The Concordian - January 26th, 2016

Concordia University’s weekly, independent student newspaper

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VOLUME 33, ISSUE 17 | TUESDAY, JAN. 26, 2016

theconcordian.com /theconcordian

@theconcordian

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Graduate

debt-free

Or at least less in the hole

Life p. 6 also in this issue

news

Reporting from conflict zones p. 3

arts

An existential puppet show

music

p. 8

sports

opinions

Too old for the ice: Breaking the MTL’s urban pirate musician p. 10 limiting players p. 12 stigma cycle

p. 15

news

NEWS EDITORS /// news@theconcordian.com GREGORY TODARO (! @GCTodaro) & LAURA MARCHAND (! @Marchand_L)

CITY

BY SAVANNA CRAIG NEWS ASSISTANT

St. Mary’s hospital debacle continues It was the highest ranking clinician, and not the operating surgeon, who ordered a transfer of a near-death patient from St. Mary’s to the new superhospital, the Montreal Gazette reported. A man died after the surgeon revealed he was barred from performing the surgery that could have saved his life due to budgetary cuts that discontinued the operation. Previously, both the hospital and the provincial Health Minister Gaétan Barrette claimed it was the surgeon’s decision not to operate; however, multiple sources have informed the Gazette that it was hospital authorities, who were aware of the situation, that made the call and transferred the man.

Woman narrowly avoids death by construction debris A Montreal woman says she doesn’t know how she’s alive after a metal rod, also known as rebar, flew through her windshield on the driver’s side.

Sigal Karasik claims she was driving on St. Jacques Street near construction for the Turcot interchange, when a hydraulic hammer accidentally hit the rod embedded in the pavement, sending it flying from the site and into traffic.

Website owner guilty for posting Magnotta video The owner of the site BestGore.com has pleaded guilty to posting the video that shows convincted killer Luka Magnotta stabbing and dismembering Chinese Concordia student Jun Lin. Edmonton man Mark Malek was charged with publishing obscene material, after officials suspected he knew that the recording depicted a real killing and refused police requests to take the video down. Magnotta was convicted to life in prison in 2014 for the crime.

POLITICS

The guaranteed income debate

Students sound off on a blank cheque for every Canadian

BY LAURA MARCHAND CO-NEWS EDITOR Financial troubles and higher education seem to go hand-inhand: who hasn’t heard the stereotype of the student eating instant noodles for the 12th night in a row? Student debt is a harsh reality for many, even years after receiving their degree.

To make ends meet, many students work while they study: 49 per cent of all full-time Canadian students earn while they learn, according to a Statistics Canada report. The report also notes that the average student works approximately 17 hours a week at their part-time job, earning around $6,000 a school year—far short of the “median cost of the … school year for postsecondary students age 18 to 24 [which] was $10,900,” and a different Statistics Canada report claims that “full-time students in Canada paid an average of $14,500 to pay for post-secondary schooling in 2010–2011”.

Yet, this is how most students manage to pay for their education: “more than one-half of students report that either savings (27 per cent) or earnings (26 per cent) provide the largest amount of money towards the total cost of their school year.”

That’s an average of 17 hours a week that isn’t spent studying. A study by Jeffrey S. DeSimone, Professor at the University of Maryland for the United States National Economic Bureau concluded that “each additional weekly work hour reduces academic year GPA by 0.011 points.” For those who are already struggling—financially or academically—balancing work and studies is a high-stakes juggle between education and debt.

Is there an alternative? Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party, proposed one in the last federal election: a Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI). The proposed GLI would eliminate poverty-focused welfare programs, and replace them with a blank check: $10,000 for anyone making below a certain threshold, students included.

In its public platform statement, the Green Party wrote it was “deeply concerned about the widening income gap, and the steadily increasing numbers of people trapped in the low-wage economy—workers, especially our young, who are struggling to survive with part-time, non-standard precarious employment.”

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, made guaranteed livable income part of the party’s campaign platform. Photo by Keith Race.

The Green Party claims that Canada spent one tenth of its gross domestic product (GDP) on income support in 2013, a sum of about $185 billion. They also claim that one third of Canadians make less than $20,000 a year.

The plan would involve the GLI being taxed back as the recipient’s own income rises, and at $60,000 the recipient would no longer receive the stimulus.

Speaking to the Huffington Post, May argued that ridding Canada of the bureaucracy that surrounds the welfare system, in addition to lowering poverty-induced strain on the hospitals, would save the government billions. “It will fix our health-care system, it will fix our criminal justice system,” said May last November. “But more than that, it gives every Canadian kid a chance to succeed in life.”

In 2014, the Liberal Party of Canada passed Policy Resolution 100, which called for “a Federal Liberal Government work with the provinces and territories to design and implement a Basic Annual Income in such a way that differences are taken into consideration under the existing Canada Social Transfer System.”

Although Justin Trudeau admitted it was a “good theory,” he is quoted by the Toronto Star as expressing his skepticism. “We cannot guarantee to bring everyone over the poverty line by giving them part of the taxpayers’ pocket.”

Concordia students, however, feel that a guaranteed livable in-

come would have helped them in their studies.

“Our books are not cheap,” said Claudio Pantoni, a mechanical engineering major at Concordia.

“Being in engineering ... you should be taking five classes a semester. But I have to do four to be able to work to pay for everything else—school, bills, whatnot.”

Autumn Cadorette, an art history major at Concordia, said she believes a guaranteed livable income would allow low-income Canadians to pursue post-secondary studies. “[It will] promote education, because a lot of people don’t get as much of an education as they want because they can’t afford it,” said Cadorette, who described the GLI proposal as something “the student population needs.”

Emil St-Pierre, a recent graduate of Concordia University’s master’s anthropology program, said the extra income could have helped fellow students he saw struggling.

“I also know many students ... that would have been able to graduate debt free, avoid precarious work, and worry less about rent with $10,000 a year (or even less),” said St-Pierre. He said he especially saw many students who “wanted to pursue further studies, but weren’t able to do so because they had no income living as students.”

According to a poll conducted by the Trudeau Foundation and Concordia University, 46 per cent of Canadians

support the idea of a guaranteed income, with 42 per cent opposed. Support for the measure is most popular “in Quebec and among Canadians with lower levels of education and income, while most strongly opposed by Albertans and high income Canadians,” according to the report.

“The pushback is usually that everybody’s going to be just lazy and sit back and do nothing their whole life because the state is taking care of them. What they actually found was that that wasn’t what people did,” said May to the Huffington Post, citing a Manitoba experiment where the small town of Dauphin, Manitoba received GDI cheques for a five-year period between 1974-1979.

In 2011, the University of Manitoba released a report revisiting the results of that Manitoba “Mincome” (minimum income) experiment. The report found that “specifically hospitalizations for accidents and injuries and mental health diagnoses” fell during the experiment, and “students in grade 11 seemed more likely to continue to grade 12 than their rural or urban counterparts during the experiment.” Even those that did not receive the supplemental income contributed to an upward trend: “the involvement of friends and neighbours in the scheme might have led to changes in social attitudes and behaviours that influenced individual behaviour even among families that did not receive the supplement.”

JANUARY 26, 2016

TALK

War correspondent C.J. Chivers on reporting Chivers touches on doubt for an end to war and lessons learnt overseas

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NATION

BY LAURA MARCHAND CO-NEWS EDITOR

School shooting in La Loche, Sask. leaves four dead Four are dead and seven more in hospital after a 17-year-old boy opened fire at a residence and the local high school in La Loche, Sask.

The northern community of 3,000 continues to mourn the deaths of brothers Dayne (17) and Drayden Fontaine (13) as well as two teachers, Marie Janvier (21) and Adam Wood (35). The National Post reports that the shooter had allegedly been bullied, and community leaders are calling for resources to affect rampant depression, suicide, and substance abuse.

War correspondent for The New York Times C.J. Chivers (right) speaking at Concordia on Jan. 20. Photo by Gregory Todaro.

BY SAVANNA CRAIG NEWS ASSISTANT ! @savannacraig

H

aving started his career as a U.S. Marine Corps officer in the Middle East, The New York Times war correspondent C.J. Chivers was somewhat ready to work in war-torn areas. While he was physically prepared, he struggled mentally with being in such treacherous settings. Chivers visited Concordia on Jan. 20 for a talk hosted by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies to explain his involvement reporting in the Middle East and Moscow. The Concordian spoke to Chivers one-on-one about his struggles and insight working as a reporter overseas.

The Concordian: It can be easy to focus on negativity in countries affected by war, but were there any stories you would like to share or things you noticed towards social or economic development?

C.J. Chivers: You see positive things often in bad environments.

In war, it’s an invariably bad environment and things, in my experience, tend to be getting worse not better. But against that, you do see great acts of kindness, decency, selflessness and self-sacrifice. So there is goodness out there for sure. We write about it from time to time as it occurs and when it’s newsworthy, but generally in my experience, in war zones, you see much more bad than good. If it feels like the focus is negative, that’s because generally the activity is negative.

TC: Is there any advice you

could give to someone who is ing through and forming coninterested in working in dan- tingencies for almost everything gerous areas, such as the ones that can go wrong. Try to imagyou have been to? ine and anticipate everything that C.J.C: Think carefully about can go wrong, then try to prevent it. Not just before you do it, but it from going wrong and have a while you’re doing it. You have set of plans, or the equipment, to do the journalism. No matter or the supported [safe] place, so what your beat is, the journalistic that if it does go wrong you have requirements are the same. You a good chance of coming through have to find sourcsafely. You, everyes for information, one with you and “I actually in gather information, everyone around some ways deverify information, you that you are liberately shut analyze informaendangering by that portion of tion and come up your presence. myself off and with something It’s exhausting to you’re going to be think about all of compartmentalpresenting as your these things thorized it, so that I news. But workoughly and conwould have the ing in dangerous tinuously, but you mental space to environments and really have an ethwork and focus working in enviical responsibility on my work.” ronments where to do exactly that.

