Ryan’s buried brilliance, Rick’s return to the stage and CBC corners Don & Ron for a new mini-series

CHERRY, KEESO, WATTON, MACLEAN: They shoot! They score!

THE WRATH OF GRAPES:  The sequel to the hit mini-series Keep Your Head Up, Kid premieres this Sunday on CBC with Jared Keeso reprising his Gemini-winning performance as Don Cherry. The mini-series charts Don’s journey from the NHL to Coach’s Corner, with Jonathan Watton as Ron MacLean. And if this sequel is only half as good as the original, it can’t help but

ROBERTS: on stage at Tarragon

be a hit … the three-day Toronto International Film & Video Awards festival kicks off today at 5 pm at Victoria College … attention foodies: Insight Productions chief John Brunton is bringing Food Network Canada’s top-rated Top Chef Canada series back for a second season on March 12 … the Shakespeare in Action production of The Diary of Anne Frank opens March 15 at the Al Green Theatre in the Miles Nadal JCC. Sascha Cole returns in the central role of Anne as do Chris Karczmar and Alexis Koetting as Mr. and Mrs. Frank … and Rick Roberts, so good as Stephen Leacock’s errant father in Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town, is back on the boards again, this time in the English-language premiere of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs. The Carole Fréchette play, translated by John Murrell, is helmed by Kim’s Convenience director Weyni Mengesha. Now in previews, it opens March 7 at the Tarragon.

MEANWHILE: Veteran rocker George Olliver postponed his gig at the Courtyard Restaurant in Pickering last week due to fearsome media weather forecasts predicting the storm of the century.  Which, as I recall, translated to some rain. He’s now set to play the Courtyard tonight instead … pop/jazz vocalist Joel Hartt makes his debut performance at the Green Door Cabaret tomorrow night with piano man Mark Kieswetter … DanceWorks presents Sylvain Émard Danse in the Toronto premiere of Fragments – Volume I,  for one night only, tomorrow at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront …. Liona Boyd is Alberta-bound for nine concerts with Michael Savona. You can find her tour dates on her new renovated website at www.LionaBoyd.com… and  Discovery Networks have snagged versatile screenwriter and producer Edwina Follows (Traders, Relic Hunter, Beast Master, Emily of New Moon) as its new  Director of Commissioning and Production. Follows is now responsible for the commissioning  independent programming for Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery World HD, Investigation Discovery and Discovery Science.  Smart move, Discovery.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE HIGH SEAS:  Yesterday our Floating Film Festival on the Seabourn Sojourn made its first stop, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I like San Juan, but whenever I come here all I always think of Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics to America from West Side Story:

Puerto Rico / My heart’s devotion / let it sink into the ocean /

After our stop in San Juan we screened two more movies. First up was an intriguing documentary called Jealous Of The Birds. Did you know that more than 15,000 Holocaust survivors chose to remain in Germany after World War II? Me neither. How could they stay? Jealous Of The Birds is a first-time documentary by young filmmaker Jordan Bahat that attempts to answer that question. Bahat’s quest is clearly personal; he longs to understand the choices made by his own grandparents – he even persuades his grandmother to revisit Auschwitz – and how they managed to rebuild their lives  Bahat’s film is a study of survivors, their children and other Germans who choose to live among perpetrators. and includes interviews children whose legacy includes the crimes of their parents. Fascinating stuff, and a fine start for a first-time filmmaker.

GOSLING & DUNST: brilliant performances, buried treasure

Last night’s bedtime story, screened after dinner, was All Good Things, a 2010 psychological thriller with an outstanding case. Both love story and murder mystery, it was inspired by one of the most notorious missing person’s case in New York history, in which Robert Durst, scion of the wealthy Durst family, was suspected of, but never tried for,  killing his wife, who disappeared in 1982 and was never seen again. Ryan Gosling plays Robert Marks, Kirsten Dunst plays his doomed young wife Katie, and Frank Langella plays the powerful family patriarch. The film is already regarded as a buried treasure, mysteriously abandoned by its distributors when it could easily have been an Oscar contender. Dunst and especially Gosling offer brilliant, breathtakingly believable performances as the young couple destined for tragedy. We watch horrified as Dunst’s slow corruption plays directly into Gosling’s sophisticated spiraling psychotic, with just enough information gleaned en route to show us how he got that way.  Easily the most talked-about film so far at this year’s Floating Film Festival, this is bone-chilling drama at its best. Catch up with it if you can.

