As announced moments ago on CTV’s ETALK, pop culture expert Tyrone Edwards is the new co-anchor of ETALK. Welcomed by co-anchor Danielle Graham, who is currently on maternity leave, and Lainey Lui, who is filling in for Graham, Edwards marked the first night in his new role with an exclusive interview with Alicia Keys and coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Edwards, who started his television career at Bell Media almost 10 years ago as the host of Much’s RAPCITY, has been reporting for ETALK since June of 2018.
ETALK, now in its 19th season, has returned to production at Bell Media Studios’ headquarters in Toronto, with one rotating host or reporter filming in-studio, while the rest of the team continues to report virtually.
Edwards began his television career as the host of RAPCITY, later becoming a host on Much and E! before becoming a reporter on CTV’s ETALK in June of 2018. His versatility and enthusiasm has landed him many other gigs, including co-host of the IHEARTRADIO MMVAs, MUCH COUNTDOWN, multiple IHEARTRADIO MMVA RED CARPET specials, and weighing in as a fashion expert on original Canadian series, CELEBRITY STYLE STORY.
Today The Shine Network, a federally incorporated social enterprise which commits to empower and celebrate Indigenous Canadian female content creators, goes live online at shinenetwork.ca. Founded by award-winning actor, director, writer and producer Jennifer Podemski (Empire of Dirt, Dance Me Outside, Cardinal, Degrassi: The Next Generation), The Shine Network is currently seeking donors and strategic partners to champion its mandate and to help build its professional development incubator.
Slated to officially launch with full programming in early 2021, the free subscriber-based platform will provide both an exhibition space for content and a talent incubator with virtual training for those pursuing a career in the Canadian film, television and media industry. The Shine Network’s digital cinema space will feature a diverse variety of content made by Indigenous women. Additionally, special presentations will include curated works by established Indigenous filmmakers, virtual artist discussion sessions and exclusive online screening events.
“Being forced to pivot during a pandemic got me thinking about how I can best serve my community and make a positive and lasting impact on the Canadian media landscape,â€Â says Jennifer Podemski, The Shine Network, Founder and CEO. “The Shine Network is my call to action to address the grossly disproportionate realities Indigenous women face when it comes to inclusion, access and funding.â€
Statistics show that the current industry paradigm is not providing equal opportunity to Indigenous female creators and The Shine Network is devoted to shifting this reality with a commitment to fostering talent. The Shine Network’s Professional Development Incubator will provide Indigenous women access to an array of masterclasses and tutorials created to motivate and inspire. All classes will be virtual and custom designed to address the unique challenges Indigenous women face and provide insight and actionable steps to overcoming those obstacles. Subscribers who complete all classes and tutorials will be given access to one-on-one sessions with a select group of virtual mentors.
I’m a huge fan of music documentaries and count Soundbreaking, It Might get Loud, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage and Sonic Highways among my favourites. I’ll add Amplify to the mix.
We spoke to Shane Belcourt about how Amplify came about, and what he hopes viewers will experience as they watch it.
What made you create Amplify?
Shane Belcourt: The producers that I work with wanted to make a music documentary series. The default for that kind of music documentary series is usually the biography series, ‘Here’s the musician, here’s what they’ve done.’ I mean, sure I like them, but I want to watch a TV show that has some artistry behind it, that has some kind of uniqueness that I can’t get anywhere else. I was quite inspired by Dave Grohl’s HBO documentary series, Sonic Highways, as well as the Netflix series, a very popular one, Chef’s Table.
I thought, ‘There’s something about both of these documentaries, the way that they’re structured and the pacing and the points that they bring out.’ But the other big one was when you think about going to musicians and saying, ‘Hey, you’re great. Tell me why you’re great. Rolling,’ they’re going to be like, ‘Uh, no thanks.’
Shane Belcourt
But if you said, ‘Hey, what’s something that you’ve read recently or thought about, or something in our Indigenous world that you’re really excited to explore and think about that’s really shaped you? Will you tell me about that?’ And, of course, every musician is like, ‘Oh yeah, hey, you should read this and I love this part and that part. And here’s what it means to me.’ Through that micro focus, you get the macro feeling of who this person really is. So you get the biography, you get the feeling of who this person is through focusing on one thing that they’re excited to talk about.
One of the things that struck me were the times you’re showing a barn in a field or some flowers. Clearly that was a conscious decision on your part to make this different.
