Rock band Triumph reunites
NEW YORK - The rock band Triumph is reuniting, but you'll have to go overseas to see them.
Rik Emmett, Mike Levine and Gil More will reunite for the first time in two decades at the Sweden Rock Festival outside Solvesborg, Sweden, in June.
An organizer of the festival says they jumped at getting Triumph to play at the festival after the band was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame and some of the members mentioned they might enjoy doing something together someday.
Triumph was known for songs like "Magic Power," "A World of Fantasy" and "Somebody's Out There."
Nominees announced for new Canadian Indie Awards
David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and Sarah Polley's Away from Her are competing for best feature film for the Canadian Indie Awards, a new award created by the Canadian Film and Television Production Association.
The CFTPA announced a list of nominees Monday in film, television and new media.
Organizers say the awards, scheduled for Feb. 20, are intended to recognize the talent of Canada's independent producers.
Robert Lantos is the producer for Eastern Promises and Daniel Iron, Jennifer Weiss and Simone Urdl for Away from Her.
Luc Déry and Kim McCraw of Micro_Scope have earned two nominations in the feature film category for Congorama and Continental, Un Film Sans Fusil.
The Tracey Fragments, which Bruce McDonald directed and produced with Sarah Timmins and Paul Barkin, is also nominated for best film.
In the best mini-series category, Dragon Boys, St. Urbaine's Horseman and October 1970, all of which aired on CBC, are competing with Redemption SK and Above and Beyond.
The nominees for best TV movie were Luna: Spirit of the Whale, Abducted, A Life Interrupted, In God's Country and The Robber Bride.
CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie, produced by Michael Snook, Susan Flanders-Alexander, Clark Donnelly, Mary Darling and Zarqa Nawaz, is vying for best TV comedy with Corner Gas, produced by Virginia Thompson, Brent Butt and David Storey.
Other contenders are Rent-a-Goalie, The Jane Show and Moose TV.
Best drama nominees are:
Blood Ties.
Durham County.
Intelligence.
Race to Mars.
Regenisis III.
Best documentary are:
Jonestown: Paradise Lost.
Radiant City.
Flight from Darkness.
The Bodybuilder and I.
Saving Luna.
The CFTPA is an industry organization representing 400 companies engaged in the production and distribution of English language TV programs, films and new media.
"Ratatouille" scores Golden Tomato Award
NEW YORK - "Ratatouille" and "Once" warmed the hearts of moviegoers and critics alike — and now, they've taken top honors in the ninth annual Golden Tomato Awards.
The Golden Tomato Awards pay tribute to the best-reviewed films of the previous year as determined by the Web site RottenTomatoes.com, which compiles reviews from print, online and broadcast film critics to measure the percentage of favorable critiques.
"Ratatouille," the animated gem about a rat with unexpected culinary skills, earned a 96 percent ranking on the site's Tomatometer. The Irish romance "Once," which won for best limited release film and best musical, scored 98 percent.
"Atonement" scored the Golden Tomato for romance. "The Bourne Ultimatum" won in the action/adventure category, "Juno" was the best comedy and "No Country for Old Men" the best thriller.
"Away From Her" was named best drama, "Sicko" won best documentary and "Grindhouse" was the top horror flick. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" took a Tomato for science-fiction/fantasy and "Enchanted" won best family film. "The Lives of Others" was the top foreign film.
The Moldy Tomato — awarded to the worst-reviewed film of the year — was thrown at "Because I Said So."
Indiana Jones Will Be A Valentine's Day Tease
Nothing says romance and love like Indiana Jones. Actually, lots of things say romance more than Indy, but it looks like the lover’s holiday, Valentine’s Day, is when Indy will make his presence known with a long awaited trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
According to CHUD, the trailer for the upcoming Indiana Jones adventure will be teased on Entertainment Tonight on February 14th, as well as make its theatrical debut. Most likely the trailer will the be available on IndianaJones.com the next day, February 15th.
The Feburary 14th theatrical debuts include the romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe, Fox’s Jumper, Disney’s sequel Step Up 2 the Streets, and Paramount’s Spiderwick Chronicles. Looking at those, Indy’s trailer probably has the best chance of being attached to Spiderwick, since it is a Paramount vehicle. At the same time, Jumper might appeal more to that Indy-action crowd than the more fantastical Spiderwick Chronicles.
Plain White T's singer lands a date with Delilah
It took five years, one hit song and two Grammy nominations, but Plain White T's singer Tom Higgenson finally got his date with Delilah.
