Montreal: Two Quebec box-office champs, C.R.A.Z.Y. and Maurice Richard, lead the nominations going into the eighth annual Prix Jutra. Each film garnered 14 nominations and will compete head-to-head at the Quebec film awards for best picture, best direction, best script and best actor.

Montreal: Filmmaker Vali Fugulin (www.six.lemondeestpetit.ca) says that when she attended her first Tupperware party, she thought she’d stepped into a time warp.

Edmonton – If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that sequels are bound to follow. And Tom Berry, the coproducer and cowriter of Decoys, the Ottawa-shot 2004 movie about teen alien body doubles, isn’t messing with that formula.

Montreal – Working conditions became downright eerie for Montreal-based screenwriter Matthew Cope after he was commissioned to write the final version of The Flood, an ambitious miniseries that imagines London besieged by water.

Sports fans looking for their Olympics fix won’t have to look very hard, given the broad range of ways the CBC plans to deliver its coverage of this month’s Winter Games (Feb. 10-26).

Montreal: Veteran actress, writer and director Denise Filiatrault will receive this year’s lifetime achievement award at the Prix Jutra for her decades-spanning career on stage, TV and film.

Montreal – Two filmmakers with an avid interest in the city’s cultural history are creating a documentary about one of its largely forgotten photographers.

Rhombus Media has confirmed that Silk, François Girard’s first feature since 1998’s The Red Violin, will begin shooting in early February in Japan.
The ambitious $26-million project is based on Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same title, and will star Michael Pitt (The Dreamers, Last Days) and current It girl Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride & Prejudice). The production is an Italian/Canadian/Japanese copro to be distributed by New Line Cinema.

Montreal: Organizers of the New Montreal FilmFestival insist that their famously troubled fete has not been shut down, even though its recent make-or-break merger proposal with the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma has gone unanswered.

Montreal: Not surprisingly, the SODEC 2004/05 annual report reflects the growth and mostly good news that surrounds the Quebec film and TV industry.

Montreal: Producer Nicole Robert of Go Films (Horloge biologique, Sur le seuil) is hoping to continue Quebec’s long history of successful stage-to-screen adaptations with Cheech, the film version of local scribe François Létourneau’s popular theatrical hit.

Montreal: Child’s play is serious business. At least it is to Spectra Animation, the subsidiary of Montreal’s L’Équipe Spectra. The toonco is enjoying the afterglow of a successful 2005 and is looking to grow and go more Canadian in 2006.