Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
2011 Ontario general election
The Ontario general election of 2011 was held on October 6, 2011 to elect members of the 40th Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The Ontario Liberal Party was elected to a minority government, with the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario serving as the Official Opposition and the Ontario New Democratic Party serving as a third party. Under amendments passed by the Legislature in December 2005, Ontario elections are now held on fixed dates: the first Thursday of October every four years; the writ of election was issued by Lieutenant Governor David Onley on September 7, 2011. The election saw a record low voter turnout of 48.2%. 2007October 10, 2007: Elections held for members of the Ontario Legislature in the 39th Legislative Assembly of Ontario. November 29, 2007: The 39th Legislative Assembly of Ontario opens with the Speech from the Throne.2008February 23, 2008: John Tory's continued leadership of the Progressive Conservative party is endorsed by 66.9% of delegates at a leadership review.
June 14, 2008: Premier Dalton McGuinty receives the support of 95.4% of delegates from the Ontario Liberal Party's mandatory leadership review. June 14, 2008: NDP leader Howard Hampton announces he will be stepping down as party leader at the March 7, 2009 NDP leadership convention.2009January 9, 2009: Progressive Conservative MPP Laurie Scott announces her resignation from the legislature to allow party leader John Tory, without a seat since his defeat in Don Valley West in the 2007 election, to re-enter the legislature. March 5, 2009: In the Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock by-election following Scott's resignation, Tory is defeated by Liberal candidate Rick Johnson. March 6, 2009: John Tory resigns as Progressive Conservative leader pending the selection of an interim party leader. March 7, 2009: Andrea Horwath is elected leader of the Ontario NDP at the party's 2009 leadership convention. June 27, 2009: Tim Hudak is elected leader of the Progressive Conservative party at its 2009 leadership election and becomes the new Leader of the Opposition.
September 17, 2009: Eric Hoskins is elected as the MPP for the riding of St. Paul's following the resignation of Michael Bryant on June 7, 2009. November 4, 2009: Mike Schreiner is affirmed as the new leader of the Green Party of Ontario, receiving 97% approval from the party membership defeating the None of the Above ballot option, in the 2009 leadership election.2010January 29, 2010: Bob Runciman resigns his seat to accept appointment to the Senate of Canada. February 1, 2010: Jim Watson resigns his seat to run for Mayor in the Ottawa municipal election, 2010 February 4, 2010: Glen Murray is elected as the MPP for the riding of Toronto Centre following the resignation of George Smitherman on January 4, 2010. March 4, 2010: Bob Chiarelli is elected as the MPP for the riding of Ottawa West—Nepean and Steve Clark is elected as the MPP for the riding of Leeds—Grenville. December 16, 2010: Peter Fonseca resigned from cabinet to run for the federal Liberals in the riding of Mississauga East—Cooksville in the 2011 federal election.2011June 3, 2011: Essex MPP Bruce Crozier dies of an aortic aneurysm.
September 7, 2011: Official election call, Premier McGuinty formally asks the Lt. Governor to dissolve the legislature; the campaign will be 29 days long. September 21–30, 2011: Advance polling stations open for early voting from 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. September 27, 2011: The televised Leaders debate aired on CBC, CHCH, CTV, Global, TVOntario and Sun News Network, with Liberal leader and Premier Dalton McGuinty, Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak and New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath. October 6, 2011: Ontario general election from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. EDT. In March 2009, PC Party leader John Tory stepped down as leader, with Tim Hudak elected to be his successor. In March 2009, Andrea Horwath replaced Howard Hampton as leader of the NDP at the leadership election. Thus, both the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP went into the election with a new leader. Green Party of Ontario leader Frank de Jong stepped down in November 2009. Dalton McGuinty won 95 percent support for his leadership at an Ontario Liberal annual general meeting after the 2007 election, ran again in 2011.
