Check it out here.

(PS: I fall under the CTVglobemedia brand)

From TheStar.com:

The Saturday Star, Canada's biggest and best-read newspaper, has a new editor.

Diana Zlomislic "will oversee our most important paper of the week, with its tremendous readership" of more than 1.3 million readers, said Star editor-in-chief Fred Kuntz, who announced the appointment yesterday.

Zlomislic, who joined the Star in 2002, "has demonstrated a strong combination of good news judgment, calm under pressure and design flair," Kuntz added.

The new editor, who holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Ryerson University, came to the Star via the Haliburton County Echo and the Toronto Sun, where she worked as a copy editor, page designer, sports reporter, and sports media columnist.

Discreet is back for many chi-chi New York clubs and restos.

An NYT story paints a road constructed in Afghanistan's Panjwaii district (by Canadian troops, at a cost of Canadian blood) as being emblematic of what's wrong with the mission there.

Chuck the groundhog has been preparing for his big day in the spotlight on Feb. 2 by riding public transit with his trainer on their way to and from the Staten Island Zoo.

From the NYT:

The New York Times Company is offering a voluntary buyout plan to newsroom and business-office employees in its New England Media Group as part of an effort to cut 125 jobs at The Boston Globe and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, according to memorandums sent (Thursday) by the head of the group and the editor of The Globe.

The group also plans to outsource some finance and advertising operations to reach its goal in reducing jobs and lowering costs.

The cutbacks are to affect 17 positions in The Globe newsroom and 2 on the opinion pages, according to a memo sent to the staff by The Globe’s editor, Martin Baron. No buyouts are expected in the newsroom of The Telegram & Gazette, said Alfred S. Larkin Jr., executive vice president of The Globe.

The cuts are about 5 percent of the 2,300-member work force. The Globe newsroom has 412 employees.

From NYT film critic Manohla Dargis's take on Alpha Dog:

The cretins rule in “Alpha Dog,” which has much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo or reading the latest issue of Star magazine. Of course a little of that nasty stuff may land on you, but such are the perils of voyeurism.

For some strange reason, I kept expecting Rodney King to appear in the film's denouement saying, "People: Can't we all just get along?"

I think The Globe and Mail's Liam Lacey put it reasonably well in his review of Letters from Iwo Jima:

For all its emphasis on doomed honour and grim death, Letters from Iwo Jima is also sentimental: a lingering shot of a mangled arm holding a family photo; a Japanese soldier's epiphany, after hearing a letter read from an American soldier's mother, that the American savages may be human, like him.

Letters from Iwo Jima has been extravagantly praised, winning honours from the National Board of Review and Los Angeles critics as the best movie of the year. This may be, in part, because Eastwood, in his tough, traditional way, has made a war film that acknowledges that adversaries, including those that fight from caves, have loves and terrors as deep as our own. The intent is commendable but this is hardly a radical insight.

Long-time readers will know I gained some amusement value from a 2006 Holiday Inn TV ad that featured a bunch of spot-on workplace archtypes.

Here's a QuickTime movie of the actual ad that a thoughtful soul sent to me (thanks, Naomi!).

The U.S. recognizes that for better or worse, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is still the best  least worst son-of-a-bitch they have there in the "war on terror," but still, al Qaeda seems to be settling into the tribal areas quite nicely.