C.J. CHIVERS, your presence and You’ve got to show NYT JOURNALIST your activity can up with the skills, jeopardize othhabits and ethics er people … you of a journalist. But also have to have a large por- then you need this whole other tion of your mental and emo- body of skills, habits and ethics tional bandwidth going to safety. that you need to be applying to The safety of you and the safe- your work, as well. ty of others. So my advice is to TC: How did you mentalthink about safety. Not just yours, ly and physically prepare for but your sources, your drivers, working in these areas? translators, everybody around C.J.C: I stopped drinking enyou. Think about it all the time, tirely … and also putting myself constantly. Develop work hab- through intense physical condiits that help manage your activi- tioning at that time, to the point ties in ways that [make them] less that some people would think dangerous. That doesn’t mean it’s odd. But I knew exactly what avoiding danger, you may have my reporting partner weighed to go to very dangerous places. with his equipment and I used to But there [are] always ways to try train with his body weight in the to manage the risk down even weight room so that I could move when you are doing exceptionally that weight quickly and intensedangerous things. ly. Those preparations I think are TC: While on the job did you on many levels a matter of ethics always have a backup or escape if you’re going to be doing frontplan in case any danger arose? line stuff. It’s not supposed to be C.J.C: That’s part of it, think- an adventure, you’re actually

supposed to try to take a lot of the adventure and risk out of it while working in these very dangerous environments. One of the ways you do that is by being in shape and by being sober.

TC: How did you adjust when you first began working in war zones?

C.J.C: I’m not sure I remember it. I have trouble accessing when I was different than I am now. In part because I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about myself and how I was doing. I actually in some ways deliberately shut that portion of myself off and compartmentalized it, so that I would have the mental space to work and focus on my work.

Maybe that’s an adjustment onto itself though, right?

TC: When you were at Concordia you mentioned you did not think war would end in the areas you had worked in.

Is there any key elements you noticed while overseas that helped you understand how these wars could be resolved?

C.J.C: I don’t think these wars will end anytime soon. [Daesh] may lose territory militarily, but it will persist as a terrorist entity even if it does. I think having seen so many different would-be solutions, and so many different ideas, so many different military campaigns [that didn’t achieve] their desired effects … [nothing lead to anything] long-standing, much less permanent. [It] convinced me that the problems are more complex than the policies applied to them and will continue ... indefinitely. " This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Read the full interview at theconcordian.com

Canada signs TPP deal, doesn’t yet ratify The federal government has confirmed that it will sign the divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal next week. However, International Trade Minister Chrystina Freeland wrote in an open letter to Canadians that signing is only a technical step in the process, and that “only a majority vote in our Parliament can allow the agreement to take force.” The trade deal includes economic juggernauts such as the United States and Japan, and would represent approximately 40 per cent of the world’s GDP, reports the CBC.

Toronto police constable guilty of attempted murder James Forcillo has been found guilty of attempted murder in the 2013 shooting of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim on a Toronto streetcar. Forcillo, who was charged with attempted murder and second-degree murder, was acquitted of the latter charge after the jury found him justified in initially firing, reports the CBC. However, the jury did not find him justified in continuing to shoot, which led to the guilty verdict on attempted murder. The defense has filed a stay in proceedings, claiming there was a “trial by YouTube” that compromised the trial after the shooting was recorded and posted to the popular streaming site. Yatim was shot eight times.

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theconcordian

WORLD

BY LAURA MARCHAND CO-NEWS EDITOR

Suspects detained for assisting Daesh in Pakistan Four suspects have been accused of being involved in last week’s strike against Bacha Khan University in Pakistan.

The men have been linked to assisting Daesh in carrying out the attack on the university where 21 people were killed.

A family is also being investigated for their possible involvement—including a man, his wife and their niece. According to the Daily Mail, there is suspicion the women involved purchased the weapons. “‘The two women took advantage of the culture and used their veils to bring out the purchased weapons from the tribal region,” Military spokesman Lt Gen Asim Salim Bajwa told the Daily Mail.

Bernie supporters march nationwide Across the U.S., supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have shown their support in their “March for Bernie,” reported U.S. Uncut.

The march, taking place in about 35 cities, gathered thousands of people raising support for 2016 Democrat.

In spite of the large turnout of supporters nationwide, many large media conglomerates like CNN did not cover the events. Around 1,100 people said they would be attending the Boston march on to the event’s Facebook page.

However, speculation from online videos and photos suggests the turnout was much greater.

Record second biggest snowstorm in N.Y.C. New York City has faced its second largest snowstorm in history, according to ABC News. A travel ban had been issued across the city, with public transit being closed until Sunday morning following the storm. Central Park has recorded 68 cm of snowfall, with Staten Island accumulating 79.5 cm. ABC News reported that three people have died in New York City during the storm while shoveling snow.

Hydro-Québec sent a crew of 200 workers in 25 truck to Staten Island to help with the post-storm repairs.

JANUARY 26, 2016

CAMPUS

PSSA accreditation vote underway

Students to decide if they want to remain under ASFA

BY LAURA MARCHAND CO-NEWS EDITOR This week, the Political Science Students Association of Concordia (PSSA) is asking its student body to give it legal standing to represent its students.

A successful referendum would make the PSSA independent of the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA).

A “yes” vote would make the PSSA an official body recognized by the Quebec government. That would mean Concordia would be bound to provide the PSSA with an office, furniture and means to contact the political science student body. The incorporation process (required by the ministry) would allow the PSSA to have a bank account, and the accreditation process means that the PSSA could fund itself through fee levy, like the Concordia Student Union (CSU) and ASFA. It would also make the PSSA the legal representative of Concordia’s political science students, capable of legal action in court.

Jason Poirier Lavoie, the current PSSA president, is a major force who pushed for the referendum on accreditation. He said the PSSA in its current form is unofficial, and exists in a precarious grey zone of allowances and courtesies.

“We exist because ASFA permits us [to exist]. We’re ‘ASFA Lite,’” Poirier Lavoie explained.

“We have this office because the department is nice enough to give it to us. We have this furniture because they donate it to us.

I can’t contact my members because it’s a breach of privacy for the university … for money, we have to beg to ASFA, or spend

my own money.

So we’re very informal.”

However, the PSSA has several unique privileges, such as offering the association a vote on the Political Science department council and allowing students to interview candidates for positions in the department. “But these are all informal, these are all courtesies,” said Poirier Lavoie.

He warned that any of these advantages could be taken away without explanation.

Poirier Lavoie admits that these changes may in and of themselves sound benign, but he alleges that these shifts would signal a change of power dynamics for the PSSA. “When you think of ASFA, and the way they treat [member associations] as disposable attachments, the way this department gives us privileges, but they’re optional … this would shift us on to better footing.”

It’s something former executives agree with. “Accreditation should happen because when I was in the PSSA … we were operationally disadvantaged,” said former PSSA VP of internal affairs Nikos Pidiktakis.

“I voted for the accreditation because I don’t see that many events that ASFA directly does for poli sci students, and the PSSA execs are people that we know and have access to,” said Alex Decarie, a political science student who voted in the referendum Monday. “The PSSA holds regular events throughout the year that involve both

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VOTING DAY ONE

(1) The PSSA voting station in the Hall building.

(2) PSSA president Jason Poirier Lavoie in the group’s office.

Photos by Gregory Todaro.

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students and faculty which really helps students get to know each other and their professors outside of class which is pretty cool. So I voted yes because of all the hard work that the PSSA puts into their events and with what they’re promising to offer us once they get accredited.”

That isn’t to say that there are no disadvantages. Poirier Lavoie says that political science students will still need to pay the fee levy for ASFA, even after the PSSA’s accreditation—effectively paying the fee for two separate associations without the benefits, “since ASFA will simply

take the money and reorient it somewhere else,” according to Poirier Lavoie.

But Poirier Lavoie said he plans on renegotiating this issue with ASFA, which he believes will have to undergo dramatic changes in light of its recent problems including a series of resignations and a major harassment scandal.

“The thing you’re seeing now, this thing we know as ‘ASFA’, is breathing its last breaths,” said Poirier Lavoie. “If ASFA is to continue going in the direction that it is we [the PSSA] have no choice but to leave.”

ACADEMIC

ASFA journal flooded with entries

The organization’s first interdisciplinary journal coming this semester

BY GREGORY TODARO CO-NEWS EDITOR The Arts and Science Federation of Associations is publishing its first academic journal at the end of the Winter semester.

The interdisciplinary journal is accepting academic papers until Feb. 1 to be considered. Any papers written in an undergraduate arts and science class between six and 10 pages, double spaced, are eligible.

“The committee is going to look at the as quality over quantity,” said ASFA president Jenna

Cocullo. “If we have five great papers only, then the number will be five, if we have 10 great papers then the number will be 10,” though she added ASFA would be applying for some extra funding from the Concordia Council on Student Life to make a larger journal.

So far, Cocullo said the committee has received 40 articles since last week’s initial callout.

“Every day since, I received at least three emails with students interested in publishing,” she said.

Fifteen students have also applied to vett the essays: each

article will get read two or three times by students in the same field as the paper’s topic. Throughout this process, the articles will remain completely anonymous so the students don’t know whose work they’re reading.

Cocullo said she had the idea for an undergraduate journal during a conversation with some of her classmates. “We were talking about graduate school and how undergraduate students should start familiarizing themselves with speaking at conferences and getting

their work published,” she said.

“So I thought, ‘Why not start an undergraduate interdisciplinary journal?’”

The journal was under the responsibility of ASFA VP academic and loyola Ian Campbell, although since his resignation this semester Cocullo has taken responsibility for the project.