Liberals Barrie Advance The Globe and Mail Hamilton Spectator Ottawa Citizen Sudbury Star Toronto Star Waterloo Region Record Windsor Star Progressive Conservatives Brampton Guardian Metroland Durham Region Media Group National Post Did not endorse Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun Elections Ontario Elections Ontario, 2011 General Election Election Almanac - Ontario Provincial Election 2011 Detailed interactive map of poll-level results
Ontario
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included, it is home to the nation's capital city and the nation's most populous city, Ontario's provincial capital. Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, Quebec to the east and northeast, to the south by the U. S. states of Minnesota, Ohio and New York. All of Ontario's 2,700 km border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the west at Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system; these are the Rainy River, the Pigeon River, Lake Superior, the St. Marys River, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall, Ontario.
There is only about 1 km of land border made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes conceptually divided into Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario; the great majority of Ontario's population and arable land is in the south. In contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation; the province is named after Lake Ontario, a term thought to be derived from Ontarí:io, a Huron word meaning "great lake", or skanadario, which means "beautiful water" in the Iroquoian languages. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes; the province consists of three main geographical regions: The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes and rivers. Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions: Northeastern Ontario.
The unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the extreme north and northeast swampy and sparsely forested. Southern Ontario, further sub-divided into four regions. Despite the absence of any mountainous terrain in the province, there are large areas of uplands within the Canadian Shield which traverses the province from northwest to southeast and above the Niagara Escarpment which crosses the south; the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands and in hilltops near the Madawaska River in Renfrew County; the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. The temperate and fertile Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south is part of the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests ecoregion where the forest has now been replaced by agriculture and urban development. A well-known geographic feature is part of the Niagara Escarpment.
The Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies 87 percent of the surface area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario, the southernmost extent of Canada's mainland. Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend farther. All are south of 42°N – farther south than the northern border of California; the climate of Ontario varies by location. It is affected by three air sources: cold, arctic air from the north; the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontario's climate is classified as humid continental. Ontario has three main climatic regions; the surrounding Great Lakes influence the climatic region of southern Ontario. During the fall and winter months, heat stored from the lakes is released, moderating the climate near the shores of the lakes.
This gives some parts of southern Ontario milder winters than mid-continental areas at lower latitudes. Parts of Southwestern Ontario have a moderate humid continental climate, similar to that of the inland Mid-Atlantic states and the Great Lakes portion of the Midwestern United States; the region has warm to cold winters. Annual precipitation is well distributed throughout the year. Most of this region lies in the lee of the Great Lakes. In December 2010, the snowbelt set a new record when it was h
Cowboy Junkies
The Cowboy Junkies are an alternative country and folk rock band formed in Toronto, Canada in 1985. The group was formed in 1985 by Michael Timmins, Peter Timmins and Margo Timmins; the three Timminses are siblings, Anton worked with Michael Timmins during their first couple of bands. John Timmins was a member of the band but left the group before the recording of their first album; the band line-up has never changed since, although they use several guest musicians on many of their albums, including multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird who has performed on every album except the first. The Junkies' 1986 debut album, produced by Canadian producer Peter Moore, was the blues-inspired Whites Off Earth Now!!, recorded in the family garage using a single ambisonic microphone. The Junkies gained worldwide fame and recognition with their second album, The Trinity Session, recorded in 1987 at Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity, their sound, again using the ambisonic microphone, their mix of blues, folk and jazz earned them both critical attention and a strong fan base.
The Los Angeles Times named the recording as one of the ten best albums of 1988. The Cowboy Junkies have gone on to record a total of sixteen studio albums and five live albums, remain an active band for over thirty years. Alan Anton and Michael Timmins, lifelong friends who met in kindergarten, formed their first band in high school. In 1979, influenced by post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, they recruited drummer Geoff Railton and singer Liza Dawson-Whisker, formed Hunger Project in Toronto, they performed at a variety of clubs. In 1981 the Hunger Project embarked on a multi-city tour of the United States in the spring. After that, Hunger Project moved to the United Kingdom, where they toured for three months and released the single "The Same Inside/Assembly" on their independent label, Latent Recordings; when Hunger Project disbanded, Alan Anton and Michael Timmins remained in London and started an improvisational band named Germinal. The members – Michael Timmins on guitar, Alan Anton on bass, a drummer, saxophonist, played whatever they wished on their instruments at the same time.
