Joel Plaskett, Jimmy Rankin to take stage at East Coast awards gala
Halifax band Joel Plaskett Emergency will be among the acts set to rock the 20th annual East Coast Music Awards gala next month, organizers announced Thursday.
The rock outfit and lead ECMA nominee, which also scored nominations for the Junos and the Polaris Prize last year, will compete in seven categories, including entertainer of the year and recording of the year.
Other acts up for multiple awards heading into the gala include indie rockers Wintersleep and singer-songwriters Nathan Wiley of P.E.I. and Jimmy Rankin of Cape Breton.
Rankin and Wiley will also take the stage for the awards show, as will favourite performers such as The Trews and Lennie Gallant.
Also on the gala lineup are the Divorcees, the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, the Lapointes, Chris Colepaugh and the Cosmic Crew, Shanneyganock, Samantha Robichaud, Thom Swift and members of Ode à l'Acadie.
Gallant, The Barra MacNeils and Damhnait Doyle were among the artists previously announced for gigs during the run-up to the awards ceremony.
The East Coast Music Awards, Festival and Conference begins Feb. 7, taking over various locations throughout Fredericton.
A special concert celebrating the event's 20th anniversary will take place Feb. 9.
The celebration ends with the awards gala at the Aitken Centre on Feb. 10.
CBC-TV, which usually airs the awards gala live across Canada, announced in November it would instead produce a one-hour special featuring performances drawn from the four days, slated for broadcast March 2.
However, several CBC Radio programs, including the arts and culture show Q, are planning broadcasts from the weekend event.
'X-Files' returns to theaters, minus alien mythology
LOS ANGELES — The sequel is out there.
The conspiracy theories will not be.
Ten years after the first film and six years after the show went off the air, The X-Files returns to theaters with Fox Mulder, Dana Scully — and a lot riding on the bet that fans want more of the FBI's paranormal-investigating agents.
The film, which remains without a formal title, will dump the long-running "mythology" plotline — that aliens live among us and are part of a colonizing effort — that made it one of the most popular television shows in the late 1990s but ultimately drove away some viewers who found it too complex and ambiguous.
"We spent a lot of time on (the mythology) and wrapped up a lot of threads" when the show went off the air in 2002, says Chris Carter, creator of the series and director of the new movie. "We want a stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one."
That will come as welcome news to fans of the show's stand-alone episodes, which included cults, ghosts, psychics and ancient curses.
Carter refuses to divulge any plot points of the movie, but says he wanted to make the film immediately after the show ended. A contractual dispute with 20th Century Fox kept it on the shelf until the case was settled out of court.
He says the delay may turn out to be a blessing.
"There's a whole audience I want to introduce X-Files to," Carter says. "There were kids who couldn't watch it on TV because it was too scary. Now they're in college. I wanted a movie that everyone could go to."
Whether they will could be a test of the show's legacy, says Blair Butler of the G4TV network, which caters to video-game enthusiasts and science-fiction fans.
"At its strongest, it had really creepy stand-alone episodes," she says. "They turned it into a great franchise. But a lot of years have passed. We'll see if it's fallen off the radar."
She says the film could benefit from an ironic twist: the Writers Guild strike.
"I think it could be a sort comfort food for the people who loved how original the show was and aren't seeing original TV now," she says.
But Carter believes they'll be drawn by something else: the show's stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.
"For me, The X-Files has always been a romance," he says. "They had an intellectual romance that's very rare and restrained compared to so many relationships on TV. I think that's what appealed most to the fans. And they're back."
Leno maintains lead over Letterman
NEW YORK - If David Letterman hoped a deal with striking writers would help him in his battle for late-night supremacy with Jay Leno, it hasn't happened yet. Leno's NBC "Tonight" show averaged 5.17 million viewers last week, despite its writers being on strike and big-name celebrities being encouraged not to cross the picket line.
Letterman, who made a separate deal to bring writers back to his CBS "Late Show," had 4.08 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Leno has a 27 percent advantage over Letterman, compared to 33 percent prior to the writers going on strike.
Leno's victory margin of nearly 1 million viewers comes despite Letterman actually winning last Monday, when Tom Hanks visited to watch Letterman shave the beard he grew during two months off the air.
Besides Hanks, Letterman had Mike Huckabee, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, Tom Brokaw, Howard Stern and Tracy Morgan as guests last week. Leno had Pamela Anderson, Ron Paul, Christopher Titus, reptile expert Jules Sylvester and fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel stop by.
Letterman is having another run of A-listers this week, including Katie Holmes, Denzel Washington, Don Rickles, Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone and Diane Keaton. National ratings for this week's shows were not immediately available.
