Tom
An Old Friend
While reading this article on New SciFi Shows at TWATEOTU I found this headline.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2005/31/c0634.htmlCelebrating the Best in Sci-fi and Fantasy - THE 2005 SPACEY AWARDS
A World Exclusive - Sunday, May 29 @ 9pm ET / 6pm PT
Viewer's choice voting starts April 1 at www.spacecast.com!
TORONTO, March 31 /CNW/ - Spider-Man 2, Star Trek: Enterprise and
Stargate SG-1 are among some of the top nominees announced today for The 2005
SPACEY Awards, airing Sunday, May 29 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on SPACE. The SPACE
production team will once again travel the globe to celebrate the best in
sci-fi and fantasy. Hosted by new SPACE on-air personality Kim Poirier along
with Jonathan Llyr and Natasha Eloi, the SPACEY Awards continue to be the only
broadcast event in Canada that honour the best in genre film and television.
"It's our third year of the SPACEY Awards, the only awards show that
actually brings the celebration to the artists, wherever they might be. No red
carpets, no live-studio audience, no fashion faux pas. Just lots of fun, lots
of clips from your favourite movies, and lots of awards voted on by the SPACE
viewers themselves. With a new host, Kim Poirier, of Decoys fame, and
on-location reports from the usual gang of space cadets, this year promises,
like all good sequels, to be bigger and better than years past," says Paul
Gratton, VP and general manager of SPACE: The Imagination Station.
Viewers will once again have a chance to get involved by voting online in
nine Viewer's Choice categories from April 1 to May 15. To vote, and for a
full list of categories and nominees, please visit
www.spacecast.com/spaceys05. This year's recipients of the special achievement
and the lifetime achievement awards will be announced on April 18th
Last year's big winner was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which
won the SPACEY for best science fiction/fantasy movie and best visual effects.
Peter Jackson - who also received a special achievement award for his work on
the trilogy - accepted the SPACEY awards from New Zealand. Of the awards -
which are shaped as alien heads and made of polished aluminium - Jackson cited
that he would "put them up next to the computer and have a look at them every
day."
TORONTO (CP) - The hero is a cynical loner. A private eye for hire.
His world is dystopian. A bleak, rainy cityscape with smokestacks belching fire, slow-moving ceiling fans, dusty shafts of window light, all set against a backdrop of Vangelis-sounding music. No, it's not Blade Runner, but close. The style of that science fiction noir classic has been influencing successors for two decades now, and the newest project to pay homage is called Charlie Jade.
The 20-episode series, a rare Canada-South Africa co-production, debuts April 16 on Space: The Imagination Station.
The Canadian co-creator and executive producer Robert Wertheimer (Bollywood-Hollywood, Margaret's Museum) says the tribute occurs off the top of the first episode and was deliberate.
"We felt we had to pay homage to Ridley Scott and Blade Runner at the very, very beginning in order to set the tone," explains Wertheimer. "An homage to someone who broke new ground, because the entire series was dedicated to breaking new ground."
But instead of tracking down runaway humanoids like Harrison Ford's Deckard, Charlie Jade finds himself caught up in a secret project that has opened gateways to two other parallel worlds. This is a future where five multinational corporations are ruling civilization, and the biggest of them all, Vexcor, has developed a technology to access alternatives to our world, including a pristine one not yet ravaged by environmental degradation. But it's no utopia. Terrorists lurk there to attack Vexcor's plans.
In a cast and crew consisting mainly of Canadians, South Africans and Brits, Jade is played by an American, Jeffrey Pierce (Astronauts) who admits that from Deckard to Han Solo, Harrison Ford has been an acting inspiration since he was a kid.
"He plays heroes who have certainly a dark side to them and who are fallible. And that sort of human element is not there in most acting that you see in those prototypical hero roles."
Wertheimer also says that Jade is far from the stereotypical good guy.
"Often he fails. The choices he makes cause suffering or pain or death to other people.
"It's a show designed completely differently from any other show, with a very diabolical plan to present people with all the human failings."
One of the most failed is 01 Boxer, the prodigal son of the founder of Vexcor who feels he ought to be the heir apparent despite his ruthlessness and deceptive ways. Not surprisingly, Canadian actor Michael Filipowich doesn't see his character as a villain.
CHUM Serves Up New Sci-Fi Series at MIPTV
TORONTO, April 1: At MIPTV, CHUM Television International will be rolling out Ice Planet, a new science-fiction series that will be shot in HD.
It is expected that the series will comprise of five seasons, each of 22 one-hour episodes. Season one production begins in July, for broadcast on CHUM's SPACE: The Imagination Station in 2006.
Starring Michael Ironside, the series is a Canada-U.K. co-production from SpaceWorks Entertainment and Highgate Films. It follows Commander Jonas Trager (Ironside) and his crew from the spacecraft Magellan who crash on a mysterious planet of ice following a devastating apocalyptic attack on Earth by a highly advanced alien species. Creator Hendrik Hey notes, "Our heroes are thrown into a mythical and a fantastical journey of multiple universes and the unknown. To survive, they must evolve."
Kevin Byles, the VP and general manager of CHUM Television International, commented, "We couldn’t be more pleased to be the exclusive distributors of this exciting new series. With such a strong production team and the talent of Michael Ironside, Ice Planet is sure to be one of the next great names in science fiction television. The series is a perfect fit to CTI’s catalogue of unique and highly-targeted programming."
Canadian content definitions in the film/video, broadcasting and sound recording sectors are used for two main purposes:
1. to determine access to direct funding or to access the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit Program and
2. to measure television and radio broadcasters' conformity with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Canadian content regulations. All the Canadian content definitions in these sectors can trace their origins to CRTC radio and television initiatives in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the chairmanship of Pierre Juneau.
I'm not that cruel!skwirlinator said:Sure
You're going to make me use IE arn't you...