LUCID FORGE

Administered by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the Gemini nominations cover an array of categories, including news, documentaries, sports, children’s programs, comedy, and special event coverage. CBC dominates the nominations for Best Information Series, with CBC News: Sunday, Marketplace, and the fifth estate all receiving nods. CBC personalities Peter Mansbridge and George Stroumboulopoulos also received nominations for best Host in a General Interest or Talk Program Series, with Strombo’s nightly cultural mash-up program The Hour receiving an additional Gemini nomination for Best Talk Series. It’s up against The Hills Aftershow and MTV Live, both, interestingly, products of the music-television field that Stroumboulopoulous left when he departed MuchMusic, and took on the creating and hosting duties of The Hour in January 2005.

Culturally, the Gemini nominations cover a variety of fields, running the gamut from dance, theatre, music, and writing. Canadian music writer Paul Myers received a nomination for Best Writing in a Documentary for his work Long John Baldry: In The Shadow of the Blues. The documentary also received a nomination in the Best Biography Documentary Program category. The film explores the life and work of one of blues-rock’s most important, if equally overlooked, figures, examining Baldry’s cultural legacy and musical impact on everyone from Elton John to the Rolling Stones. Myers, a committed music lover and writer who maintains an active music blog, wrote a book about the deep-voiced blues legend called It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues, which was published through Greystone Books last year. Myers says he was “totally shocked” to see his name on the nominee list.

“I’ve never been nominated for anything,” he says from his home base in California. “It’s a cliché, but no one really does the work to get awards. What I’ve just realized is that unexpected respect from your peers is always a welcome echo for the day-to-day labour of being an artist.” Other nominees in the Best Biography Documentary category include Captain Cook: Taking Command, Citizen Sam, Confessions of an Innocent Man, and Lovable.



Carlos Diaz, a Toronto-based actor and writer, and one of the stars of the wildly popular Showcase Original comedy series Rent-a-Goalie, says that he was delighted to learn of the program’s nominations Tuesday morning. After his usual morning routine, he saw a congratulatory email from a director. “I wrote back, ‘Holy crap, are we nominated?’ and he said, ‘Yessir!’”. Rent-a-Goalie’s six nominations come after four nominations (including two wins) in the Canadian Comedy Awards earlier this year. “We were nominated (for Geminis) last year as well,” he explains from his home in Toronto, “but I think I screamed even louder this year. It’s an awesome feeling, and I’m looking forward to partying with my peeps.”

 

The program, which follows the adventures of a group of goalies-for-hire in Toronto, received six nominations in total, including one for Best Comedy and another for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy. Referring to the location of this year’s Gemini Awards Ceremony in Toronto, versus last year’s choice of Regina, Diaz jokes that “my chances of taking a cab with Roger (Abbott) and Luba (Goy, both stars of the now-defunct CBC comedy series Royal Canadian Air Farce) from the airport are dramatically lessened.” Other programs nominated for Best Comedy include Cock’d Gunns, Corner Gas, Kenny vs. Spenny, Odd Job Jack, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Actor/musician Raoul Bhaneja, who is nominated in the producer category for his documentary exploring the odyssey around his creation and performance of a solo Hamlet show (called, appropriately, Hamlet (solo), says he’s surprised by the nomination, but also hopeful. “This has always been the journey of the little show that could, always with a series of kicks and knocks along the way, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” The documentary follows Bhaneja’s years-long odyssey to adapt and stage the Shakespeare classic for solo performance, even as he balances the birth of a child and tries not to let the melancholy of the Danish Prince take over his life. It includes interviews with other famous Hamlets of the past, including Christopher Plummer, Brent Carver, Paul Gross, former Stratford Festival Artistic Director Richard Monette, Soulpepper Artistic Director Albert Schultz, and Ben Carlson, who is currently onstage performing the role at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Bhaneja, a classical actor who also appears on the television program Train 48 and heads the popular local blues band Raoul and the Big Time, is currently in Edmonton performing Hamlet (solo) as part of the city’s Fringe Theatre Festival. He’s humble about Hamlet (solo)’s nomination for Best Arts Documentary, and credits his director and editor Jeff Stephenson, who, he says, “spent a year on the edit and somehow told a forty-seven minute story with 125 hours of footage for seven years!” Other programs nominated in the Best Performing Arts program / Series / Arts Documentary category include Cowboy Junkies: Trinity Revisited, Embracing Da Kink, The Fiddle and the Drum, and Landscape as Muse.

Since the breadth and scope of the Gemini categories is so vast, various awards will be handed out on a succession of evenings, with a culmination of more major awards occurring at the end of November, complete with a television broadcast. The Geminis for the News, Sports and Documentary categories will be handed out October 20th, with Lifestyle, Children’s and Youth awards, and then Drama, Variety and Comedy awards handed out on consecutive nights thereafter. All three galas will be held at the Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex. The official Gemini Awards Gala takes place Friday, November 28th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

For more information, go to www.geminiawards.ca.