Stil a thrill
And off we go on Michael Connelly's 40th superb police procedural, riding the freeways of Los Angeles with hardboiled homicide cop Harry Bosch, detective Renee Ballard, and most recently young police officer Maddie Bosch, following in father's footsteps.
Oh, wait.
Mark DeLong Photography
Michael Connelly is known for his detective Harry Bosch, but in his 40th police procedural, he's introduced a new main character: detective sergeant Stilwell.
There are no freeways on Catalina.
And no one named Bosch or Ballard is in sight, though our lead detective sure sounds a lot like Harry Bosch. A past in the police dive unit rather than a tunnel rat in Vietnam, but still, could be a younger Bosch clone.
Insubordinate? Check. Doesn't follow orders? Check. Ventures outside the rules at times? Check. Doesn't get along with lazy or corrupt fellow police officers? Check. Opposes authority at any level, at any time? Check. Messes up relationships with great women? Check.
But does he solve crimes that so many others can't?
Oh, please.
Nightshade brings us Connelly's latest new character, Los Angeles County sheriff's detective sergeant Stilwell — no first name, Stil to his friends, Stillborn to several loathsome characters.
And for all intents and purposes, he might as well be Harry Bosch, Harry having become quite old and retired. Connelly's apparently decided against exploring Harry's earlier decades-old cases in favour of simply creating a Harry Bosch by another name.
Sure, most of those attributes also apply to Renee Ballard, but work with us here.
Does Connelly succeed?
Oh yeah, it works, splendidly. Nightshade is terrific.
Who knew that if L.A. cops get into the bosses' bad books, but not badly enough to get fired, that they get banished to Catalina — where they drive golf carts instead of cruisers?
Other than weekend bar fights, Catalina is, until this murder, pretty quiet. Stilwell immediately loses the case to mainland homicide detectives and, as luck would have it, to a jerk who orchestrated Stil's demotion. Don't you hate when that happens?
The mayor is already all over Stil — a murder is bad for impending summer business, when every place on the island is booked solid. How inconvenient. How like the mayor in Jaws.
Nightshade
The mayor made it clear when Stil arrived that whatever the law said about police independence from politicians, the mayor calls the shots on Catalina. Think Stil bent a knee?
Pay attention when you hear that the mayor is involved with offshore investors who want to build a giant ferris wheel. No, you're not going to find out here if it comes up again.
Stil first figures out who the dead woman is when he checks out a report of a stolen jade statue from the exclusive men's club and marina. Treating Stil as a servant, the manager tells Stil he fired a young woman who was using her job to try to find a sugar daddy, and the statue's disappearance soon followed. And that young woman had — you got it in one — purple streaks in her hair.
Meanwhile, Stil is sleuthing the killing of an endangered species of animal in the remotest part of the island, likely linked to what passes on Catalina for an odious mobster.
And Stil's spidey sense is tingling about the drunk he's got in the cells, who concussed a deputy by hitting him from behind with a bottle. Just seemed a little contrived. Hmmmm.
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Stil of course ignores orders not to investigate the murder, duly investigating said murder and getting way ahead of the mainland homicide team.
Connelly's ability to intrigue us with the minutiae of a police procedural is just so fluid and so seamless. We're hooked long before we realize we don't want to put the book down.
Connelly's previous murder mystery promised to establish Ballard and Maddie Bosch as an ongoing team, with Harry acting as though he still carried a badge, and his half-brother, the Lincoln Lawyer, always available to spice up a plot.
But Stilwell — pretty safe to say he'll be back.
Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin stopped clutching his pearls when he realized that for the first time after 39 guilty pleasures, Michael Connelly's sleuth would not be burning gazillions of gallons of fossil fuels on the freeways.