Germinal released two LPs. The music newspaper New Musical Express said Germinal "ranks among the most innovative and aggressive sounds to emerge from the independent scene this year." Alan Anton and Michael Timmins had a somewhat different take, saying, "It was the ultimate release for us. But for the audience, it was quite a chore." In London, they developed journeyman skills as musicians, expanded their knowledge of music history — Michael Timmins worked in a record store for a year to make ends meet while with Germinal. Among those who were to influence Michael Timmins and Alan Anton were jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, along with the sound of early blues musicians Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Bukka White, Robert Johnson. Germinal broke up after three years in autumn of 1984. Alan Anton moved to Michael Timmins returned to New York City. Upon their return to Toronto in 1985, Alan Anton and Michael Timmins rented a house, insulated the tiny garage, with younger brother Pete Timmins sitting in on drums, began exploring a new musical direction.
Margo was drafted to join and recalls, "I was contemplating going on to graduate school, staying in school. That was safe. I never wanted to be a musician or be onstage." Michael Timmins began to hear something in what they were doing with their initial jams, realizing that a female voice was what the band needed. Michael Timmins said, "I thought if you had this female voice on top of it, you could do anything you wanted."However, the slow musical tempos and whispery, hushed tones that defined their early work was not just musical inspiration, but came about by necessity. Their recording studio was their re-purposed garage, just behind the house and bordered with their neighbors. On their first jam session, the police showed up due to a noise complaint from the neighbor. According to Michael Timmins, "We realized. One thing fed into the other: Margo began to realize that her singing voice was more effective quiet. We began to realize, if we can get down underneath Margo, the sound will be more effective.
Pete picked up brushes – he was just learning to play drums at that point. Everything sort of came down. We learned to play with less volume."When the band were preparing for their first gig, they had to choose a name for the band. They considered various names, until Cowboy Junkies was agreed upon. During their early gigs the band would perform at the Rivoli; the group would perform a rhythmic groove while Margo sang improvised vocal melodies and portions of old blues songs. Many times the Junkies entire performance would be a single jam session. Peter Moore, a recording enthusiast who had ambitions of becoming a producer, was at their first show. According to Moore, "I was mesmerized by Margo; the first show, people weren't paying attention to them, because they were playing so and quietly. Margo had her back to the audience a lot of the time." When the Junkies were ready to record an album the band sought a like-minded recording engineer and didn't find one who understood what they wanted to accomplish.
Shortly afterward, the Cowboy Junkies met Peter Moore at a dinner party, when they began talking about recording equipment and techniques, they found that Moore's interest in single-mic recording meshed with their desire to capture the intimate sound of their rehearsal garage. Moore had just purchased a
Ontario New Democratic Party
The Ontario New Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in Ontario, Canada. The Ontario NDP, led by Andrea Horwath since March 2009 forms the Official Opposition in Ontario following the 2018 general election, it is a provincial section of the federal New Democratic Party. It was formed in October 1961 from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Ontario Federation of Labour. For many years, the Ontario NDP was the most successful provincial NDP branch outside the national party's western heartland, it had its first breakthrough under its first leader, Donald C. MacDonald in the 1967 provincial election, when the party elected 20 Members of Provincial Parliament to the Ontario Legislative Assembly. After the 1970 leadership convention, Stephen Lewis became leader, guided the party to Official Opposition status in 1975, the first time since the Ontario CCF did it twice in the 1940s. After the party's disappointing performance in the 1977 provincial election, that included losing second party status, Lewis stepped down and Michael Cassidy was elected leader in 1978.
Cassidy led the party through the 1981 election. The party did poorly again, Cassidy resigned. In 1982, Bob Rae was elected leader. Under his leadership, in 1985, the party held the balance-of-power with the signing of an accord with the newly elected Liberal minority government. After the 1987 Ontario general election, the ONDP became the Official Opposition again; the 1990 Ontario general election produced the ONDP's breakthrough first government in 1990. The victory produced the first NDP provincial government east of Manitoba, but it took power just when Canada's economy was in a recession, as a result of unpopular economic policies it was defeated in 1995. Rae stepped down as leader in 1996. Howard Hampton was elected leader in at the 1996 Hamilton convention, led the party through three elections. Hampton's period as leader saw the ONDP lose official party status twice: after the 1999 and 2003 elections, he was able to regain party status the first time after the governing Progressive Conservatives revised party status requirements in accordance with that election's reduction in the number of seats in the legislature, the second time after winning a string of by-elections in the mid-2000s.
