Mar. 15: I have mentioned before that I need to get inspired
to go into TV production. Well here’s
something:
Colm Feore: He’s a Canadian actor and was in Bon
Cop, Bad Cop and The Listener.
I was reading about him the Edmonton Journal “Feore flexes villain
skills” by Eric Volmers on Feb. 10,
2014. Here’s an excerpt:
“It's a chilly day in Calgary
and the actor is sitting in a warehouse in the southeast during a break on the
Alberta-shot sci-fi thriller Painkillers.”
"It's actually terrifying that he can't remember what has transpired," says Penikett, who plays damaged hero Maj. Tom Cafferty. "He has lost a big section of his memory, a whole time period. He's trying to figure it out bit by bit. And for a guy who is used to be in control and on top of it and in charge of his faculties, to have his memory gone like that makes him feel very vulnerable." Painkillers mixes psychology, conspiracies and science fiction, grounding it all in more topical concerns about the traumatic effects of war.
My opinion: This sounds like a pretty interesting story.
Bitten: I saw promos for this show starring Canadian
actress Laura Vandervoort who was on Instant Star and Smallville. She plays a female werewolf. She was in the Metro on Jan. 9, 2014:
“It’s an adult show, and it’s about the relationships and
not just the fact that we’re werewolves.
It’s the family dynamic.”
She has a 2nd degree black belt in Shotokan
karate and says she did: “93% of my own stunts except falling down the
stairs. It’s such a vast range for a
female to get play on television that I loved going to work every day and coming
home and being exhausted but feeling like, ‘Wow, I did that and I didn’t think
I was capable.’”
My opinion: When I saw the promo for the show, I was
like: “Another supernatural show?” I
already watch Vampire Diaries. I
watched the first 2 seasons of Being Human, and then I missed season 3
because my schedule. I did watch a
couple of episodes of season 4 that’s on right now.
Sci-fi nation: I cut out this article “Sci-fi nation”
in the Globe and Mail on Apr. 13, 2013. It mentions all these Canadian TV sci-fi
shows shot in Canada. It’s by Marsha Lederman:
Continuum, which begins its second season this
month, follows Kiera (Rachel Nichols), a police officer in 2077 Vancouver
who in the pilot is zapped back to 2012, along with a group of terrorists
responsible for a deadly bombing. While trying to figure out how to return to
her 2077 life – in particular her son and husband – Kiera also manages to join
the Vancouver police department,
and hunt for the escaped cons. With echoes of contemporary issues – Occupy,
9/11 – the show resonates beyond the sci-fi sphere.
Lost Girl has also been picked up by Syfy. Shot in Toronto,
the show was the most successful premiere in Showcase history when it debuted
in 2010. The Season 3 finale airs Sunday in Canada;
eight days later on Syfy. Season 4 goes into production in June, a few weeks
after Silk, who is pregnant, has her baby.
“In the beginning, it was really hard to define what our
show was. I can remember doing press, and I was, like, it’s an
action-comedy-drama; I just had no idea what to call it,” says Silk. “A lot of
people have compared us to Buffy, which I think is a really flattering
comparison. Sometimes I say it’s like Buffy for grownups, because of
the sexual content.”
The series premiered March 30, attracting the biggest audience for an original series debut in Space’s 15-year history – and some excellent reviews. “Thoroughly impressive, wildly entertaining,” gushed The Hollywood Reporter. “One of the most intriguingly entertaining new series of the year.”
Much has also been made of its ambiguous setting. For example, what appear to be suburban trains in the opening sequence are departing for New York, but the dead woman’s wallet is filled with Canadian currency. “It’s meant to be Generica,” says Manson. “It’s part of the price you pay for this kind of co-production.”
My opinion: I only saw a little bit of the shows Contiuum, Lost Girl, and Orphan Black. They seem pretty good. These kind of shows I have to watch from the beginning so I can follow it. It’s not like crime procedurals where you can watch a random episode here and there and you still know what’s going on.
Motive: “Show's writers search for a Motive” by Glen Schaefer. This is another Canadian TV show that has found success in Canada and the US. It’s published Dec. 14, 2013. Here’s an excerpt:
They're looking for poisons that leave no trace. They want to know what a body looks like after it's been trampled to death by a horse."Based on our Google searches alone, we're probably up there on the most wanted list," said writer James Thorpe who, with colleague Dennis Heaton, shares the title of executive producer on the CTV mystery series Motive.
"What comes first (when writing) is usually some kind
of juicy motive," said Thorpe, who helped launch the show after a 15-year
writing career that began with the adventure series Highlander.
My opinion: I haven’t watched that show. It looks good and all, but I’m not really
interested in watching it.
Mar. 20 Bruce MacDonald: I cut out this Globe and
Mail article “Putting the bite on Twilight” by Gayle MacDonald. It was published in Oct 9, 2010.
Bruce MacDonald created the TV movie My Babysitter’s a Vampire.
"This movie is a vehicle to make fun of pop culture
like the way Mad Magazine would do it in the fifties and sixties," says
McDonald. "Vampires seem to be eternally popular, primarily because
they're sexy.
"The Twilight series supercharged the whole
thing. But her [ Twilight creator Stephenie Meyers's]take on vampires
is structured around abstinence, which I find very strange. Come on, it's not
1972 any more, is it? Vampires are exotic, other-worldly creature that
personify the fun of the night-time world. A concept that is quite appealing to
anybody - but especially kids still living in their parents' homes.
"This script mocks, in a gentle way, the hypocrisies of
the conservative world we've come to live in," says McDonald, who has been
pulling all-nighters, along with the rest of his cast and crew, to accommodate
filming the outdoor sequences in the dark.
"I've done kids' shows before, so it's not like I'm new
to the genre," says McDonald, who has directed several episodes of Degrassi:
The Next Generation, as well as Ready or Not. "But those are
mostly dialogue- or issue-based. This has physical effects, visual effects and
tons of action sequences. It's a fully-loaded kids show."
"A lot of these projects I've been working on 10 years.
But, of course, they all just came together at once. But you gotta love [this
business]- or it's just too difficult sometimes. If you don't love it, it
doesn't matter how much money they pay you, it's not worth it."
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