Calgary: Academy Award winner Kim Basinger wrapped the MOW The Mermaid Chair June 7 after four weeks of shooting in Calgary for local prodco Nomadic Pictures (Broken Trail), U.S.-based Randwell Distribution, Lifetime Television and Corus Entertainment.

Alberta: One year after the sleeper hit movie, a TV series based on Hank Williams First Nation has been greenlit by APTN, reuniting at least one cast member with creator Aaron James Sorensen of Alberta’s Peace Country Films. Sorensen, who wrote and directed the movie, and steered it through a successful self-distributed run in 2005, will write the 6 x 30 drama with Jordan Wheeler and story editor Larry Mollin (Beverly Hills 90210).

Vancouver: Locals Insight Film Studios and Shavick Entertainment and U.S.-based production partners Ambitious Entertainment and The Regent Group wrapped the MOW Silent Partner on July 5 at Insight’s Maple Ridge Studios. The film – about a policewoman’s desperate and oftentimes illegal efforts to keep her son ­- was directed by Ron Oliver (Young Blades), written by Michael Gleason (Zoe Busiek: Wild Card), and executive produced by James Shavick (Deck the Halls), Insight’s Kirk Shaw (When a Man Falls in the Forest), Regent’s Jeff Schenck (His and Her Christmas) and Ambitious’ Stan Kamens (Secret Lives) for Lifetime Television, SUN TV and Corus Entertainment. It stars Joanna Going (Wyatt Earp), Tim Conlan (Mad TV) and Nelson Wong.

Toronto: Thirteen episodes of Allan Novak’s latest, Punched Up, will get underway shortly, as soon as it casts 13 people willing to have their lives rewritten by comedians. Novak (Soul Trek, Second Time Around) exec produces through his Indivisual Productions and bills the show as a hybrid of reality and improvised sitcom, with improv and stand-up comedy writers feeding lines and material to real-life people.

Montreal: Mary Walsh is hoping for a fall release and possible festival tour for her latest film and directorial debut, Young Triffie’s Been Made Away With.

Toronto: The ‘lavishness and eccentricity’ of the 18th century will be center stage in The Magic Flute, a magical realist take on the Mozart opera now in the works at Toronto’s Sullivan Entertainment (Wind at My Back).

Toronto: New Line Cinema is sending John Travolta and Queen Latifah to Toronto this fall for Hairspray, the feature adaptation of the Broadway musical that, itself, was adapted from the 1988 John Waters picture. Adam Shankman (The Pacifier, Cheaper By the Dozen 2) directs and exec produces with Garrett Grant and Jennifer Gibgot. The picture has Travolta as Edna Turnblad, the role previously filled onscreen by Divine, and Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle, and is booked at Showline Studios from September to early December.

* Three Moons Over Milford – an ABC Family series about how various people spend the last days before a catastrophic world-changing event, starring Elizabeth McGovern (Hawk) – wrapped on June 30 after about two months of shooting in Vancouver.

Nova Scotia continues to lead the Atlantic provinces in annual production volume, noting a $16-million increase in 2005, but infrastructure change is afoot in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador to better attract the attention of service shoots and bolster local work.

Even though the formation of the publicly traded DHX Media marks a new corporate direction for both participating companies, it otherwise remains business as usual at The Halifax Film Company and Toronto’s Decode Entertainment.

To get a sense of what is moving in the current stock market, Playback asked five major suppliers what kinds of footage they are getting the most requests for, both in terms of format and content.

Add stock footage providers to the growing list of players seizing opportunities in the burgeoning world of new digital technologies.

Toronto-based stock footage player Canamedia has partnered with U.S. music catalog seller Pump Audio to provide Canadian TV and commercial producers with indie songs for background music.

The call for another pair of reports on the state of the TV industry is hardly out of the ordinary, except when the CRTC indicates that their results may lead to amendments to its controversial 1999 Television Policy.

CBC has unveiled a fall schedule heavy with reality and other factual entertainment borrowed from the U.S. and Britain, laying a trail of breadcrumbs across its expanded primetime schedule that, it is hoped, will lure young viewers back to the third-placed network.