Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 18

B2 MONDAY. MARCH 13, 2006 CULTURE EDMONTON JOURNAL Sad sitcom a sign of the times Lame Louis-Dre)fus vehicle reminds viewers how good Seinfeld was VJ hopefuls -uai- i 1 TV REVIEW The New Adventures of Old Christine Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Time and channel: Tonight, 9:30 on CBS, 10:30 on CH The Apprentice Starring: Donald Trump Time and channel: Tonight, 10 on Global and NBC 4-. $ka first Right after you and I split up, I got one under my belt" "Under your belt? What are you, a pirate?" (Cue laughter.) Most of all, though, there's the depressing sight of Louis-Dreyfus, still indelibly etched in the memory as Seinfeld's Elaine Benes, trying her damdest to make the comedy work. It's not her fault, really: Nearly everything about Old Christine is a reminder of how good Seinfeld really was, and how woeful most of today's sitcoms are. CBS has given Old Christine a comfortable hammock position between bona fide hit Two and a Half Men and CSI: Miami, Monday night's most-watched series.

That means youll be seeing a lot more of Old Christine in future. And that's no laughing matter. CH, CBS I If you're familiar with four of the scariest words in the English language "previously, on The Apprentice" you know all about Brent, the token Canadian and, wouldn't you know it, an all-world hoser. You know about Lenny, too, a.k.a. The Russian, who comes across as being so scary it's easy to imagine even Vladimir Putin quaking at the sight of him.

In tonight's task, if we are to believe the promos, the candidates go swimming with sharks. Literally. I don't know what product they're pitching SeaWorld, perhaps, or cat food but it looks like a grabber. SHAUGHN BUTTS, THE IOURNAI MuchMusic VJ Search contestants Tim Deegan, left, Nikki Mah and Erik Bartik hang out at the Powerplant after shooting the episode that airs tonight at 8 on Citytv. For this week's competition, they had to design a logo for the Vancouver band Theory of a Deadman.

Not everyone amused by wacky antics ALEX STRACHAN CanWest News Service The New Adventures of Old Christine isn't very good, but seeing it will give you a good idea of what ails the traditional sitcom right now. There's that title, for one. It isn't as catchy as, say, Seinfeld, or Friends, or even Will Grace. The title was explained in the pilot episode, which had a sneak-preview airing earlier this yean something todo with divorced working mom Christine Campbell (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) having the same name as her ex-husband's new girlfriend. The old Christine is about to embark on new adventures while her ex gets it on with the new Christine.

Get it? Then there are the trite, typical sitcom situations. In tonight' premiere episode, Supertramp, Christine learns that her ex, First public YOUNG Continued from Bl Do you remember hearingyour first Neil Young song? I had just come up to New York in the late '60s, and I was in somebody's apartment with some other people, and we had gotten in a really good mood and turned on Buffalo Springfield, and everyone was lying down, their eyes closed, letting the music happen. I remember thinking that (Young's) Broken Arrow and (Hello) Mr. Soul were two of the most extraordinary songs I had heard in my life. At that point, I didn't extrapolate that it was Neil Young.

Later, I heard the band broke up a tragedy. And then (Young's) solo album cameoutlwas living in London by then and went down to One Stop Records, bought it, put it on the turntable, and that was it I found my buddy. Young recorded a song for the soundtrack to your movie Philadelphia, andyou did a 25-minute videocassette from his album Sleeps With Angels. How was this different? This time, we were creative partners. We talked, he sent me the new songs, and I fell madly in love with them, and we talked about how a film might evolve from this suite of songs.

This led to the idea of shooting the film at the Ryman in Nashville and how to honour the MORGAN Continued from Bl It proved so popular, the pair ended up selling copies for $10 apiece. Waters's interest in being on air stemmed from that experience. "I knew what I wanted to see on camera," he said. His next success came at age 18, when he was short-listed to be a MuchMusic VJ. He was one of seven semi-finalists selected from a nationwide search that attracted thousands of entries.

"I was freaked out. I was the youngest guy there by about fouryears. Butlhad a good time. I think that's when I realized I could do this for a living." After quitting Camosun College in Victoria, he made a demonstration video that landed him a Vancouver audition for TheX. The camera he used was the one purchased with his college fund.

