The reviews are in: Canada’s television critics say there are few genuine reasons to proudly wave the flag of Canadian TV or the Gemini Awards designed to pat our cultural output on the back. The Awards Gala is not relevant, they say. Badly timed. Oblivious to what Canadians really watch. Insular.

While much of the glamour and glitz of the Geminis will be reserved for those who achieved notable success in the last TV year, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television will honor seven individuals who have had an enduring impact at the Industry Gala on Oct. 19.

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

Marking the first anniversary since Sandra Macdonald took over as its president and CEO, the Canadian Television Fund is in the midst of yet another firestorm. This even before the release of new funding guidelines later this fall.

This year’s Academy Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the Canadian television industry, goes to Michael Maclear, chairman of Toronto’s Screenlife Productions and Leading Cases Productions.

It may not have won the Toronto International Film Festival award for best Canadian film, but 21.6% of respondents to a Playback online poll voted The Saddest Music in the World the best Canuck feature they saw at TIFF 2003. Next was the film that did win, The Barbarian Invasions (14.7%), followed by Mambo Italiano (13.7%), Go Further (6.9%), Falling Angels (5.9%), My Life Without Me (4.9%) and Gaz Bar Blues (2.0%). 30.4% indicated they preferred a film not among those listed.

Paul Gratton is chair of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, not vice chair of cinema as reported in the Sept. 15 article ‘CHUM gets Genies in one-year deal.’

TV crews are busy this month with a host of top-shelf shows now underway in and around Toronto. Out at the Dufferin Gate lot, season four of Queer as Folk just started, and will shoot until April for Showcase and U.S.-based Showtime.

Vancouver: CHUM Television, in its first wholly owned and controlled feature film, can be credited with making a road movie that really travels.
Production on the MuchMusic Movie/The Road Movie (final title, we can assume, to come) began in Newfoundland Aug. 25 and has since traveled to Toronto, Montreal and Alberta. Production wraps after a lengthy stint in B.C., with visits to Vancouver’s Stanley Park and the regional hotspots of Yarrow, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Ladner and White Rock. At press time, the crew was shooting in Tofino on Vancouver Island and was going to Campbell River and Victoria for the final big three days of shooting.

Montreal: Roy Dupuis and Serge Houde are the leads in the intense death-row drama Manners of Dying, director/screenwriter Jeremy Peter Allen’s first feature. Allen directed the award-winning dramatic short Requiem contre un plafond and is a former Kodak Best Director Award winner at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Before there was CSI there was The Murdoch Mysteries, a book series penned by Canadian writer Maureen Jennings about Detective William Murdoch, who shocked his peers with wacky new crime-solving techniques – like dusting for fingerprints. Murdoch’s exploits in Victorian Toronto are being brought to the small screen for CHUM Television/ Bravo! by way of two MOWs from Winnipeg’s Original Pictures and Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films.

Canada will be subject to a new minimum 40% expenditure requirement for theatrical features coproduced with the U.K. Lobbying efforts have not been successful, and now the industry is waiting for what may be a quasi-death knell, in the form of a guidance document from the U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport spelling out the exact requirements for qualifying U.K. expenditures. The document was initially expected in July, but might be published only later this fall.