National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 52

NATIONAL POST, MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2000 LIVE FROM EVEREST ple back home will be following my progress and helping me reach a dream." Smith reached the south summit of Everest in 1998 but had to turn back due to a shortage of rope. Newsworld is billing its coverage as the "first ever direct live transfer of sound and pictures from Mount Everest." The network's coverage of the event also includes extensive Web coverage at www.newsworld.cbc.ca. Dan Brown, National Post In an effort to expand the boundaries of its live coverage, CBC Newsworld will air live reports from Byron Smith's Mount Everest expedition beginning on March 20. The news and current affairs network will broadcast two live updates a day during the trek to the top of the world, which is preceded by an acclimatization period at the foot of the Khumbu glacier. Smith, an experienced climber from Vulcan, will file his reports with the help of a video telephone and satellite link-up.

He will be accompanied on his climb by two cameramen and 12 Sherpa guides. The team expects to reach Everest's summit some time toward the end of May. "I'm looking forward to taking Canadians along with me on this incredible trip," Smith says. "It's exciting for me to know that peo Arthur Cohn is the only producer in the world with five Academy Awards. The man behind Central Station seems poised to win a sixth this year with his gripping documentary One Day in September Oscar favourite dark horse MM mi i 1 By Pkari.

Sheffy Gefen It's chilling. A new film, nominated for an Oscar as best documentary feature, opens with a romantic view of Bavaria's scenic attractions. Then it pans to the Munich Olympics' opening parade. Israeli athletes are marching, with their country's flag, just six miles from the Dachau concentration camp. The rest of the film is about the murder of those athletes, in an opening round of terrorism in Europe.

It's 1972, the first Olympics held in Germany since the 1936 Nazi-dominated games, exactly 3 6 years earlier. The film is called One Day in September, directed by Kevin MacDonald and produced by Arthur Cohn and John Battsek. Michael Douglas narrates. His father, Kirk Douglas, was actually Arthur Cohn: "The film had to be totally authentic, or it would be unbelievable." George Jonas' book Vengeance and Robert Lantos' TV film Sword of Gideon tell that story. The third had never been found.

After he agreed to speak on camera, he went back in hiding.) "The film had to be totally authentic, or it would be unbelievable," Cohn says. "It must tell the truth fairly, for all sides, and I think we've done that. We have to see the terrorists so that you understand their aims, but we must also show their brutality. We have Sfc- M- lift If Li LzJ. mL deserted their posts.

"Imagine you have robbers hiding in a building and the police say they're not going in because it's dangerous," Cohn scoffs, outraged. "This was cowardice of the worst degree." In the resulting chaos, the terrorists slaughtered the rest of their hostages. The film shows archival material, most of it never seen before, as well as appearances by German officials, eye-witnesses, the Dutch-born widow of the slain Israeli fencing coach and a daughter of the wrestling coach, shot dead when he tried to overcome the terrorists. "Oliver Stone in JFK used archive material brilliantly, but it was combined with actors," says Cohn. "We felt our film would not be credible with actors.

Instead, we used the main protagonists who were there at the time, the actual people." Israel offered to send an anti-terrorist team to Munich, but the Germans refused, because, Cohn thinks, "if they had allowed it, it would indicate that, despite the renowned German efficiency, they're not able to deal with it. But it was regrettable, because the Israelis had experience dealing with terror and would have been more efficient." Cohn went to Germany seven times to persuade the authorities involved to appear in the film. They include then-minister of the interior (and later foreign minister) Hans-Dietrich Gen-scher, the head of the police, the head of the Olympic Committee, and a German general who, after Munich, learned from the mistakes made there and set up an effective German anti-terrorist force. Cohn's next film will be directed by Walter Salles, who made Central Station. As for losing the Oscar to Life Is Beautiful, Cohn says he and Benigni became close friends.

"He's a lovely human being, though I felt my own film was, perhaps, more memorable." Central Station won some two dozen international awards and ecstatic audiences, a remarkable feat for a story about an old lady and a young boy, told in Portuguese by unknown actors. "Everybody said it would be poison at the box office, as they warned about many of my films," Cohn shrugs. "They were wrong. We proved that subtle, poetic films are still in demand." Cohn has persistently ignored dire warnings and followed his intuition, because, he says, "I've had a wonderful chance to reach millions all over the world, to tell stories that might enlighten their lives. That's the only reason why I doit." National Post 'THIS WAS COWARDICE OF THE WORST DEGREE' A mystery to some: Canada has produced a bumper crop of female artists, with Diana Krall, top, Celine Dion, left, and Alanis Morissette joining Shania Twain as some of the most successful acts of recent years.

She's got everything she needs in Munich at the time. Cohn, who is Swiss, has never made a trivial film in his life. He's the only producer in the world with five Oscars, including one for The Garden of the Finzi-Con-tinis and two for documentaries, though he lives a world away from Hollywood. His most recent film was the fabulous Central Station, which would have won him his sixth Academy Award except for last year's Oscar love-in for Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful. He's the only foreign producer with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

The Los Angeles Times has dubbed him the master of the "sleeper," because his productions, no matter how seemingly modest, suddenly become hits. One Day in September is a real-life thriller, the first authentic account of the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists, one of whom appears on camera out of deep hiding. The suspense, as events occur, is devastating. Cohn is elegant and ageless. In an interview in Los Angeles after the film's world premiere, his voice is husky and hoarse from emotional fatigue.

