Friday notes

Remember Basem Boshra, TV columnist living on Tupper Strasse? That's him in the photo. Actually it's a lookalike. I couldn't find a photo of the real dude. Boshra was considered enough of a *star* to have his photo put on the side of buses. But not big enough to be offered a job as a permanent staffer. He left the Gazette in May 2003 in protest. There was a farewell party at Au Cepage where everybody celebrated his departure while silently wondering what the hells bells he was doing. Now BB is returning. Full time employee this time around. He had bounced around Toronto, working for the short-lived Dose and since August has been scribbling three-sentence saucy little celeb commentary for the National Post. He's one of several Montreal journalists who have not been too enthusiastic about living in Toronto but surely the only one of that group whose first and last names begin with the same letter.

For several months starting last fall, a buncha big named Hollywood stars took over a big old house across the lake from Donald Sutherland's home in Georgeville, Eastern Townships to film Emotional Arithmetic. The homeowner of the home tells Coolopolis that all the stars: Gabriel Byrne, Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow, Roy Dupuis and Susan Sarandon offered polite and enjoyable company. The team had a couple of dozen trailers outside and the actors allowed the homeowner to sit in on the filming sessions. They say the film, about a reunion of French concentration camp survivors, is compelling. Plummer is getting on in age but still very familiar and asked about his hometown Montreal peeps. The cast were set up in Township condos and were generally too bushed from filming to party down, but Byrne came to Concordia to talk to students.

Two lightnin' reviews - Romeo and Juliet (until April 1) at Centaur, not bad. The cast is large, but the main faces are young, young, young. Impressivley staged, with a particularly energetic and ballsy swordfight scene. Slightly long. One-manner I am My Own Wife wraps up Sunday at the Saidye Bronfman and is based on the real-life story of a transvestite who survives both the Nazi era and subsequent Communist times, running a little bar and museum in his house. The performance is fine although actor's German accent sounded a bit Swedish. As for the script, it helps to be into that kind of thing, otherwise you might find the protagonist a dullard and the narrator is a grant-obsessed bore.

La ville de Westmount wants to resurface its grass-challenged football field with artificial turf. Unlike in other places, this one will be fenced off on only two of the four sides. The fences are what generally piss nearby residents off. But there's some opposition to this new field nonetheless. In the first such local astroturf controversy, in August 1989, residents of Esplanade hired legal counsel in the form of stuttering Belgian Dominique Neuman. After getting an injunction blocking the resurfacing and fencing off of of a part of Fletcher's Field, a judge deemed that the ville was within its rights to fence off its field, as they are in their right to build a hockey arena or any other type of facility. Montreal, at least the borough of NDG, has repeatedly claimed that insurers insist on these fields being fenced off before they insure them. Westmount officials believe this not to be the case.