✖
Hot Sheet: Alliance Vivafilms’ Patrick Roy
While the Quebec film industry frets about a drop in interest for homegrown flicks, the top exec at Montreal-based Alliance Vivafilm, Patrick Roy, is on a roll.
Vox populi: Paul Gross
Paul Gross stops short of calling Toronto’s filmmaking community a bunch of snobs. He says unabashedly, however, that Toronto’s artistic ‘intelligentsia’ has ‘made trouble in making our artistic output relevant to the population that pays for it.’
Animation domination
Ellen Besen knows animation. And with over 35 years in the business, including directing films for the National Film Board and broadcast work for CBC Radio on the topic of animation, she has just published her first book, Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writer, Filmmaker, Video Artist and Game Developer Should Know, as a guide for young animators.
3 things you didn’t know about ….
Tim Southam, director and chair of national directors division of the DGC
Moves & Signings
Moves
Paperny takes Ottawa
The CFTPA has awarded Paperny Films president David Paperny the 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The Van-based prodco has six new and returning series on the slate this year, including the follow-up to The Week the Women Went, the initial season of which was a ratings winner for the CBC.
Fest cheers Nevins
HBO documentary boss Sheila Nevins will be presented with the third annual Doc Mogul award this spring at Hot Docs, cheering her award-winning tenure at the U.S. pay channel. Nevins, who after 30 years at HBO has had a hand in almost 200 projects, will be presented with the award on May 5 in Toronto, during the run of the annual doc festival.
Half-staff
The industry lost two creative forces last month – Leo Orenstein and Hillary Firestone.
Digital innovation in recessionary times
The top private broadcasters’ websites have so far been spared the advertising downturn afflicting their conventional TV stations, and as a result the casters say they are proceeding with their digital media initiatives as planned.
Private casters are mobile followers, says QuickPlay CEO
While the private broadcasters move conservatively forward online in the current economic climate, they seem to still be years away from a significant presence in mobile video.
Burning Question
Hundreds of job cuts, a $1-billion write-down and, now, the sell-off of its E! channels have put a typhoon-sized cloud over a certain media giant in Winnipeg, raising the question: ‘Can Canwest keep it together?’
Straight Up & Down
+ Filmport has opened North America’s largest purpose-built soundstage. The 49,500-square-foot ‘megastage’ (Stage 4) is one of seven operating soundstages at Filmport. The other six were officially opened on Aug. 20, 2008.
Everyone’s a Critic
Polytechnique: Denis Villeneuve’s retelling of the 1989 Montreal Massacre has induced widespread debate and controversy. While critics are united in their praise of his cinematic skills, which Le Devoir’s Ève Langevin calls ‘extraordinary,’ she complains that the director ‘had lost sight of the enormity’ of the event. The film fails to ‘say anything profound about this horrific event,’ agrees Brendan Kelly at the Montreal Gazette. But Nathalie Petrowski at La Presse counters that Polytechnique is rare in Quebec cinema in that it ‘does not tell us what to think, it invites us to draw our own conclusions.’ She aptly sums up Polytechnique as a ‘terrible beautiful film.’
Bridge to CBS
The Bridge has been picked up by CBS. The Tiffany network has signed a coproduction deal with CTV to co-finance and air 11 one-hours of the procedural drama, created by career cop Craig Bromell, which will start production in Toronto this May.
The definitive CDN broadcast and production resource.Over 5,000 company listings!
