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The Bleak Commercial Politics of ‘Space Jam’ – POLITICO

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The semi-animated 1996 basketball movie “Space Jam” was an unlikely cult classic. Goofy and shamelessly commercial, it got a lukewarm critical reception at best; the film was literally based on a Nike TV ad. But its feather-light touch and zeitgeist-y flair made it a touchstone for the generation who grew up during the reign of Michael Jordan and the ascendancy of the Dream Team and the general post-history vibe of the 1990s.

This weekend — a quarter-century later, as every millennial reading this will cringe to acknowledge — Warner Bros. released its sequel, “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” On the surface, they’re alike in almost every way: equally slight, accompanied by a slew of merchandising tie-ins, Michael Jordan neatly replaced by his basketball successor LeBron James. The main differences are superficial, with the passage of time reflected in both the new film’s video-game-quality CG animation and a slew of updated cultural references and cameos.

But to anyone paying attention to the world outside, they’re radically different in one important way. The original “Space Jam,” crass as it may have been, was harmless ‘90s fluff. Its successor, arriving in 2021, borders on a moral affront.

Over the past decade, the NBA has become the world’s most aggressively activist major sports organization. Its players have stumped for voting access, put the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on NBA courts, and nearly boycotted last year’s playoffs en masse amid the protests over the murder of George Floyd. It has been a dramatic and socially significant evolution from the days of Jordan, the famously apolitical uber-jock who once quipped that “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

So to watch James in 2021, the league’s standard-bearer both as a player and political activist, traipse through the sealed-off virtual landscape of “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” it’s impossible to think of anything but what the league and its players aren’t saying. The film is carefully neutered to appeal to an apolitical global cinematic marketplace dominated by China. You spend its 115 minutes not recalling the lightweight delights of the 1990s, but of the moment in 2019 when NBA front-office guru Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, and a clearly peeved James slapped him down, accusing him of harming NBA players “financially… physically. Emotionally. Spiritually,” saying “we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that too.”

Less than two years later, it’s Hong Kong, rather than the NBA’s revenue stream, that seems to have taken the brunt of the “negative.” The once-vibrant democracy is now largely under Beijing’s boot while the NBA continues to earn billions of dollars in China, its stars picking up lucrative endorsements amid rampant human rights abuses. Oddly, the “Space Jam” sequel is not currently scheduled for a release in China — Warner Bros. didn’t respond by time of publication to the question of whether it would be — but it bears the sanded-down, quirk-free character of the global film industry for which the country increasingly sets the terms. (As founder of the co-producing SpringHill Company, James also stands to benefit from whatever success it reaches in the global market.)

In fairness, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” is a children’s film, not built to carry heavy messages, and the compromises of doing business in China aren’t exclusive to the NBA. James and his peers have no inherent obligation to speak out on the behalf of Hong Kongers, or Uyghurs, or the state of American democracy, or anything else. But given the moral authority the league has flexed of late, especially over the past year, it’s hard to watch “Space Jam: A New Legacy” and think: all that hand-waving, self-censorship, and equivocating around global politics … all to preserve the opportunity to do this?

The movie itself is a smooth-edged piece of product that betrays nothing of its stutter-step origin story. It was originally helmed by the surrealist Black auteur (and Guggenheim fellow) Terence Nance, creator of HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness,” who left the project in 2019 due to “different takes on [its] creative vision.” To judge by the result, that meant he wanted to do something creative, and the studio didn’t.

The finished movie follows its predecessor’s structure almost beat-by-beat, down to a hagiographic opening montage of James’ real-life career highlights. Its major updates reflect changing trends not just in pop culture, but media itself: Instead of outer space, James is threatened with imprisonment in the Warner Bros. “Server-verse,” where it’s bleakly posited that its intellectual properties orbit each other as self-contained, hermetic theme parks.

Imagining works from “Casablanca,” to “The Iron Giant,” to, insanely, “A Clockwork Orange,” as interchangeable cogs of “content” is cynical enough for one of America’s oldest and most venerable film studios. And then the film engages in a weird sort of double cynicism about its premise: Its villain is an anthropomorphized computer algorithm played by Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle, who enacts a nefarious scheme to absorb the real world into his virtual fantasia. But the film is based on the very premise that modern audiences will respond better to its groan-worthy, universe-colliding “crossover event” than the relatively modest, if dopey, scale of the original film. Its villain is pursuing, more or less, the same strategy as its creators.

Most stifling, ultimately, is the extent to which the real world is simply absent from “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” Even its predecessor touched on something genuine; it has a reference to the real-life and still then very recent death of Jordan’s father, and drops a knowing joke about the NBA’s racial dynamics that it’s hard to imagine would pass today’s boardroom gauntlet. Here, however, the entire plot, a thinly sketched family drama aside, is premised on corporate synergy and “content creation”; the Looney Tunes appear more as brand ambassadors than anything resembling their origins as anarchic and boundary-pushing Chuck Jones or Tex Avery creations.

The 1996 film’s villain was a cigar-chomping, W.C. Fields-style misanthrope who wanted to imprison Michael Jordan for all eternity as a circus entertainer, condemning him to literally “shut up and dribble.” This is the same mindset that NBA players — James pre-eminent among them — have openly, and successfully, been fighting for the past few years, both in their political stances and assertion of their own agency as athletes and public figures. But the past few years have revealed clearly where they won’t step. “Space Jam: A New Legacy” feels like precisely the product of an algorithm written to scrub out anything that might threaten its, and the NBA’s, global ambitions. It’s impossible to sit through the movie and conclude anything other than that its villain has already triumphed.

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‘Disgraceful:’ N.S. Tory leader slams school’s request that military remove uniform

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HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.

Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.

A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”

Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.

“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.

In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”

“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”

Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.

Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.

Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.

“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.

“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.

“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.

“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”

“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Saskatchewan NDP’s Beck holds first caucus meeting after election, outlines plans

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REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.

Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.

She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.

Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.

Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.

The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Nova Scotia election: Liberals say province’s immigration levels are too high

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HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.

Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.

“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.

“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”

The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.

In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.

“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”

In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.

“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”

Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.

Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”

In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.

In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.

“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”

Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.

“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”

The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.

“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.

“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax

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