Latest news with #Calder
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Luck not with Flyers in NHL draft lottery; Michkov passed over for ROY
The NHL draft lottery had a new look and a vastly different result, but the new format didn't help the Philadelphia Flyers. The 23rd-place New York Islanders earned the right to pick first overall in the June 27-28 draft by winning the first live draft lottery in league history on Monday. The 19th-place Utah Hockey Club won the other drawing and moved up the maximum allowed 10 spots to fourth place. Advertisement The Islanders had 3.5% odds of winning the No. 1 overall pick. They will select first for the first time since drafting John Tavares in 2009. The Flyers, who had a 9.5% chance of getting the top pick and 9.5% of landing No. 2, ended up with the No. 6 pick as result of being leapfrogged by the odds-defying Islanders and Utah. The Flyers came in slotted at No. 4 and had a 15.4% chance of staying there. Their best odds (44.6%) were to end up picking fifth. The sixth slot was the worst possible scenario for the team. The top-ranked North American prospect is Matthew Schaefer, though NHL Central Scouting said it's close. The Erie Otters defenseman missed the rest of the season after breaking his collarbone during the winter while playing for Team Canada at the world junior hockey championship. He had 22 points in 17 games. Previously, the draw was conducted off camera, and deputy commissioner Bill Daly would turn over cards with team logos on them until the winner was revealed. But everyone got to watch the draw of the lottery balls live, and commissioner Gary Bettman was in the room, too. NHL draft order after the lottery No love for Matvei Michkov One of the few bright spots for the Flyers this season was right wing Matvei Michkov, who was second among rookies with 63 points and led all freshmen with 26 goals. However, those numbers weren't enough to earn the 2023 seventh-overall pick a Calder Trophy finalist spot, awarded to rookie of the year. Advertisement The rookie announcement was anticipated because there were four strong candidates. Michkov didn't get enough votes from the Professional Hockey Writers Association to finish among the top three. The Calder finalists are San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini, Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson and Calgary Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf Voting took place at the end of the regular season. No date has been announced yet for when the winners will be revealed. When is the NHL draft? The 2025 NHL Draft will be held June 27-28. The first round will be on June 27 and rounds 2-7 will be held the next day. The times haven't been announced yet. It will be held in Los Angeles at L.A. Live's Peacock Theater. Top prospects will be there, but not team representatives, who will take part virtually. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Luck not with Flyers in NHL draft lottery; Michkov passed over for ROY
Budapest Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Budapest Times
Losing the plots in an antiseptic Hollywood
Only Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-1989) has had more of his books filmed than English author William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). We don't have the number for Simenon but for Maugham, to date and if television films are included, there have been more than 90 made from his novels, short stories and plays. Both writers are great favourites at The Budapest Times, and as well as reading them extensively we also look out for the films, so Robert Calder's book is an invaluable, and cautionary, reference point for Maugham. Of course, film-makers have always had a habit of setting their own scriptwriters to work 'bettering' the source material for which they already paid a handsome sum. And the result often causes the original writers to throw up their hands at the travesty that their creation has become. And that's very often the case here, as Calder details. He will advise. Calder is a Canadian, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, and he wrote a book of literary criticism, 'W. Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom' in 1972, and a biography, 'Willie, The Life of W. Somerset Maugham' in 1989. In this new book he tells how Maugham and Hollywood not surprisingly formed a long, productive partnership. Maugham had a varied and prolific career from the 1890s to the 1950s, during which he achieved success both as a novelist, with 20 books, and a dramatist, with 32 plays. Few authors have achieved such success in both genres, Calder says, and Maugham completed an even rarer trifecta by writing around 120 short stories, some of which – notably 'The Letter' and 'Rain' – Calder describes as the most memorable in the English language. In Calder's assessment, Maugham's writing appealed to the film industry because a recurrent theme and preoccupation was his concern for freedom, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. His territory was autonomy and enslavement, seeing humans as surrounded by narrowness and