Posts from — June 2008

Henry Beckman, a Canadian character actor who appeared in hundreds of TV shows, films and stage productions in a career spanning five decades, is dead at age 86.

It is unfortunate that creators are having to bypass their associations and unions and speak directly to the public (and fellow members) to have their

The Canadian who was detained by U.S. officials and sent to Syria, where he claims he was tortured, was never technically inside the country, so his claims could not be heard in U.S. courts.

Twelve million honey bees were accidentally released after the lorry carrying them overturned on a Canadian motorway. Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a downpour of rain had helped to contain the bees near New Brunswick.

Live! On Stage! Review by Mary Alderson At every opening night at Huron Country Playhouse, you can always count on Neil Atchison for a few laughs.

Hollywood counts down to labor cliffhanger LOS ANGELES - Hollywood’s actors and studios traded last-minute barbs on Sunday, a day before their film and TV labor pact was due to expire with no announcement of a new three-year deal. The contract covering 120,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild expires on Monday night at midnight, and that date was widely seen as likely to …

Hollywood counts down to labor cliffhanger LOS ANGELES - Hollywood’s actors and studios traded last-minute barbs on Sunday, a day before their film and TV labor pact was due to expire with no announcement of a new three-year deal. The contract covering 120,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild expires on Monday night at midnight, and that date was widely seen as likely to …

Hollywood counts down to labor cliffhanger LOS ANGELES - Hollywood’s actors and studios traded last-minute barbs on Sunday, a day before their film and TV labor pact was due to expire with no announcement of a new three-year deal. The contract covering 120,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild expires on Monday night at midnight, and that date was widely seen as likely to …

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is desperate to cast porn star Tera Patrick in his forthcoming film.

Canadian director David Cronenberg has caught the opera bug. Literally. Rehearsals are under way for the operatic adaptation of Cronenberg’s 1987 horror flick “The Fly” for Paris’ Chatelet Theater and the Los Angeles Opera.

ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives; it’s advisable to call ahead to confirm engagements. “AFRO-PUNK” This annual festival features film screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music along with concerts by a number of bands in a newly built skate park outside the academy . . .

The latest film to be rescued from financially troubled ThinkFilm’s slate is the 2008 Sundance premiere “Momma’s Man.”

Animated film debuts in top spot with $62.5 million. A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend – and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.

Animated film debuts in top spot with $62.5 million. A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend – and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.

June 29 (Bloomberg) — “Wall-E,” the animated film about a robot who is left behind after humans flee Earth, was the top film at U.S. and Canadian theaters, taking in $62.5 million for Walt Disney Co.

June 29 (Bloomberg) — “Wall-E,” the animated film about a robot who is left behind after humans flee Earth, was the top film at U.S. and Canadian theaters, taking in $62.5 million for Walt Disney Co.

Rapper Wyclef Jean working to develop Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE - When Wyclef Jean went to Haiti recently, he had in tow the television cameras you might expect of a big-time rapper and producer. But he also was accompanied by a pool of buttoned-down business types, including the likes of Canadian entrepreneur Belinda Stronach and other potential foreign investors. …

Rapper Wyclef Jean working to develop Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE - When Wyclef Jean went to Haiti recently, he had in tow the television cameras you might expect of a big-time rapper and producer. But he also was accompanied by a pool of buttoned-down business types, including the likes of Canadian entrepreneur Belinda Stronach and other potential foreign investors. …

Rapper Wyclef Jean working to develop Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE - When Wyclef Jean went to Haiti recently, he had in tow the television cameras you might expect of a big-time rapper and producer. But he also was accompanied by a pool of buttoned-down business types, including the likes of Canadian entrepreneur Belinda Stronach and other potential foreign investors. …

TOFINO, British Columbia — An early 20th-century photo of Canadian west coast pioneers has always stuck in my mind. Someone had slapped a door on the hollow stump of a gigantic tree and called it home. A stovepipe protruded comically from one side of the trunk.

A few pages into “The Film Club,” the smart, new memoir by Canadian film critic David Gilmour, it becomes clear that if he ever saw any of MGM’s squeaky-clean “Andy Hardy” movies while growing up, they left little impression on him. It’s doubtful that the granite-faced Judge Hardy would have ever told his gawky teenage son (played by Mickey Rooney), “If you don’t want to go to school anymore, …

Hopscotching time on film is never an easy task, but Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa handles it with skill and care in his lovely, absorbing adaptation of Anne Michaels’ lauded novel about a circumspect writer haunted by his traumatic youth.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint by a Muslim organization against Maclean’s, ruling that the views expressed in one of the magazine’s articles were not “of an extreme nature.”

It should have been a highlight of Anne Hathaway’s increasingly impressive Hollywood career. Her new film, Get Smart, shot to the top of the US box office rankings last weekend.

Taipei - Canadian film The Fight (Le Ring) by director Anais Barbeau-Lavalette won the top prize in the new talent section of the 2008 Taipei Film Festival on Saturday. Barbeau-Lavalette won the Grand Prize of 1 million Taiwan dollars (31,000 US doll…