Rick’s grand finale, k.d.’s recollections, Zach’s funny ferns & the unsinkable Debbie (she ain’t down yet!)

ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING DEBBIE: She may be 77, but like her Oscar-nominated Unsinkable Molly Brown, Debbie Reynolds runs on her own energizing batteries. La

REYNOLDS: over there

Reynolds is about to embark on a 15-city concert tour of England which will climax with ten dates in London, her first performances there in 35 years. “We start in Norwich and we’ll do a show, get on the bus, go to the next theatre, do another show and so on. It’ll be like the old days bus and truck.” She’s been prepping with a daily regimen of swimming in her indoor pool, lifting weights and hanging upside down for 15 minutes. And practicing her notorious impersonations. Her U.K. concerts will include her impressions of Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart. “I grew up with these people.” What’s her new show called? “Debbie Reynolds: Alive And Fabulous.” Sounds right to me.

MERCER MADNESS: Canadian TV icon Rick Mercer wraps his seventh season tonight with a mirthful visit with the Canadian competitors who sparked last week’s Paralympic

MERCER & FRIENDS: on tonight's finale

Games in B.C. Mercer, who has consistently showcased these amazing athletes on his weekly show, was one of their chosen torchbearers in Ottawa and tonight provokes huge laughs (his specialty) with some new death-defying feats of daring (also his specialty) with some of our gold medalists including superSkier bro’s Brian & Robin McKeever. Good news is, Mercer has just had his most successful season ever. Better news is, he and his top-rated Rick Mercer Report will be back this fall. And you can catch his season finale tonight at 8 pm on CBC.

THE SINGER, NOT THE SONG: Luscious-voiced k.d. lang has released her first-ever career retrospective. Recollection is on the small Nonesuch label – an offshoot of Warner

LANG: 25th anniversary

Records. This  set contains her greatest hits remastered, and a collection of rare tracks.Released 25 years after the release of her debut album. Recollection features 22 of k.d.’s most beloved recordings, including an all-new interpretation of the Leonard Cohen classic, Hallelujah. Plus — wait for it — Constant Craving, Helpless, Miss Chatelaine, I Dream Of Spring, Crying with Roy Orbison, Calling All Angels with Jane Siberry, and Moonglow with Tony Bennett. My hero Liz Smith says k.d.’s new collection is, quote unquote, “a masterpiece.” Hey, what’s not to like? … also gearing up for record sales: Sarah McLachlan, set to launch  her first album of new songs in seven years, The Laws of Illusion, on  June 15 … and chalk up another biggie for Luminato, because Rufus Wainwright‘s first opera, Prima Donna, will make its North American premiere here in June. Meanwhile, Wainwright’s sixth solo album, All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, drops today. (And isn’t it funny how we’re all calling CDs ‘albums’ again?)

PORTMAN: she got Zach'd

SEE/HEAR: As a rule I can take Zach Galifianakis or leave him, but Between Two Ferns, his bogus Interview show on Funny Or Die.com (the only website with its own show on HBO) is so outrageously politically incorrect I’m becoming addicted to them. His new ‘session’ with Ben Stiller is a squirmy classic — no wonder so many stars want to play with him. His list of willing victim to date includes Michael Cera, Bradley Cooper, John Hamm, Jimmy Kimmel, Natalie Portman (!!) and Charlize Theron (yes. you read that right — Charlize Theron.) Not since  Martin Short created monster celebrity-swooner Jiminy Glick have we seen anything like this. To check it out, click here. And here. And here. And enjoy!

TOMORROW:

Marion Cotillard, Ryan Reynolds, and more!

