With the summer behind us, the magazine business is heating up. This week we'll be looking at some new, some old, some strange Canadian fall publications.

First stop is fashion, with a quick look at the latest bastard daughter of Toronto Life Fashion, entitled simply FASHION. The look of the mag is sheer Cosmo with mega tons of quick hits on what's hot, what's not. What you should wear. What you shouldn't. And oh yeah -- in case you didn't know, the latest IT cover girl (meaning the woman all women should aspire to be) appears to be Nicole Kidman.

I don't know where they found a model that could be Kidman's body double, but man oh man, she's so similar to Tom Cruise's babe that it's scary. Add to that the fact the cover is a study in blue (an obvious homage to Kidman's London turn in David Hare's blockbuster nudie Blue), and well, you get the picture.

Now I know I'm sounding trashy here. Kind of like Roseanne. But hey, that's what a quick flip through this mag did to me. It took me back to the trailer. I wanted to take a Cosmo test. Something like "Ten Ways to Tell If Your Boyfriend's Boinking Your Best Friend."

And check out the thought provoking stories: "Hollywood Helper: L.A. Stylists rule the closets of the rich and famous." Then there's always the flip side of the coin with a peek into the challenges of motherhood: "All in the Family: How two women solved their daycare problem." I'm not suggesting that daycare isn't a serious issue, but isn't that something you'd expect to find in Parenthood and not a magazine supposedly devoted solely to fashion? And doesn't "Hollywood Helper" sound like something that danced off the pages of People?

Frankly I was surprised this wasn't a sleeker, meatier affair. FASHION has Fashion Files TV's Tim Blanks aboard as Editor at Large. Fashion File is a very stylish Canadian show (one of Newsworld's finest features) and I just don't think this mag lives up to its hype. There are a few promising elements (such as the inclusion of lots of young voices) and some cool photography. Yet at the end of the day, there are way too many ads and just not enough editorial.

Pink Elephants: The Access Artist Run Centre has a new show on the boards. Shauna Oddleifson is exhibiting "a sequential collection of diminutive prints and drawings-each a chapter from an anthology of fictional stories about a little girl who does bad things. These visual anecdotes form a narrative in which presumptions of 'feminine passivity' and the innocence of youth are dismantled."

The Kelowna B.C. native's prints and drawings reveal the many paradoxes of childhood. Smiling young girls viciously push their pals off slides or bury their friends in a sandbox. The works are at once funny and simultaneously horrifying, as they reveal a lot about essential human nature, mediated through the eyes of extreme youth.

An exhibition catalogue, accompanied by an essay, is available during the course of the exhibition.

Fine Tuning: We've got a couple of interesting shows on the nation's radio broadcaster tonight. As it Happens looks at the hot issues now that Canucks will be voting for a new government on November 27th. Does Stockwell have a chance? What do Canadians really want? And just who are the players in the race? That's tonight on As it Happens with Mary Lou Finlay and Barbara Budd at 6:30 ET on CBC Radio One

This week's Great Play of the Millennium features Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus," starring Kenneth Welsh and Eric Petersen. Marlowe's work is both a clever morality play and a vicious satire on human vanity. That's on Great Plays of the Millennium, tonight at 9:05 on CBC Radio Two.