Delilah DiCrescenzo, 24, the Olympic track hopeful who inspired song-of-the-year nominee Hey There Delilah, will accompany Higgenson, 28, to the Grammys.
She says Higgenson left a voice mail the day the Grammy nominations were announced. Then she read online that he planned to invite her to the Feb. 10 awards ceremony.
The singer finally asked her last week, just before the band left for a European tour.
The two met through a mutual friend. Higgenson wrote Delilah to impress his new crush, but she wasn't interested, and the long-distance romance depicted in the song is fiction. The single went to No. 1 in Billboard last summer. It's up for best pop performance by a duo/group and song of the year.
"It's kind of weird, because we still don't really know each other," Higgenson says. "I don't think it'll be awkward, but it'll be interesting. I've never been on a first date that has been this high-profile."
Oscar noms arrive, but will show go on?
LOS ANGELES - Film fans finally will soon learn who's competing for this season's Academy Awards. Now all we need to know is whether any nominees will turn up for the big show amid a writers strike that has thrown the awards season into turmoil.
The list of Oscar nominees Tuesday is expected to include such luminaries as Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis and Angelina Jolie.
That smattering of talent alone would ensure that a lot of people at home would tune in to the Feb. 24 ceremony. But without the cooperation of the striking Writers Guild of America, celebrities might honor the union's picket lines and stay away from the Oscars, leaving the show's planners to either scrap the telecast or come up with some new form of Oscar ceremony unlike anything audiences have seen before.
The word around Hollywood is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a backup plan to put on the show without the blessing of writers and stars, but they declined to disclose details.
Gil Cates, producer of the Oscar telecast, has vowed the show will come off no matter what, hinting the program could be padded with clips from 80 years of Oscar history if writers and stars do not cooperate.
Officially, the academy says it is moving ahead with the red carpet and awards ceremony as usual.
"We are planning to have our show on Feb. 24 at the Kodak Theatre with an audience of 3,300 people and a television audience significantly larger than that," said academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger.
Next to the Super Bowl, the Oscars are the most-watched annual broadcast in the United States. Last year, 40.2 million Americans tuned in to the Oscars.
The writers strike already took down Hollywood's second-biggest film honors, the Golden Globes. With the guild planning pickets outside and declining to let writers work on the show, stars fell in line and refused to attend.
The swanky, televised Globe banquet was scrapped and replaced with a news conference to announce winners. No one showed up to accept awards in person.
If the Oscars were forced to go ahead with a show boycotted by nominees, a winner's name may not be preceded with the traditional phrase, "And the Oscar goes to ...", but something more like, "And we'll be sending over a courier to leave the Oscar on the doorstep of ..."
Academy executives and ABC, which airs the Oscars, hold out hope the strike might be over before the awards. If not, guild leader Patric Verrone has said the union also will not allow writers to work on the Oscars.
Writers walked off the job Nov. 5 over their share of potential profits from programming on the Internet and other new media. Awards shows have become key ammunition for the guild to try to bring producers back to the table after negotiations broke down Dec. 7. Talks could resume as early as this week.
Yet the Academy Awards are a big step above the Golden Globes and other honors jeopardized by the writers strike, so some in Hollywood think the guild might relent and let the Oscars go on as planned if the strike lingers until then.
"It would be in the writers' best interests to come to some kind of resolution, if only temporary, so the awards could go on," said Richard Zanuck, producer of Oscar best-picture winner "Driving Miss Daisy" and the recent Golden Globe winner for musical or comedy, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."
"Canceling the Academy Awards is something almost too big to contemplate. Any sympathy toward them in my estimation would evaporate."
Potential Oscar nominees include "Sweeney Todd" stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, along with the film's director, Tim Burton.
Among others in the running are Clooney for the legal drama "Michael Clayton," Day-Lewis for the oil-boom epic "There Will Be Blood," Jolie for the terrorism saga "A Mighty Heart" and Blanchett for the Bob Dylan tale "I'm Not There" and possibly the historical pageant "Elizabeth: The Golden Age."
Javier Bardem is considered a potential supporting-actor front-runner for the crime saga "No Country for Old Men," which also is expected to earn a directing nomination for Ethan and Joel Coen.
Comparative unknowns also are likely to factor into the mix, including Ellen Page for the teen-pregnancy comedy "Juno," Nikki Blonsky for the musical "Hairspray" and Marion Cotillard for the Edith Piaf tale "La Vie En Rose."
