Attention, Swiss music lovers — Dr House is in the house, and he’s gonna tickle the ivories in Montreux

MUSIC IN THE AIR: For a grande dame of 46, the Montreux Jazz Festival is looking pretty hot this year. In addition to the previously  announced Noel Gallagher, headliners now confirmed for the two-week summer music

LAURIE: piano man

extravaganza in what may be Switzerland’s most beautiful city  include Jethro Tull’s  Ian Anderson, Erykah Badu, Tony Bennett with daughter Antonia, Jane Birkin, SNL semi-sensation Lana Del Rey, Bob Dylan,  Juliette Greco, Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock, piano man Hugh Laurie (does he play House music?), Bobby McFerrin & Chick Corea, Pat Matheny, Sergio Mendes, Alanis Morissette, Sinead O’Connor [maybe,] Van Morrison and Rufus Wainwright, Yeah, that ought hold ’em for a couple of weeks …  musical performance artist Peaches, buoyed by the

MORISSETTE: jazz baby

2010 success of her one-woman version of Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, she performed all the characters herself) has a new eyebrow-raiser in the works. Om May 1 in Berlin, in a new showcase funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, she’ll play the lead male role of Orpheus in L’Orfeo, a full-blown opera composed by Monteverdi at the beginning of the 17th century. The opera tells the story of the singer Orpheus who triumphed over the underworld and enchanted people, gods and wild animals with his warbling. Sounds like a good fit so far …  Tony Award owner Betty Buckley has

BUCKLEY: funny that way

a new touring show, Ah, Men! The Boys Of Broadway, in which she gets to sing the great men’s songs from Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Pippin, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. Accompanied by her pianist Christian Jacob, she opened the show this month in her town – Fort Worth, Texas – and is already set to dazzle ‘em at The Rrazz Room in San Francisco October 30-November 4.  But first she’ll dazzle us with a concert evening May 10, a glamorous kick-off to the 15^th and final We’re Funny That Way comedy festival. Seeing and hearing Buckley in concert is a rare and exceptional delight. For ticket information, click here.

HATHAWAY & JACKMAN: Can they hear the people sing?

FLICKERS: Director Francis Lawrence (Water For Elephants, I Am Legend,) is set to direct the next installment in the Hunger Games franchise with Jennifer Lawrence (no relation) … Taylor Swift, who surprise everyone with her solid acting chops in Garry Marshall’s hit romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, will play Joni Mitchell in the screen version of

CROWE: on camera in Les Miz

Sheila Weller’s book Girls Like Us. Looks like Alison Pill, so good as Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, will play Carole King.  No word yet as to who will play Carly Simon …  the two writers who created the screenplay for Gus Van Sant’s new feature Promised Land are none other than Matt Damon and John Krasinski … and shooting of Les Miz continues with Republic Of Doyle alumnus Russell Crowe playing Inspector Javert, the nemesis of Hugh Jackman’s Jean Valjean. Anne Hathaway gets to dream a dream as Fantine, Amanda Seyfried plays her daughter Cosette, Samantha Banks stays on her own as Eponine and Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen play the mercenary Mme and M’sieu Thenardier. Sounds pretty fabulous so far. All fingers crossed!

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Ms Vanasse gets Scruples, Ms Koslo gets Sheba, Ms Janney gets a Dinner and Ms Lucci gets a maid

VANASSE: new pilot

TUBE TALK: Award-winning Quebec actress Karine Vanasse, who charmed American audiences with her work in the too-short-lived Pan Am, is shooting a pilot for a new series for a new first-time producer. The pilot? Scruples, based on the Judith Krantz novel about a socialite who attempts to open a fashion-forward boutique in the heart of Beverly Hills. The new producer? Natalie Portman, who is exec producing with Tony Krantz and Annette Savitch  … three TV favourite are tossing their hats in the ring again. Anthony LaPaglia (Without A Trace) is shooting Americana,a

JANNEY: dinner date

pilot for a new drama about a legendary fashion designer and his family business; Tony Shaloub (Monk) and Allison Janney (West Wing) are starring in Friday Night Dinner, a pilot spin-off of the British series that revolves around a traditional Jewish family as they observe Shabbat dinners; and Susan Lucci is the top-billed marquee bait in Devious Maids, a pilot based on the Mexican telenova about four maids who work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. And the beat goes on.

