Results tagged “manufacturingdissent”

If today’s column title gets Rachel Sweet’s Hairspray stuck in your head for the rest of the day, good! Because then we’ll have made our point that the version of Hairspray hitting this weekend isn’t as good as the John Waters original. Though the music not being as good is only part of it. There’s also the inherent irony about making a musical in which one of the central themes is integration through a shared love of largely-African American music that features only music written by a couple of white dudes. Hell, the irony of just making a musical about that. Musicals are basically the whitest form of entertainment we can imagine.

The elite of the documentary film world gathered this morning at Revival for a press conference announcing the lineup of this year's Hot Docs festival. It's a powerhouse program, which TVO's Rudy Buttingnol attributes to the filmmakers and the growing importance of the medium. "Documentaries are helping change the way people think," says Buttingnol, who will also receive the inaugural Outstanding Industry Achievement Award. "Just look at how governments around the world are now trying to address the problem of the environment...I can't help but think documentaries had something to do with it."