Mabbott follows up with comic Citizen Duane

Gander, NF: In Gordon Pinsent’s Heyday!, a young man trying to buoy the spirits of his dying mother uses his imagination to recreate, in their modest Newfoundland home, the glamorous scenes playing out at a nearby hotel. Set near the end of World War Two, the two-hour MOW for CBC is loosely based on Pinsent’s own experiences working as a busboy at the famed Airlines Hotel in Gander – a stopover for U.S. servicemen and the Hollywood stars sent to entertain them.

* Premiere Bobine and Cinetel Films will soon wrap the sci-fi Earth Storm, starring Stephen Baldwin and Amy Price-Francis (Train 48), ending a three-week stay in Hamilton, ON.

Hoo-ha! Pacino returns to Vancouver

Around mid-winter, Jan Miller figured she’d made the worst decision of her tenure as director of Strategic Partners at the Atlantic Film Festival.

While the Canadian Television Fund talks about a wedding date early in the new year for it and Telefilm Canada, there remain unresolved a number of details regarding how the newly consolidated TV funding system will operate.

Telefilm Canada has set an Oct. 25 application deadline for the third edition of its Spark Plug program, which provides support for minority filmmakers trying to get their television dramas off the ground.

Brent Clackson is the Vancouver-based entertainment business development representative for Custom House, the world’s largest independent foreign exchange company, with 83 branches spread over seven countries and the ability to handle more than 100 international currencies.

‘You never want to lose,’ exclaimed a happy Jerry Ciccoritti after picking up the prize for directing the CTV miniseries Lives of the Saints at the Directors Guild of Canada Awards ceremony in Toronto Oct. 1.

The Canadian Film Channel, one of four proposed pay-TV networks seeking a licence from the CRTC, initially sounds like a cause for celebration for the local film industry. The CFC’s mandate would be to air Canadian content 24/7, and to annually commission 10 features and 150 smaller projects. But some of the country’s leading guilds and unions are in fact opposed to the CFC, and have filed interventions with the CRTC, which can be viewed on the regulator’s website.

Glenn O’Farrell is the president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

Peter Murdoch is the chair of the Coalition of Canadian Audio-visual Unions and VP media of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union, which belongs to the CCAU. Other members of the CCAU include ACTRA, the DGC, NABET and the WGC.