Napkin Man gets a Barenaked booster, Seagull stars get set to soar, and Nico dances into Cinefranco

FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS: Hard to believe, but Marcelle Lean’s once-struggling Cinefranco Film Festival is celebrating its 15^thstanza this year. After running a successful weeklong school program of screenings last month, the

NICO & MYLENE: They've got Rhythme

festival opens to the general public this Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Weekend highlights already generating a sizeable buzz include Nico Archambault’s splashy performance with Mylène Saint-Sauveur  in On The Beat/Sur le rhythme, directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud; the new Isabelle Hupert entry, My Worst Nightmare/Mon pire cauchemar, directed by Anne Fontaine; director Emmanuel Mouret’s new comedy The Art Of Love / L’art d’aimer, with François Cluzet and Julie Depardieu; and Dominic Desjardins’ opening night film, La Sacrée. For the complete list of films and how to get to see them, click here – et bon cinema!

OUR TOWN: Lots of openings tonight. A revisioned version of The Vindication of Senyora Clito Mestres, directed and performed by Dora nominee Dragana Varagic, is set to run tonight through Sunday at Theatre

RODRIGUEZ: opening night

Passe Muraille’s Backspace, with an additional performance March 31 at the Isabel Bader Theatre … Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie bring back Lemieux’s acclaimed 2003 choreographic work Varenka, Varenka! from tonight through March 31 at the company’s new dance centre in Regent Park, The Citadel. The work is inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel Poor Folk, about an aging clerk and his love for a young woman in mid-nineteenth century Russia … and wow, what an opening night cast! — Guillaume Coté, Greta Hodgkinson, Aleksandar Antonijevic and Sonia Rodriguez. Still wondering if you will be able to keep all the different lovers distinct and separate when John Neumeier’s splashy ballet version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull opens tonight at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts? Fear not – the National Ballet has produced a cheeky one-minute video guide to all the love affairs in the show. To see it, just click here — and enjoy!

ROBERTSON: Napkin Man

TV SHOP TALK: Corus Entertainment will launch its newest service, ABC Spark, next Monday with the day-and-date season premiere of The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The primetime schedule will also include ABC Family original series Switched at Birth, Melissa & Joey, The Lying Game and Make It or Break It … BBC director general Mark Thompson will step down after the London Olympic games this summer … KIds’ CBC is currently developing a new show for small fry called The Adventures Of Napkin Man, hosted by Barenaked Ladies charmer Ed Robertson … Discovery Networks International has bought a 20% stake in French pay-TV company Televista, gambling that

SCHONEBERGER: Rose d'Or host

Televista will move into France’s free-to-air market … and only three Canadian entries made it to the finish line as Rose d’Or nominees this year. Storming Juno Interactive, produced by Secret Location for History Television, is a Multiplatform nominee; For One Night Only, produced by Les Productions Rivard for ARTV, is a Live Event Show nominee; and Property Brothers, produced by Cineflix Inc. for the W Network, is a Lifestyle finalist. Winners will be revealed on May 10 when German TV presenter, actress and singer Barbara Schöneberger hosts the Rose d’Or awards ceremonies in Lucerne.

WOMAN’S WORLD: It’s been a year or three since she lit up home screens as Felicity, but now Keri Russell is set to star in FX’s period drama pilot The Americans. Russell will play an undercover KGB spy who starts to fall in love

GUMMER: will First Cut be the kindest?

with her arranged husband (also a spy). Hmmm – wonder if Scott Speedman is available … Meryl Streep’s talented actress daughter Mamie Gummer, so good in her guest stints with Julianna Margulies on The Good Wife, is the lead in CW’s new medical drama pilot First Cut … three-time Oscar nominee Sigourney Weaver is set to star in her first primetime series, Greg Berlanti’s USA pilot Politcal Animals. She’ll play a former First Lady who is now Secretary of State. In the good old days the networks would have waited until Hillary Clinton left the job — but hey, these are the good new days. Or so they tell me.

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About Evan’s new show, Atom’s new movie, Liz’s Elvis recipes, and Moby’s and Lindsay’s new videos

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE:  Erudite interviewer Evan Solomon will take a page out of Reach For The Top host Alex Trebek‘s dictionary next

SPEEDMAN: Atom-ic man

season when he hosts  CBC’s new reality game show, Canada’s Super Speller, as 12 young finalists vie for the title. (Okay, kids, can you spell S=t-r-o-u-m-b-o-u-l-o-p-o-u-l-o-s?) … fans of Scott Speedman and Arsinee Khanjian will soon to get to see their much-anticipated work in  Atom Egoyan‘s prize-winning Adoration when the drama opens here next month. For a sneak preview, click here … and you’ve probably heard all about it by now, but Lindsay Lohan‘s send-up of her somewhat battered public persona, created earlier this month for Will Ferrell’s Funny Or Die website, gets smarter and funnier every time I revisit it. If you missed it, click here. And enjoy!

SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE: Dutch-based production company Endemol, creator of the controversial Big Brother reality TV franchise, is tapping into the global recession and struggling businesses with Someone’s Gotta Go, a series

TRUMP: going, going ...

set to air on Fox TV. Workers at struggling firms will be enlisted to choose who will get a pay cut, a raise in salary, or lose his or her job completely — based on information about their colleagues’ pay and reviews of their past performance. One troubled company — and a new layoff — will be featured each week.

According to Endemol, the concept “is the reverse of reality shows like The Apprentice or The Rebel Billionaire, in which a business mogul like Donald Trump, Alan Sugar or Richard Branson progressively whittles down prospective employees in a prolonged survival challenge/job interview.”

True — but Survivor candidates have been voting each other off the island for almost two decades, and Big Brother’s ‘houseguests’ have voted to evict each other for the past 10 seasons. So a new show it may be, but a highly original concept it ain’t.

PRESLEY: secret chef?

SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN WITH ELVIS:  Who is it? None other than New York gossip girl Liz Smith, still the showbiz columnist of choice. In her book Dishing Liz writes about her collection of Elvis Presley cookbooks. “These actually exist,” she insists. “Are You Hungry Tonight? …The Presley Family & Friends Cookbook  … The I Love Elvis Cookbook, and the one that is my all-time favorite, Life & Cuisine of Elvis Presley.”  Liz claims she often goes to bed hungry and just reads Life & Cuisine with her mouth watering. “Elvis might have lived longer if he’d eaten only fish, tofu and vegetables,” she muses – “but can one call that living? I can’t see Elvis getting off food anymore than he could get off drugs. Linus had his blanket … Proust his Madeleine … Elvis had his (cook) Pauline on duty.”

DAVID IS HIS LYNCH-PIN: Last year film director David Lynch (Twin Peaks) gave a speech about the nature of Creativity that proved inspirational for

MOBY: Lynch-er

singer-songwriter Moby. Moby says Lynch’s remarks led him to focus on making a new album he loved, without really overly concerned about how many CDs he might sell.“As a result,” he says, “it’s a quieter, more melodic, more mournful and more personal record than some of the records I’ve made in the past,”

EMI Music Canada will release Moby’s new album Wait For Me in Canada on June 30th. And the video for the album’s debut track, Shot In The Back Of The Head, is shot by none other than ol’ Blue Velvet-eyes himself, David Lyuch. And you can watch it here.