CBS said one positive sign is that Letterman has beaten Leno in the New York market nine times in his first 11 shows back. In the 30 shows prior to the strike, Letterman won 12 times, Nielsen said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Writers Guild of America said Thursday the organization hasn't decided about whether to bring up Leno on disciplinary charges. The union contends that Leno is breaking their strike rules by writing his own nightly monologue. Leno said the union is wrong.
Craig Ferguson's "Late Late Show," which shares Letterman's production company and also has its writers back, inched closer to NBC rival Conan O'Brien. O'Brien's NBC show averaged 2.07 million viewers before the strike, and 1.99 million last week. Ferguson was at 1.75 million before the strike, and 1.84 million last week.
Directors, Hollywood studios reach deal
LOS ANGELES - Hollywood directors reached a tentative contract deal Thursday with studios, a development that could turn up the pressure on striking writers to settle their 2-month-old walkout that has idled production on dozens of TV shows.
"Two words describe this agreement — groundbreaking and substantial," said Gil Cates, chairman of the Directors Guild of America's negotiations committee. "There are no rollbacks of any kind."
Among other things, the three-year agreement establishes key provisions involving compensation for programs offered on the Internet.
That issue has also been a key sticking point between striking writers and the studios, which broke off talks on Dec. 7.
In announcing the deal with directors, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, expressed hope that it would help end what it called an extremely difficult period for the industry.
It also called on the writers guild to engage in informal discussions to determine if there was a reasonable basis for returning to the bargaining table.
The Writers Guild of America said it would evaluate the terms of the directors' deal. It also reiterated that it has been calling on the studios to resume negotiations.
"We hope that the DGA's tentative agreement will be a step forward in our effort to negotiate an agreement that is in the best interests of all writers," the writers guild said in a statement.
Writers previously said directors do not represent their interests.
The deal with directors gives their union jurisdiction over programs produced for distribution on the Internet and sets a new residuals formula for some paid Internet downloads that essentially doubles the rate currently paid by employers, the guild said.
In addition, it sets residual rates for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet.
"Our industry's creative talent will now participate financially in every emerging area of new media," the studio alliance said in a statement.
The deal was welcomed by others in Hollywood.
"I'm very pleased with the new agreement and I hope it helps speed up the negotiations" with the writers guild, George Clooney said.
Clooney has often commented on the need to resolve the strike to put thousands of people back to work in Hollywood.
The directors guild was well-prepared when it started negotiations Jan. 12.
It had spent $2 million researching the potential value of new media over the next decade and held a series of meetings with key studio heads to establish a basis for the formal talks.
Cates, who's been involved in union contract negotiations for three decades, served as lead negotiator for directors.
He is also producing this year's Academy Awards program, which is imperiled by the writers standoff.
Sunday's Golden Globes were reduced to a news conference after actors refused to cross writers' threatened picket lines.
NBC lost millions of dollars in ad revenue, and award winners were deprived of instant publicity that could have provided a box-office bump.
New media issues also were expected to dominate negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires in June.
The directors guild said late last year that it would delay the start of talks to give writers a chance to come to an agreement with studios.
But the guild clearly lost patience after negotiations between the writers and studios broke off last month and the strike dragged on.
Among other things, the studios' deal with directors says:
• Programs produced for the Internet will be directed by guild members, with the exception of low-budget shows.
• Residuals for downloaded movies will be increased by 80 percent over the current rate paid by employers. Those payments will be based on a distributor's gross, which the guild said was a key point in negotiations. (Distributors' gross represents the amount received by the company responsible for distributing the film or TV program on the Internet.)
• Companies are contractually obligated to provide the guild "unfettered access to their deals and data," the guild said, calling that unprecedented transparency.
• For ad-supported streaming of Internet programs, an initial 17-day free window will be followed by a requirement that companies pay 3 percent of the residual base — about $600 for a network prime-time drama — for 26 weeks of streaming. Companies can continue to stream for another 26-week period by paying an additional 3 percent, or a total of $1,200 for one year's worth of streaming. During a program's first season, the 17-day window is expanded to 24 days to help build audience.
In their talks, the writers guild and studios have clashed over using a percentage of a distributor's gross receipts to determine Internet compensation.
The guild said it sought that approach but was told by the alliance it was an unworkable and unacceptable formula. Instead, the studios offered a flat $250 payment for a year's use of an hourlong TV show on the Web.
The guild balked, citing the $20,000-plus residual that writers now earn for a single network rerun of a TV episode.
Also at issue for the writers guild is unionization of reality and animation writers.
Talks broke down after the alliance demanded the guild take that and other issues off the table, claiming there had been an agreement to drop it.
The guild's next move may be influenced by history.
There's a lingering resentment among members over what they considered raw deals in the 1980s involving what eventually became lucrative home-video and DVD markets.
The writers guild home-video deal was shaped by a deal made previously by the directors guild, following an industry practice of pattern bargaining.
That created resentment among some writers guild members toward the directors.