Walt discovers Mary Poppins, Julia takes a run at the White House and Paula gets a new mission

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Okay, I admit, Cabin In The Woods is not for me. Okay, hardly anything in the woods is.  But here’s a movie I want to see, even if they haven’t started shooting it yet, Tom Hanks and Emma 

THOMPSON: will she play P.L. Travers?

Thompson are in talks to star in Saving Mr. Banks, a behind the scenes look at the making of Mary Poppins. Hanks would play Walt Disney and Thompson would play Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers … Paula Patton, so good with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, is being wooed to join Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington in 2 Guns. Sounds good to me … legendary Air Farceur Don Ferguson will interview ex-CBC VP Richard Stursberg at the launch of Stursberg’s new book The Tower Of Babble next week at The Gladstone Hotel — $5 or free with the purchase of a book. For more

LOUIS-DREYFUS: new series

info, click here … and former New York Times critic and columnist Frank Rich is one of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ executive producers on her new HBO comedy series Veep, in which she plays the vice-president of the United States. The potty-mouthed series is set to premiere on both HBO and HBO Canada this Sunday, and for a saucy sneak peek, click here.

FLYING BENEATH THE RADAR (SO FAR:)  Fresh from his stint in The Hunger Games, big screen favourite Donald Sutherland is taking another crack at TV with Pan 

SUTHERLAND: pilot project

Am’s Mike Vogel and a new pilot called Living Loaded … Tate Donovan, so good with Glenn Close in Damages until he got whacked in season three, is co-starring with Victor Garber in the new Meagan Good pilot, Notorious … John Stamos plays an ex-con who attempts a reunion with his half-brother in his pilot, Little Brother …  Bradley Whitford’s new pilot, The Asset, is a spy drama that revolves around a female agent in the New York office of the CIA (hasn’t anyone in Hollywood seen Covert Affairs?) … Rick Schroder, who just turned 40 (OMG! How did that happen?) co-stars with Angela Bassettin

SCHRODER: OMG, he's 40!

her new still-untitled spy-vs.-spy drama pilot …  Kevin Bacon plays an ex-FBI agent who leads the search to catch a diabolical serial killer (James Purefoy) who has created a cult of serial killers, in his still-untitled new thriller pilot … Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a disbarred defense attorney in his new pilot Guilty … Vampire Diaries alumnus Matt Davis plays an investigative journalist blogger in his new pilot, Cult …  in her new pilot First Cut rising star Mamie Gummer plays a new doctor who discovers that, sadly and comically, life at the hospital where she works is no different than high school … and the storyline for another new pilot, The Selection, sounds strangely familiar.  It’s described as an epic romance set 300 years in the future which centers on a poor young woman who is chosen by lottery to participate in a competition to become the next queen of a war-torn nation at a crossroads.

Wow! … wonder who came up with that one.

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Mad Men beat the odds, Piers interrupts, and Griffiths, Healey & MacIvor spark T.O. theatre

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Oscar owners Cuba Gooding Jr. and Mira Sorvino and small-screen scene-stealers Bradley Whitford and Lucy Liu are among the stars currently shooting new TV pilots in L.A. …  filmmaker

ATWOOD: Payback at TIFF

Jennifer Baichwal and Margaret Atwood get the red carpet treatment at TIFF Bell Lightbox tonight for the Canadian premiere of Payback, the new Baichwal doc based on Atwood’s Payback: Debt And The Shadow Side Of Wealth. The Q&A  following the By Invitation Only screening will be hosted by Walrus senior editor Sasha Chapman …  Parks And Recreation laugh-getter Nick Offerman has been cast in Diablo Cody’s directorial debut …  and don’t say we didn’t warn ya: Both of Daniel Lanois’s March 23-24 concerts with Brian Blade at the Great Hall in Toronto are completely sold out. The concerts coincide with Lanois’ induction into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame during Canadian Music Week.

STAGE STRUCK: Three stage giants are set to share their remarkable talents with Toronto theatergoers in the next three weeks. First up is Linda Griffiths, who will reprise her bravura performance as Margaret Trudeau in a reading of

MACIVOR: world premiere

Maggie and Pierre this Saturday at Theatre Passe Muraille, staged by Paul Thompson. Thompson will  also play P.E.T to her Maggie. (Wow, what a way to spend St. Patrick’s Day!) Then, two nights later at TPM, on Monday March 19, Michael Healey will appear in his latest play, Proud, a script Tarragon Theatre reportedly declined to produce for fear of incurring the wrath of the PMO. And two weeks later Tarragon playwright-in-residence Daniel MacIvor, who recently dazzled us with a stunning revival of His Greatness, will premiere his new play Was Spring on April 4 at Tarragon with Clare Coulter, Caroline Gillis and Jessica Moss.  Talk about yer embarrassments of riches! If I were you I’d start dialing for ducats right now.

INTERVIEWUS INTERRUPTUS: He was a solid Celebrity Apprentice, and an appealing if impatient judge on America’s Got Talent,  but I suspect the romance is over between the public and Piers Morgan.  As the current

MORGAN: interrupter

occupant of Larry King‘s coveted nightly spot on CNN, he’s constantly attracting some of the biggest names in show business, sports and politics — and then constantly interrupting them, clearly bored by their responses.  At one point I thought he was getting over himself; turns out I was wrong. In my opinion Morgan  is absolutely capable of delivering the goods — but only when he pauses long enough to listen, which he does all too rarely. Says Manhattan gossip girl Liz Smith: “Piers Morgan will never warm the cockles of my heart, but I suppose some people enjoy his smirky style.“ Ouch!

IT’S A MAD, MAD WORLD: New Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award winner Matt Weiner, creator of US cable hit Mad Men, is getting ready to  launch season five later this month. He told C21 that he wrote the pilot for the series before he even started working on HBO’s The Sopranos — but no one would touch it. “HBO rejected the show about 80 times,” he says. “Going to AMC

MAD MEN: taking the fifth (season)

wasn’t a choice; it was the only company that was interested. People were telling me how they felt so bad for me because no one was going to see my show. When Christina Hendricks agreed to be a series regular, her manager fired her.

WEINER: getting Mad

People would say to me: ‘You were executive producer on the most exciting show on TV [The Sopranos] and this is what you turned it into.'” Mad Men was the first original show that AMC picked up, and the network tried to coax Lionsgate into partnering with them. But Lionsgate thought the period-piece pilot was too expensive so AMC shouldered the cost of shooting it. When they saw it Lionsgate execs thought the pilot was extraordinary — which it was — and signed on for the series. Which is how we got to see Mad Men.  And how Mad Men got to become the first cable series the win the Emmy for Best Drama, which it has won every year for its first four seasons. And you thought making television was easy!

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