restrictions, trapped by poverty or the class system, restricted by a role such as colonial administrator or humble verger, and imprisoned by their emotions. In the early 20th century, Calder writes, the moving picture was becoming the newest of art forms, embryonic compared to literature, drama, opera and the visual arts. Audiences were initially excited to see moving images but soon developed a taste for actual stories, and producers began scouring the world for plots and characters. In 1915 Maugham's fame as a novelist was still to come but he was a well-known dramatist whose plays were staged in London and New York, and he sold the rights to his play 'The Explorer' to pioneering film producer Jesse Lasky. Of the 10 films made from Maugham stories in the silent era, only one – the novel 'The Magician' – was not a play. Straight away, the films shifted from Maugham's original stories, downplaying sexual struggles and revising endings, for instance. 'The Ordeal' in 1922, based on a 1917 Maugham play called 'Love in a Cottage', was extensively rewritten, making the play unrecognisable. Despite such revision and censorship, it's an unfortunate cinematic fact that many silent films are lost, with most of the Maughams among them, never to be seen again. Occasionally today one might still turn up in an attic in New Zealand or somewhere, but the chances reduce. Calder recreates the lost films from contemporary newspaper reviews and such. Usefully, he informs of complete changes of titles, so we now realise that 'Charming Sinners', released by Paramount in 1929, is actually the Maugham play 'The Constant Wife' first performed in 1926, and 'Strictly Unconditional', released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1930, is a version of another play, 'The Circle'. And who has even heard of 'Dirty Gertie from Harlem', from Sack Amusement Enterprises in 1946, let alone suspected that the plot is essentially an adaptation of 'Miss Thompson', which in turn is 'Rain'. Maugham is not credited and it is claimed to have been an original tale written by the ironically named True T. Thompson. Sadie is disguised as Gertie La Rue. When sound arrived, 'Rain' offered particularly fertile material. This short story was originally published as 'Miss Thompson' in April 1921 and is set on a Pacific island, where a missionary's determination to reform a hardened, cynical prostitute leads to tragedy. It was filmed as 'Sadie Thompson' by Gloria Swanson Productions in 1930, with Swanson in the lead, then as 'Rain' by United Artists in 1932 with Joan Crawford, and as 'Miss Sadie Thompson' by Columbia Pictures in 1953 with Rita Hayworth. At one stage, in 1940 when Mary Pickford owned the rights, she was approached by three studios. RKO wanted the story for Ginger Rogers, MGM saw it as a vehicle for Ann Sothern and Warner Bros. had Bette Davis in mind, but these projects all remained just that. Calder's account of Swanson's determined efforts to make a film that was essentially too hot for the moral crusaders trying to rein in Hollywood 'excesses' is a particularly intriguing look at the machinations in play. The Hays Office and its 'code of decency' barred profanity, nudity, miscegenation, scenes of childbirth and ridicule of clergy. Single beds and no toilets. Despite Swanson's trickery to evade the censors and put Sadie on screen, her film is sanitised and ends not with a bang but a mawkish whimper, Calder recounts. It wasn't alone. Maugham's semi-autobiographical fiction 'Of Human Bondage' included what could well be his most compulsively page-turning section ever, as medical student Philip Carey repeatedly subjects himself to humiliation by the slutty waitress Mildred. Bette Davis played the tormentor in RKO's 1934 film and Leslie Howard took the kicks. Unknown to us until now, Warner Bros. filmed it in 1946 with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker, and finally Seven Arts Productions did a version with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey in 1964. Davis was also the murderess Leslie Crosbie in the Warner Bros. film of 'The Letter' in 1940, and Calder assesses that of all the Maugham adaptations it is the one that most enriches one of his stories with the artistic possibilities of the medium. As for the worst, this was surely 'Isle of Fury' starring Humphrey Bogart in Warner Bros.' 1946 version of Maugham's novel 'The Narrow Corner', seemingly 'the product of a team trying to win a quickie film contest'. Jeanne Eagels played Crosbie in Paramount's 'The Letter' in 1929, and Warner Bros. adapted it again as 'The Unfaithful' in 1947 with Ann Sheridan. Warners had also filmed 'The Narrow Corner' in 1933. Other 'multiples' were 'The Painted Veil' in 1934, 1957 (as 'The Seventh Sin') and 2006, 'The Beachcomber'in 1938 (as 'Vessel of Wrath') and 1954, 'The Razor's Edge' in 1946 and 1984, and 'Theatre' as 'Adorable Julia' in 1962 and 'Being Julia' in 2004. Calder details how Hollywood signed up eminent authors to write specifically for the studios because their names on posters guaranteed increased ticket sales, and while some of them adapted to the demands of creating film scripts, Maugham was not one. On a Hollywood sojourn in 1920 he got a $15,000 commission for a script but it was never used. After that he declined further offers. 'I'm amazed at the way in which producers buy my stories and then change the plots. If they like their own plots best, why bother to buy mine?' Calder gives us the eviscerations and revisions designed to satisfy the censor and the perceived tastes of moviegoers, if not the expectations of their author.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'I'd Do Everything the Same': Matvei Michkov Talks Lane Hutson, Rookie Season & Goals for Next Season