MAZZARA: bound for Banff

PEOPLE: Add Glen Mazzara, Executive Producer of the Emmy Award-winning series The Walking Dead, to the Master Class series at the upcoming Banff World Media Festival … Women Fully Clothed will follow up their April dates in California with four May stops in beautiful B.C., performing their new show in Nanaimo, Victoria, Courtenay and North Van … Corrine Koslo inherits the juicy role originated on stage and screen by Shirley Booth when Come Back, Little Sheba opens this summer at the Shaw Festival. More on Shaw tomorrow …  Gerald Finley, Oliver Jones, Quartetto Gelato and the Nathaniel Dett Chorale are among the mighty music-makers set to spark this summer’s Westben Arts Festival Theatre offerings in

BUCKNER: Den mother

Campbellford, Ontario. July showcase presentations culminate in an August 5 fund-raiser finale, featuring pianist Brian Finley and the Brian Barlow Big Band and aptly named The Big Band Theory. Sounds like a winner … and the indefatigable Pat Ferns, in Cannes to moderate the “By Invitation Only” Drama CoProXchange at MIP TV, is heading back to his old stomping ground, li’l ol’ T.O., at the end of the month to host International Co-Production Day at Hot Docs on April 30.

IT’S ALL COMING BACK TO THEM NOW: On tonight’s Dragons’ Den finale, all five Dragons reminisce about the very best – and worst – moments over the past six seasons. Den host Diane Buckner reportedly gets Dragons Jim

HAWCO: cliffhanger?

Treliving, Kevin O’Leary, Arlene Dickinson, Bruce Croxon and exiting fire-breather Robert Herjavec to tell what they really think about each other,  and highlights from the last six seasons of the show include the stand-out pitches AND the in-fighting, counting down to the three most memorable moments in the series’ history. After you leave the Den,  Allan Hawco rallies his troops on Republic Of Doyle’s season closer  to prove his father’s innocence when he’s accused of murder. Will Season 3 end with another cliffhanger?  I’d put money on it, b’y … … and speaking of cliff-hangers, Martin Gero’s steamy L.A. Complex series, about young hopefuls sharing the same space in Hollywood, will premiere on The CW in the U.S. this month. New episodes are set to start unspooling here in July on MuchMusic.

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Roseanne plots her return, Gordon calls on Ottawa, Reba calls Lily ‘mom’ and Mr. D calls it a season

MUM’S THE WORD:  Remember when she romanced little Tom Hanks in Big? Ageless head-turner Elizabeth Perkins is playing Sarah Chalke’s mother in a new TV pilot, How To Live With Your Parents For The Rest Of Your Life. Who’s playing Dad? Brad Garrett. And John Dore is

ROSEANNE: pilot project

somewhere in the mix too … Lily Tomlin, so good last season as the malevolent matriarch in the hypnotic Glenn Close series Damages, is playing Reba McEntire’s mother in Reba’s new comedy pilot, Malibu Country … Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Nealon are headlining Howard Busgang’s new pilot Isabel, inspired by the CBC Radio Canada series Le Monde De Charlotte … Matthew Perry plays a sportscaster in therapy in his new pilot, Go On. No word yet on who’s playing his mom … and the woman some folks would describe as the mother of them all, and I do mean the one and only Roseanne Barr, is taking another kick at the can with a weekly series, without TV daughter Sarah Chalke (she’s busy) but with TV hubby John Goodman already on board. Roseanne’s new pilot, Downwardly Mobile, is about a trailer park boss –guess who? — who serves as a surrogate mother to all her tenants. And the beat goes on.

FLIGHTS OF THE PINSENT: “Guests may never wash their arms again after rubbing elbows with Gordon Pinsent,” reported the Ottawa Citizen after Pinsent showed up at a benefit party to promote this summer’s Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. Pinsent will make his Festival debut there on July 30 by narrating Ogden Nash poetry to Saint-Saens‘ Carnival of the Animals and Tennyson‘s Enoch Arden set to Strauss. He’ll also wing to Halifax next month to participate in April 15 events marking the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. In the meantime, his new CD collaboration with Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo and Travis Good of The Sadies, Down And Out In Upalong, is scheduled to drop next week;  his latest movie project, the 3D IMAX film Flight of the Butterflies, which he just finished shooting in Mexico last month, is currently set to premiere in September; and his new autobiography, Next, is due in stores on October 16. For the inside scoop on the Upalong album, click here. And if you’re in Toronto on April 12, stop by The Drake Hotel and see Good, Keelor & Pinsent showcase their new CD  in person.  So don’t say I didn’t warn ya!