Cocullo said the journal should be published in the last week of March. " All of our ASFA stories: http://theconcordian.com/ ?s=ASFA

life

LIFE EDITOR /// life@theconcordian.com CRISTINA SANZA (! @Cristina_Sanza)

CAFÉS

A social hangout first, an antique café second

At Anticafé you can enjoy everything from coffee to board games so long as you pay your rent

BY ANNA KROUPINA CONTRIBUTOR Like any café, Anticafé offers coffee, tea and biscuits. There are comfortable sofas and there is free Wi-Fi. But what sets it apart from every other café in Montreal is that you don’t pay for any of these things. Instead, patrons are charged for their time spent at the café.

“People pay an entry fee, but we don’t sell food or coffee. We’re more constituted like a boutique, or an art gallery,” explained David Chevrier, a manager and part-owner at the café.

Anticafé is a social space first and a café second. Its look and feel are the sum of its clients, almost itself a living, breathing, changing space. It seamlessly acts as a workplace, a hangout and a workshop.

The community aspect is reflected by the friendly staff, in the whimsical artwork adorning the walls, and by the fact that you need to do your own dishes.

Montreal’s Anticafé opened in October 2015 and is modeled after the very first café applying this concept, named Ziferblat, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Ten rooms are available, including a T.V. room with DVDs, a board game room, and various “meeting” rooms that can also be rented out. The café plans to open a yoga and an art room in the near future.

Spanning two floors, the main windows look right out onto Quartier des spectacles. The antique furniture doesn’t match and the interior doesn’t follow a colour scheme, but that’s just the look that Chevrier was going for.

“We wanted something eclectic, very disparate, very mixed so that even though it just opened, it looks like it’s been open 15 years,” he said. “It has an old soul, old furniture with a history. It’s also part of the Anticafé mentality of recuperation, very pro-environment.”

Guests are tracked in an Excel sheet, and pay for the duration of their stay at the end. The first hour costs $3, and each subsequent hour is $2 for a maximum of $9 per day. While $9 adds up to four hours at the café, visitors can stay longer, as the hours are free onwards. Monthly passes sold at $180 ensure you access to the café, even when at full capacity, as well as five free hours for a friend.

Capacity is capped at 80 people to maintain a tranquil, comfortable ambiance and prevent overcrowding. Since the café has seen a surge in popularity since the beginning of January, staff has had to refuse guests.

Chevrier added that the Anticafé’s mandate will always be to give clients the impression of coming home to a shared apartment.

Photos by Marie-Pierre Savard and Anna Kroupina.

“It’s fun to have people over at your house, but too many people, that’s not fun anymore. We’re here to maintain a nice environment so that it’s pleasant for guests,” he said. “When you have roommates, you take your boots off, you wash your dishes, you keep the bathrooms clean, and that’s what people love.”

You’re wrong if you think that only students frequent the café. Rooms have been rented out to media for interviews and to large corporations for business meetings. The spike in numbers means they’re still figuring out their busiest days, peak hours and financial situation.

“It went from two big bags of coffee a week to maybe seven big bags per week.

The cookies, I used to buy for about $80 per week, now I buy for $60 per day. We went from 20, 30, 40 clients per day to 150, 200. We’re adjusting and adapting.”

Chevrier admitted that he’s thinking of opening other Anticafé locations, some of which, he noted, will be wheelchair accessible. $ Anticafé is located at 294 Ste. Catherine St. W and is open every day from 10 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

SHAKE, STRAIN AND SERVE

The long journey north to Ahunsic Despite the distance, Bar 132 Vintage is worth going the extra mile for

BY ANDREJ IVANOV STAFF WRITER For most people, Ahuntsic, the northern part of St. Laurent Boulevard, would not be first place to go to grab a casual drink. Unless you live in the area, it appears to be a long and daunting trek and many Montrealers are not too fond of that in the winter months.

For cocktail lovers on the other hand, the trek reaps high reward because at the end of the long journey they will find a beautiful watering hole known as Bar 132 Vintage.

The diversity of cocktails and bartenders make the bar an unavoidable spot. Four bartenders work there, each with their own specialty: Phillip Letellier, a master in scotches; Jonathan Elbaz, whose specialty are fruity and sweet cocktails; Jean-Maxime Giguère, the owner; and Jean-François “Superman” Laurence, specializing in cocktail creation and culinary inspirations.

The bar also hosts guest bartenders every Monday, bands every two weeks on Saturdays, and is even pitching its own television program. Laurence said that the program would consist of making original drinks for the bands that play and

Jean-François “Superman” Laurence poses in front of his custom cocktail, the Irish Kiss. Photo by Andrej Ivanov.

then discussing the drinks and the band.

The bar also decided that one day per week the staff goes completely off-menu.

Every Wednesday patrons are invited to fill out a small questionnaire and have a custom cocktail made for them based on their answers. Laurence says some of the questions include the person’s favourite dish, their budget and the type of glassware they like to help make the drink as unique as possible. The recipe is then written on the back of the questionnaire and the bartenders can recreate the drink at any time.

For special occasions, the bar hosts classy parties inspired by The Great Gatsby, where people dress in 1920s attire and classic cocktails are on the menu. The entire bar’s concept pays tribute to what Laurence called, in French, “the heydays of cocktails.” Laurence added in French that they will use many occasions to host such parties, whether it’s the bar’s birthday, the manager’s birthday, Halloween, or the Holidays. “We always try and create chic-themed nights,” he said.

Laurence’s favourite drink usually depends on his mood. In general, he likes the “Hanky-Panky,” a prohibition-era drink created by one of the first female bartenders, Ada Coleman, who made it

for actor Sir Charles Hawtrey. According to Laurence, the story goes that the actor asked for a drink that packed a punch and after much experimenting, Coleman created the Hanky-Panky. It’s a dry gin, red vermouth and Fernet Branca cocktail. “It has panache,” said Laurence. # Bar 132, 132 Fleury St. W Sun.: 3 p.m. — 1 a.m.

Mon.—Thu.: 4 p.m. — 1 a.m.

Fri.: 4 p.m. — 3 a.m.

Sat.: 5 p.m. — 3 a.m.

Irish Kiss

by JeanFrancois “Superman” Laurence 1 oz 1⁄2 oz 1⁄2 oz 1⁄2 oz 1 dash 1⁄2

gin St-Germain Apérol lime juice rose water egg white

Shake, strain and serve, with * 3 drops of coriander bitters and 3 drops of chocolate bitters, with an orange zest.

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theconcordian

JANUARY 26, 2016

COVER STORY

Become a budgeting master and avoid student debt The ultimate tips for constructing a budget and making sure you save money where it counts Planning a budget is always a good idea. It stretches the student dollar farther and helps finance future plans. Meghan Dreenan of Concordia’s Student Success Centre and also a former student explained the basics of creating a budget and managing your finances as a student. Here are some of her tips TEXT BY VALERIA CORI-MANOCCHIO, GRAPHIC BY FLORENCE YEE, LAYOUT BY PIERRE A. LEPETIT

BUDGETING BASICS

BE GOALORIENTED

1 Start by identifying and jotting ○

BEFORE OPENING AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET to make your

calculations, set a S.M.A.R.T goal. This involves coming up with a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Knowing your end goal is motivational and keeps you focused.

However, IT’S ESSENTIAL TO REMIND YOURSELF OF SAID OBJECTIVES. Drennan

suggested keeping pictures on the fridge or in your wallet to help deter you from a moment of consumer weakness.

FOLLOWING THROUGH Drennan said staying on track can be particularly difficult because you want to participate in what your friends are doing, regardless of the cost. She suggested to TREAT YOURSELF WITH MINI-REWARDS THAT WILL NOT BREAK THE BANK—enjoy

a cup of tea with a friend or take a relaxing bath at the end of the week. It’s also important to know what you’re paying for. Whenever you’re shopping, CONSIDER

THE NUMBER OF HOURS YOU WILL HAVE TO WORK TO PAY OFF THE PURCHASE. She also

recommended using Excel or budget apps like MVelopes and You Need a Budget. They are easy, user-friendly ways to keep progress going. Taking the time to file receipts is another, more tangible way to assure your budgeting is being carried out.

DOs Do carry cash to give you a visual idea of how much you can actually spend, especially if you’re the type to unconsciously use your debit card to pay for everything.

However, carry cards if having cash on you is too difficult to resist. ○ Look into applying for in-course bursaries too.

Student debt in Canada The federal gov. predicts tution fees will rise at a rate of 2.5 per cent above inflation annualy over the next 25 years to

42 PER CENT OF YOUNG ADULTS LIVED AT HOME

from

$6,191

30%

in 2011

of medical students are expected to graduate with over $100k in debt

IN 2014—15, UNDERGRADUATES PAID

3.3% more

on average in tuition fees

$19k

Canada has the highest percentage of university graduates earning less than half the national median income amongst the OCDE countries

SOURCES: STATISTICS CANADA, OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS CANADA, CANADIAN COLLABORATIVE CENTRE FOR PHYSICIAN RESOURCES, CIBC WORLD MARKETS

DEBT Drennan also has GUIDELINES FOR STUDENTS WITH DEBT. Firstly, write down every one you need to pay back—it’s nerve-racking, but you’ll know exactly how much you owe and to whom. ○ Drennan stressed THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING ABOUT CONCORDIA’S EXISTING SERVICES: The People’s Potato offers free lunches daily and a food bank twice a month. The Student Emergency Food Fund assists Concordia students, providing gift cards to purchase food. In terms of school costs, Drennan said to check-out Concordia’s Co-op Bookstore or abebooks.com, instead of purchasing course books at full price. ○ For International students, she recommends WORK STUDY, which permits students to work on campus for sometimes more than minimum wage and build a network of contacts. Meeting with Financial Aid and Awards or setting up an appointment with the Career Resource Centre is always a good idea to figure out if you qualify for any awards or bursaries. ○ “Think of budgeting as a lifestyle,” said Drennan. Once you develop a rhythm it becomes almost natural.

down every SOURCE OF INCOME you make. This includes paychecks, part-time jobs, savings, tax refunds and even bursaries and loans—just be aware of the fact that loans 2 Next must be paid back. ○ come the one-time, UPFRONT EXPENSES like tuition, textbooks, utilities set-up and moving expens3 Once you have expenses es. ○ and sources of income narrowed down, then your monthly income is calculated by subtracting expenses from income and dividing the balance up per month. Most student budgets are divided by eight to correlate the length of the school year, but if you don’t plan or returning home for the summer, divide your monthly income 4 Finally, determine your by 12. ○ MONTHLY EXPENSES, such as rent, transportation, entertainment, food, internet and your phone bill, and subtract that from your balance.

