Halifax: Local product Chaz Thorne will be the star of the Atlantic Film Festival’s opening weekend. The Haligonian hyphenate produced and cowrote Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game and coproduced, wrote and directed Just Buried, his feature helming debut. Both will screen at the fest.

It’s the end of an era for Alliance Atlantis Communications, once Canada’s largest production company, which has been broken up following the Aug. 15 close of its acquisition by CanWest Global Communications and Goldman Sachs for $2.3 billion.

You can’t be in two places at once, much less in three or four, no matter how good the movies in those theaters might be. Which is why every edition of the Toronto International Film Festival forces us all to make some hard choices. See the new Greenaway picture? Or wait for the theatrical release and go to Midnight Madness instead? And so we ask:

• Marianne O’Reilly has been named president of Rainmaker Visual Effects. O’Reilly joined the Vancouver shop as a visual effects producer in 1999 and has 17 years experience in film, television and sports. Her credits include Stargate SG-1, Dead Like Me and Blades of Glory. Additionally, Rainmaker has promoted Shauna Bryan to head of business development and Jason Dowdeswell to head of digital studio. Bryan established the company’s London facility and oversaw Blades of Glory, Rainmaker’s largest production to date. Her other credits include She’s the Man, Firewall and White Chicks. Dowdeswell joined the company in 2002 after working for Sony Imageworks and Industrial Light and Magic. His film credits include Godzilla, Outbreak, Species and True Lies.

• Distraction Formats has closed a trio of format and series sales, sending Kenny vs. Spenny and other titles to companies across Europe. The Montreal- and London-based distributor has sold the format rights to Kenny vs. Spenny to Polskie Media, which will adapt the property, seen here on Showcase, for TV4. The original show, from Blueprint Entertainment and Breakthrough Films and Television in Toronto, has gone to more than 10 other territories worldwide, including the Netherlands, the U.K. and Germany.

• Physical effects for the forthcoming Discovery Channel miniseries Race to Mars were handled by Louis Craif, while CG work was supervised by Jacques Levesque. Also, QuickPlay Media had a total of 15 people working on the online aspect of the Mars project over three years, not 15 at a time. Incorrect information appeared in the Aug. 20 issue.

To a young producer, it sounds like a dream come true. After struggling to complete your feature film, you get accepted into the Toronto International Film Festival. After all, most every producer with eyes on the English-Canadian, North American and international markets wants in at TIFF, and out of all the Canuck features submitted (216 this year), only 20 to 30 will make the final cut.

He’ll probably hate me for letting this kitty out of the bag, but if you’re looking for work, you might want to give Bob Trimbee a call.

Degrassi: The Next Generation has become the first TV program available on a pay-per-download basis in Canada through Puretracks.com.

Filming of The Weight, a new 8 x 60 drama about life in a suburban wasteland from powerhouse writers George F. Walker and Dani Romain, has begun in the Scarborough suburb of Toronto.

The new CBC drama Heartland has started shooting in and around Calgary, turning the best-selling novels by English author Lauren Brooke into a 13 x 60 for the network’s family-aimed Sunday night lineup.

Producer Rob Merilees of Vancouver’s Infinity Features and director Charles Martin Smith wrapped the Canada/U.K. copro Stone of Destiny in Glasgow, Scotland and London on Aug. 10. It is their second feature collaboration, following 2003’s acclaimed The Snow Walker.