving in together and then drifting apart.
    • Starstruck understands what makes Jessie and Tom interesting to watch: not domestic bliss, but their awkward banter and difficulty overcoming their mismatched quirks, despite their obvious chemistry and attraction.

Far North

    • ThreeNow (New Zealand) and Paramount+ (Australia) The terrific new New Zealand dark comedy Far North dramatises a bizarre meth-smuggling case from 2016, in which a ridiculously inept gang nearly got half a ton of methamphetamine to market, only to be rumbled by the locals.
    • Impeccably shot, and featuring a wonderfully motley assortment of low-rent crims, desperate drug runners, cartel mobsters and salt-of-the-earth locals, Far North is easily one of the best (and funniest) New Zealand shows in years.

Mother and Son

    • ABC iView Mother and Son has long been regarded as one of Australia’s greatest sitcoms.
    • Read more:
      The Mother and Son reboot has fresh things to say about adult children and their ageing parents

      For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.

    • In the 2023 Mother and Son, Maggie (Denise Scott) is a free-spirited eccentric who almost burned down the family home while cooking dinner for her grandchildren.

Ai no Sato (Love Village)

    • In the UK, the upcoming show My Mum, Your Dad (an Australian version aired in 2022) is being billed as “middle-aged Love Island”.
    • Ai no Sato, or Love Village, is a take on the stalwart Japanese reality dating format Ainori (Love Wagon).
    • In Ai no Sato, by contrast, contestants (all aged over 35) renovate a house in rural Japan together … and fall in love along the way.
    • I love Ainori, but Ai no Sato takes things to a new level.

Unforgotten season five

    • There are a lot of excellent series out there (Broadchurch, Happy Valley and Karen Pirie are all exceptional).
    • This is perhaps why it took me so long to give Unforgotten a go.
    • Each season begins with the discovery of a murder that the historical crimes unit must solve, led by DCI Cassie Stuart (the wonderful Nicola Walker) and DI Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar).
    • Season five sees the departure of Walker and new to the team is DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan).

Beautiful Disaster

    • Prime If Beautiful Disaster, the new film from Cruel Intentions director Roger Kumble, had come out 20 years ago, no one would have paid it much attention.
    • However, streaming in 2023 – now the rom-com has disappeared as a mainstay of Hollywood cinema – there’s something refreshingly delightful about it.
    • At the same time, only sometimes effectively, Beautiful Disaster thinks through questions around erotic power dynamics in a post-#MeToo era, comically centring on the kind of guilt Abby feels regarding her attraction to Travis.

Migrant workers facing the dangers of wildfires need support

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 30, 2023

However, while many have been able to evacuate and receive help, migrant workers have been coping with the effects of the fires with relatively little support.

Key Points: 
  • However, while many have been able to evacuate and receive help, migrant workers have been coping with the effects of the fires with relatively little support.
  • Temporary migrant workers in the Global North are already highly vulnerable to abuse in the workplace and hazardous working conditions.
  • Shortly before the wildfires erupted, our research team was travelling across the Okanagan Valley meeting with migrant workers and interviewing community organizations and farmers.

Poor working conditions

    • Migrant workers also reported bad and unhealthy housing conditions and major obstacles to accessing health care.
    • Some also said they feared reappraisal and dismissal if they refused the hazardous working conditions and strenuous days.
    • Many temporary migrant workers were classified as essential workers during the COVID-19 lockdowns and continued to work during the worst days of the pandemic.
    • As the crisis was unfolding, we reached out to the migrant workers we had interviewed a few days before the wildfires.
    • Javier Robles, a community organizer with KCR Community Resources in Kelowna, said of the migrant workers:
      “They are the backbone of our economy.