(Header/feature image courtesy of The Hockey News' Megan DeRuchie) Matvei Michkov didn't need a Calder Trophy nomination to prove he belongs in the NHL. While the hockey world buzzed about top rookies this season, the 20-year-old Philadelphia Flyers forward compiled an impressive first campaign—electrifying crowds with his creativity, igniting plays with his vision, and, most importantly to him, making strides that go well beyond stat sheets. In typical Michkov fashion, he met the news of not being named a Calder finalist with the same cool composure he tried to bring to every shift on the ice. 'I'm not sure,' Michkov said when asked how he felt about the omission in a new interview with RG. 'I guess I should've played better so there'd be no doubt who the best rookie was. But it is what it is. It won't change how I approach things.' This was a season of firsts for Michkov—his first in North America, his first time adjusting to a completely different language and culture, and his first test against the grind of an 82-game NHL schedule. Still, he delivered. While others drew more headlines, Michkov steadily proved why he's considered one of the most gifted young players in the world. He flashed high-end offensive instincts, blended skill with a dogged work ethic, and grew into his role with the Flyers as the season progressed. 'Of course, I feel I could've scored more points and played better in some moments—there were plenty of chances that I didn't finish,' he said. 'I didn't have any specific numbers in mind before the season started, because I didn't know what to expect. New country, new people. My main goal was to show what I can do and enjoy every game. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't. But now my focus is to train well in the offseason, get stronger, and help the team make the playoffs. That's our main goal.' It's that consistent team-first attitude that has quickly earned Michkov respect in the Flyers' locker room. His skill is undeniable, but it's his mindset that may truly set him apart. Even after a strong rookie season—one that might've made him a Calder finalist or even winner in a different year—Michkov has no interest in personal accolades. He's already looking ahead to what matters most to him: team success. 'Yes—make the playoffs first,' Michkov said when asked about his goals for Year 2. 'Then try to win the Stanley Cup. Personally, I'm not setting any specific numbers. The only goal I have is a team goal, and I'll do everything I can to reach it.' 'He's probably the one player I've played with where he wants to be the best player in the NHL. He believes he can be.' —Travis Konecny on Matvei Michkov. Said his competitiveness was up there with Claude Giroux. #LetsGoFlyers — Siobhan Nolan (@SGNolan) April 18, 2025 That doesn't mean Michkov wasn't paying attention to his peers. The NHL's rookie class this year was stacked with talent, from physical defensemen to crafty playmakers. Michkov singled out Montreal Canadiens blueliner and Calder favorite Lane Hutson as someone who caught his eye. 'I didn't follow [the other rookies] closely, but the media talked about it a lot, so it was impossible to ignore," he admitted. "Lane Hutson had a really strong season. He scored a lot and was great on the powerplay. I really like his game. I actually saw him back in 2020 at the Winter Youth Olympics. I told [Washington Capitals prospect] Ivan Miroshnichenko at the time, 'Watch that guy—he's going to make it.' And now he's playing the same way in the NHL. I'm happy for him.' But Michkov is more focused on how he can take the next step. With his rookie season behind him, the Russian forward is focused less on what he can change and more on how he can refine his approach. It's not about altering his game—it's about maturing his mindset. 'Honestly, I'd do everything the same,' he said. 'Hockey is hockey. The only difference is that now I've learned to stay calmer. When you're calm, things start to go your way—your game, your life. When I was younger, I couldn't always control my emotions. I wasted too much energy. That's the only thing I'd change. Even though it's hard to stay calm all the time, that's what I'm working on.' That level of introspection is relatively rare in a player so young. But then again, Michkov has always carried himself a bit differently than most 20-year-old players. He doesn't need individual trophies to validate his place in the league. He's shown what he can do—and more importantly, he knows what he still wants to become.
