Rated: 14 Accompaniment (Sexual Content, Coarse Language, Substance Abuse)
Runs: 102 minutes
Director: Paul Weitz
Country: US
Released: 2012
Starring: Robert De Niro, Paul Dano, Olivia Thirlby

“A young writer, coping with addiction, finally meets the drunk, delusional father he never knew at the homeless shelter where the writer works. That’s the improbable truth at the core of Being Flynn, the uneven but undeniably powerful film from writer and director Paul Weitz. Based on Nick Flynn’s 2004 memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Being Flynn is a film that aches with sadness. Paul Dano excels as Nick, the budding writer, poet and playwright who drifts through his twenties until he takes a job at the New York homeless shelter that employs his girlfriend, Denise. Seeing his father, Jonathan, lining up for the shelter is a jolt. Jonathan is a writer too, claiming to be on par with J.D. Salinger and Mark Twain. He talks obsessively of his magnum opus, Memoirs of a Moron, and unearths long-buried memories of Nick’s childhood and his troubled mother, Jody (the ever-superb Julianne Moore). The film is a duel between father and son, with Nick providing narration for each in the hope of understanding his old man. From L.I.E. to Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood, Dano has shown himself to be an actor of subtle brilliance. His quiet intensity is a wrenching contrast to De Niro’s unhinged flamboyance.... Here, you can feel De Niro’s full engagement in a character that echoes his roles in Taxi Driver and Awakenings. It’s a great wreck of a performance that feels bruisingly true.”- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Advance Tickets ~ IMDB on Film ~

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"The Hindu believed that the cat was a symbol for childbirth." Bella, being a fair-weather cat, loves spring.

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Tourism Critic James Aylward grilled Tourism Minister Robbie Henderson over irregularities found in an Auditor General's report released Friday.

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More than a dozen Department of Fisheries and Oceans workers on P.E.I. received notice Thursday that they may lose their jobs.

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Charlottetown Naiads synchronized swim team takes on the competition at the Atlantic Regional Synchronized Swimming Championships.

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A wellspring of young talent in Georgetown will be showcased Thursday, May 24 at 7pm when the school’s drama club puts on a variety show at the Kings Playhouse.
Admission to the event is free but donations to the Kings Playhouse will be accepted.
The drama club is a reflection of the youth of Georgetown, with more than 50 of the 93 students of Georgetown Elementary as members.
The club was created last year by Dawn Sadoway, and is now being run by Toby Murphy, although Ms Murphy hastens to add that she “can’t come close to filling her (Ms Sadoway’s) shoes.”
Ms Murphy said she expected a few students to sign up for this season and was surprised when more than 50 decided to take part.
The drama club performed a Christmas play called ‘The Reindeer Rebellion’ last December, and the members are busy all year, meeting every Wednesday after school to work on their improv and other drama skills.

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Earlier this spring, along with my colleagues from the PEI Home and School Federation and with the PEI Teachers Federation, I had the pleasure of meeting with Premier Robert Ghiz to express our concerns about cuts to the budget for education technology (the capital budget was cut from $500,000 to $0 for 2012-2013).

While clearly a supporter of the idea of technology in education, the clear message we received from the Premier was “there’s no money.”

He told us this backwards and forwards and as the plot to a variety of stories. 

We came back at him in a number of ways, from the tactical to the emotional.

“There’s no money.”

With no money for capital spending on technology, he told us, the education system must innovate through thrift and creativity.

Given that I have built an entire career around the practise of thrift and creativity, this was a something of an irresistable challenge.

And, indeed, a useful tool that I knew we could use to accelerate innovation at a pace that would have otherwise been bureaucratically impossible: “The Premier says we have to innovate through thrift and creativity” is a pretty good calling card to use when trying to sell people out of the box. 

The first project under this call to action went live a week ago: a home-and-school owned, funded and operated wireless Internet network for Prince Street Elementary School. We call it TeacherNet.

You can read the political, logistical and technical details here, but the short version of the story is this: wireless Internet in the classroom is coming, indeed in newly-constructed schools it’s already there. But with cuts to technology funding and an already-over-taxed technology division in government, it’s likely not coming to existing schools for several years.

