Toronto-based director Jonathan Hayes is a runner-up in this year’s First Cut Award competition based solely on the merits of his acclaimed short film, The School, submitted as his reel. Repped by Toronto’s Spy Films, Hayes has yet to shoot a commercial, or even a spec spot, yet the judges saw enough potential in his short to give him a runner-up nod.

Montreal: Just For Laughs has acquired all copyrights, exploitation rights and trademarks to the Just Kidding and Only Joking gags series.

Andrew Tolomizenko is corporate counsel for a large production company and provides legal services to outside clients in the television commercial and film industries.

Longstanding Toronto production house Radke Films and its offshoot Steam Films have set up shop in Vancouver.

The National Film Board gets back into the theatrical distribution game this month with the Toronto release of The Last Round: Chuvalo vs. Ali. The feature doc, about the 1966 bout between local boxer George Chuvalo and Muhammad Ali, opens Oct. 31 at Canada Square Cinemas and is slated to roll out through the fall to a total of 10 or 12 screens, backed by a ‘strong’ promo push.

Marking its 25th year of operation, Toronto-based Canamedia has signed an agreement to become the exclusive provider in Canada of the Natural History New Zealand Images library archives. NHNZ has more than 4,000 hours of filmed footage, ranging from natural history and world history to landscapes, close-up animal behavior, modern science, time-lapse scenics, peoples of the world and adventure sports.

* Claude Joli-Cúur has been appointed director, business affairs and legal services with the National Film Board. Joli-Cúur will also serve as secretary to the NFB’s board of trustees.

The red, white and blue ticker tape had scarcely touched the ground at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s feet, his champagne had not yet lost its fizz, before the Canadian press was making much of how his Oct. 7 win in California is a threat to our service industry. Der Ahnold had, as he so often reminded voting below-the-line workers in Hollywood, pulled strings to keep the shoot for his latest punch-up, Terminator 3, out of Vancouver and he had pledged to do the same, industry-wide, as Conan the Governor.

Barry Kiefl is president of Canadian Media Research.

In a recent online poll of Playback readers reading ‘Should the Canadian Television Fund eliminate the regional bonus?’, 39.8% of respondents voted ‘No, but Vancouver should not qualify for it.’ Following closely were those who feel the regional bonus should not be eliminated (38.8%), while less than one-quarter of respondents (21.4%) believe the bonus should be eliminated entirely.

Miroslaw Baszak admits he was intimidated at the prospect of lensing the $20-million feature The Gospel of John, coproduced by Garth Drabinsky and Chris Chrisafis for Visual Bible International.

Calgary camera service company Scorched Pictures has added a new image converter system to its offerings with the German-made P+S Technik Mini 35 Digital Adapter.

Halifax-based producer Michael MacDonald (formerly of Ocean Entertainment) established Road House Films in February and already has a whack of TV productions in development and a 2 x 60 limited documentary series in production.

Vancouver: The volume of television production may have slowed considerably in Vancouver in the current market, but Victoria is experiencing a mini television boom, in part because of the yeoman’s job Vancouver producer Ted Bauman is doing to bring production to the capital city.

ew teenagers, least of all the gay ones, would like to see their dating lives turned into a TV show for the country’s biggest network. But Marc Hall – the highschooler who last year took his school board to court so that he could take his beau to the prom – must surely be used to all the attention by now. His social life, and the legal fracas it touched off, made headlines around the world last spring, and now, via Tapestry Pictures, will be made into the MOW Prom Queen for CTV.