After 20 days on the ice, The Nightingale Company has wrapped its hockey MOW, tentatively titled Chicks with Sticks, and sent it into the editing suite with cutter Jim Munro. The pic – starring Jason Priestley and Margot Kidder – is due to air on The Movie Network and Movie Central this spring, followed by later runs on Super Ecran and the A-Channel station group.

ThinkFilm is rolling the dice with its biggest-ever release while Sony Pictures Classics has Oscar hopes as Norman Jewison’s The Statement opened in theaters on Dec. 12.
The suspense drama, the Toronto-born director/producer’s 24th feature, stars Michael Caine as a Frenchman with a past of abetting Nazis who finds himself on the run from a mysterious assassin. The film, with a reported budget of $27 million, is a copro between Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films, France’s Odessa Films and the U.K.’s Company Pictures.

The train is crowded today, like it is every day, so the publicist, two PAs and I have to sit on the floor, squished and out of sight up against one of the doors. Outside it’s dark and fake street lighting is flashing past while, a few feet away, two camera operators and a sound man are trying to bend into the right shape – anatomy be damned – to get a shot of two commuters who are arguing over a frozen turkey.
It is one of the last scenes in the Thanksgiving Day episode of Train 48 – the daily Global series about, well, about people making small talk on a train. Pete, the heartless yuppie, has just offered to donate an obscenely huge butterball to the food bank where Dana, the do-gooder, volunteers. But he wants $10 to recoup his loss. They argue while, in the next pod of seats, another four characters are making poultry-themed decorations out of construction paper.

Toronto’s Portlands and Great Lakes Studios may have resolved their face-off just in time to find another mega-studio staring them in the face only 40 minutes west.

Policy wags from across Canada handed in a great deal of work to the CRTC late last month, answering the federal regulator’s questions about how to fix English-language drama. Proposals put in by CAB, the CFTPA, CBC and the CCAU call for a mishmash of changes to the broadcast system, running the gamut from a redefinition of ‘drama’ and ‘primetime’ to all-around requests for more money.

English-Canadians are finally getting the chance to see what has already become one of the most successful homegrown films, both critically and at the box office after its May 9 release on 136 Quebec screens.

PrideVision sold for $2.6M

The hardest part about covering the U.S. networks this fall has been keeping up with all the cancellations. Coupling? Gone. Boomtown? Also gone. Skin? L.A. Dragnet? Outta here. The Brotherhood of Poland, NH? The Lyon’s Den? Dead as Betamax.

Mike Bullard landed with a thud last month when his late-night talk show brought less than 100,000 viewers to its new home on the Global network. Bullard’s new, self-titled show earned a national audience of just 96,000 when it debuted Nov. 24, according to head counters at BBM, and has lingered at about the same level since, despite a significant ad and promotional push.

This year the 18th annual Prix Gemeaux, held Nov. 22 and 23, celebrated the best in French-language television as well as a renewed sense of industry unity.

The Canadian Television Fund announced $6 million in funding from its Equity Investment Program, administered by Telefilm Canada, in its fall round. In all, 52 English- and French-language documentaries, representing 77 new hours of programming, will be supported.

Axium International, a Los Angeles-based payroll services company with film and television branches in Vancouver and Toronto, capitulated to threats from anti-runaway lobby groups and canceled a Canadian tax-credit information session in L.A. Nov. 14.

Parks Canada has learned that ‘approval’ is a touchy word among filmmakers, and has tweaked the wording of its proposed rules for film and TV shoots, following a flurry of complaints from the industry. But it is standing by its controversial price structure which, if passed by its executive board, could be okayed by Ottawa as early as January.

Vancouver: American studios and networks are working grievance management fees into their production budgets for Vancouver in the wake of increased complaints from B.C. unions, says a U.S. studio representative.

Vancouver: British Columbia’s provincial government and performers union are at odds whether changes to child work regulations will help protect kids or increase the potential for exploitation on set.