NOTE It’s common to end up with a balance of $0 or less the first time you make a budget. The key is to minimize monthly expenses and find ways to save as much of your monthly income as possible.

TIPS Drennan suggested getting a roommate to decrease rent and electricity costs, preparing your own lunches, shopping around at less expensive grocery stores to scope out the best deals and splitting entertainment expenses, for example having a Netflix account among several friends.

DON’Ts Don’t plan an entertainment budget of $0; no one can live like that. ○ Don’t use your credit card to pay for purchases you cannot immediately pay back in cash.

arts

ARTS EDITORS /// arts@theconcordian.com ELIJAH BUKREEV & LYDIA ANDERSON

THEATRE

You’ll want Rent as much as your landlord does 1

ROCK-OPERA

McGill University is hosting a production of Rent until Jan. 30.

(1) (2) A cast of highly dedicated performers.

Photos courtesy of AUTS. (3) The show is full of power and energy.

Photo by Julia Bryant.

BY JULIA BRYANT STAFF WRITER

T

he student-run Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society (AUTS) at McGill University certainly set themselves a challenge when they decided to put on a production of Rent.

Written by the late Jonathan Larson, Rent is a rock musical that was loosely based on one of Puccini’s operas, La Bohème. The play follows a group of young artists in New York City who are living in poverty during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

AUTS has been rehearsing since September, and with good reason—this show is not an easy one to perform. Rent is very music-heavy, with close to no dialogue in-between songs. The songs themselves are also rather demanding—since the show is a rock-opera, the musical numbers are all high-pitched and high-energy. Thankfully, the cast of the McGill group is made up of extraordinarily talented performers who are dedicated to their show. The members of AUTS are all involved with the show because they are passionate about theatre and that shone through their performances.

The lead actors embodied their charac-

ters with truthfulness, while the ensemble actors infused life and energy into every big dance number, highlighted by the superb choreography by Debora Friedmann.

The visual design and technical components of the show were nearly flawless, from the stunning lighting effects to the quirky and enticing set design. The world that the designers crafted for the stage allowed the characters to interact with their environment easily and authentically.

They truly looked like they were roaming the streets of New York and hanging out in grungy city apartments.

Every show has its faults, however.

During the press preview, there were a few awkward transitions between songs and scenes in the performance. There were also some problems with the audio levels of the wireless headset microphones on the actors. However, these problems are exactly the kind of thing that will tighten up and become smoother with more practice and more performances.

The show itself was so full of power and energy that these minor complications were hardly noticeable.

Thanks to such a strong delivery of the show, this production of Rent really allows for some bigger messages to come across.

Rent offers an intriguing look into the lives of the impoverished while highlighting some difficult truths 3 about the way the world looks down on lower-class people. However, by bringing these issues to light, Rent offers us a place to talk about them.

Presenting these prob-

lems on the stage makes it easier for us to understand and interpret them.

The show’s director, McGill student Daniel Austin-Boyd, said Rent offers some valuable insights to its audiences. “I really think it shows the importance of community, and the dangers of isolation,” said Austin-Boyd. “I think that’s my take-away message from it.”

Austin-Boyd added he wanted it to show people are capable of overcoming any kind of challenge in their lives. “There is a certain magic to the com2 munity that these people have. Because their lives are not great—they’re all poor, most of them have AIDS ... So they have bad lives, but they make it work because they have each other,” said Austin-Boyd.

First-year McGill student Olivier Bishop-Mercier, who played the lead role of Mark, mentioned how Rent is different from most other musicals.

“It’s a tragedy, but it’s a representation of people of a lower class,” he said. “And that’s not how we usually think about tragedies. We usually think about it as an elevated form of theatre.”

He went on to say that many of the themes in Rent are universal and can be applied to all kinds of people. “I think it’s important to tell this story about how everyone feels these incredibly intense emotions,” said Bishop-Mercier. “It isn’t just reserved for kings and queens.”

Another actor, Sophie Doyle, is a graduate student at Concordia. She said she found it unsettling leaving their latenight rehearsals and “seeing so much

poverty and homelessness in downtown Montreal.”

Doyle said that while audiences are watching Rent, they should consider how the characters’ struggles can come to life outside the theatre. “For me, it’s about recognizing these themes that can be put on stage through song and dance, and [about] that sympathy you can feel for the characters,” said Doyle.

She said that while portraying the larger-than-life character of Maureen, she saw a lot of connections to the issues she studies for her degree. “I’m a Master’s student in educational studies doing sociology of education, so I look at a lot of this stuff in school,” said Doyle. “It’s interesting to look at it in academia, and then to look at it on the stage, and then to look at it in your own backyard. They’re just very different experiences.” & Rent is playing in the Moyse Hall at McGill from Jan. 28 to Jan. 30.

8

theconcordian

JANUARY 26, 2016

FILM

A puppet with a soul longing for another voice Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman’s first film since 2008, is a small but fascinating animated drama

BY ELIJAH BUKREEV CO-ARTS EDITOR “What is it to be human? What is it to ache?” These lines are spoken in Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, but they would belong in any one of Kaufman’s films— such interrogations are key to the writer-turned-director’s whole oeuvre, which includes Being John Malkovich, Adaptation. and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

If Anomalisa feels especially fragile, it’s not only because it is a stop-motion animation film—and if it feels so naked, it is not only because the puppets are anatomically correct. We’re used to writers hiding away behind their characters, the more impersonal and unreadable, the better. But when you watch Kaufman’s work, you see his soul on display. He parades his thoughts and anxieties on stage, and he doesn’t dress them up, because he only seems to be interested in what’s true and what defines each and every one of us.

The story of Anomalisa is perhaps the simplest Kaufman has written, but behind its tender core is a great deal of sad-

ness and even occasional darkness. The main character is Michael (David Thewlis), a classic case of a self-help author who cannot even help himself. He spends a day in a Cincinnati hotel, where he is scheduled to speak at a convention on customer service. Lonely and distraught in an anonymous world, he meets a young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who has a voice different from everybody else.

“Your wife? Your son?” she asks him when he begs her to run away with him.

“They don’t exist… they’re just them!” he answers, which sounds cruel but in that moment rings intensely true, because his escape has become a matter of psychological survival.

The script was originally written in 2005 as a sound play, so work done on sound and voice-acting is essential to the film, which opens with a chorus of voices heard in complete darkness. You could close your eyes and still experience the film in a very rich way, but why would you want to do that when Kaufman and his co-director Duke Johnson have put such care into crafting a puppet world at once

EXISTENTIAL PUPPET SHOW Three years in the making, Animalisa was partially financed through Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site.

Nearly alone in an ocean of mass-produced gargantuan spectacles, it is a small miracle that Anomalisa exists. You want to grab it by the hand and never let go.

ANOMALISA ⋆⋆⋆⋆ Directed by Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson. With the voices of David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan. Released on Jan. 8, 2016.

Duration 90 min.

EMA CIN LITICA PO

FEB.

1

7 p.m.

H-110

BY ELIJAH BUKREEV CO-ARTS EDITOR

S

dreamlike and oddly familiar. If you’ve ever travelled and come to a new city, you’ll recognize the locations. You’ve been in that airport, ridden that taxi cab with that obnoxious driver and settled into that ubiquitous hotel room.

Is it only a reflection of Michael’s state of mind, or has the world truly become an impersonal prison peopled by a faceless crowd? Is there any hope left for a spark, an otherness, an escape?

Kaufman’s conclusion is open to interpretation, although different answers can be supported by the film itself.

As an existential drama that just happens to be animated, Anomalisa is in itself an anomaly, a film that is too personal and unconventional to exist in today’s cinematic landscape, and yet does.

ean McAllister’s A Syrian Love Story got him a nomination for an Outstanding Debut by the British Film Academy, which is odd, considering that the filmmaker has been shooting documentaries since at least 1998. His projects are as daring as they are diverse—a portrait of Iraqis both during and after Saddam Hussein’s rule; a look at territorial disputes between Israel and Palestine; an account of a Japanese businessman who lost it all; and a documentary of an unfolding revolution in Yemen.

McAllister’s latest film is as much about Syria as it is about the family he follows in the course of five years.

The filmmaker first finds the country in a state of apparent peace, and visits the site of Palmyra—since then destroyed by Daesh—on a tour trip, but soon decides to look for a better story, something that would be “gritty.”

“Why are you looking for something negative?” a woman asks him when he decides to contact political prisoners. “Gritty doesn’t mean negative, gritty means real!”

A Syrian Love Story Documentary filmmaker Sean McAllister follows a Syrian family over five years

he replies.

Soon, McAllister is sitting in a bar with Amer, a political opponent of the Assad regime who will become one of his subjects, and friends, in the course of the events that will befall the country. The titular love story is between Amer and his wife Raghda, who met in prison as inmates. He saw her through a hole in the door, her face bloodied and swollen, and started talking to her every day through a pipe. It’s quite a story to share with their children, but Raghda is imprisoned again when she tries to share it with a larger audience in the form of a book.

