John Madden to helm Killshot in T.O.

* A second season (8 x 30) of G-Spot gets underway next month at Serendipity Point Films and Barna-Alper Productions in Toronto.

It’s looking to be a good year for filmmakers from B.C. and Quebec at the Toronto International Film Festival. The fest unveiled its full lineup of Canuck films on Aug. 2 and has loaded its Canada First! program with selections from the west and la belle province – starting with Louise Archambault’s first outing, Familia.
The story of a mother and daughter’s turbulent relationship, starring Sylvie Moreau and Mylène Saint-Sauveur, will open the program’s sophomore year at TIFF next month.
‘It’s about the general cycle of behaviour,’ Archambault told reporters. ‘How do you change behaviour that is non-desired behaviour of your parents? So, good luck.’ Archambault has previously directed the shorts Mensonges and Atomic Sake.

Details remain sketchy except that, at press time, stuntman Christopher Sayour was still in ‘very serious condition,’ more than a week after falling 12 metres on the set of Smallville in Langley, B.C.
Sayour suffered multiple fractures and internal injuries on July 26 and was airlifted to hospital in New Westminster, B.C., where his condition was upgraded from critical to serious. Don McLaughlin, a spokesman for the regional medical authority Fraser Health, would not elaborate.

Less sex for Showcase and more fun on HGTV and the Food Network are two goals for Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting and its specialty channel lineup for 2005/06.
Once thought of as a second-window service for Canadian dramas, Showcase has turned heads recently with its own series and, this year, has returned to the same well with comedies Kenny vs. Spenny, It’s Me Gerald and doc series Webdreams.

Activists in Ontario are scratching their heads over the province’s newly revamped law on movie classification, complaining that lawmakers have done too little to curb the censorial powers of the province’s film board despite a firm ruling from its highest court.
The Ontario Superior Court last year struck down the province’s Theatres Act, finding after a four-year legal battle that it violated freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The province was given 12 months to rewrite the law and the result, the Film Classification Act, is expected to go into effect by the end of August.
But Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, director of freedom of expression at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, says the act ‘misses the point’ of the ruling, noting that the province has not done away with its system of prior restraint.

Bidders for Canada’s first new pay TV network in over two decades are vowing to invest millions in Canadian dramas, films and documentaries, and to boost on-air Canadian content if they win approval from the CRTC.
Four broadcast groups are in contention for licenses – Spotlight Television, Allarco Entertainment, the Canadian Film Channel and Archambault Group – and they have targeted Canadian film and TV producers for support with offers of cash and a market for their work.

Jerry Ciccoritti had two reasons to celebrate after the Directors Guild of Canada announced its award nominations on Aug. 4. He is nominated for both his feature Blood and for directing the CTV miniseries Lives of the Saints.

It took another Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm offering, Horloge Biologique, to unseat Aurore as the current top-grossing domestic movie in Canada, bringing in $511,372 on 87 Quebec screens, an average of about $5,900 per screen, in its debut weekend starting Aug. 5.
Horloge, about a group of 30-somethings weighing single life versus parenthood, even outdrew the heavily hyped opening weekend of The Dukes of Hazzard. According to Vivafilm, there are no expansion plans in Quebec at this time. It will make its English Canada debut after it’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, but a firm release date has not been set.

Bailey’s Billion$: Liz Braun at The Toronto Sun had the kindest words for David Devine’s talking-dog picture, noting that its frolicking animals and cartoonish bad guys will go over well with kids. ‘Parents,’ she writes, after reminding them that theaters are air-conditioned, ‘it doesn’t get much better than this.’
Although even she thought the script, co-written by Mary Walsh, was ‘needlessly overplotted’ – siding with Jennie Punter at The Globe and Mail, who growled at the ‘silly subplots… and not enough doggie action.’ Punter was happier with ‘the delightfully evil’ Tim Curry and Jennifer Tilly, applauding their schemes and rampant scenery chewing as the pic’s most entertaining moments.
Not so, says Peter Howell at The Toronto Star, who derides talking-animal movies as ‘kid-flick contagions,’ pities Curry for his involvement, and lifts his leg on the whole picture as an ‘unhappy flashback of the tax-shelter days.’

CTV’s Robson Arms may not have looked like it stood much of a chance in the Friday 10pm timeslot, but the comedy finished its season on July 29 with a respectable season average of 450,000 per episode. This is a far cry from the first-run 1.5 million of Corner Gas, CTV’s homegrown hit, but not bad for such an under-watched summer timeslot.
CTV is giving Robson, an Omni Film Production about the residents of a Vancouver apartment complex, a chance to further build its audience, rerunning the first season on Sunday nights with two back-to-back episodes beginning at 10pm. Robson’s second run began Aug. 7, following Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. says Canada’s recently ‘sweetened’ film and TV incentives have successfully compensated for the drop in the U.S. dollar – and are again threatening California’s production industry. In a recent report, the group warns that the combination of runaway productions, pirated DVDs and the drop in box office numbers may quash the state’s upward trend in production employment.
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for a revamp of the state’s incentive package, but the state government has yet to approve any amendments.

Montreal: There’s some funny business going on between Canadian broadcasters and comics, and it’s pulling in big ratings for domestic networks.

Canadians may be going to the movies less, but according to Statistics Canada, they’re still getting the picture.

Thom Fitzgerald’s latest, 3 Needles, will kick-start the 25th Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax next month.