The party maintained party status after the 2007 Ontario general election and he stepped down as leader in 2009. Andrea Horwath replaced him after she was elected leader at the 2009 leadership convention in Hamilton. Under her leadership in the 2011 Ontario general election, the party elected 17 MPPs to the legislature and in the 2014 Ontario general election, the party elected 21 MPPs. Under Horwath, the party achieved its second highest seat count when it formed the Official Opposition with 40 MPPs after the 2018 Ontario general election; the NDP's predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, was a democratic socialist political party, founded in 1932. The Ontario CCF in turn was indirectly the successor to the 1919–23 United Farmers of Ontario–Labour coalition that formed the government in Ontario under Ernest C. Drury; as the Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation under Ted Jolliffe as their first leader, the party nearly won the 1943 provincial election, winning 34 seats and forming the official opposition for the first time.
Two-years they would be reduced to 8 seats. The final glory for the Ontario CCF came in the 1948 provincial election, when party elected 21 MPPs, again formed the official opposition, they were able to defeat Premier George A. Drew in his own constituency, when the CCF's Bill Temple won in High Park though the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario won another majority government; the breaking point for the Ontario CCF came in 1951. They were reduced to two MPP's in that year's provincial election, never recovered. In the two remaining elections while it existed, the party never had more than five members in the legislature. Jolliffe resigned as leader in 1953. Donald C. MacDonald became leader in 1953, spent the next fifteen years rebuilding the party, from two seats when he took over the party's helm, to ten times that number when he stepped down in 1970. Delegates from the Ontario CCF, delegates from affiliated union locals, delegates from New Party Clubs took part in the founding convention of the New Democratic Party of Ontario held in Niagara Falls at the Sheraton Brock hotel from 7–9 October 1961 and elected MacDonald as their leader.
The Ontario CCF Council ceased to exist formally on Sunday, 8 October 1961, when the newly elected NDP executive took over. The Ontario NDP picked up seats through the 1960s, it achieved a breakthrough in the 1967 provincial election, when its popular vote rose from 15% to 26%. The party increased its presence in the legislature from 8 to 20 seats. In that election the party ran on the themes of the cost of living, tax distribution, education costs, Canadian unity, housing. Stephen Lewis took over the party's leadership in 1970, the NDP's popularity continued to grow. With the 1975 provincial election, the governing Progressive Conservative party was reduced to a minority government for the first time in thirty years; the charismatic and dynamic Lewis ran a strong election campaign that forced the Tories to promise to implement the NDP's rent control policies. The NDP overtook the Liberals to become the Official Opposition with 29 % of the vote. However, the Tories retained power as a minority government.
Hopes were high tha
MusicBrainz
MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open data music database, similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the Compact Disc Database, a database for software applications to look up audio CD information on the Internet. MusicBrainz has expanded its goals to reach beyond a compact disc metadata storehouse to become a structured open online database for music. MusicBrainz captures information about artists, their recorded works, the relationships between them. Recorded works entries capture at a minimum the album title, track titles, the length of each track; these entries are maintained by volunteer editors. Recorded works can store information about the release date and country, the CD ID, cover art, acoustic fingerprint, free-form annotation text and other metadata; as of 21 September 2018, MusicBrainz contained information about 1.4 million artists, 2 million releases, 19 million recordings. End-users can use software that communicates with MusicBrainz to add metadata tags to their digital media files, such as FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC.