McAllister films indoors—with the family—which gives the documentary an appearance of a homemade movie. The violence that happens on the outside is either displayed on the family television screen or described, in astonishing and graphic detail, as an unremarkable occurrence, which reflects that it has become commonplace, something to be expected. When a speech by Hillary Clinton is broadcast the family is glued to the screen—she is part of a completely different world, and might as well be speaking from another

Directed by Sean McAllister Duration 75 min

⋆⋆⋆⋆

planet.

Raghda is eventually freed, but it is McAllister who is arrested. The footage found on his camera is a threat to the family, so they must drop everything and travel to Lebanon as refugees. When the filmmaker is released, he reconnects with the family and their story resumes. It becomes clear that the couple’s marriage is falling apart. Amer wants no more than a quiet life and dreams of Europe, while Raghda, a freedom fighter, cannot adapt to any other existence and feels that she has abandoned her cause. “She cannot be Che Guevara and a mother,” said Amer when she left them to reconnect with the revolutionary movement.

What the documentary does best is show a division within Syrian society, and people’s reaction to the conflict. One of the couple’s sons showcases a particularly poignant progression. As the film starts, he declares himself ready to fight the regime, but several years later, from France, he reflects on the fact that a comfortable life is not easy to give up. “Nobody wants to build this [country, Syria,] again. Everybody wants to go out …

I will stay in France.”

JANUARY 26, 2016

theconcordian

9

FEATURE

Unseen and ignored, even in death A look at how death functions in the homeless community The stories in this series are products of the Inclusive Journalism Project, a research initiative that seeks to develop a new way of reporting about poverty and homelessness. Whereas conventional articles speak about the poor and the homeless and address readers outside those communities, the stories produced by this project are written as dialogues, or conversations, with their subjects, and are intended to speak to their communities.

Volunteers serve a warm lunch and a smile to visitors at the Mission of the Great Shepherd.

Below: Wayne Taillon.

Photos by Cristina Sanza.

BY CRISTINA SANZA LIFE EDITOR

You said he was in was in his 80s, dressed well, and had a positive outlook on life. Often smiling and laughing with eath happens often in this others, he was a regular every Saturday community. The loss of a for many years. close friend, a family member I saw him one day and he seemed a or someone familiar from the bit down. He said, ‘Steve, I’m getting tired streets leaves a special kind of being old.’ And then he didn’t come of mark when the news comes weeks or back. He disappeared. We learned last months after they have disappeared, and week that he committed suicide. when there is no funeral, no memoriHoward was found in the St. Lawal service, no chance to remember them rence River—apparently he had jumped. and say a proper goodbye.

To identify him, DNA samples were takI met Wayne Taillon, the president en and the police searched through their of the Mission of the Great Shepherd in missing persons files. Wayne says that he Pointe St-Charles, who introduced me to was well-known at the mission and his Steve*, a regular Saturday visitor for about death saddened a lot of people.

10 years now.

Cristina, that’s one of the things, when Steve, you have this firm handshake. you’re dealing with homeless people who Your tweed blazer and that slight grin show are elderly. I mean, I’ve had three people me your willingness to talk. die since January, at least It’s Saturday around two others who have disOne of the noon, and in the mission’s appeared and quite possidifficulties of upstairs room we’re surbly have died… being in the rounded by others enjoying It’s a bit of a drain. We lower-end, is a free meal. Our converget involved with people friends dying … sation ranges from news and even though we havyou don’t see about how the week has en’t visited them in a while, been, the food we’re about you care about them, you them all the to eat, and, here and there, ask about them. It’s a bit of time, and more emotional topics. a problem. then you learn You tell me about what Strangers are considthey’ve died. brought you to the mission ered friends. Acquaintances STEVE* in the first place—how you are friends. usually come to see your These are street peofriend Gary. ple, people that I’ve known for eight to 10 One of the difficulties of being in the years who used to come here regularly. lower-end, is friends dying. You see peoSteve, you told me they can be itinerple occasionally, you don’t see them all ants, homeless, or in and out of hostels, the time, and then you learn they’ve died. rehab, jail or even people who are looking I’ve had three people die in the last eight for company. News about deaths comes months. through word of mouth.

You told me about Howard, a friend I understand from Wayne, the mission you’ve known for over six years. provides a sense of family, community, a

D

social network. It does more than serve free lunch on Saturdays. It’s an emergency food bank, a community store selling furniture and clean clothes, and it offers counseling services to those in need. Most of all, Wayne explains to me, it provides a sense of family, community, a social network: “Usually, here, if somebody passes away, somebody is going to tell the people, there’s no problem about that. That’s communicated quite fast, amongst themselves, there’s no question about it.”

But more often than not, a friend just disappears. No one knows when or how they died for weeks.

How do you grieve, then? Are there funerals? Are there memorial services?

Wayne says: “When the person is in touch with relatives, it’s easier. If they don’t have anybody, it’s very difficult. You have to go to the city or the police, you have no other way. The larger missions probably have more facilities to deal with these situations.”

I was saddened when you told me that many who live on the streets die on the streets.

There’s one person whose death made me very angry, because he died living

on the street. He used to live outside the Guy-Concordia metro and lie there with his old belly sticking out of his jeans and he was eligible for a $1,400 pension that he never bothered to collect!

At some point the man had been in hospital. He was overweight and possibly suffering from a heart problem. You learned of his death through a woman at the A&W close to where he slept. She used to help make sure he had food to eat.

I spent time trying to find out what was happening with him. So I called the police, so on and so forth. And ultimately, I believe he was buried in [something like] a pauper’s grave. I heard different rumours about his life prior to living on the street.

People thought he had been a teacher…

He had a lot of friends.

How do you deal with these deaths at the mission, Wayne?

“We try to give the people moral support, you know. That’s one way we deal with it, in a spiritual sense, we tell people that there is hope, even after this life, be ready. People like to hear that there’s hope.”

At the mission, people don’t just come for the meals. * Name has been changed.

music

MUSIC EDITOR /// music@theconcordian.com SAMUEL PROVOST-WALKER

Sail the seas with JESS

ABRAN

Quickspins

Get the playlist: spoti.fi/1Pyzc0f

DAUGHTER

Not to Disappear (4AD/Glassnote, 2016)

With a fixation on trip-hop and pirates, this local talent is as eccentric as she is potent

CATCH ABRAN LIVE

(1) O Patro VYS on Jan. 29 (2) Naive drops Jan. 29, Photo by Laetitia Orsini.

BY CRISTINA SANZA LIFE EDITOR A family home video shot in the ‘90s plays. It’s grainy and occasionally out of focus. There’s a baby girl, almost a year old, sitting in a playpen. The baby’s mother, an opera singer, is practicing vocal warm-ups nearby. As she sings, her daughter mimics the sounds she hears, effectively singing with her mother.

From this very moment, music became the most important thing for curly-haired, trip-hop-loving Jess Abran, the baby girl depicted in the video. Pirates and all things nautical came at a close second.

Originally from the Laurentians in Quebec, Abran grew up on a farm. If she wasn’t practicing the guitar or saturating her life with the music her parents listened to, she was sailing or fishing with her father at the lakes close to her home. Sailing was a bigtime passion of hers growing up.

When she moved to Montreal, Abran brought a lot of her country-nautical roots with her. In her room, one can find a huge Jolly Roger flag, a traditional pirate hat and decorative anchors. She refers to herself as an urban pirate.

Despite having a self-proclaimed pirate persona, she says she’s a ‘90s kid at heart, inspired by a lot of the music of that decade, most importantly trip-hop, a genre fusing hip-hop, downtempo and electronica. She refuses to be pigeonholed into a specific, confining genre. Her tunes are a bit folky, a bit trippy, and maybe even a bit jazzy. There are common threads, though: tons of reverb, lots of pedals, heavy delay, funky drums and thick bass. She is a musical storyteller, but she’s never really telling her own stories through songwriting.

“With my music I never had a specific story to tell,” Abran says. “Most of my songs are make-believe.”

If her songs aren’t about video games—like one of her newest singles, “Fallout,” based on the hit series of the same name—or a madeup narrative, they’re about being a pirate or sailing the seven seas. In nearly every song, a reference to water, boats or sailing can be heard. She is also fond of writing about the dark side of life.

“A lot of my songs have minor chords.

You’ll never see me play a C or a D or a G. I’m inspired by a lot of the dark shit in life,” she says. “People’s faces [and] people’s eyes tend to tell me a story, and then because I’m such a lunatic I’ll go home and be like ‘man, that chick on the metro today looked so sad, I’m going to make up a story about her life tonight.’”

Abran’s current influences are quite worldly—Sigur Rós, Damien Rice and alt-J are among her biggest inspirations. Anything that’s different, and maybe even a bit weird influences her, she says.

As a young artist, Abran struggled with confidence regarding her vocals, and she would often feel shy and socially awkward. “My voice would sort of intimidate me in a way. I was known for having a really small voice,” she says. “I was no Christina Aguilera or Lady Gaga. I was more of that quiet and soft-spoken girl … but I was really good at guitar.” Developing and honing her voice has helped her deal with social anxiety, which she has continuously struggled with.

Singing is a form of therapy, she says. “It took me a long, long time to grow into myself and be confident, and I’m still lacking a lot of that to this day.”

On Jan. 29, Abran is digitally re-launching her 2012 EP Naive worldwide. She is rebranding it as an album of seven songs, which include some from her original launch and some new. Each song has been re-mastered, re-mixed or com-

Despite a three year gap, Daughter’s sophomore release Not To Disappear picks up right where their debut left off. Though the London band have added more drum machines and electric guitars, it remains a hauntingly eerie experience due largely in part to Elena Tonra’s unmistakable vocals.

