The power and enduring legacy of a children’s television show was on full display Saturday night at a gala screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe,” is the heartfelt new film from director Robert McCallum. He was embraced by a packed house Saturday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Theatre.
On Wednesday, Parrot Analytics posted their quarterly report card on the streaming industry. Five of the companies — Netflix, Disney (Disney+ and Hulu), Warner Bros Discovery (Max), Paramount Global (Paramount+) and NBCUniversal (Peacock) are publicly traded and share data. The parent companies behind two others, AppleTV+ and Amazon Prime Video, do not report subscriber numbers.
It’s one of the oldest business practices in the book: go global, sell local. Nobody knows this better than Amazon, and they’re applying it, big time, to their streaming service Prime Video. That was made abundantly clear Wednesday in Toronto at a press event, ably hosted by Citytv’s Liem Vu, and staged as “Prime Video
Amy Poehler’s documentary on Desi and Lucy premieres Friday on Amazon Prime Video. Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz’s iconic sitcom I Love Lucy (1951-’57) can still be seen weekdays in the greater Toronto area (on Hamilton’s CHCH) as well as on streaming platforms (Prime Video, Apple TV or your Roku device). If you’re new
If you thought Aaron Sorkin had some ‘splainin’ to do for liberties taken with his biopic “Being the Ricardos,” you might want to compare it to this new documentary from a first-time director who knows from comedy — Amy Poehler. With the help of 23 hours of recorded conversations left behind by Lucille Ball, Poehler
Imagine going into a Big Brother-like room with ten top comedians. Let’s say they’re all Canadians. Why not name them: Colin Mochrie (Whose Line is it Anyway?), Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall), Andrew Phung (Run the Burbs), K Trevor Wilson (Letterkenny), Tom Green, Caroline Rhea, Deb DiGionanni, Jonathan Lajolie, Brandon Ash Mohammad and Mae
Way back in July of 1960, TV Guide ran its 10th cover story on Lucille Ball. The headline was terse: “Humiliated and Unhappy.” Writer Dan Jenkins caught up with TV’s “zany redhead” two months after her divorce from Desi Arnaz and right before a career misstep in a Broadway musical called “Wildcat.” Jenkins wrote that
Aaron Sorkin takes liberties. The creator/executive producer of The West Wing moved a few facts around in telling the story of electronic television inventor Philo T. Farnsworth with his Broadway play “The Farnsworth Invention” (2007). For one thing, he wrote that Farnsworth was defeated in court by wiley RCA boss David Sarnoff over his patent