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Winnipeg Free Press
18-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Discovery ‘Shark Week' has breaching great whites, looks back at ‘Jaws' and starts with some dancing
NEW YORK (AP) — Fifty years ago, 'Jaws' unlocked dread in millions about man-eating sharks. This summer, that fear may be somewhat reduced as they become contestants on a TV dance show. Former 'Dancing With the Stars' host Tom Bergeron steps up for a marketing masterstroke by Discovery Channel's 'Shark Week' — 'Dancing with Sharks,' where humans and 20-foot-long hammerhead sharks do a little mambo. 'I had a decade and a half experience of hosting a dance show, but this one was different,' Bergeron tells The Associated Press. 'I'd often thought on 'Dancing With the Stars,' wouldn't it be great if we could incorporate another species? And here I've finally got my dream come true.' In the show, five scuba-diving shark handlers use bait to twirl and guide various sharks into mini-waltzes, in what's being billed as 'the world's most dangerous dance competition.' One contestant wraps his arms around a nerf shark and spoons it. Another takes off her air tank and does a double backflip. A third — a hip-hop loving shark handler — does an old school head spin on the ocean floor as sharks swirl. 'These are some of the best shark handlers in the world. These are people who know the nuances of sharks, know how they move, know how to behave, know how to safely move with them, and they're guiding these sharks along as you would a partner,' says Kinga Philipps, a TV correspondent and one of the three judges. 'It is so fluid and beautiful, all they really had to do is put a little bit of music to it and they're actually dancing.' It's a shark-a-thon 'Dancing with Sharks' kicks off the week of programing, which includes shows on how to survive a shark attack, why New Smyrna Beach in Florida has earned the title of 'The Shark Attack Capital of the World' and whether a mysterious dark-skinned shark off the coast of California is a mako, mutant or possibly a mako-and-great white hybrid. The seven nights of new shows — and a related podcast — ends off the Mozambique coast with a once-a-year feeding frenzy that turns into a showdown between the sharks and their massive prey, the giant trevally. One highlight is Paul de Gelder's 'How to Survive a Shark Attack,' which he has intimate knowledge about. He lost his right hand and leg in 2009 during an attack by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor. 'If you're in the jaws of a shark, you want to fight for all of your life. You want to go for the soft parts. You want go for the eyeball. You want to go for the gills,' he says. 'But if you're not being attacked by a shark and you're just encountering a shark, then you just want to remain calm.' De Gelder debunks one myth: Punching a charging shark will stop its attack. 'If you really want to hurt your own hand, go ahead,' he says. A better approach is to not thrash about and gently redirect the animal. 'The secret I got taught many years ago was don't act like food and they won't treat you like food.' 'Shark Week' has become a key part of the summer holiday TV schedule, a place where humans safe on land can see ancient apex predators unnervingly glide into view and snap open their jaws. This year's highlights also include the hunt for a 20-foot great white that can leap into the air — 'Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus' — and a show about male and female great whites competing in a series of challenges to determine which sex is the superior predator, naturally called 'Great White Sex Battle.' Joseph Schneier, senior vice president of production and development at Discovery, says the shows are born from listening to what the diving and science community is seeing, like pro divers moving artistically with the sharks as they fed them, leading to 'Dancing With Sharks.' 'We realized, well, there's something here that we can go further with,' he says. 'We're lucky that sharks continue to surprise us. Which helps us get kind of new stories and new things to focus on. That's been the mantra for us — the sharks are the stars, not the humans.' As always, there is a deep respect for the creatures and strong science beneath the amusing titles, sharky puns, dramatic music and racy titles like 'Frankenshark' and 'Alien Sharks: Death Down Under.' 'It's like putting your vegetables in a dessert,' says Bergeron. 'You get all the allure of a 'Dancing With Sharks' or other specific shows, but in the midst of that you do learn a lot about sharks and ecology and the importance of sharks in the ecosystem. It's all in your strawberry sundae.' Discovery's 'Shark Week' has a rival — National Geographic's 'SharkFest,' which also has hours of sharky content. There's also the unconnected shark horror comedy 'Hot Spring Shark Attack' and a movie earlier this summer that added a serial killer to a shark movie — 'Dangerous Animals.' Born from 'Jaws' 'Shark Week' was born as a counterpoint for those who developed a fear of sharks after seeing 'Jaws.' It has emerged as a destination for scientists eager to protect an animal older than trees. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. ''Jaws' helped introduce this country and this world to a predator we're all fascinated with,' says Schneier. 'But we also feel 'Jaws' went too far. These are not creatures that are out to hurt humans by any means, but they have had 50-plus million years of evolution to get to this place where they are just excellent predators. It's fun to celebrate just how good they are at their job.' Kendyl Berna, who co-founded the ecology group Beyond the Reef, and is a veteran on 'Shark Week,' says studying the ancient beasts can teach humans about changes to the planet. 'So much of the programming this year speaks to what's happening with the rest of the world — climate change and how much that affects where sharks are and when they're there and what they're eating,' she says. 'As a keystone apex predator, sharks do set the tone for what's happening.' Bergeron says being a part of 'Shark Week' for the first time and meeting some of the divers who interact with sharks has actually made him braver. 'I don't think I'm at a point where I could go down there with them and have the sharks swirling around me without a cage. But with a cage, I think I am ready to do that,' he says. 'Just don't tell my wife.'
CBC
13-07-2025
- CBC
50 years after Jaws, will B.C. ever see more great white sharks?