Heartbreak and gloom constantly linger throughout, notably on “No Care.” Regardless of the fact that the album holds no singular anthem, Daughter’s Montreal tour date has been sold out for months, which speaks volumes for their artistry and solidifies their place in the indie music landscape. ( Trial track: “Alone/With You”

7/10 pletely refurbished, so while some songs will be familiar, the new versions will sound different in some way.

Her goal with the re-launch is to give the songs a more legitimate send-off, via iTunes, so that she can start working on new material. She already has a few collaborations in the pipeline for this year alone. “[The album] is not going to tell a story like most CDs do, or most albums do, or most works of art do,” she says. There is no chronology or consistency throughout the album; her voice will sound different from track to track, depending on how old or new the song is. Since different producers worked on different songs, the mixing and mastering won’t be fluid throughout either.

“Some people might be thrown off by that. Like ‘what the fuck, she sounds like a kid in this song, and this song is a song she just released,’” she said with a laugh.

There is a historical element to the collection of songs, as they will showcase Abran’s musical progression and development from her humble beginnings to now.

“It’s a historical artifact of my whole life at this point,” she said.

“Most people will probably recognize these as love songs, but these songs will probably ring true to many people in many different ways,” she says. The songs are emotional and dark, and she says she wants them to hit right at the heartstrings.

“I don’t want anyone to forget that I’m the awkward chick next door who’s obsessed with nautical things,” she says.

“This is definitely who I am, and even if [music] doesn’t become a success, it’s what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life.”

1

— Jessica Romera

2 TY SEGALL

Emotional Mugger (Drag City, 2016) Ty Segall’s new album Emotional Mugger sounds like a Ty Segall album: loud guitars, a fuzzy, melodic low end and Segall’s faux British accent chiming in. The album is made up of songs indistinguishable from one another, each showcasing an guitar solo as interesting as a running tap. Emotional Mugger has a circus-like whimsy that occasionally recalls The Beatles’ Magical Mystical Tour, especially on “Breakfast Eggs.”

This is Segall’s first solo release since 2014’s Manipulator, a much more refined record. Emotional Mugger is a listenable mess of dull confusion that lacks direction, like a really good jam session. In other words, it’s a lesser Ty Segall album. It could be worse. ( Trial track: “Mandy Cream”

6/10

— Mia Pearson

JANUARY 26, 2016

theconcordian

11

RECOMMENDATIONS

MORE LIKE THIS: http://theconcordian.com/ ?s=Quickspins

A beginner’s guide to 1

GERMAN PROG

(1) Kraftwerk (2) Analog synths played a huge role in the genre’s sound (3) NEU! (4) Three classics

3 SOPHIE

Product (Numbers, 2015) Violently smashing wonky sounds and endearingly ironic ‘00s dance pop with hyperactive panache, Product is simply too little too late.

While most of idiosyncratic art collective PC Music’s output has been too thematically subversive, SOPHIE’s first compilation assembles the producer’s most popular cuts. Plasticity plays a huge role, with each song polished to a ludicrously bouncy and maddening sheen. Though alien in sound, many of SOPHIE’s songs lack functionality, their rabid bass thumps feeling like exercises in challenging current norms. Though a cohesive album may help matters, Product is mostly a reminder that PC Music swept the world way back in 2013. ( Trial track: “Bipp”

5/10

— Samuel Provost-Walker

TORTOISE

The Catastrophist (Thrill Jockey, 2016)

4

Less of a progression and more of a lateral shift, The Catastrophist is as pleasing as it is inoffensive. Though less experimental than their previous album, Beacons of Ancestorship, the album’s titular opener immediately serves up welcoming synths, giving way to a bass-heavy groove that’s distinctly Tortoise’s. With the exception of an unfathomable cover of David Essex’s “Rock On,” The Catastrophist doesn’t do much wrong, rolling along predictably while painting an admirably colorful canvas. While those yearning for Tortoise’s more minimalist years will predictably sound the alarm in outrage, this is a latter-day Tortoise album through and through, for better or worse. ( Trial track: “The Catastrophist”

6/10

— Samuel Provost-Walker

2

3

4

Distinctly jazzy and experimental, this genre’s influence is still felt today

BY SAMUEL PROVOST-WALKER MUSIC EDITOR

the limitations of American rock’s R&B roots while adhering to many of its other hallmarks, namely a standard, steady 4/4 Though rock music has its roots firmly beat and raucous electric guitars. planted in blues, many of the genre’s While many bands originally disowned most interesting derivatives aim to fur- and distanced themselves from the term ther themselves from these tropes. due in part to its derogatory prefix, the With the arrival of the ‘70s came new- name has since been re-popularized by found technology for musicians to play its homeland following the emergence with and in some cases, the results were and success of many of its artists. With quite revolutionary. Meeting somewhere their blend of early synthpop and trancebetween early progressive inducing repetition, rock and psychedelic rock, Kraftwerk are still the most For one, krautrock has become one internationally renowned krautrock of Germany’s most influenband to emerge from serves as a tial and revelatory exports, the genre, their later more accessible shaping the sounds of yesoutput charting on North bridge to terday and tomorrow.

American charts. Though European So what makes German their later output pioneered experimental progressive rock so synthpop and was steeped and tape incredibly different from in progression, 1974’s music… its Western counterpart?

Autobahn proved a perfect Well, quite a few things balance between old actually. For one, krautrock and new was possible. serves as a more accessible bridge to With its A-side comprised entirely of a European experimental and tape music, single self-titled song, the album blends often incorporating analogue sound experimental sounds and gorgeous loops and synths to its rhythmic brand of ambient passages within a distinctly prog rock in atmospheric ways. Studying krautrock structure to stunning effect. The the pioneering works of experimental album also catapulted the German quartet German composer Karlheinz to international stardom.

Stockhausen, many of the genre’s bands While Kraftwerk climbed the charts combine elements of avant-garde jazz worldwide with their off-beat brand and electroacoustic music, stripping away of electronic music, Michael Karoli,

Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit pioneered something more overwhelming and chaotic in the form of Can. Following a few soundtrack appearances and an excellent debut in the form of 1969’s Monster Movie, the German band enlisted eccentric Japanese singer Damo Suzuki to front the band.

What followed was a transformative trilogy of albums punctuated by funky rhythms, impressively robotic drumming and deafening sonic collages. Future Days, the band’s final album with Suzuki, serves as a pleasantly soothing and jaunty tropically-tinged final chapter, eschewing the band’s more cathartic experiments in favor of crafting a rich, beautifully coloured atmosphere like no other.

One of krautrock’s most defining traits is its transformative quality, stripping rock of its soul and replacing it with a seemingly mechanical rhythm section. Though most bands in the genre couple these elements with rich psychedelia, NEU!’s 1972 self-titled debut sticks extremely closely to the genre’s foundations. Comprised of energetic grooves and forays into experimental harsh noise, NEU!’s more traditionalist approach isn’t for everyone. With bands like New York’s DIIV and England’s Radiohead showcasing deep admiration for many artists in the genre, the influence of krautrock is simply undeniable.

Are you a music connoisseur with a desire to write?

Do you have opinions on the latest and greatest in the industry? Know of any local events that are absolute must-sees? Join our mailing list and write for The Concordian’s Music section! music@theconcordian.com

sports

SPORTS EDITOR /// sports@theconcordian.com ALEXANDER COLE (! @a_cole39)

HOCKEY

Junior hockey players forced to retire

Lifelong minor hockey players are worried about giving up the game they have loved for years

BY MEGHAN KELLY CONTRIBUTOR In every sport, there are rules. In most cases, these rules are set in place to ensure safety among players and maintain fairness for everyone involved. In hockey, for example, a close hit into the boards can earn you two minutes in the penalty box. If you drop the gloves and fight, it costs you five. If rules are broken, suspensions are served and lessons are learned. Rules are rules.

Hockey Canada has all those types of guidelines implemented in its leagues across the country. The association sets in place all of the regulations that affect both recreational and competitive leagues, and most of these rules have been set in stone for over 40 years. Some of these rules touch beyond what players do on the ice.

Instead, they focus on specific player characteristics, which is having a significant effect on Junior level hockey players across Canada.

One of the longstanding rules in Canadian hockey is the age limit at the Junior level: no player over the age of 21 can continue playing in that league. Additionally, no team can have more than four 21-year-old players on their roster in one season, often resulting in several players losing their spot not necessarily because of lack of talent, but lack of space.

According to Martin Phillips, father of two hockey players and director of Junior hockey for the West Island Hockey Association, this regulation was set in place by Hockey Canada to allow more room for players coming up to the Junior level.

“There are tons of guys coming up from the Midget level every season needing a place to play for the next few years,” Phillips said. Regardless of whether the 21 year-old players get to play in their last eligible season or not, this rule has a profound effect on players across the country, and some closer to home.

Montrealer David Montgomery began playing hockey at the age of three and fell in love with the sport at first stride. “I honestly could skate better than I could walk at that point,” he said. “I always wanted to be on the ice.”

Over his 18-year career, Montgomery

played hockey at various competitive have the opportunity to be on the ice. levels, both regionally and provincial“I can still go to the gym and train, but ly. After high school, he travelled to the no amount of training at the gym can keep United States to play hockey for Loom- me in the same shape that hockey has,” is Chaffee College in Connecticut. Wher- Montgomery said. ever Montgomery went, his skates and Retirement for these young players can stick followed. “Regardless of where I was be temporary, but this option is not necesin life, hockey was always a constant,” sarily ideal for all. Post-Junior, the next opMontgomery said. tion available to players wishing to continue In 2013, Montgomery began playing Ju- playing is to wait six years before lacing up nior AA for the West Island Royals. He en- the skates again and hitting the ice in Beer joyed the team atmosphere and had the League, a recreational, non-contact hockopportunity to play with many former teammates he knew from past seasons. “The guys there are great,” he said. “Really talented and passionate about the game.”

