Mondoville Daily Scroll: December 9
Today on the Scroll: posthumous gangsta rap battle smacked down; upper-middlebrow TV makes a Canadian comeback; rocking hockey book sent to the PMO; aging Australian rockers carry on without Toronto talent; and what does gossip hawker see in the country’s most disparaged media personality?
Judge Issues Interim Ruling In Death Row Case [Billboard]: Lara Lavi, who started the year with the recording assets of Death Row Records at her disposal after Toronto company WIDEawake Entertainment won them in a bankruptcy auction, failed to get a restraining order against deal backers New Solutions Capital — a New York Supreme Court judge ruled Ronald Ovenden clearly has controlling ownership and, besides, Lavi never put up the $2 million bond to support her claim. Next stop, an Ontario court on Thursday, where permission is being sought to access Lavi’s personal webmail accounts. [Previously on Mondoville]
Sundance Channel Rises in Canada [press release]: Drive-In Classics, a digital specialty channel licensed under Moses Znaimer’s watch that CTV didn’t know what to do with, will relaunch in March under new Corus Entertainment ownership with branding by Robert Redford. But everything old is new again — the promised programming sounds a lot like C Channel, the pay TV service that lasted for five months in 1983, after a telethon failed to keep it on the air. Also coming soon, as part of the same deal, a re-brand of SexTV to chick flick channel W Movies. [Previously on Mondoville]
Book Number 70: Tropic of Hockey by Dave Bidini [What is Stephen Harper Reading?]: Yaan Martel’s excruciatingly condescending campaign to get the philistine prime minister to appreciate Canadian books, whose endorsement letters are now themselves a book, sends along its latest selection: “Nothing loved can be reduced to mere entertainment, to mere anything. So just as I have an exalted view of literature and bristle at the notion of art as mere entertainment and cannot fathom anyone having a good, thinking life that doesn’t include reading, so Dave Bidini exalts, bristles and cannot fathom on the subject of hockey. Each one of us cares, defends and justifies what he or she loves. Put all those passions together, and you have a society, a culture, a nation. A last word, then, on Tropic of Hockey: it’s the most Canadian book I’ve sent you.”
INXS plans new album, world tour with ‘guest vocalists,’ to begin in Vancouver [Canadian Press]: Whatever happened to their Rock Star reality show winner, J.D. Fortune? No mention of him in the plans to play at the 2010 Winter Olympics, having claimed to be unceremoniously dumped at an airport: “The band has since disputed the story, with a spokesman saying he wasn’t even sure where the supposed incident Fortune referred to was to have taken place.” J.D. has started telling his INXS story on his blog, a tale titled “The Hard Way.”
Ben Mulroney Should Be Next CTV News Anchor [Ian Undercover]: Brangelina author Ian Halperin knows a star when he sees it — especially if they’re willing to say such nice things about his latest muckraking book. [Previously on Mondoville]
… and more all day today @mondoville and dailystream@mondoville.com.