The Fall 2010 issue of Sudbury Living features the diary of a Breast Cancer survivor. Mercedez Quinlan tells her story. The issue is available on newsstands now!

In 2010, an estimated 23,200 women in Canada will be diagnosed with breast cancer. That is an increase of 500 from 2009. On average 445 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer every week. One in nine Canadian women are expected to develop breast cancer during their lifetime.

There are numerous events planned to create awareness of breast cancer and raise money for research.

Flower Towne is pleased to announce its "Blooms 4 Breasts" event.  Fifty percent of all pink rose sales for the month of October will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society for Breast Cancer research. 

This Friday, the Pink Hair Affair will take place at Tom Davies Square at 10:30 pm

Sunday, Oct. 3/ Run for the Cure

The annual run takes place at Cambrian College.

Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 pm

Little Black Dress & Pearls Soiree

Howard Johnson Plaza, Brady St.

$50, proceeds to Canadian Cancer Society, Breast Cancer Research

Oct. 23, 24

(Saturday 11 am - Sunday 2 am)

(Sunday 8 am - 3 pm)

Linda's Photography & Scrapbooking Newsletter

presents Crop For A Cure

Holiday Inn on Regent St.

$60 registration includes meals, scrapbooking goodies.

Proceeds to Canadian Cancer Society

705.692.1359

Thursday, Oct. 28

The Breast Action Coalition Sudbury will host the first annual Think Pink Event at the Jubilee Centre. Admission by donation

 This Canadian documentary take on Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, is gentle and complimentary. According to Brigitte Berman's story, Hefner was not only an activist for sexual freedoms but women's right (to enjoy sex) and civil rights.

The 84-year-old original playboy, it should come as no surprise, is very smart, literate, and has a social conscious. Unfortunately for most of women of a certain generation, he has always been portrayed as a dirty old man who wears silk pajamas 27/4.

Playboy was launched in1953, and the first issue featured nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe. Henfer had the brand thing going very early, and in the late 1950s launched a late night “penthouse party” television show which featured black and blacklisted performers. His Playboy clubs ignored the colour barrier in Miami and New Orleans, and gave black comedians such as Dick Gregory a wider audience.

Hefner also published fiction and non fiction by some of America's top male writers of his generation, as well as penned editorials which questioned his country's morality laws.

Hefner comes out very well in this documentary. A man who never had to deny “having sexual relations” with any woman,” and proud of it.

Thursday night I saw the American movie Howl about American poet Allen Ginsberg and the obscenity trial that surrounded his poem Howl.

The movie takes place in the late 1950s, a time I am not familiar with, but avant-garde artists such as Ginsberg set the stage and paved the way for the 1960s and 1970s “youth” and sexual revolutions...topics which are well documented. Artists of my generation were influenced by Ginsberg and his contemporaries.

The movie, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is poetry itself in black and white, and with colour segments, weaving court proceedings, an interview with Ginsberg (played by James Franco), a poetry reading in San Francisco, and imaginative animation.

The directors' previous film was The Times of Harvey Milk, and they stick to their documentary style in Howl, recreating the trial scenes, and interview with Ginsberg. There is a clip of Allen Ginsberg, who died in 1997, at the end of the film.

John Hamm (Mad Man) and David Srathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck) play lawyers in the obscenity trial. The very handsome Franco, who has portrayed James Dean on film, has transformed into a believable Ginsberg, who was far from good looking.

Rating four bags of popcorn

 I would like to say that I do a lot of reading about the movies I see at Cinefest before I see them. Usually I have not. Wednesday evening I went to see Of Gods and Men, a French film because the 8 pm showing fit with my schedule.

The film tells the story of eight French Cisterian monks living in Algeria peacefully among the Muslim population and is based on a true story. I didn't know that it won Le Grand Prix at Cannes.

Of Gods and Men could be nominated for a foreign film Oscar and end up in wide distribution, but if not I suspect it will never play again in Sudbury, and because it is subtitled and slow moving, it may not make it to satellite TV.

It is a quiet film with a powerful message. I am a better person for seeing the film.

 Six bags of popcorn

Comments from Michael Swan

The book this movie is based upon was tremendous. About five years ago I became so absorbed in it that it took over a week of my life.

I haven't seen the movie, but I certainly intend to when I can. It was here for TIFF, but you have to be unemployed to find enough time to line up for films at TIFF.