Unfair immigration policies

    • The vulnerability of the migrant workers in Canada is directly linked to the immigration program through which they are hired, which provide them few legal protections and rights.
    • Most migrant workers in the Okanagan come through the Temporary Foreign Worker program.
    • Or perhaps people think we do not have anything to say?” Migrant workers in Canada are sadly not alone in not being heard.
    • Migrant workers in Hawaii are now in limbo after wildfires devastated the historic city of Lahaina.
    • Governments must urgently revise immigration policies to ensure that migrants, regardless of their legal status, are able to ask for and receive the support they need during times of crisis.

50 years after the Bunker Hill mine fire caused one of the largest lead-poisoning cases in US history, Idaho's Silver Valley is still at risk

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 30, 2023

On Sept. 3, 1973, a fire swept through the baghouse of the Bunker Hill mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley.

Key Points: 
  • On Sept. 3, 1973, a fire swept through the baghouse of the Bunker Hill mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley.
  • The building was designed to filter pollutants produced by smelting, the melting of rocks that separates metal from its ore.
  • At the time, the prices of lead and silver were climbing toward all-time highs.
  • They increased production, bypassed the filtration steps and, for eleven months, dumped noxious gases directly into the surrounding area.

How lead harms human health

    • However, we have zero need for lead.
    • It can also cause problems with brain development, kidney function and reproductive health, including miscarriages, prematurity and low birth weight.
    • The CDC no longer uses “level of concern” as a threshold, because there is no safe blood lead level in children.

Children’s health after the Baghouse Fire

    • The children of the Silver Valley were exposed to extremely high levels of poisons after the Baghouse Fire at the Bunker Hill mine.
    • Their average blood lead level was 67.4 micrograms per deciliter.
    • It is difficult to assess the extent of the damage from the Baghouse Fire in the children of the Silver Valley.

Continuing health risk in Silver Valley

    • The legacy of the Baghouse Fire continues to haunt Silver Valley, but that incident 50 years ago is only part of the picture.
    • At its height, the Silver Valley area had over 200 active mines.
    • It is estimated that the Coeur d’Alene River delivers about 200 tons of lead to Lake Coeur d’Alene every year.

Swan deaths show the continuing risk

    • In 2022, the average blood lead level for children in “The Box” was estimated at 2.3 micrograms per deciliter, above the U.S. average.
    • The average for the surrounding area was higher, 3.3 micrograms per deciliter.
    • Since 2008, average swan deaths are estimated at 50 to 60 birds per year.
    • There were over 300 bird deaths documented in 2022; a study is underway into the cause.

As Idaho’s population booms, people aren’t aware

    • With population growth comes development, digging and disturbing contaminated soil.
    • Idaho’s Panhandle Health District offers free lead screenings year-round to anyone living or spending time in the area.
    • Mary Rehnborg, program manager for the Institutional Controls Program in the Panhandle Health District, contributed to this article.

The federal government turns to local communities to help refugees settle into the US, but community-based programs bring both possibilities and challenges

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Today, there are more than 110 million people who have been forced from their homes and countries, the highest number on record.

Key Points: 
  • Today, there are more than 110 million people who have been forced from their homes and countries, the highest number on record.
  • But despite this increased need for immigrants and refugees to find homes, they are often blocked from entering many countries because of security concerns, rising xenophobia and nativism.
  • Since 1980, the U.S. has had one of the largest resettlement programs in the world.
  • The federal government and 10 nonprofit organizations have worked together to give immigrants and refugees the services they need to resettle.

Community-based refugee sponsorship programs

    • In the newly announced Welcome Corps program, for example, sponsors have to raise $2,375 for each refugee and commit three months of financial support, as well as up to 12 months of social support.
    • Community sponsorship projects, similar to Welcome Corps, have been piloted in more than 40 states and 90 communities.

Resettlement program successes

    • For example, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. welcomed more than 1 million refugees from Southeast Asia through community sponsorship.
    • But by the 1980s, an economic recession and shifts in public attitudes toward refugees reduced the popularity of community sponsorship.
    • Around the same time, Congress passed the 1980 Refugee Act to standardize resettlement and shift from the community sponsorship model to the professional resettlement agencies that are still active.