SB: Yeah. I’ve got to really tip my hat to the broadcaster, APTN. I sold them originally from the lookbook and from the pitch deck. I said, ‘Listen. I want to do something that has the pacing, like Chef’s Table, that’s very meditative, that takes time to linger on a shot. We’re in no rush.’
And to their credit, they said, ‘Great.’ One of my friends has this great saying. He’s actually musician. He said, ‘When the world runs, walk slow. When the world goes slow, start running. If you want to stand out, do the opposite.’ And so I think that there’s a history now of documentaries. There’s so many good documentaries. And I’m inspired by the visual treatment that we’re all pushing to.
How did you decide on the songwriters you were going to include?
SB: I work really closely with producer Michelle St. John, and she knows everybody. She’s great. We thought, ‘OK, well, we know what the recipe of the show is: Songwriter + inspiration = an episode.’ So we thought, ‘OK, well, who are 13 songwriters that we’d love to spend time with who we know are articulate, and also a mix between somebody who’s known like iskwÄ“ and someone who’s less known like Lacey Hill?’ We definitely wanted to make a list that had a lot of Indigenous female performers. So that was also a juggling act. You make your big list.
Author Robin Wall Kimmerer
And I would say 80 per cent agreed right off. We called them. They’re like, ‘We love this idea. Totally interested. We’re in.’ And while we made that list of songwriters, we also then made a parallel list of what director would be perfect to work with that songwriter.
One of the things that I enjoyed is you had each person introduce themselves in their Indigenous language. SB: Yeah. So much of welcoming and greeting yourself and introducing yourself to the space or to the people who you’re sharing that space with is to express who you are and where you’re from and what your community and nation is. Who holds you, what group has brought you forward as opposed to, ‘I’m this isolated person named Dale or Bob or whatever.’ That was something that we wanted, too. It just made sense to do that. And the other thing too, is that the musicality of the language was something that we just love to hear. It just gives them a little flavour of something that just to me, sounds a little sweeter and pulls the audience in a little further as they read the subtitles, but hear the sound for most of the people who don’t speak Ojibway.
When people tune in and watch Amplify, what are you hoping that they do? Do you want them to hit up iTunes and look for this music and start Googling these artists and the people who inspired them?
SB: That’s just it. You just nailed it right there. The hope that someone watching the show is that for a half-hour TV block, they get to sit down and be transported into a place that has these unusual and new characters and voices and sounds. And then at the end of it, they’re just thinking a couple of things. One is, for something like in the pilot, ‘I have to go buy a copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book. I want to read it.’ That’s what you hope because it’s such a great book. And then, ‘Oh, I want to check out Cheryl L’Hirondelle. I love the sound of her stuff. It’s so interesting.’ I’m someone who as an artist, I guess ultimately whenever I watch a great movie or a great show, I want to make something. It inspires me to be creative and do what I do. So I hope, ultimately, people watch it and go, ‘I want to sit down and write a song,’ or whatever it is that they do to get out there and just be creative.
Amplify airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on APTN.
John Catucci vividly recalls the moment COVID-19 threw production of the second season of Big Food Bucket List into disarray. They were filming in Georgia, and things got serious really fast.
“We were in Savannah just before the lockdown happened,” Catucci recalls. “Savannah has one of the biggest St. Patrick’s Day parties in the country. We got there just the week before that was going to happen. And then everything changed. When it changed, it changed fast.” And, rather than fly back to Canada, he and the crew piled into a car and hit the road for an 11-hour-plus drive back to Canada via Pittsburgh.
Returning Saturday at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada, Big Food Bucket List once again finds Catucci travelling North America—pre- and during the pandemic—making and tasting dishes in joints you just have to check out.
You’re still filming now. I guess you’re not walking into a restaurant with a restaurant full of people.
John Catucci: We’re following the production protocols. The hand sanitizers are just pumping nonstop all day, making sure masks are on until the last second, until we start shooting and stuff like that. The crew is wearing masks all day. People are getting tested. They’re trying to stay as safe as possible.
Has there ever been anything that you’ve tasted that you didn’t like and had to fake it?
JC: I think I had clam poutine once, years back. And it just didn’t work for me.
For you, yeah.
JC: And that’s a good point. For me, right? I think it was something that I had to learn on this show is that you’re not going to love everything on the menu. Sometimes you as a customer, you ordered wrong, and that’s not on the restaurant. That’s on you. I remember going out to dinner one night and everybody got steaks. I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to do the fish. I’m going to do the halibut. It looks good.’ It just didn’t hit. And again, it’s not their fault.