Fifty years after Steven Spielberg's Jaws set the template for the Hollywood summer blockbuster movie, the spectre of a great white shark attack still looms over anyone who goes swimming in the sea. Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, and the film is set in New England as a vicious great white shark kills summer beachgoers, and a police chief takes on the scary task of tackling it. Scientists say B.C.'s waters are still too cold for the great white shark to proliferate on Canada's West Coast, but that they could become more common as the Pacific Ocean warms due to climate change. Still, they say over a dozen sharks call B.C.'s waters home, and measures to protect them from hunting are resulting in more of them recovering in population. "Sharks are part of what brings natural balance to ecosystems by exerting this top down predation pressure, so species never get out of control," said Andrew Trites, a professor at the University of B.C. Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. "We are seeing a recovery of sharks, I would say probably worldwide, but particularly in North America." Among the most common sharks that call B.C. home is the spiny dogfish, which Trites says many fishermen have accidentally caught in the Salish Sea. Danny Kent, curator of fishes at the Vancouver Aquarium, says another common shark is the sixgill shark, which divers may have encountered in the Howe Sound region. But the curator says many sharks in B.C. waters thrive on the open ocean, and not close to land. "I think most people would be lucky to see [a shark] just cause they're not often seen," he said. "They might be common, but not commonly seen." Other sharks that inhabit B.C. waters, according to Kent, include the salmon shark, the mako shark and the thresher shark. Another is the basking shark, a 12-metre long shark that is one of the largest fish in the world. Kent said basking sharks used to be plentiful in B.C. waters, feeding on plankton. "They were almost completely eradicated and ... almost nobody ever sees them anymore," he said. "And, you know, if we started seeing them coming back, I think that would be a good sign, just like we're seeing other marine mammals coming back that haven't been around for a while." Trites said the great white is very uncommon in B.C. waters, and even though their prey of seals and sea lions are recovering in population, the ocean on Canada's West Coast is simply too cold for them to become a regular feature. "The great white is really, really rare — although maybe it'll become more common in another 50 years when we do another anniversary for the movie Jaws," he said. "Maybe [then], we can talk about great whites, because what is changing is the waters are warming."
Winnipeg Free Press
10-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito revisit ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' for its 50th anniversary
Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind 'Jaws,' and had received nine Oscar nominations. But Nicholson wasn't feeling optimistic. In five years, he'd already been nominated five times. He'd also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn't go through it again. 'I remember how hard I had to persuade Jack to come to the ceremony. He was so reluctant, but we got him there,' Douglas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. 'And then of course we lost the first four awards. Jack was sitting right in front of me and sort of leaned back and said 'Oh, Mikey D, Mikey D, I told you, man.' I just said, 'Hang in there.'' Douglas, of course, was right. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' would go on to sweep the 'big five' — screenplay, director, actor, actress and picture — the first film to do so in 41 years, ('It Happened One Night,' in 1934) which only 'The Silence of the Lambs' has done since. That night was one of many vindicating moments for a film that no one wanted to make or distribute that has quite literally stood the test of time. 'This is my first 50th anniversary,' Douglas said. 'It's the first movie I ever produced. To have a movie that's so lasting, that people get a lot out of, it's a wonderful feeling. It's bringing back a lot of great memories.' The film adaption of Ken Kesey's countercultural novel was a defining moment for Douglas, a son of Hollywood who was stuck in television and got a lifeline to film when his father, Kirk Douglas, gave him the rights to the book, and many of the then-unknown cast like Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd. DeVito was actually the first person officially cast. Douglas, who'd known him for nearly 10 years, brought Forman to see him play Martini on stage. 'Miloš said, 'Yes! Danny! Perfect! Cast!' Douglas said in his best Czech accent. 'It was a big moment for Danny. But I always knew how talented he was.' A Joyful Shoot Though the film's themes are challenging, unlike many of its New Hollywood contemporaries it wasn't a tortured shoot by any stretch. They had their annoyances (like Forman refusing to show the cast dailies) and more serious trials (they found out halfway through production that William Redfield was dying of leukemia), but for the most part it was fun. 'We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey's work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,' DeVito said, laughing. Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn't. 'There was full commitment,' Douglas said. 'That comes when you don't go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, 'Jack, you OK?' He said, 'Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It's lunch time and they're all acting the same way!'' Not disproving Nicholson's point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital. 'They wouldn't let us,' DeVito said. 'The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.' A lasting legacy The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It's a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin. 'It's a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,' Douglas said. DeVito thinks it, 'holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.' Besides the shock of 'holy Toledo, am I that old?' DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy. Currently on hiatus A review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe. One person Douglas thinks hasn't gotten the proper attention for his contributions to 'Cuckoo's Nest' is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. His music company, Fantasy Records who had Creedence Clearwater Revival, funded the endeavor which started at a $1.6 million budget and ballooned to $4 million by the end. He was a gambler, Douglas said, and it paid off. And whatever sour grapes might have existed between Douglas and his father, who played R.P. McMurphy on Broadway and dreamt of doing so on film, were perhaps over-exaggerated. It was ultimately important for their relationship. 'McMurphy is as good a part as any actor is going to get, and I'm now far enough in my career to understand maybe you have four, maybe five good parts, really great parts. I'm sure for dad that was one of them,' Douglas said. 'To not be able to see it through was probably disappointing on one side. On the other, the fact that his son did it and the picture turned out so good? Thank God the picture turned out. It would have been a disaster if it hadn't.' Douglas added: 'It was a fairy tale from beginning to end. I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn't really surpass that moment very early in my career.'
