Last Saturday night Smallville star Allison Mack (who plays Chloe Sullivan in the Vancouver-filmed series) hosted the Crazy8s Short Film Festival, which was held at the Centre for Performing Arts on Homer Street. The festival began in 1999, and is a competition in which directors have eight days to produce a movie using 800 feet of film on an $800 budget. This year, 60 filmmakers pitched their ideas over a span of two days to a judging panel of seven B.C. film industry players. After final selections, entrants were given a meeting with story editors (hosted by CBC Vancouver), a camera package and thousands of dollars worth of grip/lighting gear to work with.
Moonlighting in Vancouver: After having a recurring role in Showtime’s locally filmed series, The L-Word, actress Cybill Shepherd (Moonlighting) will return to Vancouver to play the mother of actor James Roday in at least two episodes of USA Network’s comedy-drama Psych, playing a free-spirited psychologist. When she returns from Europe to visit ‘Shawn’ (Roday) and ex-husband ‘Henry’ (Corbin Bernsen), Shepherd’s character stirs up trouble. Both Psych and The L-Word are prepping for new season starts in Vancouver.
Vancouver’s Rainmaker partners with Stan Lee: Comic book legend Stan Lee and his production company POW! Entertainment have partnered with Vancouver’s Rainmaker Entertainment to launch Legion of 5, a new superhero property. Legion of 5 — owned jointly by Rainmaker, POW! and Brighton Partners — is planned as a series of CG-animated films but will take a cross-platform approach to include games, online and mobile releases, and a merchandise component. Details of the characters and storyline are being kept under wraps, but plans call for Rainmaker to create the look of the characters as well as develop and produce the feature-length CG-animated film properties.
