Glasnost was the Russian phrase for the spirit of openness that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to instill until he was driven from power in 1991. Since the rise of Vladimir Putin, many of the media freedom gains under glasnost have retreated.

The NYT's Nathan Lee said this about Chocolate:

Risibly sentimental even for a genre not known for its emotional sophistication, “Chocolate” follows Zen as she collects on debts owed her ailing mother in order to pay for medical care. (You hope her targets have paid up their own premiums.) All of which is pretext — barely — for a series of unexceptional brawls.

"Unexceptional brawls" (?!?!)

I seem to live in a universe that parallels Mr. Lee's. I saw some remarkable fight sequences and relentlessly-paced action.

At TIFF, I saw a crowd that oohed, ahhed, whooped and generally had a kickass time.

Is Jija Yanin Vismitananda (Zen, the autistic martial arts savant) going to win an acting award? Is the screenplay a work of cinematic literature? No and no. But so what? It's a martial arts movie!!!

You can't judge such films by those criteria. The one true test is this: Was it exciting to watch? On that score, Chocolate ranks right up there with Ong Bak, SPL, Flashpoint and Banlieue 13.

You can see the trailer here. Here's a snapshot:

Nope, nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

From the Globe and Mail:

Health officials in Alberta confirmed Friday that there are more cases of cancer than expected in a small aboriginal village downstream from the massive oil sands plants, but they said there was no cause for residents to be alarmed.

In 1964, the Trashmen recorded a manic, two-minute ditty called Surfin' Bird that went on to be covered a dozen years later by punk bands such as the Cramps and the Ramones.

It was a popular Vietnam-era song (it came out just the U.S. was just gearing up to get serious in Indochina) and helped sonically illustrate one battle scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. The movie's final act is based on the battle of Hue*. The actual scene keeps getting removed from YouTube. If it disappears again, do some searching:

* For more, see this Jan. 31, 2008 post: The Tet Offensive. Oddly enough, it remains among my most clicked-on posts even today.

And in 2006, the torch was passed to a new generation and a new war -- but this ain't a movie scene:

From YouTube - "Reporter turns ghetto in 3 seconds":

(Seen first at Twitter)

Guardian blogger Owen Adams looks back on Lux Interior of the psychobilly punk group the Cramps. Interior, 60, died Wednesday of a heart condition.

Craig Oliver, CTV News's chief political correspondent and co-host of Question Period, is the winner of the 2009 Hyman Solomon Award for Public Policy Reporting.

From the Public Policy Forum website:

In 1994, the Public Policy Forum established The Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism to celebrate the journalistic standards and intellectual integrity of the late Hyman Solomon who, as Ottawa Bureau Chief of the Financial Post, covered the complex interplay of the public and private sectors, and the intricacies of national decision-making.

The award is presented each year to a journalist whose work, in either official language, provides insights into the policy-making process in Canada, and explains to Canadians how changes in public policy affect their individual well-being and collective economic progress.

Here's the list of previous winners. I think it's distinguished company.

For more on Craig, read this Nov. 16, 2008 post: G&M profiles Craig Oliver

From the NYT:

It seems that even Rupert Murdoch isn’t immune to the downturn battering media companies.

The News Corporation, the media empire controlled by Mr. Murdoch, said Thursday that it lost $6.4 billion in its second quarter as profit fell sharply at its television and movie units. The company also took a large write-down of $8.4 billion, about $3 billion of which reflected a decline in the value of the company’s newspaper unit, which includes Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

From the NYT:

Condé Nast Publications named a new publisher for The New Yorker on Thursday and put the magazine’s previous publisher in charge of Internet ad sales for the entire company. The move is part of a continuing reorganization as the company grapples with the magazine industry’s plunging ad revenue.

Last week, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev was all "I feel your pain"-ish over the latest murder of a Russian journalist. Czech-based journalist Robert Coalson, a writer for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, says don't be fooled.

From CBC.ca:

Five of Britain's top financial journalists appeared at a government hearing in London on Wednesday, rejecting accusations that their reporting caused panic and helped escalate the financial crisis in the U.K.

An independent committee comprising members of the British parliament have been investigating the U.K.'s banking crisis and questioning different players in the industry.

Journalists from the BBC, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, Sky News and the Guardian said that even if they had held back their stories about failing banks, the problems at the institutions would have existed.

From CBC.ca:

The tough times in the Montreal media continued on Wednesday with an announcement by Corus Québec about layoffs at Info 690 radio.

The company says the French-language news station will undergo a reorganization to help make the station more profitable.

The move will result in 12 layoffs.

According to the company, Info 690 has been losing money for years.

The International Federation of Journalists puts the media worker death toll at 109 for 2008 -- down from 2007's all-time record of 175, but that's mainly due to fewer Iraqi journos being lost to sectarian violence.

At a key point in his life, Maher Arar was called a terrorist in various newspaper articles. Journalists doing so quoted shadowy people from within the Canadian intelligence security establishment. The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui thinks such sources should be outed.

I note this observation from the Globe and Mail's Andrew Willis (from Tuesday):

With the most junior of CanWest's notes trading in the 25-cents-on-the dollar neighbourhood, the bond market is signalling that a full-scale financial restructuring may be coming. It's difficult to imagine how CanWest's dual share ownership structure would survive a creditor-driven restructuring - the Asper family is in danger of losing control of the company.

From the BBC:

The director of Somalia's independent HornAfrik radio station, Said Tahlil Ahmed, has been killed in the capital (Mogadishu).

PBS's MediaShift on a panel discussion about Twitter -- the social media innovation that's weeping the nation.

Online news strategist Steve Yelvington calls for an end to the "irrational negativity" currently surrounding the U.S. newspaper industry.

From AP to CTV.ca:

With an upgrade to its mobile maps, Google Inc. hopes to prove it can track people on the go as effectively as it searches for information on the Internet.

From the BBC:

Israeli officials say they are taking measures to restrict the work of the Arabic television network, al-Jazeera, inside Israel.

It follows a decision last month by al-Jazeera's owners, the state of Qatar, to cut trade ties with Israel.

From the BBC:

Press campaigners have condemned the killing of a Kenyan journalist whose decapitated body has been found dumped in a forest.

The dead journalist was identified as Francis Kainda Nyaruri.

His body was discovered with his hands tied behind his back and deep gashes on his body.

The campaign group, Reporters Without Borders, said Mr Nyaruri was reported missing last month after writing about alleged corruption.

The Globe and Mail sheds a total of 90 jobs across all departments, and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald hands out layoff notices to almost one-quarter of its newsroom.

The executive editor of the New York Times on why he's still bullish on quality journalism and the outlets that deliver it.

From the Toronto Star:

Conrad Black likely won't be kicked out of the House of Lords even under proposed rules that would oust British peers with criminal convictions.

With the business model shifting, not to mention the recession battering current revenue streams, it seems appropriate to wonder how the news media will pay for the expensive investigative projects that it has traditionally done.

Former Toronto Star publisher John Honderich explores some options currently on the table.