Montreal: Some of the year’s top-grossing films, including Camping sauvage, Le Papillon bleu and Elvis Gratton XXX, have been largely overlooked by jury members for this year’s Prix Jutra nominations.

The Banff Television Festival and Playback have joined up to salute the best in Canadian television, and in June will hand out a new Best Canadian prize as part of the fest’s annual Rockie Awards.

White Noise: The Canada/U.K./U.S. copro may have topped its Canuck competition at the box office, but critics have turned a cold shoulder to the supernatural thriller about snowy TV screens. The script’s ‘gaping holes and paranormal hooey’ are the biggest problem, says The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, consisting as it does of ‘crude gee-whizzikers scares, cribbed from the horror canon,’ adds Entertainment Weekly. The Toronto Star’s Geoff Pevere credits debut director Geoffrey Sax for the pic’s sense of ‘isolated, insomniac, noctural paranoia’ and notes, as does Liz Braun at the Toronto Sun, that Michael Keaton holds up well in the lead.

The holidays are over and – now that so many cash-strapped, hibernating Canucks are attached securely to their living room couches – the big three nets have rolled out their mid-season schedules, laying down, in the process, the groundwork for some significant ratings rumbles on the weekend and Monday night schedules.

CTV’s Corner Gas continues to generate audiences of over one million viewers after moving to its new Monday 8 p.m. time-slot.

Even as the NHL and its players race towards the point of no return, CBC is keeping quiet about its plans for the very real possibility of an entire season sans hockey.

Ontario culturecrats have returned from a four-day trip to L.A. optimistic that recent tax law changes are already drawing Hollywood dollars back to Hollywood North.

On Feb. 4, producers and broadcasters from France will descend on Toronto for a two-day conference with their Canadian confrères. Organized by the French consulate and the Sunny Side of the Doc festival of Marseille, the invitation-only rendezvous aims to improve documentary efforts between the two countries and will feature 170-plus professionals from Canal+, France2, CBC, CTV, Telefilm Canada and others.

The Canadian Television Fund is, once again, trying to encourage broadcasters to put more money into Canadian drama.
Recently announced changes to the CTF’s English-language drama guidelines, for its ’05/06 funding cycle, put more focus on audience performance and could prompt broadcaster licence-fee increases of up to $15,000 per hour for bigger-budget dramas. In addition, the fund will now look to primetime audiences to determine audience potential.

Alliance Atlantis has rearranged its programming execs following the departure of Laura Michalchyshyn – dividing all of its 17 specialty channels between SVPs John Gill and Kirstine Layfield. Gill is now in charge of AAC’s drama outlets including Showcase and its spin-offs, while Layfield, fresh from launching the Fine Living digichannel, will head up all lifestyle channels.

Being Julia producer Julia Rosenberg has exited Serendipity Point Films to found her own company, January Films. But she isn’t going far. The new outfit will operate out of Serendipity’s Toronto offices, just down the hall from her former boss Robert Lantos.

CWG calls for docs

David Steinberg is a partner in the entertainment group at Heenan Blaikie, advising producers, financiers and distributors in all aspects of the film and television industries. A version of this article appeared in the December issue of Emmy Magazine in the U.S. and is reprinted with permission.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, when producers convened at the CFTPA’s annual Prime Time in Ottawa, the mood couldn’t have been more somber.

Edmonton: There may be no NHL this year, but Calgary-based Alberta Filmworks has teamed up with Toronto’s Accent Entertainment to produce an MOW about a hockey legend. No, it’s not the story of Wayne Gretzky, but rather that of his father, Walter Gretzky.
The $3.5-million CBC MOW Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story is based on the best-selling book, On Family, Hockey and Healing, written by Canada’s greatest hockey dad.