Government and volunteer partnership

    • Some scholars have criticized the program’s focus on self-sufficiency as inadequate to support refugees’ initial and long-term needs.
    • And cities and states new to the program have been hobbled by their inexperience in resettling refugees.
    • In the new Welcome Corps program, for example, sponsor groups raise private funds to provide services, reducing the need for federal funding.
    • The federal government is trying to give community sponsor groups specific guidance about where to get the help they may need.
    • Community sponsorship programs were intended to function alongside the traditional resettlement program – not to add to the workload of resettlement agencies.

Business schools must step up on sustainable investing education

Retrieved on: 
Monday, August 28, 2023

Sustainable investing takes into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors alongside traditional financial components.

Key Points: 
  • Sustainable investing takes into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors alongside traditional financial components.
  • Criticisms of ESG investing have been exacerbated by post-secondary finance programs that barely touch upon these issues, resulting in a significant shortage of qualified sustainable investment professionals.

Due diligence

    • This should not be controversial; it’s simply part of proper due diligence in portfolio investing, similar to analyzing financial factors.
    • Given the climate crisis and persistent inequality, business schools must urgently and immediately tackle the sustainability deficit in finance education.
    • Formal instruction must be enhanced with experiential learning techniques that expose students to the complexity and nuances of sustainable investing.

ESG under fire

    • Right-wing critics argue that including ESG considerations in investment decisions is intrusive moralizing and part of a “woke capitalism” agenda.
    • Counterparts on the left downplay concerns about economic transition costs or exaggerate the power of ESG investing to create a better world.
    • Criticisms and politicization, combined with other factors, have curtailed flows to ESG funds.

Reforming business schools

    • Developing competence in sustainable investing requires a serious revision in business school finance programs.
    • Core courses must include sustainable investing concepts and tools as part of mainstream financial education.
    • This is especially important given fast-evolving ESG and climate-related regulations and rising global risks that pose new threats to companies and investors.

Student-managed investment funds

    • Student-Managed Investment Funds (SMIFs) provide students with experience working together to manage real investment portfolios under the guidance of faculty supervisors and industry professionals.
    • Since business schools have long used student-managed funds to train the next generation of investment bankers, financial analysts and other financial industry professionals, this is surprising — and disappointing.
    • Sustainable finance education could benefit greatly when students work together to integrate financial, environmental and social factors in student-managed investment funds.

The role of universities

    • We encourage university administrators and finance educators across the country to immediately implement ESG policies for existing student-managed investment funds.
    • One encouraging initiative in this regard is by Propel Impact, a non-profit that is collaborating with seven universities to run their own local student impact funds.
    • We offer this program to University of Victoria students and hope it expands to more Canadian universities.

The Mother and Son reboot has fresh things to say about adult children and their ageing parents

Retrieved on: 
Monday, August 28, 2023

For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.

Key Points: 
  • For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.
  • However, the revival has some fresh things to say about the fraught but loving bonds between adult children and their ageing parents in the 21st century.

The original Mother and Son

    • Mother and Son premiered on the ABC in 1984 and ran for six seasons until 1994.
    • At the time Mother and Son was first broadcast, Australian sitcoms were thin on the ground.
    • Mother and Son represented a significant departure from the sketch comedies, soaps and serial dramas that featured on 1980s television.

Ageing parents and adult children

    • Re-watching Mother and Son, (currently available on iView), I was struck by how well it captures the complex emotions of both ageing parents and their adult children.
    • The series never shied away from Arthur’s guilt and frustration, or Maggie’s loneliness and feelings of loss.
    • In a society where care of children and the elderly was (and still is) typically regarded as “women’s work”, this was significant.