DICKINSON: big decision-maker

GRAND FINALES: If it’s April it must be Season Finale week on CBC Television. Tonight Gerry Dee wraps up the first season of his freshman comedy Mr. D. with Jonathan Torrens and Bette MacDonald, followed by the much-anticipated very last episode of Little Mosque On The Prairie with Zaib Shaikh and Sheila McCarthy. (I believe Little Mosque is the only Canadian sitcom to be inducted into the Museums of Radio and Television Science in both New York and Los Angeles, and last week’s episode, by the way, was a real church-burner — literally!) Also saying sayonara is Big Decision, which wraps up its four-show test-drive tonight too, with Arlene Dickinson on deck as the decision-maker. And tomorrow night we’ll see the season closers of Rick

MR. D & Mr. M: on CBC's Season Finales

Mercer Report and 22 Minutes. Also calling it a season this week: Dragons’ Den, now this country’s top-rated home-grown entertainment show; Republic Of Doyle, coming off its best season yet; Marketplace, which attracted a hefty new audience this season; and the fifth estate, which after 36 noteworthy seasons saw some of its largest audience numbers in more than a decade.  Hey, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Somebody must be doing something right.

TOMORROW:  Watch for the Glenn Gould Foundation to announce the details of a Gala evening celebrating the ninth Glenn Gould Prize laureate Leonard Cohen. A stellar line-up of musical stars and honourary speakers will take to the stage to salute Cohen’s lifetime achievements in music and poetry. Stay tuned.

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Lifetime grows black Magnolias, Israel sparks MIPtv sales, Nancy’s just Foolin’ and the Junos get Feist-y

LATIFAH: steel lady

FLICKERS: Dynamic leading ladies Queen Latifah, Alfre Woodard and Phylicia Rashad have signed on for Lifetime‘s all-black remake of Steel Magnolias, taking over the roles originally played by Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine and Sally Field.No word yet as to who will  be cast in the Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts roles …  looking for some laughs this weekend? Servitude is the first film to be developed and workshopped through the Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab, the CFC Film Program in collaboration with Just For Laughs, and it opens today with a stellar cast — Joe Dinicol, John Bregar, Linda Kash, Lauren Collins, Aaron Ashmore, Enrico Colantoni, Margot

DINICOL: in service

Kidder, and Dave Foley.  Directed by Warren P. Sonada and written by co-producer Michael Sparaga, it looks like a lot of fun … left-wing heroine Jane Fonda will remind us what a good actress she is when she plays right-wing Republican former first lady Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels’ The Butler.  An Oscar nominee for directing Precious, Daniels describes The Butler as a sprawling historical drama that centers on Eugene Allen, a black man who worked as butler in the White House under eight presidents. Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker is slated to play Allen, and insiders say ardent Daniels supporter Oprah Winfrey may play one of the many supporting roles …and Marcelle Lean‘s 15th Cinefranco filmfest wraps up this weekend at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Hot titles include Ma Part Du Gateau/My Piece Of The Pie, one of

SUTHERLAND: worldwide

the films celebrated on last month’s 12th Floating Film Festival, and L’Art D’Aimer/The Art Of Love. For Cinefranco program notes click here.

BRAVE NEW WORLDS: Did you see the premiere of Kiefer Sutherland’s new series Touch last week on Global? If you did, you had plenty of company. Touch premiered almost simultaneously in 100 countries and territories. In the U.S. it screened on Fox; in Germany, on ProSieben; in Russia, on Channel One. New-world executive thinking indicates that the worldwide premiere signifies a new way of doing business that attracts multinational advertisers (Unilever is a sponsor of the series around the world) and attacks online piracy … also making history: the Adam Beach series Arctic

BEACH: hit series

Air, which averaged almost a million viewers a week in its debut season, the largest audience to follow the first season of a CBC Television drama series in 15 years.  Other CBC shows more than one million viewers weekly include Dragons’ Den, Republic Of Doyle and The Rick Mercer Report. So somebody must be doing something right … Israeli TV formats may prove to be the big buzz at this year’s MIPtv. The annual international television convention opens Sunday in Cannes with a red carpet gala screening of Julian Fellowes‘ Titanic, already sold in 86 countries, but it’s the shows from Israel sparking the most interest. HBO‘s In Treatment and Showtime‘s Homeland are both based on hit Israeli TV series. Another Israeli series, The Naked Truth,  a suspense thriller set entirely in an interrogation room, has already been picked up by HBO