MusicBrainz allows contributors to upload cover art images of releases to the database. Internet Archive provides the bandwidth and legal protection for hosting the images, while MusicBrainz stores metadata and provides public access through the web and via an API for third parties to use; as with other contributions, the MusicBrainz community is in charge of maintaining and reviewing the data. Cover art is provided for items on sale at Amazon.com and some other online resources, but CAA is now preferred because it gives the community more control and flexibility for managing the images. Besides collecting metadata about music, MusicBrainz allows looking up recordings by their acoustic fingerprint. A separate application, such as MusicBrainz Picard, must be used for this. In 2000, MusicBrainz started using Relatable's patented TRM for acoustic fingerprint matching; this feature allowed the database to grow quickly. However, by 2005 TRM was showing scalability issues as the number of tracks in the database had reached into the millions.
This issue was resolved in May 2006 when MusicBrainz partnered with MusicIP, replacing TRM with MusicDNS. TRMs were phased out and replaced by MusicDNS in November 2008. In October 2009 MusicIP was acquired by AmpliFIND; some time after the acquisition, the MusicDNS service began having intermittent problems. Since the future of the free identification service was uncertain, a replacement for it was sought; the Chromaprint acoustic fingerprinting algorithm, the basis for AcoustID identification service, was started in February 2010 by a long-time MusicBrainz contributor Lukáš Lalinský. While AcoustID and Chromaprint are not MusicBrainz projects, they are tied with each other and both are open source. Chromaprint works by analyzing the first two minutes of a track, detecting the strength in each of 12 pitch classes, storing these 8 times per second. Additional post-processing is applied to compress this fingerprint while retaining patterns; the AcoustID search server searches from the database of fingerprints by similarity and returns the AcoustID identifier along with MusicBrainz recording identifiers if known.
Since 2003, MusicBrainz's core data are in the public domain, additional content, including moderation data, is placed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 license. The relational database management system is PostgreSQL; the server software is covered by the GNU General Public License. The MusicBrainz client software library, libmusicbrainz, is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, which allows use of the code by proprietary software products. In December 2004, the MusicBrainz project was turned over to the MetaBrainz Foundation, a non-profit group, by its creator Robert Kaye. On 20 January 2006, the first commercial venture to use MusicBrainz data was the Barcelona, Spain-based Linkara in their Linkara Música service. On 28 June 2007, BBC announced that it has licensed MusicBrainz's live data feed to augment their music Web pages; the BBC online music editors will join the MusicBrainz community to contribute their knowledge to the database. On 28 July 2008, the beta of the new BBC Music site was launched, which publishes a page for each MusicBrainz artist.
Amarok – KDE audio player Banshee – multi-platform audio player Beets – automatic CLI music tagger/organiser for Unix-like systems Clementine – multi-platform audio player CDex – Microsoft Windows CD ripper Demlo – a dynamic and extensible music manager using a CLI iEatBrainz – Mac OS X deprecated foo_musicbrainz component for foobar2000 – Music Library/Audio Player Jaikoz – Java mass tag editor Max – Mac OS X CD ripper and audio transcoder Mp3tag – Windows metadata editor and music organizer MusicBrainz Picard – cross-platform album-oriented tag editor MusicBrainz Tagger – deprecated Microsoft Windows tag editor puddletag – a tag editor for PyQt under the GPLv3 Rhythmbox music player – an audio player for Unix-like systems Sound Juicer – GNOME CD ripper Zortam Mp3 Media Studio – Windows music organizer and ID3 Tag Editor. Freedb clients can access MusicBrainz data through the freedb protocol by using the MusicBrainz to FreeDB gateway service, mb2freedb. List of online music databases Making Metadata: The Case of Mus
Silver City (2004 film)
Silver City is a 2004 American political satire comedy-drama film written and directed by John Sayles. Chris Cooper portrays an inept Republican gubernatorial candidate, a character, noted for similarities to U. S. President George W. Bush; the film's ensemble cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Huston, Michael Murphy, Maria Bello, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Kay Place, Thora Birch, Tim Roth, Billy Zane and Daryl Hannah. The film is a "murder mystery to a political satire". Richard "Dicky" Pilager, the dim-witted scion of a powerful political dynasty, is running for Governor of Colorado. One day, while filming a campaign ad that shows him fishing at Arapahoe Lake, Pilager hooks a corpse on location. Chuck Raven, Pilager's campaign manager, hires Danny O'Brien, a former journalist who works as a private investigator, to examine the case. Raven urges O'Brien to find potential links between Pilager's political enemies. O'Brien's job is to intimidate Pilager's opponents, he has numerous revealing conversations with various people.
