Hockey Night in Canada theme contest opens
Canadians will have an opportunity to leave their musical mark on the country's most famous sports show with the official launch Thursday of Canada's Hockey Anthem Challenge.
Aspiring composers will be able to submit audio or video files with their bid to provide the new theme music for Hockey Night in Canada.
"Between now and October, we invite musicians to create and everyone in the country to help us select the perfect new music to represent the most famous hockey broadcast in the world," said Scott Moore, executive director of CBC Sports.
"With Canada’s Hockey Anthem Challenge, we will create a new theme for the hockey nation, something that will tell the world what CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada is all about."
The winning entry will receive $100,000 in cash and half of the ongoing performance royalties, with the other half going to Canadian minor league hockey.
At least five semifinalists will be presented to the country and judged by a celebrity panel on a CBC network television special on Oct. 4. The judges will be announced shortly.
"We’re going to create just the right mix [of judges] to ensure we come up with a winner that’s both musically exceptional and appealing to the all-Canadian hockey fan," said Moore.
Two finalists will then face off at the beginning of the HNIC doubleheader on Thursday, Oct. 9, with fans having the opportunity to vote for the winner.
The new theme will be unveiled two days later on the traditional Saturday broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada.
"Canadians have never been shy about anything to do with hockey," said Moore. "This is going to be an event where hockey history is made."
Song entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. ET Aug. 31. Even those without a song in the hunt will able to weigh in on submissions, posting reviews and ratings at the contest website CBCSports.ca/hockey/anthemchallenge.
The contest is open to Canadian residents only.
"Get Smart," "Love Guru" compete for laughs
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Oh, we've got comedy.
"Get Smart" and "The Love Guru" will open in North American theaters on Friday, saddled with middling to bad buzz, and the result could make the weekend no laughing matter for at least one of them.
"Get Smart" -- the big-screen adaptation of the classic TV show -- looks likely to top the weekend rankings with ticket sales of $30 million-$35 million. The $80 million film, which stars Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, is a co-production between Warner Bros. and Australia's Village Roadshow. The two previously partnered on the recent bomb "Speed Racer."
Paramount's Mike Myers spoof "The Love Guru" should conjure about $20 million, finishing third after a second-weekend haul of $25 million or so for Universal's incumbent champion "The Incredible Hulk."
Paramount has been subjected to industry snickering for deciding to release its $60 million comedy at the same time as the clearly stronger "Get Smart." But though Warners is operating from a position of strength, even its willingness to stick with its first-choice date has many suggesting that the situation is less than ideal for either studio.
"The thought was always, 'When is one of these two pictures going to move?"' a rival distribution boss said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they're going to hurt each other and that one of them is going to do better than the other."
Paramount executives said their film's lower cost and a crowded summer schedule make such concerns much ado about something that little could be done about. Additionally, the studio shared the financial burden with independent producer Spyglass.
Myers hasn't appeared onscreen in six years. His biggest live-action bow remains "Austin Powers in Goldmember," which debuted with $73.1 million in July 2002. "The Love Guru" has drawn fire -- some might say free publicity -- from activist groups claiming that its mocking of a phony-baloney Indian spiritual leader treads heavily on Hindi religious sensitivities.
New Oscar rule limits song noms to 2 per film
LOS ANGELES - Last time around, the Oscar songs category was three times "Enchanted" — a trick that may never be repeated.
The number of original songs that can be nominated from a single movie will now be limited to two, according to a rule change by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy's governors approved the change late Tuesday.
Last year, Disney's "Enchanted" had three titles in contention: "Happy Working Song," "So Close" and "That's How You Know." The winner of best original song: "Falling Slowly," from "Once."
The new rule would also have applied in 2007, when three songs from "Dreamgirls" were nominated. That year, the Oscar went to "I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth."
Seinfeld a comedian, not an actor
NEW YORK - Jerry Seinfeld claims a cookbook author is cooking up some fancy semantics by calling him an actor rather than a comedian to minimize the humour in statements she says defamed her.