A day after London audiences saw the world premiere of Made in Dagenham in Leicester Square, Sudbury audiences saw the film at a Cinefest gala Tuesday at SilverCity Cinema.

Dagenham is England's Detroit, and at its peak, Ford Motors employed 40,000 people. In February 2002, full production was discontinued due to overcapacity in Europe and costs of upgrading the 60-year-old site,  Today the site employs 4,000 people in engine, stamping and transport operations.

Back in 1968, 187 women who worked at Ford Dagenham waged a battle for better wages and ended up fighting a successful battle for equal pay for equal work in Britian. This film should be of great interest to Sudbury audiences given the city's labour and economic history.

The film was directed by Nigel Cole, whose previous movies include Calendar Girls.

The movie manages to tell a good story, deliver a message for today's workers, and entertain at the same time. Bravo.

Rating: five bags of popcorn.

Comments from Lionel Rudd

I won't be able to see 20 or more movies like so many people do during Cinefest, which started last Saturday and continues to Sunday, Sept. 26. But I will see a few.
Sunday I watched Nowhere Boy (www.nowhereboymovie.com/), the story of John Lennon's early years. I have read several biographys on Lennon and numerous Beatle bios, and I thought the movie was true to the recorded story of his teen years in Liverpool, just before the Beetles or Beatles went to Hamburg in 1960. And the rest is history.

Much of the movie was shot in Liverpool. I visited the city briefly a few years ago and was very impressed with its beautiful architecture. For most Canadians, the only thing we know of Liverpool is the Beatles, and all those dark, black and white images of the post-war port city. The city has cleaned up its act like so many other cities (including ours).

I loved the movie. The music is mostly 50s American blues and early rock 'n' roll, the music Lennon listened to. Songs by Lennon's bands were performed by the Nowhere Boys Band, but I thought that may have been Lennon's voice on Maggie May (the original seaman's song). According to the movie, the sea shanty was the song sang by the Quarrymen at their first performance.

This movie gets five bags of popcorn.

(The following is from the Fall 2010 issue of Sudbury Living magazine. The issue is on sale now at selected newsstands. Don't miss the cover story Greater Sudbury police chief Frank Elsner by Sudbury Living editor Vicki Gilhula.)

In a perfect world I would send this memo to my boss:

So sorry, I don't have time to come to work in September and October. My social calendar is full.
The Jazz Festival at Science North runs from Sept. 10 to 12. This is the second year for this festival, which is organized by the Sudbury Community Foundation. I missed it last year, but I heard it was a “world-class” event.
Then, there is the Sudbury's international film festival, which starts Sept. 18 and continues to Sept. 26. The festival is great fun, and it attracts people from other parts of Ontario and northern Michigan. Many movie fans take the week off and watch 20 movies or more. Not only are we lucky to see films that normally don't play here, we have a chance to see them months ahead of their North American release dates.
The annual Arts Studio Tour will be held Sept. 25 and 26. This is a great opportunity to visit artists' homes and galleries. I have Saturday, Sept. 25 circled for the opening concert of the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra. At the end of the month, the Sudbury Theatre Centre's season begins with Moonlight and Magnolias. Theatre Cambrian will present Billboard's Best from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. I can't wait.
In October, there are several special events planned to raise money for breast cancer research which I hope to attend. I am taking a few days off at Thanksgiving, and later in the month, I need time off to organize a birthday party for my mom.
The women who host the LEAF Women's Day Breakfast are planning a movie evening instead this year at the Rainbow Cinemas, Thursday, Oct. 21. A week later, I have invited author Ray Robertson to Sudbury to do a reading at the main branch of the public library (Oct. 28 at 6:30 pm).
As I write this, plans are underway for an authors' festival to be held in early November. Poet Roger Nash will be hosting several authors in Sudbury under the auspices of the people who organize the Harbourfront Authors' Festival in Toronto. I can't miss that!
I am having too much fun living in Sudbury. Maybe around mid-November, I can slow down and do some work on the Winter issue of Sudbury Living. I will let you know when I figure when I am taking my remaining vacation days.

Of course, it is not a perfect world, so I will be at my desk at Sudbury Living from Monday to Friday editing the Winter issue of Sudbury Living. Maybe, I will have a little time to have some fun after work.