About two hours northeast of Toronto stands The Highlands Cinema, a hand made movie palace carved out of cedars and mosquitoes. Every summer for 40 years, families from neighbouring towns and villages in Ontario’s cottage country have braved bear cubs in the parking lot to see everything from “Barbie” to the latest “Despicable Me” flick.
He’ll always be remembered as “the master of The Hollywood Squares.” There was, however, much more to the seven decade-long showbiz career of Peter Marshall. Born Ralph Pierre LaCock back in West Virginia in 1926, Marshall’s TV credits date all the way back to 1949 and a forgotten ABC series he co-hosted along with comedy
I didn’t know it at the time, but this past Monday I did my final guest report for Drive Home host Scott Thompson at Hamilton’s all-news radio station CHML. They wanted a TV commentator to talk about CBC’s Olympic coverge and ratings. I was moving stuff out of storage that day — a hold over
If only this was really the world. This was the view from our living room as the Games of the 2024 Olympics wrapped in Paris. The Olympic ideal seems so far removed from the fractured state of planet Earth, politically, environmentally and on so many other levels. Hats off to France and their Olympic organizers
You might say Japan is having a pop culture moment. From the multi-Emmy award-nominated drama Shogun (all episodes available on Disney+) to a steady stream of utterly bizarre Japanese contestants on America’s Got Talent, Japan is everywhere this year. If you’ve got a hankering for a little TV sushi, I have some other suggestions from
About two hours northeast of Toronto stands a movie palace carved out of cedars and mosquitos. There are more theatre seats in the five screening rooms in this homemade multiplex than there are people in the small town where it exists, Kinmount, Ontario. Yet, from May through October, every summer for 40 years, families from
In the past few weeks, I’ve posted a couple of “From the Vault” episodes over at brioux.tv: the podcast. One featured a 2014 interview with Bill Daily talking about his boss on The Bob Newhart Show; the other was another 2014 interview, this time with WKRP in Cincinnati creator Hugh Wilson. I’ve done others in
Hugh Wilson talked his way into a job at MTM Enterprises at just the right time. When he arrived in the early ’70s, they were busy making sitcom history with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. Wilson, who had no prior TV experience, could often be found up in the rafters, taking a crash