For Season 2, you went to places like Portland, Winnipeg, you were down in Florida, Seattle, Brooklyn, a wide variety of places you’ve been to. You must be really pinching yourself to get the chance to have gone to some of these cities.
JC: Portland’s got a great food scene, Seattle’s got a great food scene. San Diego’s got great food, that was great too. I love Manhattan. I love going to New York. I love going to Brooklyn, that vibe that happens in that city is unlike any other city in the world. It’s got grit, and it’s got this edge and it’s got this energy that, there’s a rush, there’s a bustle that you don’t find anywhere else. And I’ve never had a bad meal in New York. Never once. Restaurants can’t afford to have bad meals there because there are so many restaurants in there that if you have a bad meal and somebody hears about it, you’re done.
This industry has been hit hard by COVID-19. Do you think it can come back?
JC: I think it can come back. I think it might come back in a different way. Can we go back to sitting down in a restaurant full of other people? I hope so. I really miss that. I miss that energy that happens in there. I miss sitting down at a table and looking over and seeing what is that person having? Oh, that’s coming by, what’s that? I miss that. That was one of the things that I loved about going out to restaurants.
It’s not just a place where you eat. It’s the connection that it has with the people around them. And it’s the connection that it has to the community. And it’s the neighbourhood that sometimes grows around a restaurant. People come in to your restaurant, but then they go to this store and they go to that store, and they go to the paper store, and they were the card store, and they go to the park. That’s how important a restaurant is.
You’re very active on Instagram. Your garden this year has been incredible.
JC: The company is called The Good Seed. Melissa Cameron helps design and create gardens for small spaces, whatever space you have. But my backyard is a small Toronto backyard and she was able to help me design the garden space, what I could grow, and what grows together with what. And even though I’ve got a limited space of two raised beds in a little side garden, the amount of stuff I was able to grow this year was incredible. And again, it comes a lot with her knowledge and this spring, summer, I was able to be home and tend it.
For the past years, I’ve been on the road every spring, summer because that’s when we shoot our show, but I’ve been able to slow everything down and watch this garden just create food for my family to eat. And every morning, I’d go out there with my espresso and I’d water the garden, and I’d see how the tomatoes were doing and how the beans were doing, and my zucchini and my carrots. The garden this year was just spectacular. It was one of the places where I found solace. It was one of those places that helped with my mental health, was able to ground me. There’s nothing like putting your fingers in soil to connect you with the earth. It was a beautiful thing. And I was so, so happy.
Big Food Bucket List airs Saturdays at 8 and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada.
Shaftesbury announced today that season two of Departure has begun production in Toronto. Produced by Shaftesbury and Deadpan Pictures, the gripping drama is directed by Canadian Screen award winner T.J. Scott (Orphan Black, Star Trek: Discovery), and created by Vincent Shiao.
Season two of Departure focuses on the tragic crash of a high-speed automated train – the Apollo – travelling from Toronto to Chicago. Kendra Malley (Emmy® winner Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife) leads the investigation into an accident that leaves multiple deaths in its wake and a web of potential suspects: the tech visionary who invented the train’s control system; the anti-technology politician, and the FBI prisoner who disappears after the crash. When the feds swoop in to initiate a manhunt, Kendra’s investigation evolves from finding the causes of the crash to working with federal agents to capture the fugitive – who may be the root cause of the entire disaster. Along with Archie Panjabi, season two features an all-star ensemble cast including Oscar® winner Christopher Plummer (Knives Out), Kris Holden-Reid (Umbrella Academy), Jason O’Mara (The Man in the High Castle), Mark Rendall (Departure), Kelly McCormack (Killjoys), Karen Le Blanc (Ransom), Wendy Crewson (Frankie Drake), Charlie Carrick (Reign), Donal Logue (Gotham), Dion Johnstone (Sweet Magnolias) and Greg Bryk (Mary Kills People).
Season one will air in Canada on Global beginning October 8 and on Peacock/Universal starting September 17. Departure is distributed by Red Arrow Studios International, with Starlings Television handling the sale to Peacock/Universal. NBCUniversal International Networks (NBCUIN) acquired season one and two for Europe and Africa and season one has already aired in those territories.
Departure is Executive Produced by Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, Malcolm MacRury, Jackie May, T.J. Scott, Paul Donovan, Ailish McElmeel, David A. Stern, Matt Geller and Archie Panjabi. Patrick Cassavetti, Teresa M. Ho and Julie Lacey are Producers.