He spent two seasons with the team, but in March of 2015, at age 21, Montgomery packed up his skates and stick for the time being.

Upon finishing his last season of Junior, he and several other players in his position are facing a forced, early retirement from competitive hockey. “It honestly feels like someone clicked a stop button on my career,” Montgomery said.

Phillips acknowledges the effect the age limit has had on players over time. “Players deal with it differently, but I’ve never met a player who approved of it,” ey organization open “I know so many he said. Phillips knows that there to players 27 years of guys my age are several players 21 years and age and up. For Montthat would play, older who are still physically able gomery, Beer League even if it was a and willing to continue playing is great for those who level lower than hockey but cannot do so because are older, but he would what we’re used of the rule. prefer if he didn’t have to. We just want Missing the game isn’t the only to wait so many years to play.” negative effect that early retireoff-ice before being ment has on young players. able to join.

DAVID MONTGOMERY “Not being able to play any“I don’t understand more is going to take away from why we can’t have my ability to relieve stress and just take a a league in between,” he said. “I know so break from everything,” Montgomery said. many guys my age that would play, even if “It’s going to affect me in more ways than it was a level lower than what we’re used to. one.”

He also knows that his athletic ability may decrease, something many players experience when they don’t

We just want to play.”

For some players, the age restriction of Junior hockey brings about a certain level of disappointment, but they are still trying to find ways in which they can stay involved in the sport besides playing. Steven Findlay, assistant captain of the Junior AA West Island Royals and Montgomery’s teammate, has been playing hockey for over 16 years and is now coming up on his last year of Junior level hockey.

“I know I still have a year to go so it hasn’t really hit me yet, but I can’t even imagine what it’s going to feel like when I know I’m hitting the ice for the last time,” he said.

For Findlay, hockey has always been his true passion. As the end of his competitive career approaches, he’s looking forward to taking on a new challenge in the hockey world.

“My dad, my brother and I have always wanted to take on our own team and coach a younger group of kids,” he said. “When I finish my last year playing and school settles down, that’s what I want to do.”

Findlay does feel, in some respects, that his hockey career is being cut short by the age limit, but he is trying to approach it with a positive attitude. “I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles,” he said with a smile.

Once he finishes playing, he will be looking for different activities to fill the void. “I think that besides coaching, I’m going to pick up other sports that I never had time for when I was playing hockey, like indoor soccer,” he said.

Over the coming years, several retired players like Montgomery are looking to see if any changes will be made to either the age limit of Junior level hockey, or if a league for players wishing to continue their careers will be created.

“We’re still young adults trying to figure out a lot about life,” he said. “We’ve related so much of our lives to hockey and now it [kind of] feels like a part of us is gone.”

According to Phillips, no association to his knowledge has made any motions towards a change.

PICTURED (1) David Montgomery and Steven Findlay are worried about quitting hockey.

(2) Steven Findlay carrying the puck.

Photos by Meghan Kelly.

JANUARY 26, 2016

theconcordian

13

FIELD HOCKEY

Field Hockey: hop off the ice and onto the turf A personal take on an overlooked sport in the world of mainstream athletics

Think of ice hockey, played on synthetic turf and with much less equipment.

For as long as I can remember, field hockey was my spring sport.

I recall that the main reason I joined was to wear a skirt. A traditional field hockey uniform includes a jersey, skirt, shin guards, cleats, high socks and a mouth guard. I never enjoyed the feeling of moulding firm plastic against my teeth; I still squirm at the thought of it.

The game is simple, two teams composed of 11 players including the goalie play a game of possession, elimination and tackling for two 35-minute halves. The team that ends up with the most goals when the final whistle blows is the winner. If the game results in a tie it leads to overtime and strokes if needed. Strokes are an adapted form of a shootout.

Field hockey players use sticks made out of wood or fiberglass with a j-shaped hook at the bottom. One surface of the stick is rounded and the other is flat.

When you are first learning, it is a

slow sport. The rules are tedious and the pace can be described as stop-andgo. You are not allowed any foot-to-ball contact, no swinging the stick too high in the air and no more than two people touching the ball at once. Also, the ball is

extremely hard and can cause bruises, so it’s important to be aware of that as you begin to learn the game.

I am a very clumsy person and would kick the ball without even knowing it.

This would cause the opposing team to gain possession. In an effort to remain

calm, my coach politely recommended I become our team’s goalie.

I know I said I joined field hockey to wear the skirt but after a few games in net I was hooked. I wore so much padding I looked like the Michelin Man. My

Over a span of eight years, I played almost every position on the field.

As I look back now, the aspect I enjoyed the most was playing with my team. We motivated each other, and we developed together. In high school our team started as the worst team in the league; it was upsetting because I knew we had promise. Over the course of five years we never gave up, and worked harder each year to develop our skills. Our drive and determination is what led us to the city finals in our final year.

We did not win but I could not be more proud of my team.

If you are considering playing field hockey, keep in mind it’s a long process. You have to give yourself time to learn and adjust to the sport. If I quit when I was on the worst team in the league I would have never been Graphic by Florence Yee. able to look back on our accomplishments and be as proud as I gear included a goalie mask, leg guards, am today. kickers, chest guard, padded shorts, If you are interested in playing, hand protectors, neck guard, arm the main club is the Montreal Amguards and of course a stick. Goalies are bassadors, which has a team for the only players on the field that are almen, women, boys and girls. The lowed to legally kick the ball. My coach sport is played outdoors, and is could now take a sigh of relief. great for the summer.

SARAH & THE HABS

Bergevin decides not to fire Therrien The Montreal Canadiens are in desperate need of a change

BY SARAH KOSSITS STAFF WRITER The Canadiens’ recent losing woes have caused speculation in regards to what should happen with the team and its management. RDS reported last week that if the team lost against MORE LIKE THIS the Boston theconcordian.com/ Bruins which author/s_kossits/ they did— head coach Michel Therrien would be fired.

I was ready for it. I don’t like blaming the coach, but people underestimate how big of an impact they can have on a team. One year, my hockey team went nowhere and fin-

ished at the bottom of the province. The next year, under the leadership of a new coach, we got three medals out of our season and finished third overall.

Coaching matters and a big part of coaching is being able to manage and produce young talent, which Therrien has shown he cannot do.

Alex Galchenyuk should be thriving right now. We should have never traded Jiri Sekac and we definitely should not have traded Jarred Tinordi for John Scott and Victor Bartley. Yet, Galchenyuk isn’t excelling and we’re practically giving away our talented rookies as they are unable to thrive under Therrien’s system.

I’m not opposed to trading our rookie talents if we get someone in return who will help the team’s current scoring woes. If General Manager Marc Bergevin wants to trade a prospect in order to bring in another talented player, that’s fine. However, that’s not what he’s doing.

Bergevin held a press conference on Jan. 21 and the contents were live-tweeted by the Habs Twitter account.

A lot of people were expecting to hear that Therrien had been fired as ru-

mored. Spoiler alert: that’s not what we heard at all.

Instead, Bergevin said “it’s been a hard time for all of us, but I believe in Michel Therrien and his coaching staff.

Nobody is going anywhere.”

Bergevin, to me, added insult to injury by adding he is “not ready to sacrifice the future of the team for success in the short-term.”

Mr. Bergevin, if you’re not willing to sacrifice the future of the team for short-term success, then why did you trade Tinordi?

He was a part of the future of the team. You traded a talented young defenseman for a 27-year-old who you immediately assigned to the AHL and for 33-year-old Scott who will likely never play a game in a Habs uniform. I do not understand the point of that trade, nor your press conference comments. I don’t think I ever will.

I’ve been a Habs fan my entire life.

I’ve never quite lost my patience with a team as much as I have during this recent string of losses. Every NHL team will go through ups and downs in a season and that’s a normal part of the sport. What’s not normal is that no one in management seems to care too much right now.

At this point, their best hope is to put John Scott in the lineup. We have nothing more to lose, and maybe he’ll be the player who saves us all.

TIN

G ER S

S

BY OLIVIA O’MALLEY CONTRIBUTOR

Scoreboard This weekend’s results MEN’S HOCKEY STINGERS VS. CARLETON (L: 4-3 OT) The Stingers hosted Carleton University on Jan. 22 in a game they lost 4-3 in overtime. After going down by a score of 2-1 after the first period, the team came back in the third thanks to a game-tying goal by Stingers captain Olivier Hinse. Forward Joey West scored the overtime goal to give Carleton the win in the first game of a homeand-home series with the Stingers.

STINGERS @ CARLETON (L: 4-1) On Jan. 23, just one day after their overtime match-up, the Stingers travelled to Carleton for the second leg of their home-and-home series.

Once again, Carleton would come away with the win, this time by a score of 4-1. Carleton started the game strong, as they came out of the first period with a 3-0 lead. The Stingers now hold a record of 8-11-5.

WOMEN’S HOCK

EY

STINGERS VS. CARLETON (W: 1-0) The Stingers took on Carleton University at home on Jan. 24 and won by a score of 1-0. The game was scoreless for the majority of the game, until forward Claudia Dubois scored on the power play, with only 47 seconds left in the game. The win brings the Stingers’ record to 5-8-2 on the season, which puts them in fourth place in the RSEQ division.

opinions OPINIONS EDITOR /// opinions@theconcordian.com DAVID EASEY

EDITORIAL

Talking about mental health in the wake of tragedy Few of us can imagine, let alone comprehend the sorrow currently felt in La Loche. The small community of only 3,000 people was torn apart on Jan. 22, when a teenage shooter killed two brothers in their home before opening fire at the local high school. Two teachers were killed there, and seven more were sent to the hospital, some in critical condition.