WHITE: April Foolin'

for an American remake, and NBC has ordered a pilot called Midnight Sun, based on the Israeli show Pillars of Smoke, about a female FBI agent who uncovers a conspiracy. Other hot prospects at next-week’s four-day marathon in the south of France: Mr. Selfridge, a period drama about the life of the flamboyant founder of the London department story; Tom Fontana‘s Copper, about a police officer in 1860s New York City; the psychological thriller Hemlock Grove, already snapped up by Netflix; the period mini-series Madame Tussauds; dramatic series Hannibal, already sold to NBC; World Without End, a follow-up mini-series to Pillars Of The Earth; and Sinbad, BBC’s update on the tale of the

FEIST: Junos telecast

8th century swashbuckler who battles monsters and visits magical places.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Music man Jack de Keyser strums his stuff tomorrow night at Simcoe Jazz & Blues in Oshawa … perennial crowd-pleaser Nancy White headlines the April Fool’s Matinee this weekend at the trendy Green Door cabaret with pianist Bob Johnston, percussionist Marsha Coffey and singers Ghislain Aucoin, Suzy Wilde, Barb Johnston, Maddy Wilde, Eddy Be, Stella Walker, Bridget Carter-Whitney, Mavis Lyons and Mike O’Hara. “Do not be frightened by the number of singers and the fact that the show is on a Sunday,”

McLACHLAN: singing Sunday

adds the irreepressible Ms. Walker. “No gospel music will be presented. That is our pledge to you.” Showtime is 3 pm  this Sunday April 1, For ticket info click here … Maggie Cassella hosts her own April 1 send-up, Liar Liar Pants On Fire, Sunday night at The Flying Beaver Pubaret. “It’s an April Fools Day event where YOU get up on stage and tell a whopper of a story. The audience votes on weather they think it’s true or false. If you fool them you win a prize!” … and now that deadmau5 and Madonna have called a truce, his fans can see him on Sunday night’s Juno Awards telecast on CTV. Also set to rock the premises: Blue Rodeo, City and Colour, Feist, Hedley, Hey Rosetta!, K’NAAN, Lights, MC Flipside, Nickelback, Sarah McLachlan, and Simple Plan.

Happy weekend!

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Lenore hosts a Social in Truro, Betty hosts SNL for Mother’s Day & Krystin waits on stage for the Parade

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: New headline-making Nova Scotia MLA Lenore Zann is hosting a Spring-Is-In-The-Air Social & Dance this weekend in Truro, NS to raise

WHITE: she's Hot

money for an upcoming community production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It’s all happening Saturday night at The Pond (that’s the Ponderosa Tavern to me and you) on Main Street in Bible Hill … Chi Cao, the Principal Dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet who stars in Bruce Beresford’s hypnotic drama Mao’s Last Dancer, will jet to T.O. to attend the special National Ballet’s SRO preview screening next Monday at the Isabel Bader Theatre … SNL alumnus Jimmy Fallon has come a long way from co-hosting Weekend Update. This summer he’ll host the Emmy Awards on Aug. 29 … and Betty White, still set to host this weekend’s Mother’s Day edition of Saturday Night Live in New York, has joined the cast of a new TV Land original series Hot in Cleveland.

FOOTLIGHTS: Once more intent on battling “Canada’s most dangerous enemy, cultural amnesia,” VideoCabaret presents Michael Hollingsworth’s The Great War, opens

PELLERIN: on stage

tomorrow night at The Cameron House … also opening Thursday: Bobby Del Rio’s new play The Market, not on a stage but in a corporate office space at Adelaide & Jarvis. The play, which features Kyle McDonald, Julian DeZotti, Aaron Forward and Ryan Moleiro as 20-something traders, runs through May 23 and Del Rio warns audiences that his new show contains violence, “excessive” language, “and guys acting like dicks!” … and Republic Of Doyle scene-stealer Krystin Pellerin, so good as the pistol-packing detective hopelessly smitten with Allan Hawco’s Jake, is currently on stage starring in the Soulpepper revival of John Murrell’s Waiting for the Parade, now thru May 29 at the Young Centre in the Distillery District.

CAO: Toronto-bound

OUR TOWN: Three up-and-coming bands – Canteen Knockout, Bronx Cheerleader and Proof Of Ghosts – headline this Sunday night’s concert at Sneaky Dee’s to save Reg Hartt’s time-honoured Cineforum. For more info, click here … Scott Feschuk, Jacob Richler and executive chef Rob Gentile team up for the 2010 edition of Taste Of Maclean’s on May 17 at Buca …and Random House is set to launch Globe & Mail scribbler John Doyle’s new book, The World Is A Ball: The Joy, Madness And Meaning Of Soccer, on May 20 with a book-signing bash at, you guessed it, The Football Factory on Bathurst Street.

TOMORROW:

GLEE girl goes sci-fi,

and other earth-shattering scoops.

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