Vancouver: Busy Vancouver cinematographer Vic Sarin (Margaret’s Museum) is directing and shooting (and producing with partner Tina Pehme) the low-budget Canadian romantic comedy Deluxe Combo Platter in Squamish until Dec. 2.

Marla Sokoloff (The Practice) stars as a small-town waitress who finally resolves to confess her love for the town’s most eligible bachelor (Barry Watson of 7th Heaven) when a powerful big-city businesswoman (Monika Schnarre of BeastMaster) blows into town to shake it all up.

Jennifer Tilly and Dave Thomas costar in the production, paid for through private investment and distribution advances. Equinoxe Films has Canadian theatrical rights to the West Vancouver-based Sepia Films project and Liberty Films will distribute in the U.S.

The plan is to have the film ready for the Toronto International Film Festival.

Teacher’s pet

Vancouver producer Harvey Kahn of Front Street Productions wrapped production Nov. 15 on his first producer-for-hire gig since moving to Canada and starting to make his own films in 1999.

The Good Teacher, a thriller commissioned by foreign sales company Porch Light Entertainment, is a US$1.6-million video and cable television thriller in the vein of the 1992 feature The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Shooting in Furry Creek, just south of Squamish, Teacher stars Patricia Kalember (Sisters) and new Calgary resident Erika Eleniak (Baywatch) in a story about a woman posing as a teacher who targets families with well-to-do husbands and takes the wife out of the equation. Ken Tremblett (Lightning: Bolts of Destruction) plays the doctor-husband.

Recently, Kahn wrapped We Don’t Live Here Anymore, starring Naomi Watts, Laura Dern and Mark Ruffalo, which he produced and funded independently through his U.S.-based investment fund Front Street Films LLC.

In January, he will start prep on his next in-house feature The Deal, a $3-million to $5-million John Grisham-esque romance thriller set against Wall Street and the oil industry. Ruth Epstein, a former investment banker and executive producer of We Don’t Live Here Anymore, wrote the script and Kahn will direct when production gets rolling in February.

Slasher movie

Fresh off a little alleged domestic battery, which sent him to hospital for 20 stitches to close up a gash on his head, actor Christian Slater (Alone in the Dark, which shot in Vancouver this summer) is back in Vancouver to shoot Pursued with Estella Warren (Planet of the Apes) and Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile).

Slater gets to play the homicidal corporate headhunter in the Canadian feature produced by Vancouver’s Insight Film & Video and scripted by Peter Lenkov (Demolition Man). TV director Kristoffer Tabori (Law & Order) will direct. Production, which began Nov. 11, wraps Dec. 6 in Vancouver. Artisan will distribute.

Two for one

The Handler, the new drama by Vancouver showrunner Chris Haddock (Da Vinci’s Inquest), made the first cut and was picked up by CBS for a full first season. That’s like two seasons worth of episodes of his Canadian drama on CBC.

Feature creatures

International Keystone Entertainment of Air Bud fame wrapped its latest kids-and-animals family feature Nov. 17 after a four-week shoot in Vancouver. In Chestnut, Makenzie Vega (The Family Man) and Abigail Breslin (Signs) star as orphaned girls who have to hide their beloved and growing Great Dane puppy when they are adopted by parents living in a posh New York City apartment where no dogs are allowed. Vancouver producer Robert Vince is writer, director and producer.

* Riding the Bullet, based on the Stephen King story, is in production in Vancouver until Dec. 20. The horror-suspense story stars Jonathan Jackson (Tuck Everlasting) as a college student who, while hitchhiking home to visit mom, is picked up by David Arquette (Eight Legged Freaks), who turns out to be dead. Erika Christiansen (Traffic) costars. King adaptation specialist Mick Garris (Desperation) directs.

Omni trio

Omni Film Productions is in production with the 60-minute documentary Weird Sex and Snowshoes, based on the Canadian film history book by film critic Katherine Monk. Mpix (formerly Moviepix), The Movie Network, Super Ecran and Bravo! are aboard the CTF-supported project. Vancouver filmmaker Jill Sharpe (Culturejam) will direct, Dianna Bodnar is the writer and Gabriela Schonbach is producer. Mpix is slated to broadcast the doc in the summer of 2004.

Schonbach is also the producer of a one-hour CBC Life and Times documentary profiling gold-medal winning Olympic wrestler Daniel Igali. The project is coproduced and directed by Toronto filmmaker Joel Gordon. Production will wrap later this month, with an airdate in March 2004.

Omni producer Brian Hamilton wrapped production last month on the one-hour documentary Wild Horse, Unconquered People, about the last bands of wild horses in B.C. Directed by Lionel Goddard and Susan Smitten, Horses shot in the Nemaiah Valley, in the Chilcotin region of B.C. from May to October, and will be delivered to CBC’s Roughcuts at the end of November.

Tech talk

Vancouver technology guru David Chalk is back on the air with Dave Chalk Connected Live, which started airing 39 one-hour, live-to-air episodes Sept. 20 on Toronto 1, A Channels in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary, KVOS TV and Tech TV.

The new show, produced in Abbotsford with Chalk’s regular cohost Mike Agerbo, demonstrates the role of technology in day-to-day life and encourages viewer interaction through text messaging, e-mail and live telephone calls.

The show, funded through syndication fees and banner sponsorships with companies like Telus and Canon, invites industry experts into the studio to share technological expertise and work with technology in the field.

Episodes of Dave Chalk Connected Live will be archived online at www.chalktv.com.

Rumors and intrigue

Vancouver is in competition with locations including Las Vegas to host the 2004 International Indian Film Academy Awards – Bollywood’s Oscars – if public and private money to cover the costs of mounting the three-day event come through.