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A doc for mrs kutcher, a French film for Fonda, a hip new handle for Jann, and a loving look at Don & his Rose

AMERICAN TWEETHEARTS: Still-sultry screen siren Demi Moore – aka mrskutcher to her 2.6 million daily followers — admits that her obsession with Twitter, so very shared with hubby Ashton Kutcher (aka aplusk, with 4.6 million followers of his own,) does have

ARDEN: name change?

an effect of their daily lives. “”I don’t think he ever says anything to me that is more than 140 characters long!” quips Demi. Mrs. Kutcher and her talented fun-loving hubby will be the subject of a new documentary focusing on their adventures in Twitterland … more than likely inspired by the success of James Lipton’s Inside The Actors Studio, HBO is getting into the Star Turn business with Masterclass, anine-episode documentary series set to premieres on Sunday April 18. Artists set to tell Almost All include Edward Albee, Bill T. Jones, Liv Ullmann, Jacques D’Amboise, Placido Domingo and Frank Gehry … Jann Arden tweets that she’s considering a name change. At the moment she’s favouring Diddy Ja Ja … and now that Sandra Bullock has joined the list of award-winning females whose marriages fell apart shortly after their big moment at the Academy Awards, my hero Liz Smith has some solid advice for future winners. “When actresses go up to accept awards,” sez Liz, “they should just thank themselves!”

FONDA: blingual

STILL FABULOUS, STILL FONDA: Enduring screen lioness Jane Fonda is prepping to shoot a French film in Paris in June – “my first film in French in almost 50 years!!” Fonda describes it as  “a tender, humorous, charming story about two couples and another dear friend with whom the two women had once been lovers who, because of the financial and physical challenges of age, decide to all move in together. (As many seniors are doing these days) A young sociologist who is doing research on the lives of older people is invited to live with them as well.” She admits she was startled when she met the film’s writer-director Stéphane Robelin and producer Christophe Bruincher. “I was startled by how young they both are! Stéphane is 39 and Christophe is 35. Just about the age of my children.” But she was thrilled to finally meet co-star Geraldine Chaplin. “I have always wanted to meet

BRUHL: when in France ...

her. I was on stage with her father the night he made his triumphant return to Hollywood to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars—the same night I won mine for Klute.” In the film Fonda plays an American who has lived all her life in France and is a Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne. German star Daniel Bruhl, so terrific as the young propaganda hero in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, plays the young researcher who moves in with the seniors and bonds with Fonda’s character. Bruhl’s personal presence, Fonda reports, is “sweet, attentive and soulful. Perfect for the role.” And she won’t be surprised if her first husband, legendary director Roger Vadim, is a frequent visitor to the set. She’s expecting to see lots of him.

CHERRY: true Blue

YOU THINK YOU KNOW A GUY, BUT — : Must admit I’d never heard of actor Jared Keeso before last night’s premiere of Keep Your Head Up, Kid on CBC. but I’m a fan now. His work in Part One of the two-part Don Cherry screen bio is absolutely stellar — tough, endearing and funny. Sarah Manninem is spectacularly good as Rose, the soft-spoken iron butterfly he woos and weds, and in last night’s opener Stephen McHattie gave us an eccentric, truly memorable portrayal of Eddie Shore. Written by Don’s son Tim Cherry and deftly directed by Jeff Woolnough, this is one wildly entertaining Movie Of The Week, so elegantly produced that you can enjoy it even if you’re not a hockey fan. Cherry himself  said he planned to watch the screen story of his life last night “with commercials and all, just like everybody else,” with his faithful pooch Blue by his side. I can only hope he and Blue enjoyed it half as much as I did. And yes, I’ll be glued to my set tonight when CBC  premieres Part Two tonight at 8 pm.

TOMORROW:

Take the K-Train