A new mother and son

    • In the 2023 Mother and Son, Maggie (Denise Scott) is a free-spirited eccentric who almost burned down the family home while cooking dinner for her grandchildren.
    • His mercenary sister, Robbie (a gender flip from the original) wants to move their mother into aged care so they can sell her home: a very 2020s tale.
    • The new Mother and Son is likeable, gentle comedy.
    • While it can’t hope to match the brilliance of the original, this reimagined Mother and Son offers an sympathetic, honest portrayal of ageing parents and their harried adult children – something we don’t see enough of on our television screens.

Children's early learning belongs in neighbourhood schools

Retrieved on: 
Monday, August 28, 2023

Some important lessons pertain to effective ways provinces and territories can expand children’s and families’ access to early learning programs.

Key Points: 
  • Some important lessons pertain to effective ways provinces and territories can expand children’s and families’ access to early learning programs.
  • Canada-wide early learning and child-care agreements established between the federal government and provinces or territories allow governments to be creative with increasing access.
  • Ample evidence points towards benefits and practical ways of offering high-quality early learning programs in schools quickly and efficiently.

Relying on school infrastructure


    Schools can launch early learning and care fast and well by including four-year-olds in the neighbourhood school in programs offered by the school, free of charge. These programs recognize that any fee, even $10 a day, is a challenge for many, especially those who most need the program. This approach is efficient and effective, child-friendly and family focused, and informed by a wealth of international research.

Creating more early years spaces


    Ample examples exist of governments who have effectively launched school based early learning programs:
    Canadian success with school-based pre-kindergarten reflects international experiences, including in the United States:

High-quality programs

    • Similar lessons were learned in many schools’ move to full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds, once unheard of but now enjoyed by all but three provinces in Canada.
    • As regions across Canada work to meet the expansion requirements outlined in the federal agreements, enrolment numbers for existing school-based programs for four-year-olds offer an attractive route toward creating more early years spaces.
    • Read more:
      What to look for in a high-quality 'pre-primary' or junior kindergarten program

      It is not just the rate of expansion that is impressive; so too is the quality of programs.

Short- and long-term benefits

    • High-quality early childhood education lowers special education rates and lessens the intensity of supports required for children with identified exceptionalities.
    • Families enjoy having all their children at one site, and can sometimes also rely on busing.

Return on investment, continuity of learning

    • A report from the Roosevelt Institute, a not-for-profit think tank in the United States, notes “studies of early care and education programs beginning at birth targeted to disadvantaged groups — such as children in low-income communities of color — have demonstrated significant improvements in their long-term education, health, and employment outcomes, leading economist James Heckman to estimate a 13 percent per year return on investment for similar programs.” New York’s pre-kindergarten program created 70,000 spaces in two years.
    • In Australia, efforts to align programs serving three- and four-year-olds with primary grades stress the significance of learning and teaching that smooths the transition for children and families and optimizes academic and developmental outcomes.

Early learning is early education

    • They need to know that their children are immersed in high-quality early learning and they do not want to be exhausted in their search for it.
    • Early learning is early education.
    • The federal government invested in children’s early learning and child-care because it finally accepted the wisdom of doing so — for children’s learning and development, for families’ well-being, for the economy and for communities optimal social outcomes.

The five best films at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 24, 2023

I’ve been talking to my film students lately about the way that viewing contexts affect how we receive a film – whether this means different hardware, locations, moods and modes of engaging.

Key Points: 
  • I’ve been talking to my film students lately about the way that viewing contexts affect how we receive a film – whether this means different hardware, locations, moods and modes of engaging.
  • The Melbourne International Film Festival gives such a fantastic opportunity for coming together like this for two weeks of really concentrated cinema experiences, a welcome retreat from winter.

Walk Up (Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea, 2022)

    • Part of the difficulty in writing about Hong’s work is that conversations among fans can feel exclusionary, heading immediately into auteurist gushing about form and repeated character types.
    • This repetition is one of the real pleasures of encountering his work.
    • If you’ve never seen a Hong film, you can expect slow, realist plots about relationships (romantic, familial).
    • In Walk Up, the filmmaker protagonist Byung-Soo (Hong regular Kwon Hae-Hyo), adult daughter in tow, visits an old girlfriend who owns a four-storey apartment building.

