Guelph Politicast

This week on End Credits, it's a cause for celebration. As you may have noticed above, this is the 200th episode of the show, a momentous event almost four years in the making. There have been a lot of changes on the show, some people have come and gone over the years, but the draw has always been the movies, and this week we remember the best of the best.

This Wednesday, May 26, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Candice Lepage, and Peter Salmon will discuss:

Top Five of the First 199. Congratulations, you lived long enough to hear the 200th episode of End Credits! It's all down hill from here. Before moving on to the future, we will stop and take account of the first 199 episodes with our Top 5 of the show so far. Each panelist, choosing only from the movies they've reviewed on the show, will reveal their Top 5 of End Credits. From Adam Sandler's Oscar-worthy acting to a killer clown in the sewer, from art and romance in 17th century France to art and romance in 20th century Atlantic Canada, let's toast our favourites from the first four years of the show!

End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're getting you ready for Labour Day! No, not the holiday weekend widely considered the last break of the summer, we mean the "fight the power" version where you get out on the streets and fight for workers' rights. We've got work on the mind with labour negotiations for Ontario's teachers, and we've got fighting on the mind with the latest from Ukraine. In terms of a labour fight, we've got someone who's a picket line right now.

This Thursday, August 31, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Bold School. Kids across Ontario go back to school next week, but... For how long?! Well, that's more of a pressing question for elementary, Catholic school and French-language school students because members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation reached a deal with the Ministry of Education to enter arbitration, which was kind of a coup for Stephen Lecce, but left the other unions out in the cold. What does labour look like at Ontario's schools this fall?

Cloak and Wagner. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private army called the Wagner Group, was killed on a flight outside Moscow last week almost two months to the day he gave up his apparent coup attempt on the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. Why Prigozhin quit when it looked like he had the momentum is still a mystery, and speaking of a lack of momentum, what happened to the Ukrainian counteroffensive that was supposed to be so effective? We'll have an update.

TVOn Strike! They're not the first workers to go on strike this year, they're not even the first group to go on strike in the last month, but the workers of TVO, Ontario's public broadcaster, have been on the picket line for nearly two weeks now. What do they want? A long delayed pay raise and an end to contract labour that's creating instability in the work force would be a good start. This week, we're joined by Canadian Media Guild president Annick Forest about the stakes of the strike for TVO workers and the stakes more broadly for journalists and public broadcasting in Canada.

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

There's still a lot of summer left, so what are we supposed to do with some of our extra down time? How about enjoying some local paths and trails for a nice hike? It’s never not a good time to take a walk and enjoy the natural splendor of the Guelph area, but a warm day, a cool breeze, a clear trail, and a sensible pair of shoes is not a bad way to pass some time, and no one knows that better than the current head of the local hiking club.

The trails of Guelph have been the subject of a lot of discussion lately as walking and hiking, like a lot of outdoor activities, have seen an increase in interest during the pandemic. At the same time, the City of Guelph was putting the finishing touches on the Trails Master Plan, an ambitious program to make local trails more accessible, and improve their connectivity across the city. One of the community groups at the forefront of pushing the City on those improvements is the Guelph Hiking Trail Club.

In their own words, the Guelph Hiking Trail Club is a non-profit organization established in 1970 dedicated to stimulating an interest in hiking, establishing and maintaining trails, and encouraging conservation and awareness of the natural environment. They organize group hikes, promote social connections between local hikers, and advocate for a better hiking experience, like they did earlier this year when they successfully raised $50,000 for a bridge over the river along the James Street Trail.

John Fisher, current president of the Guelph Hiking Trail Club, is the guest on this week's podcast, and he will talk about how he got involved, and where the good hiking is for beginners and more advanced people. He also discusses the need to have good hiking etiquette, and whether or not the pandemic has had an impact on the number of hikers on area trails. And finally, Fisher will talk about what kind of work that the local trail network needs, and how City Hall can help make the most out of the Trails Master Plan.

So let's take a hike on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

To learn more about the Guelph Hiking Trail Club, you can go to their website, or connect with them on social media through Facebook and Twitter. To find the location of different trails in the city, you can visit City of Guelph website here, and to look at the Trails Master Plan on the City's website, click here.

***The Guelph Politicast will return with new episodes on August 24.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday. .

This week on End Credits we send in the clowns. Or rather one clown. This week we're going to try and get past the controversy and craziness and review the new movie, Joker. We're also going to start our series dedicated to 1999, and look at a couple of new trailers released this week, and we're going to talk about everyone's favourite topic, copyright law!

This Wednesday, October 9, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:

Copy, Right? In Hollywood, all the best laid plans for sequels and reboots lay at the feet of the most fickle of challenges, Trademark Law. The rights for Predator, Die Hard, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the works of Stephen King and David Mamet might all potentially end up back in the hands of their original creators, so is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Later, Trailers. What does a superhero spin-off, an action movie, and a based on a true story thriller have in common? They're trailers for new movies coming soon! One is a DC movie featuring Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, another is the latest Michael Bay explosion-fest, and the third is about the man wrongfully accused of the Olympic Park bombing in 1996.

25 for '99, Part 1 of 5. It's been 20 years since what's been called "the best year in movies" came and went, 12 months of some of the most influential and innovative movies of the last few decades, and for the next couple of weeks, we'll remember the best of the best. Each of our hosts will reveal their Top 5 favourites from 1999, starting with Tim.

REVIEW: Joker (2019). It's hard to think of a movie that's been more controversial than Joker, an ultra-serious, gritty and realistic take on the origins of Batman's most well-known nemesis. Heavily inspired by the early works of Martin Scorsese, and featuring a dynamo performance by Joaquin Phoenix, the movie is primed to be one of the biggest hits of 2019, but is it worthy of all the hype, not to mention all the safety concerns?

End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we box! It is Boxing Day, isn't it? So we're going to be boxing up all kinds of things, but the one thing we will be unboxing is our annual political movies show! For the tenth annual edition, we will look at four important films that cover a lot of political ground, from a documentary about a famous writer to the nightlife of Berlin just as things started getting Nazi, and from the end of the world in 2027 to a David Vs. Goliath courtroom fight!

This Thursday, December 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Scotty's Pick #1: I Am Not Your Negro (2016). "In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished."

Adam's Pick #2: Children of Men (2006). "The world's youngest citizen has just died at age 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set in and around a dystopian London fractious with violence and warring nationalistic sects, this movie follows the unexpected discovery of a lone pregnant woman and the desperate journey to deliver her to safety and restore faith for a future beyond those presently on Earth."

Scotty's Pick #2: The Rainmaker (1997). "Rudy Baylor is a young attorney out to make a difference in the justice system. He is also the only hope of an elderly couple after their corrupt insurance company refuses to pay out a claim that could save their child's life. In this judicial drama, Baylor rails against corporate lawyers, corrupt judges, and abusive husbands, all with the help of a fellow lawyer who hasn't even passed his bar exam. He is facing long odds in the courtroom - and this is only his first case."

Adam's Pick #2: Cabaret (1972). "In Berlin in 1931, American cabaret singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) meets British academic Brian Roberts (Michael York), who is finishing his university studies. Despite Brian's confusion over his sexuality, the pair become lovers, but the arrival of the wealthy and decadent playboy Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem) complicates matters for them both. This love triangle plays out against the rise of the Nazi party and the collapse of the Weimar Republic."

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.