Vancouver: The lingering effects of the almost-strike by SAG earlier this year began to fade a little more with the last days of summer.
Vancouver’s overall volumes began to increase in September with the addition of titles such as big-budget Columbia feature I Spy, season two of Showtime series The Chris Isaak Show, the Discovery docudrama Living with Monsters (about hunting through the ages) and the mammoth alien-abduction miniseries Taken by DreamWorks.
New MGM suspense series Jeremiah with Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner started production at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby in September. Also in production in Burnaby is the Warner Bros. series The Young Person’s Guide to Becoming a Rock Star.

Canadian comedienne deluxe Mary Walsh has signed on to write and star in Devine Entertainment’s first theatrical feature film, Puppy Love. The project marks another first, with Walsh penning her debut theatrical film script.
Puppy Love is a coproduction of Devine and Debbie Nightingale’s Toronto prodco, The Nightingale Company. For Devine, Richard Mozer will act as producer along with the company’s pesident and CEO David Devine, who will also direct.
The bones-to-biscuits tale follows a golden retriever named Giver who becomes the main beneficiary of his deceased master’s multimillion-dollar fortune. Walsh is cast as Florence Van Loon, who, along with fellow family members, schemes up a plan to deny the dog his due.

Montreal: Filming is underway in a fully reconstructed turn-of-the-century village in rural St-Charles de Mandeville on the big-screen adaptation of Claude Henri Grignon’s epoch-making 1939 novel, Un Homme et son peche.
The $5.7-million Cite-Amerique production from director Charles Biname shoots for close to two months through to Nov. 10, resuming production in January in time for a December 2002 release by distributor Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

The Gemini writing nomination for an episode of The Outer Limits is the second one for Scott Peters. He was nominated back in 1997 for an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? It’s an ironic turn of events for Peters. He’s always wanted to be a director.

After 18 years of working in the production industry, Cal Coons is finally making a name for himself as the cocreator and executive story editor of the hit Global Television crime series Blue Murder.

Someone might be operating a website on the Internet right now known as [name of your company or product here] sucks.com. There are literally hundreds of websites on the Internet that use trade-names or trademarks belonging to well-known companies together with the word ‘sucks’ (or ‘bites,’ ‘blows,’ ‘I hate’ or some other similarly disparaging term) as their domain names.
‘Sucks’ sites are typically operated by aggrieved customers or employees who want to broadcast their complaints about the target company to the world. Such sites frequently reproduce the trademarks and/or copyright logos of the target entity, often with a red ‘X,’ a slash or the word ‘sucks’ superimposed over the logo. Many of these websites are interactive – in that they encourage others to post their own complaints about the target directly on the website for all to see.

Award-winning, Montreal-based cinematographer Guy Dufaux (a Genie winner for his memorable images in Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal and Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Un Zoo La Nuit) is again in competition, this time for a Gemini. He is nominated in the category of best photography in a dramatic program or series for his stunning visuals in Alliance Atlantis’ four-hour, US$15-million miniseries Haven, which introduces TV viewers to U.S. journalist Ruth Gruber and her heroic struggle to bring nearly 1,000 WWII Jewish refugees to America in 1944.

For Gemini-nominated cinematographer Alain Dostie (best photography in a dramatic program or series for Alliance Atlantis’ four-hour miniseries Nuremberg), the most satisfying aspect of the filmmaking process is collaboration. ‘I don’t think I could ever do something alone. I need to work in a team,’ he says. ‘When a set goes well it’s wonderful. You forget everything.’

Based on a book by Martha Ostenso, After the Harvest is the tragic story of the Gares, a Prairie family in the 1920s. Caleb Gare (Sam Shepard), the family patriarch, is the rich farmer who despite his wealth keeps his family in near-poverty.

During one of the episodes of The Associates, director of photography Philip Earnshaw was lighting an actor with a small scar on her face. Most of the time he worked to minimize the scar, but in this instance it was appropriate to emphasize it. ‘You could see a vein and it worked for that scene. There’s a convention in TV and movies to make women look as fantastic as possible; the challenge is to make them look good but in keeping with the mood the director is trying to create,’ he says.

The Gemini nomination for director of photography David Moxness for Gene Rodenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict is not just a personal recognition but also a vindication of the format the show uses. It was the first episodic television production to shoot with Sony’s 24p high-definition HDW-F900 camcorders. Moxness joined Final Conflict in its third season. The series, an Alliance Atlantis production in association with Tribune Entertainment Company, is about an alien race who come to Earth and use their technology to help the planet while battling human opposition. To get prepared for the switch from film, Moxness and Thoman Durnan, the series’ other DOP, shot the series’ sets. Everyone was happy with the results.

Nominated for a Gemini in the best talk/general information series category, the irreverent The New Music shares the nominee podium with more grown-up fare such as Pamela Wallin’s Talk TV and Vicki Gabereau among others. The show that gave J.D. Roberts and Jeanne Beker their career jolts, and established Daniel Richler as a pop culture guru, has been running for 23 years. It has won two Geminis. The current host is former Edge 102 DJ George Stroumboulopoulos, with contributions from videographer Larisa Gulka.