Canada’s Gemini nominations revealed
September 1, 2010 by
Kelly Anderson
The 25th annual Gemini Awards, which honor the best in Canadian English-language television, have revealed the nominees selected by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. The winners will be announced on three separate nights: the Industry Gala Presentations on November 2 and 3, and the Broadcast Gala on November 13, followed by a live-to-tape broadcast on Global and Showcase.
Nominated programs include Battle of the Blades, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s reality competition that paired figure skaters with professional hockey players, from Insight Production Co. Ltd. The CBC series was nominated for best music, best performance or host, best direction and best photography, all in the variety program or series genre.
Love, Hate and Propaganda, the CBC’s six-part documentary series on WWII as seen through the propaganda of the time, picked up numerous craft award nominations, including best production design or art direction in a non-fiction program or series, best sound in an information/documentary program or series, best visual research, best writing in a documentary program or series, and two nominations in the best editorial research category.
Another reality competition that was listed alongside Battle of the Blades in the variety program or series category was So You Think You Can Dance Canada, a Dansetv Production based on the format from 19 Entertainment Limited. The series was also nominated for best music/ variety program or series, best photography, best picture editing in a comedy, variety or performing arts program or series, and a nod for host Leah Miller in the best performance or host category.
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) also received a healthy number of nominations, with Paris 1919, a copro between the NFB, 13 Production, Galafilm and ARTE France, picking up a nod in the best history documentary program category; the online component of the doc Waterlife, Waterlife.nfb.ca, nominated for best original program or series produced for digital media – non-fiction and Capturing Reality nominated in the best performing arts program or series or arts documentary program or series. The Film Board also has involvement in two docs up for the Donald Brittain Award for best social/political documentary program: A Dream for Kabul, with InformAction Films and Reel Injun, with Rezolution Pictures and CBC News Network. Other projects nominated for that award are ID: Productions Inc’s Broke., Stormy Nights Productions’ Up Against the Wall and Water On the Table Inc.’s Water On the Table.
Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge’s Reel Injun was acknowledged by the Academy with a nomination for best direction in a documentary program, alongside fellow nominees Rosie Dransfeld for Broke, Julian Jones for The Great Sperm Race, Rob King for Silent Bombs: All for the Motherland and Nimisha Mukerji and Philip Lyall for 65_RedRoses.
For best direction in a documentary series, the nominees are Mike Downie for One Ocean – Birth of An Ocean, Leon Laflamme for Love, Hate and Propaganda – Truth and Total War, Jeff Semple for Ancestors in the Attic – Black Market Baby?, Stavros Stavrides, Leslie Lucas and John Westheuser for License to Drill – Paydirt and Wendy Treuman for Mega Builders – Big Rig.
The nominees for best documentary series include Aftermath from Cream Productions, Down the Mighty River from Rezolution Pictures, License to Drill from Pixcom Productions Inc., The View from Here from TVO and Word Travels from Omni Film Productions Limited.
White Pine Pictures’ Genius Within – The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, Productions Grand Nord’s Karsh is History and Take 3 Productions and France’s 13 Productions’ Prokofiev: The Unfinished Diary are all nominated for the best biography documentary program.
For best reality program or series, Temple Street Productions’ Canada’s Next Top Model was nominated, as well as The Cupcake Girls from Force Four Entertainment Inc, the CBC’s Dragons’ Den and Should I Stay or Should I Go Productions’ Love it or List it.
Up for the best general/human interest series, nominees include Ocean Entertainment’s family Renovation, Juxtapose Productions’ Hell on Hooves, Creative Atlantic Communications’ Remedy Me!, WIWA Productions’ Tosca: Flexing at 49 and Weight To Go IV Productinos’ X-Weighted: Families.
Best lifestyle/practical information series nominees include RVR Productions’ Agent Vs Agent, Whalley-Abbey Media’s Chuck’s Day Off, The Holmes’ Group’s Holmes Inspection , Insight Production Co.’s How to Look Good Naked Canada and Frantic Films’ Til Debt Do Us Part.
For lifestyle hosts, the nominees are Lynn Crawford for Pitchin’ In (for the ‘Shrimp’ episode), Chuck Hughes for Chuck’s Day Off (‘My Toughest Critics’), Canada’s Next Top Model host Jay Manuel (‘A Warm Safe Place’), Sarah Richardson for Sarah’s House and co-hosts Anna Wallner and Kristina Matisic for Anna & Kristina’s Grocery Bag series (‘Cowboy in the Kitchen’).
The remainder of the nominations can be found at the Geminis site.
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