Lawyers for Seinfeld say Missy Chase Lapine's lawyers resorted to the switch in words to describe Seinfeld when several weeks ago they filed a rewritten version of her lawsuit against him and his wife in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
"Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known actor," Lapine's revised lawsuit said. The original had called him a comedian.
Lapine, the author of "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals," accused Seinfeld's wife, Jessica Seinfeld, of plagiarizing her cookbook when in October she published her own, entitled: "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food."
During an appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman," Jerry Seinfeld said Lapine was accusing his wife of "vegetable plagiarism" and compared her to the three-name killers of John Lennon and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins," Seinfeld said. "Mark David Chapman. And you know, James Earl Ray. So that's my concern."
His lawyers said in court papers filed late Tuesday: "No reasonable viewer could have thought that Seinfeld really meant that Lapine ... might become an 'assassin' simply because she has three names."
Lapine's lawyers have said Seinfeld, best known for the popular television comedy series "Seinfeld," used the Letterman appearance to launch a "malicious, premeditated and knowingly false and defamatory attack" on her.
"The issues of law will be decided by the court, and we are confident of the outcome," Lapine lawyer Howard B. Miller said Wednesday.
Seinfeld's lawyers asked a judge to toss out the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.
In separate court papers, Jessica Seinfeld accused Lapine of falsely claiming she invented the idea of hiding fruits and vegetables in children's meals when "countless prior works utilized this very same unprotectable idea," including a 1971 book. She called the lawsuit "opportunistic."
Canadian war epic to open TIFF
TORONTO - Paul Gross' Passchendaele, an epic about the famously tragic battle in the First World War, will open the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The all-Canadian film, which is poised to become the signature piece of Gross' career, was announced yesterday as the festival's opening-night gala. This is the prestige position in Toronto's annual extravaganza of film.
Gross, widely known as the Mountie from the TV series Due South, wrote, directed and produced Passchendaele, in which he co-stars as a Canadian soldier who returns to the Belgium front despite severe injuries from an earlier campaign. Canadian troops, as they had at Vimy Ridge, proved to be among the most heroic and effective among the Allies fighting the German Imperial Army at Passchendaele, a village near Ypres in West Flanders.
"It is rare that Canadians get to experience their own histories via the moving image, particularly on the big screen," Piers Handling, director and CEO of the Film Festival Group, said yesterday in a statement.
"Paul Gross is an inspiring Canadian and a leader in our industry," Cameron Bailey, filmfest co-director, said in his statement.
"By paying tribute to our nation's heroes -- including his own grandfather, an Alberta veteran of Passchendaele -- Gross uses the visceral charge of movies to contribute a foundation chapter to our national history. While never ignoring the horrifying truths of this or any war, Passchendaele stands as truly epic storytelling from western Canada."
The Calgary-born Gross, 49, comes from a family of Canadian soldiers. After his grandfather served in WWI, his father, Bob Gross, became a tank commander in the Canadian Army. While Paul was growing up, his family moved about from base to base in Canada, the U.S., England and Germany.
As an actor, Gross made his TV debut in 1985 and gradually evolved into a homegrown star who has tapped into the Canadian psyche before, including as the narrator of the 2006 mini-series, Hockey: A People's History.
As a writer, Gross wrote for TV series and specials, including two episodes of Due South and the drama Gross Misconduct in 1993. He also wrote the script for the curling comedy Men With Brooms, which marked his directorial debut. Passchendaele is his second feature as a director.
In the new film, Gross plays an injured soldier who falls in love with a nurse, played by Caroline Dhavernas, while being nursed back to health in Calgary. When her sickly brother enlists, he feels obliged to return to the war effort to protect the youth, who is portrayed by Joe Dinicol. Gil Bellows also has a major role.
The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypes, was fought in several stages for six months in 1917 under horrific conditions, including in water-logged trenches and over muddy fighting terrain. Paralyzed by the brutally bad decisions of the British commander, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the Allies suffered staggering losses in the campaign, which proved to be futile in the overall war effort.
The Canadians were instrumental in what successes could be gained in the second battle of Passchendaele in late 1917. Gross' film tells that tale literally "on the ground." The filming took place in Alberta.