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Forecasters for a day
Consumer-generated weathercasts? It’s all part of The Weather Network’s sponsorship of Toronto’s Luminato festival
The Establishing Shot: No news is good news at upfronts
After this year’s upfronts, the story for both CTV and CBC is, largely, that there isn’t much of a story. But that’s a good thing.
’50 and fabulous’ Cattrall recognized for remarkable career
Is there life after Samantha Jones? For 10 years, the ‘sexy clown’ (her own description) of the HBO series-turned-feature film Sex and the City has inhabited much of Kim Cattrall’s career, making her a household name, and garnering her numerous awards and accolades.
CFC honors volunteers with Payback Awards
The Canadian Film Centre recognized the outstanding contribution volunteers have made to this year’s student short-film productions, which were screened June 2 at Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas.
Barrett turns to teaching
Doug Barrett has a new gig lined up and, as his time as chair of the Canadian Television Fund winds down, is set to take a teaching post at York University. Barrett has joined the Schulich School of Business at the Toronto university as visiting scholar in the CTV Professorship in Broadcast Management, taking over for Trina McQueen.
People
• Seville Pictures and Maximum Film Distribution have a new marketing team, topped by Paul Rotz, Tamara Shannon and Barb Matheson. Rotz is now director of theatrical sales for Canada, while Shannon, as director of marketing and promotions, will push the companies’ theatrical slate and organize special events. Matheson is director of publicity and communications.
Sold!
• Seville Pictures closed a series of deals at Cannes for titles including Waltz with Bashir and Radu Mihaileanu’s Le Concert. Other titles acquired include Je l’aimais, Les plages d’Agnes, Mademoiselle Chambon, Le petit Nicolas and Amazonie la planète verte.
The Burning Question
Kirstine Layfield says running journeyman game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune will win some much-needed ad revenue for the CBC, which she says will go into making more Canadian shows. (Maybe even new shows, which were in short supply at the net’s fall preview.) And so we ask:
Letter
Unbalanced look at the digital space
Correction
In the May 26 issue, a quote stating that ‘it took nerves of steel to get pulled in [Izzy Asper’s] wake’ was mistakenly attributed to Canwest president and CEO Leonard Asper. It was, in fact, the opinion of writer Etan Vlessing. Playback apologizes for the error.
Much at stake with Part II fees
You may not be aware of this, but there’s been a high-level dogfight going on in the courtrooms for some time now. The dogs are the broadcasters and BDUs against the feds, and what’s at stake is a juicier bone than most realize.
Spottiswoode’s Nanjing drama surfaces
Preselling your film to Sony Pictures Classics would cause most Canadian directors to erupt with joy.
Michael Cerenzie: Ex-pat producer bringing features back home
Not many people know this, but it took a scrappy, mucho-tattooed former nightclub owner from Sault Ste. Marie, ON to get City of Ghosts, Matt Dillon’s long-stalled 2002 directorial debut, off the ground. After seven years of fruitless pursuit in the Hollywood jungle by the veteran thesp, Michael Cerenzie, then a relative newcomer to Hollywood, pulled it together – in just one month.
The upside of new media deals
Mark Hand is a cross-media content specialist who provides creative writing and consulting services to film and television producers looking to develop cross-media properties. He can be reached at mark@markhand.ca.
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