Saint Ralph, Corner Gas and H2O were among the winners on April 18 when the Canadian Screenwriting Awards were handed out at a packed downtown Toronto nightspot.

Nineteen Canadian programs are in the running for the Rockie Awards at this year’s Banff World Television Festival, a ‘banner year’ for Canucks, say organizers, who will compete with nominees from 16 other countries at the 26th annual awards gala on June 13.

Hot Cargo

Las Vegas: Canadian FX and animation software providers took varying approaches at this year’s NAB.

Sander Gibson is a commercial attorney specializing in entertainment law with Gascon & Associés (Montreal), and acts as an arbitrator in entertainment and commercial matters. He is an arbitrator for the IFTA and is a member of the ADR Institute of Ontario, and the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association.

Why does Playback write such negative things about a movie when it could write positive things just as honestly? I am referring to your nasty short paragraph (Critical Mass, March 14, p.4) about Daniel and the Superdogs.

In a recent online Playback poll question asking ‘Do you believe that broadcasters have a rejuvenated interest in Canadian drama?’ 71% of respondents voted no and 29% voted yes.

Sometime in June, Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla is expected to make an announcement that has had broadcasters and TV producers buzzing for much of the last year. The federal government, it is assumed, will make a call as to who should take full control of roughly $250 million in funds directed at making TV shows. Will it be Telefilm Canada or the Canadian Television Fund?

Three years after putting Nunavut on the filmmaking map with Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn have started work on their follow-up with the similarly set The Journals of Knud Rasmusen. The pic is a history piece, set in 1920s Igloolik, about the culture clash between Europeans and the Inuit, as seen by a local shaman, his daughter, and the titular, real-life Dutch explorer.

McCulloch makes Comeback

Care Bears out of hibernation

Toronto: Temple Street Entertainment has optioned Paul Quarrington’s novel Galveston, and put him to work on the screenplay to be produced by Ivan Schneeberg and David Fortier. It’s the story of three people who camp out on a Caribbean island about to be rocked by a killer hurricane and Schneeberg hopes that, when the time comes, the picture will play well on both sides of the border, similar to the well-received adaptation of Quarrington’s Whale Music in 1994.