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt, US, 2022)

    • It’s fascinating how the most interesting hot teen actresses of my adolescence now play frumps in films by female auteurs.
    • Beautiful Michelle Williams’ dowdiness here rivals even Kirsten Dunst’s in The Beguiled or The Power of the Dog.
    • You would never believe this croc-clad, slouching woman was playing Marilyn Monroe 12 years ago.

Femme (Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, UK, 2023)

    • The moment Femme ended, the stranger to my right turned to me and said, “Wow, that was intense hey?
    • I was reminded of how many rape-revenge films don’t seem to understand that revenge is only satisfying if the survivor gets away with it.
    • And that sometimes we don’t want to see bullies learn the error of their ways – we just want to see them left out in the cold.

Gush (Fox Maxy, US, 2023)

    • The editing is unrelenting, with layers of sound collage and grainy digital shots of nature overlaid with MySpace-aesthetic animations, auto-tune, scenes of live theatre and TV clips of Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell.
    • Read more:
      The best films at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival

      This feels anathema to experimental film, which does sometimes intersect with the essay film (with an argument and something to say), but doesn’t have to.

    • Also – as I see someone clever on Letterboxd saying, it reads like “a series of bitchy Jonas Mekas TikToks”.

Phenomena (Dario Argento, Italy, 1985)

    • This was part of the festival’s Argento retrospective – new restoration prints of the horror and giallo master’s classics.
    • And 1985’s lurid hallucination Phenomena is a total blast.
    • You can watch a film nearly anywhere, but you need to be in the cinema for that kind of delightful experience.

How a hip-hop mindset can help teachers in a time of turmoil

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 23, 2023

As a researcher who specializes in hip-hop culture, I know that one of hip-hop’s greatest gifts is a certain mindset that focuses on freedom of thought, flexibility and truth-telling.

Key Points: 
  • As a researcher who specializes in hip-hop culture, I know that one of hip-hop’s greatest gifts is a certain mindset that focuses on freedom of thought, flexibility and truth-telling.
  • It also includes creativity, authenticity, confidence, braggadocio, uninhibited voice and integrity as those things relate to one’s community and culture.

1. Claim your space

    • And when I say ‘Who’s house?’ I want y'all to say ‘Run’s house.’” Through this call-and-response routine, the group claimed every arena in which they performed.
    • Hip-hop’s longevity is due in large part to this boldness – artists standing firm and fighting back even when they were under attack.

2. Form a squad or a crew

    • Educators can lean on their squad to help strategize and stay sane.
    • A squad or crew need not be confined to just one school.
    • Just as hip-hop artists are often part of larger groups, educators can similarly build a larger community of support.

3. Remix

    • One of the most popular strategies of creating hip-hop music is the remix – where a song’s producer will create a new version of a song, sometimes by borrowing or sampling beats from other songs, changing up the pace, or even introducing new lyrics that weren’t part of the original.
    • A classic example would be KRS-One’s 1988 song “Still #1.” Whereas the original version was laid back, the “Numero Uno” remix featured a sample of an upbeat Latin jazz song and even opened in Spanish.
    • A remix may also be helpful with school funding.

4. Go crate digging

    • Crate digging is a critical part of the remix.
    • After desegregation, for instance, a new struggle emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to make school lessons more culturally and racially inclusive.
    • Communities around the country partner with the Children’s Defense Fund to offer local Freedom Schools.

5. Still keep it real

    • At the time, it felt like intense pressure to keep it real and to represent your community.
    • I now look back and appreciate that it actually wasn’t pressure, but rather permission to be authentic.
    • But there’s no restriction against “keeping it real” and discussing the new laws and policies as a civics lesson.