With the weather turning distinctly chilly north of the 49th, Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana is thinking south – Latin America, that is. The toon titan recently announced the sale of My Dad the Rock Star, Jacob Two-Two and Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Kids to Cartoon Network Latin America.

Producer Firdaus Kharas of Ottawa’s Chocolate Moose Media has helped guide other long-form production talents out of Canada, South Africa and India on a series of 2D-animated PSAs aimed at AIDS awareness.

Spirits at Bardel Entertainment are soaring after the Vancouver animation house’s Silverwing series recorded healthy numbers in its out-of-Canada debut on Copenhagen’s TV 2 Danmark last month.

Cinar has successfully resolved a couple of disputes, avoiding compromise of the company’s standing prior to its proposed sale.

Blizzard blew into theaters Dec. 12, receiving good notices for its old-fashioned Yuletide yarn about a lonely girl and an outcast reindeer. Toronto’s Mr. X spearheaded the FX work on the Knightscove Entertainment/Holedigger Films/Alliance Atlantis feature, shot in Toronto and Quebec City.

Discreet all over holiday blockbusters

Winnipeg-based Original Pictures and Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films have teamed up again to adapt short stories from another of Canada’s most renowned female authors. Last year, they produced an Emmy-winning dramatic series based on short stories by Margaret Atwood, and now they are busy adapting short stories by Carol Shields, with plans to approach the work of Alice Munro next.

Vancouver: Gynormous Pictures producer Rosanne Milliken of Vancouver is gearing up for an impressive rash of work in the new year with her German and U.K. coproducing partners.
Solo, a Sixth Sense-meets-Poltergeist-inspired suspense thriller, goes to camera Jan. 12 for a month of production, with Jon Voight (Coming Home), Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), Saffron Burrows (Frida) and Vancouver actor Stephen Graham starring. In the Carl Binder (Just Cause) script, an unlikely group of adults come together to find a neglected child who has gone missing. Ghosts are involved.

After 20 days on the ice, The Nightingale Company has wrapped its hockey MOW, tentatively titled Chicks with Sticks, and sent it into the editing suite with cutter Jim Munro. The pic – starring Jason Priestley and Margot Kidder – is due to air on The Movie Network and Movie Central this spring, followed by later runs on Super Ecran and the A-Channel station group.

ThinkFilm is rolling the dice with its biggest-ever release while Sony Pictures Classics has Oscar hopes as Norman Jewison’s The Statement opened in theaters on Dec. 12.
The suspense drama, the Toronto-born director/producer’s 24th feature, stars Michael Caine as a Frenchman with a past of abetting Nazis who finds himself on the run from a mysterious assassin. The film, with a reported budget of $27 million, is a copro between Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films, France’s Odessa Films and the U.K.’s Company Pictures.

The train is crowded today, like it is every day, so the publicist, two PAs and I have to sit on the floor, squished and out of sight up against one of the doors. Outside it’s dark and fake street lighting is flashing past while, a few feet away, two camera operators and a sound man are trying to bend into the right shape – anatomy be damned – to get a shot of two commuters who are arguing over a frozen turkey.
It is one of the last scenes in the Thanksgiving Day episode of Train 48 – the daily Global series about, well, about people making small talk on a train. Pete, the heartless yuppie, has just offered to donate an obscenely huge butterball to the food bank where Dana, the do-gooder, volunteers. But he wants $10 to recoup his loss. They argue while, in the next pod of seats, another four characters are making poultry-themed decorations out of construction paper.

Toronto’s Portlands and Great Lakes Studios may have resolved their face-off just in time to find another mega-studio staring them in the face only 40 minutes west.