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Jane kicks up her heels again, Mike gets his own tribute and Ms Atwood goes back to Year One

BROADWAY BABIES: 30 Rock scene-stealer Jane Krakowski, who made her name in the Broadway musical Grand Hotel and won a Tony for dazzling

KRAKOWSKI: song & dance

Antonio Banderas in Nine, is finally getting back to full-time singing and dancing, if only temporarily. Due to her shooting schedule her cheeky tongue-in cheek cabaret act at Feinstein’s, Jane Krakowski Has Sold Out…Tickets Available, must close tomorrow night at Loew’s Regency … Laurie Metcalf, who picked up three Emmys playing Roseanne‘s sister on Roseanne, is back on Broadway starring as the mother in the first full-scale revival of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs. She’ll continue to reprise her role in Broadway Bound, the second play in Simon’s autobiographical comedy, when both shows play in rep at the Nederlander. Brighton Beach Memoirs opens Oct. 25; Broadway Bound begins previews Nov. 18 and opens Dec. 10 … and Academy

METCALF: Broadway bound

and Tony Award winner Mike Nichols will be honored with the American Film Institute’s 38th annual Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. “I’m surprised and pleased,” dead-panned the impish director of such films as Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Angels In America. “I was watching The Graduate on my Blackberry last week and it really holds up!”

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Why do we watch movies on planes that we wouldn’t watch anywhere else? Margaret Atwood tweets that she disgraced herself by watching Year One, the sophomoric comedy spoof with Jack Black and Michael Cera, on her way to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Guess she consoled herself with news that her Year Of The Flood was

McGOWAN: Julie's ex on The Border

#8 on the New York Times bestseller list by the time she landed in Germany … Doug Coupland thinks Ed O’Neill’s new show Modern Family “is just pure genius. It’s sooooo well written.” A technology geek, Coupland finds delightful and absurdly obscure video clips and posts them on Twitter – for example, this gem with Mr. T, Loni Anderson, George Hamilton and Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton in the same Lipton commercial. Coupland, whose new book Generation A is due in book stores, reports he lost his cell phone a few weeks ago, but instead of hyperventilating he’s discovered that he simply doesn’t think about it any more. “Didn’t expect that to happen!” Me neither … and Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival returns to Toronto tomorrow night for one night only at

O'NEILL: new series

the Bloor Cinema with its 10th annual show featuring funny short films about sex from Canada and around the globe.

EXES & OOOHS: Yesterday I told you that Julie Stewart, currently on stage at the Factory Theatre in Brad Fraser’srave-winning new comedy True Love Lies, also plays Graham Abbey’s ex onThe Border.

Wrong! Julie plays James McGowan’s ex on The Border. And yes, I really can tell those two guys apart. (sigh)

Oh well. Happens in the best of families.

KUTCHER: start 'er up

YA GOTTA HAVE A GIMMICK: Thanks to Ashton Kutcher for sending me (and maybe a million others) news of that new iPhone app that lets you start your car from your phone. I would start saving up for it but I’m saving up for a new TV set instead. No, not HD – 3D. Yup, Panasonic unveiled its prototype 50-inch Viera plasma 3-D set in Tokyo this week. Apparently it’s a wow. The technology works by rapidly alternating between left and right frames of the video. Viewers wear glasses that sync with the television over an infrared signal. The right frame is seen only with the right eye and the left frame with the left eye, creating the illusion of depth.

So all they have to do now is persuade producers to make reality TV shows in 3-D, and we’ll have even more reasons to go back to the movies.

Have a great weekend!

-/-

Juno stars Page & Cera and director Jason Reitman return to TIFF with three new flicks. Meanwhile …

PAGE: on a roll

MEANWHILE: Don’t be surprised if TIFF-bound Jason Reitman, who scored his first big hit at the festival with Thank You For Smoking, bumps into his Juno star Ellen Page. The irresistible Ms Page is coming here to promote Drew Barrymore’s first film as a director, Whip It, which features the most roller derby pulchritude we’ve seen since Raquel Welch tore up the track in Kansas City Bomber.

Meanwhile, joining Page and Barrymore on screen are formidable femmes Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis and SNL scene-stealer Kristen Wiig, so what’s not to like?

