Montreal: Hailed as the new wave in Quebec cinema, Andre Turpin’s Un Crabe dans la tete won seven Prix Jutra at the 4th edition of the Quebec film awards. Un Crabe (produced by Qu4tre Par Quatre and distributed by Film Tonic) won in most of the primary award categories, including best picture, while Turpin took individual honors for best screenplay, best direction and best cinematography. Un Crabe’s main competition, Pierre Falardeau’s historical drama 15 Fevrier 1939 (ACPAV/Christal Films Distribution), won four Jutra, including best male lead for busy actor Luc Picard and best female supporting actor for Sylvie Drapeau. Emmanuel Bilodeau won for best supporting actor for his role in Un Crabe.

Montreal: Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution will open the Paul Gross romance-comedy Men With Brooms in Canada on 175 screens in some 150 venues on March 8. The film’s P&A marketing campaign, at a cost of $1.5 million or more, may well be the biggest in Canadian film history.

Montreal: This year’s 20th edition of the International Festival of Films on Art fully reveals the diversity of international documentary art film production, with more than 200 films from 30 countries on the program. The event’s honorary patron is Canada’s Governor General, the Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson.

So… Turns out your latest idea for your new automotive client involves transplanting the Arc de Triomphe right smack in the middle of University Avenue in Toronto, with the spot culminating in a swooping shot of their 2002-1/2 sports car driving through the main arch, over The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier towards Queen’s Park Circle.
No problem, you think, just another special effect.
And you’re right: there isn’t much one can come up with these days that an established vision, careful planning, a little bit of technical ingenuity and a few hours painstakingly spent piecing everything together cannot take care of.

Ask most production service providers whether their contributions are essential to a commercial production and you invariably get an affirmative.
And the truth is that most of them are right.
While agencies and clients demand greater efficiency and consistent high quality work for ever-declining budgets, services are often the target of their demands to find savings.
But where exactly do you cut? Productions need a director, a DOP, a crew, craft services, makeup, hair, props and sets.

FilmExchange: NSI’s Canadian Film Festival, held Feb. 23 to March 2 in Winnipeg, reports attendance as nearly double from last year.

Having launched last fall, Toronto production company 49th Parallel, headed by Noah Segal, Steve Hoban and Philip Mellows, has several projects moving forward.
Nothing, the third feature by Cube director Vincenzo Natali, will go to camera in Toronto for about four weeks in May. Segal describes the comedic fable as ‘Withnail and I in space,’ with a couple of dead-end schmoes who subsist on ketchup sandwiches wishing away the rest of the world. Script is by The Drews (a.k.a. Andrew Lowery and Andrew Miller, of Boys and Girls). Miller will star alongside David Hewlett (Treed Murray), and longtime Natali DOP Derek Rogers will lens, but the F/X-laden production has yet to choose between 35mm and high-definition video.

Vancouver: We may have lost Arnold, but we got Arnie.
The US$170-million blockbuster Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines briefly lighted upon Vancouver, bringing with it the promise of the biggest feature in B.C. history. But alas.
Officially, studio space opened in Los Angeles, where T1 and T2 were shot. Officially, it has nothing to do with runaway production lobbies or the political aspirations of star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who fancies the comfort of California’s gubernatorial chair.
Officially, it means that Universal Picture’s production costs just increased substantially and the studio has asked for its booked stages in Vancouver to be sublet.

Montreal: This year’s movie slate from high-rolling producer Richard Goudreau of Melenny Productions includes La Louve, an ambitious $20-million Canada/France coproduction with Yves Simoneau signed to direct, and La Balade des dangereux, a $6-million crime-caper comedy from Les Boys director Louis Saia.
La Louve (working title, translation, She-Wolf) tells the haunting story of the legendary 18th century Quebecoise La Corriveau, accused under the Old French regime of murdering two husbands and later hung by the English.

Duraid Munajim is a Toronto-based director of photography who has shot music videos, short films and documentaries. In this article, he discusses his experience with the Sony 24p format on the documentary Acrobats & Maniacs, about Quebec-based Cirque Eos, acrobats who incorporate choreography, music and special effects.

High-end TV series no doubt represent a sort of Holy Grail for many Canadian post-production shops. But the reality is that many facilities, except for the very largest and even some of those, take on whatever projects they have to, including corporate videos and infomercials, to keep busy. This is especially true with an increasingly fragmented broadcasting industry and shrinking licence fees for high-budget production.

The Fast Runner – Atanarjuat walked away from this year’s Genies with the achievement in editing award among its half dozen statuettes. What makes that particularly impressive is not only that the Igloolik Isuma/National Film Board coproduction is the first-ever Inuit feature and shot on video, but also that the cutting credits include two of the film’s coproducers, director Zacharias Kunuk and cinematographer Norman Cohn.