Anne kicks off a new tour, Robin gets ready for Rama, Robert gets ready to make a splash, the NFB gets animated & T.O. film buffs go on Cairo Time

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Jazz legend Joe Sealy, cabaret queens Nancy White and Judith Lander, and We Will Rock You alumni Yvan

LANDER: October concert

Pedneault and Alana Bridgewater headline an afternoon musicale Oct. 25 at Rosedale United Church … Robin Williams plays Casino Rama Nov. 11 & 12 … Ron James is set to host the Nov. 14 Gemini Awards telecast from Calgary … good news for her Atlantic fans: Serena Ryder will play the first of six “intimate” east coast gigs November 26 in St. John’s … and Robert LePage’s nine-hour theatrical marathon, Lipsynch, is currently on view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with intermissions and a dinner-break, through this Sunday. The brilliant Quebec dazzle-master, set to world-premiere his predictably controversial new opera The Nightingale and Other Short Fables

WILLIAMS: at Rama

here next week at the Four Seasons Centre, plans to fill a partially raised orchestra pit with roughly 30 tonnes of water. His singers will wade in, waist-deep, to manipulate puppets while the orchestra plays onstage behind them. Now that’s show business!

FLICKERS: New season for the TIFF Cinemateque screenings at the AGO starts tonight, with Lisa Ray set to make an appearance tomorrow night for the screening of Deepa Mehta’s hit comedy Bollywood/Hollywood. For more info, just click here …  TIFF award-winner Cairo Time, with Patricia Clarkon and Alexander Siddig, opens in T.O. today. Film buffs, take note: Director Ruba Nadda will be attending tonight’s 7pm screening and tomorrow’s 2pm and 7pm

CLARKSON: in TIFF winner

screenings at the Varsity Cinemas for post-screening Q&A’s … award-laden writer-director Paul Haggis’ current film project has an intriguing title: The Next Three Days … and in celebration of International Animation Day and the National Film Board of Canada’s 70th anniversary, the NFB is launching a special edition of Get Animated! – a series of free public screenings, from October 23–31, 2009, in 13 communities across this country. Accordingly, the NFB’s Get Animated! website is already offering exclusive animation programming to all its visitors.

LITERATI: Royalists continue to be fascinated by the Queen Mother’s recently revealed diaries and letters, despite the fact that her younger daughter,

MURRAY: on the road again

the late HRH Princess Margaret, reportedly destroyed a lot of the Queen Mum’s correspondence in an effort to cover up the scandals created by Charles and Diana … look for new books this fall from both Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy … on your mark, set, buy: Top Five fiction finalists for this year’s Giller Prize are Kim Echlin, The Disappeared; Annabel Lyon, The Golden Mean; Linden MacIntyre (yes, the Linden MacIntyre,) The Bishop’s Man; Colin McAdam, Fall; and Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault … and Anne Murray is set to kick off her cross-Canada tour to promote her new autobiography, All Of Me, with a signing session at Indigo Books & Music on Oct. 29 at the Eaton Centre. To find out when she’s coming to your town, just click here.

And have a happy Thanksgiving.

-/-

Advertisement

Now where was I? … ah yes, as I was saying …

Can’t say I wasn’t warned.

I believe the Latin term for it is bloggus interruptus.

It’s that peculiar brand of self-delusion that makes you believe you can still blog while you’re 30,000 feet up in the air, or on a train speeding through Switzerland, or, or …

GARBER: winner

You can’t. Well, at least, I can’t. And so I’ve finally learned. (I hope.) I didn’t run out of steam. I didn’t run out of things to blog about. I just ran out of time to blog ’em. Time-management is not my strong suit. Never has been, Never will be. I still make a daily To Do lists that Hercules himself would need a week to accomplish, and at the end of the day I am still mystified because, despite the dozens that may already be crossed off, so many items still remain To Do.

Rationally, of course, I fully expect to miss a blog deadline every now and then. But not for 10 days in a row!!

My bad.  And mine to correct.

Meanwhile:

RIVERS: roastee

 

TO THIS VICTOR GO THE SPOILS: Four-time Tony nominee and six-time Emmy nominee Victor Garber (Alias, Milk,) who received a big welcome home from Broadway when he moved back to New York from L.A., will miss the Tony Awards this year. On Sunday June 7 Garber will be in Alberta to receive the Cineflix Award of Excellence at the 30th edition of the Banff World Television Festival …  Robin Williams has rescheduled his cancelled March stint at Casino Rama and will now do two nights on Nov 11 & Nov 12 … triumphant 75-year-old Celebrity Apprentice Joan Rivers — “just think of me as Joan Of AARP!” she told Larry King earlier this week – will be alternately feted and fricasseed by her comedy contemporaries at her very own Comedy Central Roast on July 26, slated for telecast two weeks later on Aug. 9. She’s also picked up another Emmy nomination,this time for her voiceover work on the PBS animated series ARTHUR  … and what’s this? A new music group from Bollywood called Ruby Dhalla & The Nannies? No doubt about it, Double Exposure are back on the case. And you can check it out right here.