CERA: "hysterically twisted"

Meanwhile, Page’s Juno co-star Michael Cera has his own entry in the upcoming TIFF sweepstakes: Youth In Revolt, which TIFF programmer Cameron Bailey describes as an “hysterically twisted coming of age tale,” with Zach Galifianakis, Jean Smart and Steve Buscemi, directed by Miguel Arteta.

Meanwhile, director Reitman, still in L.A. finishing his new TIFF entry Up In The Air, has been taking Sundays off to screen movies he’s never seen but always wanted to. Last Sunday’s screening? Francois Truffaut’s 1959 classic The 400 Blows.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Prima ballerina turned prima producer Veronica Tennant is on the Gemini honours list again. This time she’s up for two, with a Best Director nomination for her shot-in-Cuba dance essay, Vida Y Danza Cuba, which is also nominated for Best Performing Arts program. Ms

DORE: clowning at Comix

Tennant’s brilliant cinematographer, Don Spence, is also a nominee this year, for his fearless camerawork on the Rick Mercer Report, which is about to launch its seventh season on CBC Television … reigning country music queen Shania Twain and Tony-winning Wicked star Kristin Chenoweth (Pushing Daisies) have both been tapped to sub for Paula Abdul as guest judges on the next season of American Idol … and Canadian crowd-pleaser Jon Dore headlines at Comix, the comedy club on West 14^th Street, this weekend in Manhattan.

OH TO BE A FLY ON THAT WALL: It’s official — Barbara Streisand is giving an intimate concert of selections from her new album at the famed New

STREISAND: new Love

York jazz club the Village Vanguard on Sept. 26. Her new album, Love Is the Answer, will be released Sept. 29 and marks the first time that Streisand has worked with Diana Krall and her combo. Streisand was executive producer of the album; Krall was producer.

“Her mom used to play my records,” says Streisand, “so she kind of grew up with them. I usually produce a lot of my own things, so we did it as a collaboration.”

The regular CD features the orchestra versions of the songs; the two-disc deluxe CD set also features Streisand performing the selections with Krall’s jazz group.

KRALL: producer

Krall always records basic tracks with her band and then the orchestra is added later. “David Foster records that way, where you do the tracks first,” Streisand told L.A. Times reporter Susan King. “I don’t particularly like it. But it brought me back to the way I started, so there was something very … nostalgic … about it.”

The small Manhattan clubs where she got her big break, the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel, are gone now. When she was 19, she auditioned at the Vanguard, where Miles Davis was the star of the show. “I didn’t get the job.” No, but somehow she managed to survive. Last month her three-disc DVD set, Streisand: The Concerts, went platinum after a three-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard Charts, making it the biggest selling music DVD of 2009.

Ain’t showbiz grand?

TOMORROW:

Pre-TIFF Oscar buzz, Hugh Jackman,  Jodie Foster & Mel Gibson, and more.

-/-

Gone fishin’ — for more showbuzz

Truth is, I’m having one of those too-lazy-to-write days when I feel like sitting around watching movie trailers instead of typing. And the web is a veritable cornucopia of movie trailers.

CERA

WASHINGTON

PITT

Have you visited the Yahoo movie trailer site? Slick ‘n’ easy one-stop-shopping for both current and upcoming flicks. The trailer for Year One, the new Jack Black-Michael Cera comedy, is so funny that it may sell a million tickets before the film even opens. You can get a great sneak peek at

BULLOCK

Brad Pitt’s Inglorious Bastards, Sandra Bullock’s new romantic comedy All About Steve, Christian Bale’s take on Terminator Salvation, SNL alumnus Maya Rudolph’s first major film outing Away We Go, the John Travolta-Denzel Washington-James Gandolfini remake of The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3, and prep for some delightful animation entries, including what appears to be the weird and wonderful  Up and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs You can even preview a new Eddie Murphy movie, Imagine That, that actually looks like it might not suck. Imagine that!

To see for yourself, click here, and enjoy!

I’ll be back in full swing tomorrow, with a full column that doesn’t once mention Garth Drabinsky.

And that’s a promise.