Tag Archives: APTN

FOD keeps us laughing with The Hungover Games, and Meg Tilly returns to the stage in little ol’ T.O.

FUNNY OR DIE:  On Monday I told you about the new Rob Reiner-Billy Crystal sequel to When Harry Met Sally with Helen Mirren in a key romantic role. The whole thing was a gag dreamed up by Rob and Billy for Will

MIRREN: make-believe with Billy

Ferrell’s startlingly successful comedy website Funny or Die, as you could tell almost immediately after you clicked on the sneak preview. Award-laden actress Mirren, who rarely get the chance to play comedy, was clearly up for her assignment, and watching Rob and Billy’s meetings with young, trend-happy “studio executives” is priceless. If you missed Monday’s column, or by any chance took it seriously, click here for that special sneak preview of When Harry Met 

HUNGOVER GAMES: it all seems so familiar ...

Sally 2, a movie that hopefully will never get made. Nonetheless, most of today’s major movers and shakers love sending up their own careers on FOD, and FOD loves sending up the industry that spawned it. As soon as The Hunger Games was released, and even before it achieved its mammoth box office numbers, FOD was on the case. “Each year, drunk people are selected to participate in torturous games the morning after a big night out. There’s no sunglasses, no water, and no headache medicine.” Yeah, right. To see the trailer for The Hungover Games, click here. And enjoy!

RITTER: taking a flyer

CASTING ABOUT: Ex-time traveller Scott Bakula (he did it before Erin Karpluk) is headlining a new plot, Table For ThreeJimmy Fallon is exec producing a new comedy pilot about three 30-something guys who become parents despite the fact that they haven’t grown up themselves … Frances Conroy and Tovah Feldshuh are among the stars in Beautiful People, a pilot for a series in which families of mechanical human beings exist to service the human population  — until some of the mechanicals begin to “awaken”… Jason Ritter, Michael Imperioli and award-laden Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz spark County, a pilot about 
young doctors, nurses and administrators in an underfunded and morally compromising L.A. County hospital … Phylicia Rashad returns to the small

RASHAD: pilot season

screen in Do No Harm, a pilot about a brilliant neurosurgeon (Steven Pasquale) whose dangerous alter-ego threatens to wreak havoc on his personal and processional life (calling Dr. Hulk?) … and Julia Stiles plays a female FBI cult specialist who investigates the mysterious disappearance of a group commune in Alaska in Midnight Sun, a pilot based on the hit Israeli format.

NO BIZ LIKE SHOWBIZ:  NHL All-Star Theo Fleury and actress Carmen Moore (Arctic Air) host the 19th Annual National Aboriginal Achievement Awards tonight on Global and APTN …  Jimmy Smits has signed on for a season of FX’s celebrated Sons

TILLY: on stage in T.O.

of Anarchy, and not as a cop. He’ll be playing a gang member … Bruce McDonald is set to personally introduce Hard Core Logo II, his long-awaited follow-up to his cult classic mock-doc Hard Care Logo, tonight at TIFF Bell Lightbox … Theatre Sheridan’s rave-garnering production of Rent has been held over even before it opens! The TS production, now set to open May 16 at the Panasonic Theatre, was originally booked to close on May 27 but will now run through June 3. To order tickets, click here … and Meg Tilly, so terrific in Global’s Bomb Girls series, returns to the stage this month at the Tarragon in a revival of the Michel Tremblay classic The Real World?  — which originally premiered at Tarragon almost 25 years ago. The stellar cast assembled by director Richard Rose also features Matthew Edison, Cara Gee, Sophie Goulet, Tony Nappo, Cliff Saunders and Jane Spidell, and previews start April 24. Click here for tickets. And have a great weekend.

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Colm & Carol & Rick & Annie & Harvey & Sharon & Lana & Lee & Deborah & Joan & …

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Reportedly set to tiptoe through the tulips at the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa next month: Margaret Atwood, Rick Mercer, Fred Penner and Ian Tyson, to name only a few …

BURNETT: any questions?

BURNETT: any questions?

my spies say tickets for the new Stratford production of ‘the Scottish play,’ with Colm Feore as the tortured king, are already selling briskly …  resilient movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will again host the annual Cinema Against AIDS gala and auction at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21. Set to join Harvey in Cap d’Antibes are super auctioneer Sharon Stone, singer Annie Lennox (she’ll serenade the high rollers gathered at the lavish Hotel du Cap) and Bill Clinton, who has proven himself to be a tireless crusader in the battle against the worldwide AIDS crisis … Big Love scene-stealer Jeanne Tripplehorn plays Jackie Kennedy and Jessica Lange & Drew Barrymore play her eccentric cousins when HBO premieres the much-anticipated screen version of Grey Gardens this weekend … also this weekend, Kenny Robinson celebrates 15 Years of Nubian Disciples shows at Yuk Yuk’s. Now that’s an anniversary worth noting! … and just to make you glad you had this time together, Carol Burnett is set to bring her one-woman Q&A show to Massey Hall on June 12.

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GOSH, THEY GROW UP SO FAST: Doesn’t seem possible, but APTN, Canada’s first and only Aboriginal television network, will celebrate its tenth anniversary this September. And as a member of the 2010 Olympic Broadcast Consortium , APTN will also become the world’s first Aboriginal Olympic broadcaster.  And you can check out the net’s sunny new redesigned website by clicking right here.

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REMICK: Anatomy

REMICK: Anatomy

FAMOUS WARDROBE MALFUNCTIONS: Sure, that SuperBowl incident with Janet Jackson was historic in its own way. Fortunately it wasn’t a career-breaker. But I recall at least two wardrobe ‘malfunctions’ that turned out to be career-makers. Lana Turner was set to co-star with James Stewart in Anatomy Of A Murder until she saw the slutty outfits they wanted her to wear. When she refused to show up unless her costumes were changed, director Otto Preminger quietly fired her and hired Manhattan TV actress Lee Remick to replace her. The film created quite a sensation at the time, and three years later the once-unknown Remick won an Oscar nomination for The Days Of

KERR: Eternity

KERR: Eternity

Wine And Roses. And classic British beauty Deborah Kerr feared she’d be forever cast as the proper English schoolmarm until her agent got a call from Columbia Pictures tyrant Harry Cohn. Cohn had just fired Joan Crawford because she refused to wear the blowsy ’40s era wardrobe that had been designed for her; would Ms Kerr be willing to replace her? The enigmatic Ms Kerr was more than happy to do so — and that’s how she ended up on that beach with Burt Lancaster. She won her second Oscar nomination for Fram Here To Eternity, and had collected four more (for The KIng And I, Heaven Knows Mr, Allison, Separate Tables (with Lancaster again,) and The Sundowners before she received an honourary Academy Award in 1994.

The moral of this story? Never lock a clothes horse in a closet.

Or something like that.

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YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE: Still believe it’s better to light one candle than curse the darkness? Yeah, me too. And apparently we’re not alone. Earth Hour was such as phenomenal success this year that the Canadian World Wildlife Fund has created a new web-based community called The Good Life  I’ve signed up and you can too. To explore and properly exploit the new site, click here.

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SOUTH PARK EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU: Stumped by the fact that huge companies with huge debts are getting financial bailouts while small companies with small debts are going under? You obviously don’t have a proper grasp of the scientific methodology behind all these key decisions. To further your understanding and education of North American economics — no, no really, no need to thank me — just click here.

TOMORROW:  Celebrating Norman Jewison in Hollywood.