Hamilton Spectator
12-05-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
CPABC: Kootenay housing starts and major project activity decline in 2024
CRANBROOK, British Columbia, May 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — According to BC Check-Up: Invest, an annual report by the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) on investment trends across the province, the value of major projects in Kootenays was just over $5.0 billion in Q3 2024, down 2.4 per cent from one year earlier. 'Major project activity in the Kootenays was light in 2024,' said Mike Calder, CPA, CA, partner at MNP Canada. 'Although five projects were completed, there aren't any substantial resource projects underway that will boost our industrial capacity.' As of the third quarter of 2024, a total of 16 projects were under construction, worth an estimated $2.4 billion. Approximately three-quarters of that value was dedicated to residential or resort and accommodation developments. Utilities projects accounted for most of the remaining value. Since Q3 2023, five projects totaling $199 million in value have been completed in the Kootenay region. Meanwhile, new housing construction in the Kootenays' largest markets fell sharply in 2024. There were a combined 109 housing starts in Cranbrook, Nelson, and Trail, down 62.7 per cent from the 292 recorded in 2023. 'It was a slow year for new housing construction across the region,' continued Calder. 'Nelson's multi-unit market experienced a significant drop, while starts in Cranbrook only managed to match the relatively low numbers from last year.' Of the total, 76 housing starts were in Cranbrook, nearly all of which were detached homes. In Nelson, construction began on 28 new units, down from the 179 units recorded in 2023. Trail accounted for the remaining five starts in the region. Nearly 9 in 10 (89.9 per cent) starts were detached or semi-detached units, reflecting a considerable slowdown in new multi-unit construction. 'Overall, we didn't see a lot of new investment come to the Kootenays in 2024, and the ongoing trade dispute with the United States is not helping improve prospects,' concluded Calder. 'Some industries will be affected more than others, but there is a general concern around how easily businesses can pivot and what the impact on workers will be.' To learn more, see . About CPA British Columbia The Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) is the training, governing, and regulatory body for over 40,000 CPA members and 6,000 CPA students. CPABC carries out its primary mission to protect the public by enforcing the highest professional and ethical standards and contributing to the advancement of public policy. CPAs are recognized internationally for bringing superior financial expertise, strategic thinking, business insight, and leadership to organizations.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CPABC: Kootenay housing starts and major project activity decline in 2024
CRANBROOK, British Columbia, May 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to BC Check-Up: Invest, an annual report by the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) on investment trends across the province, the value of major projects in Kootenays was just over $5.0 billion in Q3 2024, down 2.4 per cent from one year earlier. 'Major project activity in the Kootenays was light in 2024,' said Mike Calder, CPA, CA, partner at MNP Canada. 'Although five projects were completed, there aren't any substantial resource projects underway that will boost our industrial capacity.' As of the third quarter of 2024, a total of 16 projects were under construction, worth an estimated $2.4 billion. Approximately three-quarters of that value was dedicated to residential or resort and accommodation developments. Utilities projects accounted for most of the remaining value. Since Q3 2023, five projects totaling $199 million in value have been completed in the Kootenay region. Meanwhile, new housing construction in the Kootenays' largest markets fell sharply in 2024. There were a combined 109 housing starts in Cranbrook, Nelson, and Trail, down 62.7 per cent from the 292 recorded in 2023. 'It was a slow year for new housing construction across the region,' continued Calder. 'Nelson's multi-unit market experienced a significant drop, while starts in Cranbrook only managed to match the relatively low numbers from last year.' Of the total, 76 housing starts were in Cranbrook, nearly all of which were detached homes. In Nelson, construction began on 28 new units, down from the 179 units recorded in 2023. Trail accounted for the remaining five starts in the region. Nearly 9 in 10 (89.9 per cent) starts were detached or semi-detached units, reflecting a considerable slowdown in new multi-unit construction. 'Overall, we didn't see a lot of new investment come to the Kootenays in 2024, and the ongoing trade dispute with the United States is not helping improve prospects,' concluded Calder. 'Some industries will be affected more than others, but there is a general concern around how easily businesses can pivot and what the impact on workers will be.' To learn more, see About CPA British ColumbiaThe Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC) is the training, governing, and regulatory body for over 40,000 CPA members and 6,000 CPA students. CPABC carries out its primary mission to protect the public by enforcing the highest professional and ethical standards and contributing to the advancement of public policy. CPAs are recognized internationally for bringing superior financial expertise, strategic thinking, business insight, and leadership to organizations. CONTACT: For more information: Jack Blackwell, Economist 604.259.1143 news@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
