During the two-day Digital Cinema Summit held in advance of the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, filmmaker James Cameron asked his attentive audience whether it believed digital cinema could bring people back to the theaters after a tepid 2005 box office year. He answered his question himself.

Las Vegas: Broadcasters must exploit every technology, create a signal for every platform and promote digital TV and radio as much as possible if they are to keep up with changes in the industry, said David Rehr, newly appointed CEO of the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters, during his keynote address at the NAB convention on April 24.

Morningstar Entertainment is hoping Canadians will revisit the Winter Olympics with a lengthy DVD box set, Torino 2006: Canada’s Quest for Success, which hit the street on April 25 at $60 a pop. The six-disc, 20-plus hour set, produced in partnership with CBC, features many of the Canadian highs and lows of the 2006 Winter Games.

CBC and TSN are both hoping the NHL playoffs will play out as a bunch of long, hard-fought series. The Ceeb is airing every first-round match involving a Canadian team, including the Ottawa Senators, Montreal Canadiens, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, while TSN is carrying American-only matchups.

Edmonton – Anaid Productions (Taking It Off  ) has been granted permission to film on an Alberta oil rig for its 13 x 30 docusoap The Rig, following a group of ‘riggers’ through life on and off their huge, sometimes dangerous, workplace.

Academy Award-winning actress Anna Paquin spent time in her hometown of Winnipeg recently shooting Blue State, the first feature from U.S. writer/director Marshall Lewy, which wrapped in late-April after a 20-day shoot.

Vancouver – Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah – two of the assassins from Quentin Tarantino’s popular Kill Bill films – have reunited for the crime drama Vice, shooting until May 4.

The recent ruling by the CRTC exempting mobile television services from regulation promises to provide plenty of fodder for the panels and addresses at the Playback Mobile Forum, May 11 at the York Event Theatre in Toronto.

The DVD release of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence by Alliance Atlantis continues to perform well at the sales counter. Released on March 14, the film ranked seventh on Nielsen VideoScan’s weekly DVD chart for the week ending March 26, down from the list’s second spot the week before. Violence also placed third on Rogers Video’s top rental list for the week ending April 2.

The first season of Global’s nighttime soap Falcon Beach averaged nearly 250,000 viewers per episode, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. But according to Barbara Williams, the network’s SVP, programming and production, the mediocre first-play numbers do not paint an accurate picture of how the series performed.

Winnipeg – Prolific U.S.-based producer Patrick Markey (The Horse Whisperer, White Oleander) and director Steve Berra (7-Teen Sips) brought their new feature The Good Life to Winnipeg because it doubles well for Omaha. That, and the tax credit.

Vancouver – A young couple moves into what appears to be a perfectly nice neighborhood, only to learn that its name, Mount Pleasant, holds some serious irony. Sounds like a good idea for a movie, right? It’s actually what happened to director Ross Weber and producer Kimberley Wakefield when they moved into their new home in the titular, real-life B.C. town.