Director Jean-Marc Vallée didn’t realize the special features on the English-Canada DVD release of his French-language hit C.R.A.Z.Y. weren’t subtitled until he read it in the papers.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period April 28-May 4 and DVD sales in Canada for the period April 17-23.

Deepa Mehta’s dramatic feature Water is turning into one of the Canadian success stories of the year, following a wave of releases in the U.S. and overseas.
Producer David Hamilton says he is ‘thrilled’ by the response. ‘I’m not surprised, because I think the film is so strong,’ Hamilton says. ‘This is a very audience-friendly film.’

Budget ignores culture

Veteran CBC newscaster Lorne Saxberg died on May 6 in a snorkeling accident while on vacation in Thailand. He was 48. Saxberg – winner of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award and one of the first anchors on CBC Newsworld when it launched in 1989 – had been on leave from the CBC for two years, working at NHK in Tokyo.

Fifty thousand dollars and the Shaw Rocket Prize for best children’s TV program went to Being Ian and Studio B Productions on May 3, voted in by a jury of almost 400 grade school students. The Vancouver animation house is donating the prize money to the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation and the SickKids Foundation in Toronto. ‘We want to share our good fortune with these great organizations,’ said Studio B partner Blair Peters. The prize is funded by the Shaw Rocket Fund, which invested $8.5 million in Canadian children’s programming in 2005.

Top 20 TV Programs tracks ratings for the top 20 television shows in Canada for the period May 1-7, 2006.

Philippe Falardeau’s dramedy Congorama – about the unusual friendship between a Belgian and Quebecois man – will close the Director’s Fortnight this month in Cannes, making good on a goal set by producer Luc Déry.

The Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival will expand its workshops and introduce a pitch session to bolster business opportunities when the four-day fest returns to the southern Saskatchewan town on May 25.

Amid pink flamingos, strobe lights and go-go girls, a rosy picture was painted at ShowCanada 2006 of a surging box office after a dismal 2005.

Big Bang Pictures, the mobile division of Toronto’s The Nightingale Company, has added the racy mobile series The Retired Porn Producer to its roster. The series is a comedic take on advice shows, with tips from an anonymous fellow with 30 years of experience in the skin flick business.

Here I sit at some ungodly hour, poring over the 1,500-or-so pieces of information that comprise Playback’s 18th Annual Report on Independent Production, trying to make some sense out of the current state of production in Canada. Although I’m bleary-eyed, a few things seem clear.