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Sinking Ship makes Room
TVOntario and other educasters will next month debut The Jungle Room, a new preschooler series from one of the companies behind This is Daniel Cook
Timekeeper scores with Telefilm
The latest effort from director Louis Bélanger and Roy Dupuis scored a $3-million cheque from the Feature Film Fund, partway through its shoot at a remote wildlife reserve in northern Quebec
Grondin joins Cookie Jar
Long-time toonmaker to work on new series in Toronto, including the preschooler-aimed Will & Dewitt
Tante Aline trumps Nitro
Comedy from director Gabriel Pelletier comes in first, keeping Vivafilm atop the domestic chart for a fifth consecutive week
Box office took a hit, says StatsCan
Study says a lack of Hollywood releases turned Canadians away from the local multiplex in 2005 and took a bite out of exhibitor profits
Montreal festival makes its picks
François Delisle’s Toi and Emile Gaudreault’s Surviving My Mother, the follow-up to Mambo Italiano, set to unspool later this month at the World Film Festival
Discovery readies for Mars launch
The arrival of Race to Mars and Mars Rising this fall on Discovery will be backed up by a companion book and website, a public debate and a touring exhibition of gadgetry linked to the Red Planet
Space sets dates
Blood Ties and Grand Star slotted on weekends alongside short-lived relic Roar, starring a young Heath Ledger
Insight may have to find another way of doing business
Vancouver: Kirk Shaw’s Insight Film Studios has rocketed to the top of the Canadian production biz, but the shop’s non-union approach to making films and TV shows may soon be coming to an end, if IATSE has its way.
The Small Screen: High School Musical 2 gives Family something to sing about
If you are the parent of a tween, you probably can’t help but know more than you want to about High School Musical, the syrupy Disney made-for-TV mega-hit (dubbed ‘Grease without the dirty parts’ by one dad) that aired in Canada last year on Family Channel.
Scorsese’s right-hand woman
Thelma Schoonmaker represents half of one of cinema’s most celebrated partnerships between a director and an editor, having worked on every Martin Scorsese title since 1980’s Raging Bull, which garnered the 67-year-old her first Academy Award. Twenty-seven years and two additional Oscars later (The Aviator, The Departed), the graceful Schoonmaker reflects on meeting the director at New York University in the 1960s, and fondly remembers her husband, legendary British director Michael Powell. She and Scorsese are currently working on restoring films by Powell and his partner Emeric Pressburger, including 1948’s The Red Shoes.
The Burning Question
They say there’s no such thing as TV seasons anymore – that summer is as must-see as the fall or May sweeps – but the evidence of our local listings suggests otherwise. There seem to be just as many reruns as before, and they’re a poor substitute for, let’s say, a new season of Frontline. And so, not for the first time, we ask:
Sold!
• Sun TV has picked up Aliens in America, a CW sitcom, similar to CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairie, about a Muslim foreign-exchange student living with a family in Wisconsin.
People
• Peter Viner has retired from CanWest MediaWorks, ending 33 years with the TV and print giant and its parent CanWest Global Communications. Viner, 61, oversaw the media conglomerate’s broadcast and publishing properties, which include Global Television, the CH channels, eight specialty channels, the National Post, and daily and weekly newspapers across the country. A replacement is not being sought at this time. He will continue to serve as an advisor for CanWest.
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