He learns. The interviews reveal further corruption: politicians, land developers, mining companies are conspiring to ignore certain environmental issues. O'Brien learns about illegal migrant workers, as well as a damaging love affair. Danny O'Brien. Played by Danny Huston. Danny is a private investigator, he was a reporter for the Mountain Monitor newspaper before getting fired for reporting a false story. Now working for Chuck Raven, he is to intimidate anyone who might be trying to sabotage the Pilager campaign. Richard "Dicky" Pilager. Played by Chris Cooper. Dicky Pilager is the son of an influential Colorado Senator, he was not successful in a mining enterprise, so he has decided to run for Governor of Colorado. His campaign is funded by family friend Wes Benteen. Chuck Raven. Played by Richard Dreyfuss. Raven is Campaign Manager of Pilager for Governor. A lifelong family friend, he is in charge of protecting the family name, he hires Danny O'Brien in a strategem to ensure. Wes Benteen. Played by Kris Kristofferson.
Benteen is the billionaire mogul, funding the campaign. His businesses benefit the Pilager family in return for political favors, his companies produce meat and agricultural products, provide medical services. He owns a major football team, the Prospectors, he finances half the campaign. Nora Allardyce. Played by Maria Bello, she is Danny O'Brien's ex-wife. Grace Seymour. Played by Mary Kay Place. Seymour runs a Private Investigation firm, is Danny O'Brien's boss, she is a longtime associate of Chuck Raven. Morton "Mort" Seymour. Played by David Clennon. Grace's a real estate developer, he is trying to gain influence with the Pilagers thru Chandler Tyson, in order to obtain approval of his Silver City project. Mitch Paine. Played by Tim Roth. Paine is Danny O'Brien's friend, a former reporter at the Mountain Monitor, fired for the same reason as O'Brien, he is a source of information. Senator Judson Pilager. Played by Michael Murphy. A powerful U. S. senator from Dicky Pilager's father. He bemoans his son's ineptness.
Madeline "Maddy" Pilager. Played by Daryl Hannah. Maddy is a black sheep daughter of the Pilager family, she is one of the people. Tony Guerra. Played by Sal Lopez. A Mexican-American chef whom Danny enlists in an effort to learn about the dead man. Vince Esparza. Played by Luis Saguar, he imports undocumented Mexicans for cheap labor tasks. He worked for Wes Benteen at one time. Cliff Castleton. Played by Miguel Ferrer. Ultra right-wing radio commentator, at odds with Chuck Raven and the Pilagers for thirty years, he is one of the people whom Danny is tasked to keep under control. Casey Lyle. Played by Ralph Waite. A former mining safety inspector, falsely caught up in a mining accident scandal, he is "warned" by Danny. Sheriff Joe Skaggs. Played by James Gammon. Investigates the dead body found in the lake, his brother was being investigated by Danny in the story. Chandler Tyson. Played by Billy Zane. A land developer and lobbyist in Wes Benteen's and the Pilagers' pocket. Tyson is dating Nora Allardyce. Karen Cross.
Played by Thora Birch. Mitch's assistant at the website, Cross provides Danny with information. Silver City had a limited release in the United States, where it was marketed as a comedy about an "intellectually challenged, poorly spoken politician." Sayles commented on that marketing approach in an entertainment interview for CNN: You give it to the company, they advertise it the way that gets the most people in the theater. Other countries, may emphasize the Chinatown aspects; the problem with all my movies, because they're complicated, is they don't boil down to two sentences, so you emphasize this part or that part of it. The film played in 162 theaters at its widest, earned US$1.4 million at the box office in Canada and the United States. It earned around $300,000 from both Ireland and the United Kingdom. Silver City had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market during the Cannes Film Festival. Critics noted the similarities between the fictitious Dicky Pilager and the real George W. Bush, with some seeing parallels between the fictitious campaign manager and the real Karl Rove.
Roger Ebert praised the film but said it wouldn't change any votes in the 2004 election: "America is