Which is about a decade after it came to the local coffee shop.

As parents, we wanted to get wifi into Prince Street school sooner than that to allow our children’s educators to start experimenting with ways of using a wireless network in the classroom (keep in mind that these are educators who are used to using a slow, locked-down network on underpowered equipment, so in many ways “wireless Internet” for them means “Internet that actually works.”)

We were fortunate to have several important things happen to make this pilot project happen: the principal and staff at the school were early and enthusiastic supporters of the project; Bell Aliant came on board early with a 6-month donation of 20 Mbps Fibre Op to supply bandwidth to our network; we received an exception to the policy that would have otherwise prohibited third-parties from installing wireless into a government building; and Ken Williams, a home and school volunteer from Tyne Valley offered his services, and the loan of some gear, to get the technical side of the network up and running.

Here’s what the first week of traffic on the network looked like: 6 users transferred almost 1 GB of data. In the days and weeks to come, as additional educators start experimenting we expect usage to increase. 

We’ve committed to our peers in the home and school movement, and to partners in the education system, that we’ll document the project, both technically and from a user perspective. You can follow along the process as we update the documentation.

This has been a fun project to be involved with. I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations, got a chance to poke around the nooks and crannies of Prince Street School with wire cutters in-hand, the opportunity to learn a lot about inexpensive Open-Mesh wireless routers, and, most importantly, got to use some of my day-to-day work skills to support educators at Oliver’s school.

I encourage others to heed the Premier’s call to action (I hope he meant it as a call to action…) and seize the opportunity to innovate in your own schools. If our experience is any guide, you will find willing co-conspirators in principals, teachers and staff, a bureacracy willing to adapt as long as you are patient and forthright, and no end of interesting projects waiting to be carried out.

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One of the novel things to show up in Charlottetown restaurants in the last few years, courtesy of the sudden influx of places operated by Korean newcomers, is the table-side call button. Here’s what they look like at the newly-opened Mr. Sushi on University Avenue:

You’ll find similar call buttons in Ta-ke Sushi on Queen Street and in Sushi Jeju on Grafton Street.

By all appearances Islanders have absolutely no idea what to do with them: I’ve very seldom seen anyone use them, and I know from my own family’s reaction — “we don’t want to disturb them,” etc. — there’s some hesitation to.

Once you crack through the hesitation, though, they are a great innovation: no more need to wave your arms to attract your server — just press the button. Missing a menu? Or a fork. Want to order some dessert? Or need the check. Just press the button!

For someone like me, for whom vagueness about the social cues and customs is a source of some anxiety, it’s a great help. I encourage you to join in and start pressing.

(The Mr. Sushi button system comes from a company called Vellux Wireless Calling Solutions that makes call buttons for everything from casinos to retirement homes).

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The P.E.I. government announced Friday it would cut core funding to the arts industry employment group, CulturePEI, at the end of September.

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Nearly $1 million in cash, prizes and scholarships was handed out Thursday at the Canada-Wide Science Fair held at UPEI.

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Grow Business. Live Life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMiSKPpyvMk

Read more at Grow Business. Live Life.

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Changes to the federal Employment Insurance system will not have much impact on the tourism job market, industry, says the Tourism Industry Association of P.E.I.

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The amalgamation of P.E.I.'s two English school districts is being done in too much of a hurry, says the chair of the Western School Board.

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My name is Sara Brehaut and I am a recent graduate of the Tourism & Travel Management program at Holland College.

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By Jim Brown
jim@peicanada.com

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The P.E.I. government has sent letters to five communities around the province to see if they are interested in having a privately-run liquor store.

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Music students at Three Oaks High in Summerside are working with local musicians to help them learn more about composing music.

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Atlantic Canada is selling 30 times as much lobster to China as it was just two years ago, suddenly making it one of the region's most important lobster exports customers.

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The Daily Specials at Casa Mia Restaurant for Friday, May 18, 2012 are:

• Tomato and Basil soup with feta 4.99
• Grilled cheese with bacon and carmelized onions and herb aioli with side salad..9.99

Casa Mia Restaurant
131 Queen Street
Charlottetown, PE
Telephone: (902) 367-4440
Email:

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