Gym memberships are for chumps. You know it, we all know it. You want to get ahead in this business, kiddo? Set useful goals, like getting a head start on that CTF BPE paperwork, or beating those charges for bank fraud. And so we ask:

FREE SPEECH

Toni Myers is not a cofounder of IMAX Corporation, as was stated in the Nov. 26 issue. She is a producer and director with the company.

The timing could not have been better. We launched our Daily e-mail newsletter in January, and what followed was one of the most eventful and newsworthy years in memory. What with Alliance Atlantis in play, the CRTC striking down key parts of CTVglobemedia’s deal to acquire CHUM, the CTF under siege, a strike by actors, and the seemingly unstoppable dollar, the value of such a resource was immediately apparent.

With all the questions swirling around Gary Howsam since his Nov. 5 arrest, the most pointed are directed at Comerica Bank of California and Peace Arch Entertainment for doing business with an alleged bank fraudster.

Gone are the days of water-cooler television. While the Oscars or that cranky old Dr. House might get a few jaws working under the fluorescents, there’s so much fragmentation now – especially when you throw the Internet into the mix – that we have less in common in our viewing habits than ever.

Two new motion-picture film stocks have entered the image-acquisition derby in the last month, looking to stave off rapidly evolving HD video capture.

Quebecor Media moved a step closer to morphing its varied media assets into one multiplatform, multimedia brand with the Nov. 28 launch of domestic webcaster Canoe.TV.

WINNIPEG — Buffalo Gal Pictures is in production on a $20-million World War Two-era thriller with Belgian-based company Corsan.

Yukon producer Arthur ‘Tookie’ Mercredi doesn’t mind Canada’s cold. His latest project, a coproduction with Toronto-based Real to Reel Productions, is a $1.3-million, six-part documentary series on the world’s coldest jobs.

Pro wrestler Rich Franklin and Bruce Greenwood will star in Weapon, an action film from the desk of John Flock, COO of Peace Arch Entertainment. Flock cowrote the script with Christopher Warre Smets (The Mad). It went to camera last month in Hamilton, ON, a frequent haunt of the Toronto company, under stunt worker-turned-director John Stead.

A new MOW with an international cast and director has begun shooting in and around Halifax. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, an adaptation of the Kim Edwards bestseller, went to camera on Nov. 18 for a 20-day shoot, budgeted at $5.2 million.