We are fortunate to live in a country where mass shootings are so rare: the CBC lists only eleven in the past 40 years, with three of them occurring in our own backyard. In 1989, 14 female students and one university employee were killed in the Polytechnique shooting; in 2006, one student was killed and 19 others injured in a shooting at Dawson College. And of course, Concordia has had its own share of tragedy: in 1992, an associate professor killed four

members of his faculty on the ninth floor of the Hall building.

As always, the question comes back to mental health. While we do not know how much of a role mental health played into the La Loche shooting, the National Post said the shooter was bullied incessantly. Described as a “large, very sensitive and quiet teen,” the shooter allegedly dared students to make fun of his ears during the shooting.

This shooting may very well be a symptom of a much larger problem in La Loche: the town has the highest rate of suicide in the province, three times the national average, according to the CBC. Community leaders, also speaking to the the CBC, claim there are no resources for helping the local youth, who struggle with the abuse, violence, drugs and alcohol that runs rampant in northern communities. It’s a fertile

ground for depression or worse, with no resources to treat the demons that grow beneath the surface.

As a society, we are improving our understanding of mental health, or so we’d like to believe. But incidents like the one in La Loche prove that our vulnerable are still slipping through the cracks in dangerous ways.

La Loche did not have any psychiatric treatment or mental health services available, despite the stunning rate of suicide, reported the National Post. That’s no small thing: according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, 20 per cent of Canadians will struggle with a mental illness, and 8 per cent will experience major depression at some point in their lives. Of those with depression, half will never see a doctor. Ultimately, suicide will account for 24 per cent

of all deaths for 15 to 24 year olds in Canada.

If these are our national statistics, one can only imagine the dire situation in La Loche.

With every tragedy comes the same rhetoric: that we need to do more to support our mentally ill. But frankly, the words have become cliché. We have talked the talk but have yet to walk the walk.

A contributor in the paper this week [story below] writes on struggling with the stigma of chronic low self-esteem.

This week is the Bell Let’s Talk campaign, dedicated to ending that very stigma and supporting mental health initiatives across the country. In 2016, we all—as Canadians, Quebecers, Montrealers, Concordians, and basic human beings—need to do better.

So sit down. We need to talk.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Ending the stigma of mental illness

You’d go to the doctor if your leg hurt everyday, so why not seek help for mental health?

DIANDRA D’ALESSIO CONTRIBUTOR These past few weeks, you might’ve seen commercials supporting Bell’s annual Let’s Talk campaign, which takes place this year on Jan. 27.

The commercials feature people alternately dismissing and then expressing genuine concern over their colleagues’ mental health issues. These ads highlight the often-taboo nature of mental illness and how it’s sometimes not taken seriously, but the facts show that mental illness and its consequences are all too real.

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, one in five Canadians will experience some form of mental illness in their lifetime. It’s also estimated that 22 per cent of Canadians have mood or anxiety disorders, while roughly 3 million are currently battling depression.

Tragically, about 4,000 Canadians take their own lives each year, and suicide is the second leading cause of death among Canadians aged 15 to 24 according to the same source.

With figures like these, chances are you or someone you know has experienced mental health issues, but there’s still stigma surrounding this. The Canadian Medical Association says that only a third of mentally ill people seek treatment, while others do not, sometimes out of fear or embarrassment.

But I speak from experience when I say that there’s no reason to be afraid or embarrassed when it comes to getting help. While I’ve never been diagnosed with a mental illness, I have suffered from chronic low self-esteem.

Full disclosure: I recognize that low self-esteem is not a mental illness, and I’m not trying to make light of depression, anxiety, or other disorders. However, my insecurities and failings would sometimes affect me to the point of breaking down and feeling hopeless.

Eventually accepting that this had to stop, I sought therapy two years ago. I only went for two sessions, but talking with a therapist confirmed what I already knew deep down.

I realized that my negative thoughts were all in my head and that I was being way too hard on myself. I still have my off days like everyone else, but because of therapy I’m in a much better place now and continue to learn to love myself.

I understand that sometimes counselling alone won’t cut it, and that some people’s cases require medication.

There’s nothing wrong with that either.

What matters is that anyone who is suffering from mental illness gets the help he or she needs, and as soon as possible.

Of course, the first step is to talk about it.

I’m very fortunate to have a supportive circle of family and friends to turn to, and I realize that this is not always the case, but I promise you at least one person cares.

At least one person will lend you an ear and a shoulder to lean on. We owe it to ourselves to be happy, and while it’s important to be kind to each other, it’s just as important to be kind to ourselves.

To anyone dealing with mental health issues, know that you’re not alone, and that through getting help, it really does get better. " Need someone to talk to on campus?

Contact Concordia’s counselling and

psychological services at Sir George Williams campus at (514) 848-2424, ext. 3545, and at Loyola at (514) 8482424, ext. 3555. " Alternatively, visit amiquebec.org/ listening-services/ for a list of mental health helplines in Montreal and across Canada.

Contribute to our section opinions@ theconcordian.com

Graphic by Thom Bell.

JANUARY 26, 2016

theconcordian

15

CINEMA

Why reboots are atrocious

Hollywood is tapping into the stagnant well of sequels and remakes

Those disgraceful remakes 1 THE DUKES OF HAZZARD

2 THE OMEN Graphic by Florence Yee.

BY KENIA GIRON CONTRIBUTOR The practice of remaking movies is as old as film-making itself. Silent films were remade into talkies once the technology allowed it, and some of the most memorable films fall into the category of reboots and remakes.

Many movies are actually remakes, including Al Pacino’s classic Scarface—is actually an ode to the original. And the seminal rom-com You’ve Got Mail recycles the plot of 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, but with a modern twist.

The problem is that these reboots and remakes are completely unnecessary. I’m talking about movies that only come to fruition for those dubious capitalist reasons. As of Jan. 8, 2016, there are 105 reboots and remakes that are being planned according to Den of Geek, a website that reviews television shows and movies.

This means movie-goers will once again be bombarded by recycled remakes and reboots—this raises the question: “Why?” Well, they have a built-in audience who will purchase a ticket for the sake of nostalgia. This sentiment is a powerful force that Hollywood has ultimately capitalized on, realizing that the formula can reap great financial success.

Who didn’t love watching the Power Rangers after school in the ‘90s? The beloved show about teenagers with colorful costumes fighting giant monsters is getting a reboot slated for release Jan. 17,

2017. And you know what, I bet you it’s going to make a TON of money—more money than you will see in your life.

It doesn’t matter if it’s going to suck or not. Twentysomethings are going to eat that up. There’s already a bunch of people on social media hyping up for this movie, and a trailer hasn’t even been released.

Take a look at the latest Star Wars installment.

A month before the film premiered in December, pre-sale tickets broke records, making over $100 million, according to Forbes. This is not a shocker though, the franchise is 38 years old. The fandom contains multiple generations, all curious about the fate of their beloved characters, there was no way the movie would fail financially.

The worst culprit of these crimes against original movies is the ubiquitous superhero genre. Everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past 50 years knows the origin stories of Spiderman and Batman.

The sagas of Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne have acquired a permanent space in the public’s imagination. The last movie of each franchise came out less than five years ago, with the newest addition hitting theatres in the month of March.

Yet Sony already has the release date for their third Spiderman relaunch (July 7, 2017, for those who are interested) and there are rumours swirling about Ben Affleck directing and portraying a new solo

Batman by 2018 according to IMBD. This is absolutely ridiculous, I have reboot fatigue.

The worst part is that Hollywood does not learn from its mistakes. Take The Fantastic Four franchise. The original movie came out in 2005 to middling reviews. Despite the lackluster results, the film released a sequel two years later.

Once again, the sequel failed to live up to expectations and Fox decided to cut future sequels. In 2009, talks of a reboot began. Fast forward to August 2015, a new film was released. It failed miserably with audiences and critics alike, losing an estimated $80 to $100 million according to hollywoodreporter.com. I would not be at all surprised if the studio announces another film in the works.

Look, I am exhausted by these derivatives. I do not need to see uncle Ben die again, or witness Godzilla destroy another bustling metropolis—the latter of which is getting a sequel in 2018 while Dirty Dancing is getting the TV-movie treatment.

Does the audience need these remakes? No. Are these movies going to leave an indelible mark on movie history? Definitely not. Will audiences flock to these films? Probably not.

Will these movies make money off of cheap nostalgia and aggressive marketing? Absolutely. Inessential remakes are like junk food: comfortable, easily accessible, and relatively harmless.

I for one, am sick of being fed junk and am ready to cut the fat.

3 FAT ALBERT

4 CONAN THE BARBARIAN

5 THE PRODUCERS

6 ALFIE

7 THE PINK PANTH

ER

8 FOOTLOOSE

9 ROBIN HOOD

10 CL ASH OF THE TITANS

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Drop by our story-pitch meetings Friday at 1 p.m., at our Loyola office CC-431.

Pitch stories, pick stories up, and meet the team. Meow.

etc

theconcordian TINDER OF THE GODS

Photos of the week ) @LMARIERA A Montreal-based artist who creates stunning artwork for her clients. The tattoos range from pop-art inspired to the twisted fantasy realm.

DIONYSUS

Photo by Derek Key.

Pinot gris is always a must · Known to frequent all frosh events · Night owl & avid bruncher · Searching for like minded deities looking for a good time · 3rd year political science student · En/Fr/Ancient Greek

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Concordia University’s weekly, independent student newspaper VOL. 33, ISSUE 17 JANUARY 26, 2016 OUR COVER THIS WEEK

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COME TO OUR WEEKLY STORY MEETING AT THE LOYOLA CAMPUS CC-431 FRIDAY AT 1 P.M. PITCH. WRITE. EDIT.