DOANE: glory-voiced

 

ALL THAT JAZZ:  Glory-voiced Melanie Doane is set to sing new arrangements of songs by Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Hank Snow and more, May 26 & 27 at Harbourfront Centre’s Enwave Theatre …  still-vibrant song virtuoso Stevie Wonder is set to open the 30^th annual Montreal Jazz Festival with a free outdoor concert on June 30. Wonder will give the inaugural concert at La Place des festivals, the Montreal festival site whose official opening is not scheduled until September. Also scheduled to celebrate the three-decade jamfest: Oliver Jones, Dave Brubeck and Tony Bennett  … and Ray Parker Jr., Kool & The Gang and Earth, Wind & Fire are set to shake up the 43rd Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 15.

NIXON: closing

 

PEOPLE: Law & Order alumnus Chris Noth, aka Carrie Bradshaw’s Mr. Big in Sex & The City, hosts One Night Live, a once in a lifetime concert  with Sting, Sheryl Crow and the Canadian Tenors to benefit the Women & Babies Program at Sunnybrook Hospital,next Thursday at the Air Canada Centre … perennially popular ivory-tickler Ken Lindsay continues to win new fans Thursdays and Fridays at Statler’s on Church street … and Cynthia Nixon (aka Carrie’s Bradshaw confidante Miranda) closes on Broadway this Sunday  in Lisa Loomer’s disarmingly funny look at parenting in the age of the Internet and Ritalin, Distracted.

FOOTLIGHTS: The artistic Director  of Toronto’s newest South Asian theatre company, Anand Rajaram kicks off Dishoom!, a new South Asian performance

WONDER: Montreal-bound

festival, anchored by a remount of his Summerworks hit Cowboys & Indians (with music maven Bob Wiseman) on May 23 at the Factory Theatre  …two diverse dance companies, Toronto’s COBA and Britain’s Tavaziva Dance, collaborate to present City of Tribes May 28-30 at Harbourfront’s Fleck Dance Theatre … it’s an ill wind that blows no good. The current recession is proving to be a bonanza for theatre lovers who seldom have the dough to purchase top-dollar ducats. Reduced prices abound from here to Broadway – e.g., buy one full-price ticket for Guys & Dolls and buy a second one for only $7.77, buy an adult ticket to Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas spectacular, ticket, get a free ticket for a child under 12 — and closer to home summer seat sales are sparking box office at both Stratford and Shaw.

* * * 

Have a great long weekend.

See you Tuesday!

Elaine coaches! Cynthia shoots! Colin scores!

KARPLUK

In addition to her on-camera duties on CBC’s Triple Sensation this fall, Cynthia Dale was shooting footage in Stratford last week for her upcoming network special … Colin Mochrie is reportedly set to star in the Canadian Stage Company‘s production of Yasmina Reza’s Tony award-winning Broadway hit Art, currently scheduled to run March-April 2010 … and popular Problem Like Maria judge Elaine Overholt, who vocal-coached Richard Gere, John Travolta, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ellen DeGeneres and a host of others, is taking the plunge with a new reality television series inspired by her hot-seller training DVD, Big Voice.
Stay tuned.

* * *

DENIS

LADIES IN RED: Heart & Stroke Foundation’s Heart Truth fashion show was a highlight of Fashion Week, with glamorous runway turns by such famous fair ladies as Marilyn Denis, Monika Deol, Little Mosque’s Sitara Hewitt, Jessica Holmes, Cathy Jones, Sass Jordan, Erin (Being Erica) Karpluk, Lisa LaFlamme, Elizabeth Manley, Heather Rankin, Monika Schnarre and Amy Sky. Credit photographer George Pimentel for so deftly capturing these belles of the ball. To see Pimentel’s portraits of all the girls in their designer duds, click here … great food, great atmosphere, and a great show are the main attractions this week at the Factory Theatre Spring Gala. Tax-receipt tickets are only $125 and include the

JONES

world premiere of Florence Gibson‘s Missing, directed by David Ferry. To reserve tickets call or email Michelle Yeung at 416-504-4473 or via michelle@factorytheatre.ca … $125 seems to be the bargain price this spring. Single tax-receipt tickets for the 5th annual Scrabble With The Stars extravaganza on Monday April 6 are now on sale for the same price, and include cocktails, dinner and having w-o-r-d-s with the more than three dozen stars. To order yours, call  416–777-9674 (Visa or MasterCard accepted.)

* * *

COHEN

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Undoubtedly the sexiest film about copyright infringement I’ve ever seen.”

The speaker? Jian Ghomeshi, in praise of the EyeSteelFilm-NFB co-production Rip! A Remix Manifesto, which has now opened right across the country.

And just FYI: My spies tell me that Ghomeshi’s fascinating interview with Leonard Cohen last weekend in the National Post was merely a teaser for his upcoming CBC Radio séance with Cohen on the April 16 edition of Q,

* * *

SICK BAY:  Good news is that Robin Williams is reportedly making a quick recovery from open-heart surgery, and that Stacy Keach’s mild stroke

DUNNE

apparently hasn’t slowed him down. He’s expected to return to playing president Richard Nixon on stage in Frost /Nixon as soon as he gets the green light … not so good news is that gifted novelist and legendary Vanity Fair chronicler Dominick Dunne is holed up in the mountains of Bavaria, undergoing daily treatment for bladder cancer at the same clinic rumoured to have given Farrah Fawcett a new lease on life.
We continue to keep all fingers crossed.