Vancouver: Local crews can count on dogs and murderers to keep the slow summer from being truly beastly.

Air Bud: Buddy Spikes Back is the fifth installment in the family film franchise. In this one, the golden retriever expands his athletic repertoire – which already includes basketball, football, soccer and baseball – to volleyball. He also gets dognapped, and the kids have to save him and the bumbling crooks are foiled and all that, too.

Vancouver’s Keystone International produces (Anne Vince, co-writer/co-executive producer, Mike Southon, director) with child actors Katija Pevec and Jake Smith in the lead roles. Disney, per usual, handles U.S. distribution. Production on the straight to video feature runs until Sept. 6.

Meanwhile, it’s the battle of the fright titans with Freddy vs. Jason, which goes into production Sept. 9 to Nov. 26. The New Line Cinema production pits the Nightmare on Elm Street bad guy against the Friday the 13th goalie. Brad Renfro and Robert Englund star.

In other features, Good Boy will likely star Molly Shannon in the story about a boy who befriends an alien dog. The MGM-Jim Henson production, using CGI and live action, starts Aug. 26 and goes until Nov. 8.

The Perfect Score is a Paramount/MTV/Tollin Robbins production that wraps shooting Sept. 24. In it, six bright students steal the SAT tests. Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World), NBA star Darius Miles, Erika Christensen (Traffic), Chris Evans (Not Another Teen Movie) and Bryan Greenberg (Firecracker Kid) star. It should hit screens next spring.

And then there were three

The chances this year were one-in-a-hundred as a field of 300 hopefuls were whittled to three finalists in the annual CBC Television-British Columbia Film Signature Shorts contest. The theme: 50, in honour of the CBC’s 50th anniversary.

50/50, by writer/producer Katherine Garlick and director Kevin Eastwood, is about a salesman in a mid-life crisis enroute to his high school reunion. Casanova at Fifty, by writer/director Bruce Marchfelder and producer Brie Hamilton, is about a lonely tow-truck driver who gets his life back on track. Fluffy, by writer/director Brad Vaillancourt and producer Michael George, is about a man who has 50 minutes to find the antidote for a nasty spider bite.

Honorable mention went to filmmakers Sharon Heath (Home Economics), Julia Kwan (Belligerent), Ita Margalit (50 Across), Ellen Raine Scott (50 Missing), Kyla Sweet (50 Ways to Leave Your Mother), Jacqueline Samuda (50 Questions), and Rick Tomaszewicz (Fifty).

The three finalists get $16,000 in cash and up to $30,000 in facilities and services. Sponsor Finale Editworks will provide the winning projects with color correction and closed captioning services. The finished films will be broadcast on CBC.

The contest is run in association with the Alibi Unplugged Script Reading Series. Competition details are available at www.vancouver.cbc.ca.

A whiff of VIFF

The Vancouver International Festival promises news every week until the festival is completely unspooled Oct. 11. Big news this year is the addition of the Granville 7 Cinemas to the roster of screens, allowing the festival to consolidate its presence downtown and roll out the largest number of films to date.

‘The festival has long been fighting what seemed like a losing battle, seeing theatre after theatre shut its doors in the downtown area,’ says festival director Alan Franey.

The addition of the Granville 7 means that the Festival will be able to increase its screenings to 500, up from 440 last year. Along with a greater variety of films on view, more films will be screened three times.

Other theatres involved are The Vogue, Ridge Theatre, Pacific Cinematheque and The Blinding Light Cinema. The VIFF starts Sept. 26.

Flash-er

Bardel Entertainment’s cocky little Internet cartoon The Mr. Dink Show is competing in three animation festivals in North America and is up for the Best Animation for the Internet at the Ottawa 2002 International Animation Festival. Mr. Dink was among 96 films chosen from a record 1600 entries. The Flash-made flasher will also expose himself to audiences at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival 2002. Closer to home, Mr. Dink will screen during the Women in Film and Video Vancouver Summer Shorts festival.

‘The Mr. Dink Show started out as a personal project to teach myself to use Flash,’ says creator Ron Crown. ‘But in the end, the tools used to produce the show have nothing to do with what makes it worth watching. Good storytelling and character development are always the most important things, and a little nudity never hurts either.’

The first four five-minute shorts aired on Comedy Network and Atom Films on the Web. Another nine episodes will be available this fall.

Appetizer

Master of Disguise, the Revolution Studios/Columbia Pictures comedy feature that opened Aug. 2 with Dana Carvey in the lead, had a warm-up act from Vancouver: The short animated film Something Fishy by newly created SecondSun Entertainment.

Something Fishy, produced by 3D animation division Brainchild Studios, opened in several Canadian and U.S. cities and told the undersea story of a little shrimp and his position in the food chain.

‘Something Fishy was chosen by Revolution Studios from over 300 other short cartoons they had screened,’ says director Ed Konya. ‘This will definitely help put us on the map as one of the up and coming CGI studios in North America.’

Getting real

Peace Arch Entertainment Group may have little in the way of drama underway, but it is busy with documentaries through its division The Eyes Multimedia.

Fantasy Lands, a one-hour exploration of theme parks, went into production for Discovery’s Travel Channel July 31. The third season of Animal Miracles with Alan Thicke is also in production with new episodes airing on PAX TV Sept. 16 and Life Network Oct. 9.

The 13-part documentary series Whistler Stories, which follows 11 residents of the B.C. ski resort, is in postproduction for Life Network. Raven in the Sun, a documentary about the late Haida artist Bill Reid, is also in post and is being produced in three languages: Haida (APTN), French (CBC, ARTV) and English (The New VI).

Whatever a spider can

Mainframe Entertainment was the successful bidder for the new CGI animated version of Spider-Man, by Columbia TriStar Domestic Television.

Neil Patrick Harris (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) and Lisa Loeb (Mary Jane Watson) are featured voices in the production now underway in Vancouver.

Previously, Mainframe service produced the Columbia TriStar series Heavy Gear and Max Steel.

Etc.

On Aug. 4, at the 2002 North American Indigenous Games in Winnipeg, Vancouver’s Full Regalia Productions wrapped production on the new documentary Spirit of the Game. Filmmakers Steven Paniccia and Annie Frazier Henry have followed aboriginal athletes in B.C. for two years. It will air on Global Television in February.

Meanwhile, on Aug. 6, VI Land Live expanded to a full hour weekday evenings. The news program by The New VI is hosted by Tasha Larson and is broadcast live from Pandora’s Box, the station in downtown Victoria.

Short film Zounds wraps a week of shooting Aug 21 in Vancouver. Tyron Leitso (Dinotopia) and Jim Byrnes (Highlander) star in the 22-minute, 35mm production that is funded with an NFB grant and private money. Director Cal Garingan says the story is a black comedy about a 20-ish man’s decision whether or not to kill himself.