TheMorgan Waters Show requires him to confront people who aren't always amused by his wacky antics. Yet so far, no one's done anything worse than toss an apple core at him (at the time, Waters was pretending to be the "world's first pregnant He believes most realize he's harmless and poking fun only at himself. "You get reactions from them based on me being the idiot rather than making them look the idiot," Waters said. "I've never been beaten up." strange, but ratings are ratings and when Stern appears on Late Show (this will be the 15th time) they usually go up. Late Show had no further comment on the booking, but Stern has had plenty to say about the lawsuit and CBS chief Les Moonves.

"This is a guy who was on The Love Boat," Stern said in an interview Tuesday on Fox News Channel's Hannity Colmes. Stern booked for Letterman show Julia Louis-Dreyfus Richard (Clark Gregg) is having an intimate relationship with the new Christine. She resolves to make an intimate conquest of her own, to even the score. Funny, no? Then there are the punchlines, each one punctuated by a loud burst of canned laughter. To wit: "Mind if I use your bathroom? I have to make a pit stop.

Not a full pit stop, just an oil change. I'm going to pee." (Cue laughter.) And another: "Oh my God, you just had sex." "No I didn't. I was peeing. I thought I made that clear." (Cue laughter.) And another: "Actually, she's not the performance of Prairie I know this performance is great. I am convinced that with the enhancements of close-ups and beautiful photography that we can make a cinematic experience that is, in its own way, every bit as rich as it was for me as a fan to sit and see it live.

5 9 Jonathan Dcmme country music that means so much to him. And I thought that was a great opportunity for me as a filmmaker, because it is fresh terrain. We've seen dozens of great electric-guitar rock documentaries, but I don't think we've seen that many acoustic ones. What is your attraction in working with performers? One, maybe it's the ardent filmmaker who has also got a lazy streak. Seeing a (distinctive) performance and realizing that there are no script worries here.

There are no casting worries here. I know this performance is great. I am convinced that with the enhancements of close-ups and beautiful photography that we can make a cinematic experience that is, in its own way, Cliffs along the great. I like to time my trips to corre- spond with those bursts of wonderful ac- trvity. "And HI admit that I love the coldness and thepurityofnorthernrivers.

There's cINpeepofi) pilates studio New Session begins April 3 1 Fitness Wind songs every bit as rich as it was for me as a fan to sit and see it live. There's also a bit of an egotistical thing, too. Because it is slighdy bold to try and make a performance film that is, at the end of the day, worth making to the extent that it functions as a proper film. Why don'tyou ever show the audience? That goes right back to Stop Making Sense, where I did film the audience, and then in the cutting room it seemed absurd to be cutting to the audience and distracting the viewer from the musical world that was happening onstage. It's an intrusion, and I think it's a slight affront to the movie viewer.

What was it like tofUm Young at the Ryman? If the songs hadn't been so fabulous, it would have been a whole other evening. Neil had never, ever sung those songs before an audience in his whole life. Maybe you need to consider the Prairie Wind songs as his most personal songs because they are the most recent ones he's writtea He's singing them in the Ryman, and the people out there had never heard these songs before. So it makes you think about when the Beethovens and Mozarts were around, and no one got to hear their new stuff until the premiere. And they were either blown away or they stormed out.

So it had that kind of extraordinary, unique crackle to it. Nahanni River something both compelling and primi- rive about being able to dip your cup over the side of the canoe to take a nice cold drink." thejoumal.canwest.com fr North has changed forever as civilization takes over Newsday Didn't someone say something about a "lawsuit?" Howard Stern who's being sued by CBS for "compensatory and punitive damages for multiple breaches of contract, fraud, and unjust enrichment," according to the lawsuit filed Feb. 28 will appear next week on CBS. He's booked for The Late Show With David Letterman Monday. Strange? Yes, kt i mm f-A i STRUZIK Continued from Bl "It's greatforafamily, and when we're on the river, the kids are expected to do some things around camp but are also expected to make their own fun." There is a note of sadness in the book as well.

The North that he and others know and love has changed forever. "It will never come back. It's the history of civilization, I guess, taking over remote areas. But there are mines popping up all over the place, and pipelines beingproposed, and ports along the Arctic "You can't even run the Coppermine River from the headwaters anymore because there's a mine there." Nevertheless, just as it was when he was a lad, Struzik's heart is north of the 60th parallel. "There is just something about these Arctic ecosystems that seems so simple when you first see them, but there are moments of flushes of life, when there are migrations of great herds of caribou or the grizzlies are gorging themselves on berries, and just being there among all that life is incredible," Struziksays.

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