Zoomer Magazine December 2022/January 2023

WHEN I WAS HIRED IN 2008 AS FOUNDING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THIS MAGAZINE, targeted at Canadians 45 years and older, there was a lot of incoming flak that I was too young for the job. I would half-joke that I should get a bonus for having to constantly assure readers and other stakeholders that I was, indeed, old enough. Fifteen years in, as I approach and, God willing, celebrate another milestone (read: huge) birthday in January, no assurances are necessary. I’ve never minded getting older, but there is a certain type of pressure, if only self-imposed, that comes with having a birthday around the turn of the year. As Halloween costumes and candy give way to Christmas music in elevators, a familiar sense of low-grade, but persistent, disappointment in myself…

AFTER A LONG YEAR FULL OF WAR, polarizing politics and climate catastrophes, solace-seeking viewers will get their usual dose of positivity when yet another iteration of the Christmas-loathing curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge comes to Netflix. This animated Scrooge is voiced by Luke Evans, following in the big cartoon footsteps of Alan Young in Scrooge McDuck (1947), Jim Backus in Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962) and Alastair Sim in A Christmas Carol (a 1971 cartoon so scary, it actually premièred on Halloween). Charles Dickens’ timeless novella works equally well for the religious and the secular. A Christmas Carol’s messages about goodwill and social equality are as poignant in 2022 as in 1843, perhaps even more so, as the Scrooges show no signs of slowing. Michael Caine, Kelsey Grammer, Jim Carrey, Christopher…

Former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, 86, says the band still exchanges Christmas gifts, and Keith Richards, 78, always gives scented candles They smell like whisky and cigarettes, but it’s the thought that counts. “When I said it’s great to have the whole family together again for the holidays, this isn’t what I had in mind” The HereAfter AI app allows you to converse with voice clones of the dearly departed, created from digital recordings. “Man! I feel like a-tourin’!” Shania Twain, 57, who tearfully announced a series of farewell concerts in 2015, kicks off her Queen of Me world tour in April, which includes 17 Canadian dates. Meanwhile, former Journey frontman Steve Perry, 73, releases his first original Christmas song, “Maybe This Year” The news delighted fans, and goes to…

› PHILOSOPHER KING “Like any other piece of art, songs are not seeking to be understood,” Bob Dylan, 81, writes in The Philosophy of Modern Song ($55), his first new book of writing since he published his impressionistic reminiscences in 2004’s Chronicles: Volume One and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. The voice of a generation offers incisive and witty personal reflections on ideas contained in songs by artists like The Who, the Eagles, Bing Crosby, Hank Williams, Perry Como and Nina Simone. Each of the 66 chapters hinges on a particular recording of a song (only four from female artists) and mirror Dylan’s eclectic taste as he explores the art and craft of songwriting through freeform riffs, thematic analysis and digressions about performance and the nature of…

Given that it’s a non-negotiable, milestone event in everyone’s life, it’s not surprising that death is frequently explored in movies. What is perhaps surprising is the thematic breadth the subject can take. For every flat-out weepie like Terms of Endearment and The Fault in Our Stars, there are ribald comedies like Beetlejuice, An American Werewolf in London and Death Becomes Her. And there are titles like Ghost and The Sixth Sense – heck, Ingmar Bergman’s towering The Seventh Seal from 1957 – plumbing death’s unfathomable mysteries via elements of fantasy. If there’s one thing linking all movies about death, though, it’s the concept that life is precious, every moment an incalculable gift. Two new, forthcoming films join the canon making that point, albeit in suitably different ways. The gentle…

BEING A BRUCE COCKBURN fan is an uncommonly rewarding designation. And not just because the singer-songwriter, guitarist and Officer of the Order of Canada has been steadily producing reliably excellent albums since the ’70s. Cockburn is also a musician magnet, meaning his stuff is routinely covered by a wide cross-section of others, from Jimmy Buffett to jazz guitarist Michael Occhipinti – a personal favourite of Cockburn’s – imbuing his catalogue with variety and vitality. Now Cockburn, 77, has issued Rarities, a deep dive into the archives featuring 16 “rarely heard and newly mastered recordings,” including, among other gems, “Bird Without Wings,” a Cockburn demo dating to 1966; “Twilight on the Champlain Sea,” featuring folk star Ani DiFranco and previously released only in Japan; plus Cockburn covers of artists like…