While everyone finally will know who's nominated, it'll take awhile to get a sense of who might show up, both among contenders and other celebrities attending the show. The academy sometimes begins disclosing awards presenters well before the nominations come out, the deluge of announcements providing steady publicity as the show approaches.
A year ago, the academy did not begin making announcements on celebrity presenters until after the nominations. But two years ago, a handful of celebrity presenters were disclosed during the buildup to the nominations, among them Jamie Foxx, Hilary Swank, Tom Hanks and Jennifer Aniston.
Academy spokeswoman Unger said Oscar talent bookers are in talks with stars to appear on this year's show, but it was uncertain when any of that talent will be firmed up and announced.
Oscar historian Tom O'Neil is skeptical that the Oscars would get some last-minute deal from the guild so the show could go on.
The guild has signed agreements with smaller shows such as the Screen Actors Guild Awards or the Spirit Awards honoring independent film, but "they've gone after the biggies with ferocity and no mercy at all," said O'Neil, a columnist for the awards Web site theenvelope.com.
"It's clear that they have the Oscars in their sights next," he added. "Just because the Oscars feel they're special because they get treated like superstars doesn't mean anything. There's no star treatment here for the ultimate show in show business."
Lohan, Murphy lead Razzie worst-of noms
LOS ANGELES - Advice for actors looking to get nominated for worst performance: multiple roles help. Lindsay Lohan and Eddie Murphy scored multiple nominations Monday for the Razzies, which sort out the worst that Hollywood dredged up the previous year.
Lohan's thriller, "I Know Who Killed Me," in which she plays two characters who may or may not be the same person, received a leading nine Razzie nominations, among them worst picture of 2007.
Murphy's "Norbit," released amid a film-honors season that earned Murphy an Academy Awards nomination for "Dreamgirls" last year, received eight Razzie nominations, five of them for Murphy alone, more than anyone has ever gotten in a single year.
Besides worst picture, "Norbit" had nominations for Murphy as worst actor in the title role, supporting actress as Norbit's beefy wife, supporting actor as an Asian man and worst screen couple for Norbit opposite either of Murphy's other characters. Murphy also shared a screenplay nomination for co-writing "Norbit."
"We decided that each of his characters was so offensive that he deserved individual nominations," said Razzies founder John Wilson.
According to Wilson, Murphy's closest competition for worst screen couple is Lohan in "I Know Who Killed Me," in which she plays a small-town girl abducted by a psychopath and an alter-ego, a stripper who's missing body parts.
Lohan's movie played like a cross between the torture tale "Hostel" and "The Patty Duke Show," Wilson said.
For worst actress, Lohan polled more heavily than any actor since Sofia Coppola in "The Godfather Part III," Wilson said.
"`I Know Who Killed Me' is the most fabulously brainless movie since `Showgirls,'" which Razzie voters picked as the worst movie of the 1990s, Wilson said. "By the end of it, you still don't know what happened. Are they twins or aren't they? Did she imagine it? Can I please have my hour and 50 minutes back?"
The other worst-picture nominees were "Bratz," a live-action take on the cartoon about four chic young girls; "Daddy Day Camp," with Cuba Gooding Jr. starring in a sequel to Murphy's "Daddy Day Care"; and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," Adam Sandler and Kevin James' comedy about firefighters posing as a gay couple.
Sandler and Gooding joined Murphy in the worst-actor category, along with Nicolas Cage for "Ghost Rider" and Jim Carrey for "The Number 23."
Lohan was cited twice as worst actress for "I Know Who Killed Me," while the four "Bratz" stars — Logan Browning, Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos and Skyler Shaye — shared a nomination. Also nominated were Jessica Alba for three films, "Awake," "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and "Good Luck Chuck"; Elisha Cuthbert for "Captivity"; and Diane Keaton for "Because I Said So."
Along with Murphy, supporting actor included Orlando Bloom for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," James and Rob Schneider for "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" and Jon Voight for "Bratz," "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," "September Dawn" and "Transformers."
Besides Murphy, supporting actress nominees were Jessica Biel for "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" and "Next," Carmen Electra for "Epic Movie," Julia Ormond for "I Know Who Killed Me" and Nicollette Sheridan for "Code Name: The Cleaner."
A spoof of Hollywood awards, the Razzies made their announcement the day before the Oscar nominations come out. Razzie "winners" will be announced Feb. 23, a day before the Oscars.