La Salla’s Oscar nomination has already scored it a 50-screen win, and the immortal lines ‘Moments ago I had everything, now there’s a cow in my nose’ are being sung in Italian to Famous Players’ audiences….

The two chimps conducting Smarties i.q. experiments may be puzzling some folks as to how their engagingly lifelike antics were achieved. It was, as suspected, stop-motion animation, but according to MacLaren McCann producer Franca Piacente, a very unique version thereof. The…

houdini breaks out of the box Feb. 12 at a Side Effects Software launch demo in Toronto for the new and improved 1.1 version of the 3D animation software. The early verdict is that animators’ lot in cg land just got…

On Feb. 1, Surrey City Hall saw the unveiling of The Surrey Film Studio Project ­ a proposal to build a $40 million film facility pegged ‘the most complete outside of l.a.’…

Paddy Sampson, The Blues’ producer/ director, has not seen the new footage, and in fact, although he would have cooperated, says he was not consulted on the new production at all. ‘When I heard about the project I phoned several people…

Won over by her Marilyn Manson clip work, David Bowie’s latest video was directed by Partners’ Floria Sigismondi for u.s.-based U Ground Films. Sigismondi brought the complex Little Wonder special post effects project to Toronto’s Mad Dog Digital, which joined the…

Inspiration behind the animated entries steamrollering into New Orleans hails from indie comics, kids’ books and direct-to-cel from the overheated brains of Canadian animators….

The Republic National Bank of New York (Canada) is trying to position itself as a boutique, offering producers a film financing alternative out of its Toronto office….

Due to the impact – reach, volume, breadth and profitability – of children’s shows’ merchandise lines, it’s getting hard to find a kids’ show that doesn’t have character licensing, logo branding or some form of line extension attached to it….

This column explores releasing strategies. Anyone out there with an interesting theatrical, video or cd-rom release campaign coming up, please give Playback a shout. maddever@brunico.com…

This is a column in which the whys and wherefores of releasing strategy are explored. Anyone out there with an interesting theatrical or video release campaign on the horizon, please give Playback a shout at maddever@brunico.com….

Blame it on elevator music and the musical stylings of malls…