"The events at Munich alerted the world to the need to fight terrorism. Remember, at the time when this happened, people who went to airports didn't even have to have their luggage screened." The British production team scored a coup by tracking down the sole surviving terrorist of the eight who captured the Israelis. Five died in the shootout at the Munich airport. The remaining three were arrested by the Germans, and then released when Arabs hijacked a Lufthansa plane from Beirut and threatened to explode it. (Two of them were ultimately killed by the Mossad.

to see the German ineptness at the airport, but also their goodwill and valid ideas in the Olympic village. "It's the East Germans who come out badly. They co-operated in a frightful way with the terrorists. They filmed the West German police movements and told the terrorists what they were doing, even after the Arabs had savagely killed two of the Israelis." Cohn feels the Olympic Committee pressured the German authorities to get the incident over with quickly so the games could continue. "The slogan 'the games must go on' was more important to them than the fate of the Israeli athletes.

As a result, the Germans didn't have enough time to prepare adequately." Their plan at the airport was feasible. The plane, which was to fly the terrorists and hostages out of Germany, after they were brought to the airport by helicopters, was to be filled with armed policemen. They were to capture or kill the terrorists. But, one of them actually admits on camera, they were frightened and videos, well-timed television appearances and market-by-market concert tours. She has also managed to maintain a discrete image in a sea of divas; her light country sound and her country-grrrl power attitude distinguishes her from the bland power balladry of Celine, Mariah, and Whitney.

And Lange has continued to tinker with Come on Over since its initial release 122 weeks ago. From This Moment On was a Top 10 country duet with Bryan White, but when it came time to release the song to Top 40 radio, White's obviously country vocal was dropped from the mix; an "international version" of remixes was released in Europe to appeal to the less country-friendly overseas audience (that version of the album was released in Noith America in November, 1999); even a remix of You're Still the One, a straight-ahead ballad if ever there was one, got airplay on dance stations. For all the manufactured com-merciality and bland middle-of-the-road appeal, the album's success is a shock. You can't contrive to create (nor can you completely explain) a 28-million seller. Chance and luck are key elements, as is the intangible readiness of the world at large to consume what's released.

Mysteriously, Canada has produced a cross-genre bumper crop of the world's most successful female artists: Alanis Morissette (rock); Celine Dion (power balladry); Diana Krall (jazz); and Sarah McLachlan (folk-pop). Shania Twain carries the country mantle; she has crossed on over from Nashville, and with a girlish whoop, kicked the Top 40 door wide open, clutching the Zeitgeist in one hand and a Molson in the other. My high-school friend, and 28 million others, have welcomed her in. I Jeff Breithaupt is the co-author of Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early Seventies (St. Martin's Press) and the upcoming late-'70s sequel, Night Moves.

He livesin New York City. National Post been together, probably married, for a long time. It's going to be hot sex, but it's nice sex; it's allowed. In Man! I Feel Like a Woman, Twain practically does a striptease, peeling away layers of men's clothing to reveal her inner dominatrix in thigh-length boots and a slinky black skirt. Yeah, she's taking off her clothes, but the song's lyrics are a celebration of femininity, and the whole exercise is conducted with with a you-know-I-won't-go-all-the-way wink at the camera.

For all her womanly ways, however, Twain hasn't left behind the teenagers in the crowd. She wears her glamorous image well. She's comfortable with the glitter, but there's an element of the little girl playing dress-up (see the video for Love Gets Me Every Time) that would appeal to her younger female audience. The Message: Twain's lyrics are steeped in traditional country subject matter dead-end jobs, no-account men, romantic melodrama. However, within that cliche framework, Twain manages to stay in control.

In Honey, I'm Home, it's the end of a long hard day and she wants her man to be ready at the door with a cold beer and a foot massage, an appealing scenario for her female listeners. And for the men in the audience? Well, most of them probably aren't cringing at the thought of rubbing Twain's feet over a frosty lager. This Clintonian ability to appeal to everyone in the room is typical of Twain's lyrics. The Fairy Tale: Twain grew up in relative poverty in small-town Ontario. When she was just 21, her mother and stepfather died in a tragic car accident, forcing her to temporarily abandon her singing career to look after her siblings.

Everyone of all ages loves a Cinderella story. The Voice: Twain has a stong instrument. It's a big, round, Bon-nie-Raitt-with-a-twang sound, and its cross-genre flexibility has been key to her massive success. There's other factors, of course. Her record label, Mercury Nashville, has pulled all the right strings, conducting slow roll-outs of hi singles and expensive TWAIN Continued from Page Ol The little-bit-country-little-bit-rock-and-roll union of Twain and Lange may be the most signficant factor in accounting for Twain's massive crossover success.

The Image: These days, there is no separating the way an artist looks from the way an artist sounds (MTV has long made such distinctions impossible). That's lucky for Twain, whose girl-next-door glamour has struck a chord on both sides of the gender gap. She's a Top 40 Julia Roberts: sexy, but wholesome; powerful, but vulnerable; experienced, but innocent. In the video for That Don't Impress Me Much, she wears a leopard-skin print and fearlessly flashes her bare midriff while hitchhiking alone in the desert, but when the men that turn up (an over-eager biker, a grease-spattered trucker, a cocky hot-rodder) don't meet her standards, she simply sends them on their way with a wave of her hand. Therell be no back-seat shenannigans for our girl, Shania.

Shell leave that kind of thing to Madonna. Each of Come on Over's eight other video releases underscore different aspects of that wholesome sex appeal. In You're Still the One, Twain sings under a full moon as the waves break on the beach. It's a renewal of vows, a reaffirmation of a long-term monogamous relationship, while inside the beachhouse, her dimly lit beefcake of a man is getting out 'of the tub and towelling off in anticipation. On one level, it looks like we're privy to an illicit weekend tryst, but the lyrics reassure us reassure the whole family, that is J- that this couple have if i KURT STRUM VV THK ASSOC! ATKP PRKSS One Day in September documents the ordeal of Israeli athletes hostage by Palestinians at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Shania's Uok Pages D6, D7.