Producers shooting in Nova Scotia can now access tax credits up to 45%. On March 8, Premier John Hamm announced a 5% increase to the province’s film and television tax credit, and a new 5% frequent-filming bonus. The announcements see Nova Scotia joining Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba as provinces that have hiked tax credits over the last three months.

Canada’s burgeoning specialty, pay and pay-per-view television services broke the $2-billion threshold in 2004, growing revenues 9% over 2003, says the CRTC in its Pay and Specialty Statistic and Financial Summaries 2000-2004 report.

Although Being Julia star Annette Bening didn’t leave the Oscars with a best actress statue in hand, her nomination helped push the ThinkFilm release over the $1-million mark at the Canadian box office.

Clean: Maggie Cheung and her ex-husband/director Olivier Assayas get the loudest cheers for this Canada/U.K./France copro, about the junkie widow of a rock star trying to win back her son. It’s his best work since 1996’s Irma Vep, says Hal Niedzviecki in Now Magazine, noting the ‘intimate and natural’ turn by Cheung and the ‘gorgeous urban cinematography’ of Hamilton, ON, and other globe-hopping locales by Eric Gautier. And yet the script’s ‘blind alleys and pointless subplots’ lost points with the Toronto Sun’s Bruce Kirkland and seemed ‘dull’ and lacking in the requisite drug-addled dirt to the Toronto Star’s Geoff Pevere. ‘It’s not so much a movie in three acts as three movies stuffed into a single casing,’ agrees Rick Groen at The Globe and Mail.

The Hot Sheet tracks Canadian box-office results for the period Feb. 25 to March 3 and television ratings for the period Feb. 28 to March 6.

Vancouver: Eleven West Coast companies have been tapped for the first round of financing from B.C. Film’s Slate Development Fund and are each expected to take home $150,000 to develop new shows.

The National Screen Institute – Canada’s seventh annual FilmExchange wrapped March 5 in Winnipeg, with attendance up despite the fact that this year’s festival featured fewer events and six fewer features than in 2004. Attendance jumped by more than 130, with a total of 5,045 people showing up for four days of screenings and industry events, March 2-5.

* CanWest Global has named David Drybrough interim chair of its board of directors, replacing Frank McKenna, now Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. Drybrough previously worked at Gendis and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and has served on CWG’s board since March 2003.

Rogers posts loss

Open letter to CRTC chairman Charles Dalfen

It is becoming an annual tradition in this space to crow about the Canadian film business’ accomplishments at the Academy Awards. Last year it was about Denys Arcand’s win for best foreign-language film for Les Invasions barbares, a masterful showcase for both Quebec’s creative talents and crews. The year before it was for the blockbuster musical Chicago, which shot in Toronto.

It helps to be released in English Canada. In a recent Playback online poll asking ‘What should win the Genie Award for best motion picture?’ the big winner was the animated Les Triplettes de Belleville, with 43% of votes. Runners-up were: Being Julia (26%), Love, Sex & Eating the Bones (20%), Mémoires affectives (9%) and Ma vie en cinémascope (2%).

Over the past three years, the relationship between Ontario sound editors and the productions they work on has changed significantly. For a decade, these sound editors had wanted to be hired as individual artists on film and TV projects, and not treated simply as employees of large post firms. Through concessions on their part, they have achieved their wish, and, despite some tough sacrifices, most in the local industry say it has been worth it.

The music scores vying for this year’s Genie Award are as versatile as the films they were created for, with classical approaches competing against French jazz and electronic beats.

When one thinks of cities with top audio post houses, Regina doesn’t usually spring to mind. But then again, nobody would have associated hit comedy productions with the Queen City either, at least not until Corner Gas. And Brent Butt’s smash series about the goofy goings-on in Dog River, SK, entrusts its audio post needs to local shop Talking Dog Studios.