Monday, October 29, 2007

This Hour Was 65 Minutes...

So the Geminis road show rolled through Regina this weekend. CBC Arts and The Globe & Mail and Playback all nicely summarize what was essentially a slick, quick, and relatively painless Gala awards ceremony.

All and all, it was not embarrassing...(my highest grade for most things we all do).

Taped over two hours but only one hour played live on the CBC, it was a Slings & Arrows and Corner Gas-fest, with the two programs snagging four and three trophies respectively.


Tip of the hat to friend of the blog Mark Farrell for his well deserved win for Best Writing in a Comedy Series...except he wasn't here to accept in person as he needed to be back in Halifax to keep running his other show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. That's okay Mark, we forgive.

SaskFILM threw a funtastic after party (David Moses, were you there?).

My only real bone to pick is with the Globe's John Doyle and his Friday editorial bitchfest about the Geminis as a whole:

Over its 22 years, The Geminis have become a joke, and the entire event is in serious need of an overhaul. It's actually smart of the CBC - to which the event returns after a couple of years on Global - to keep it to an hour. After an hour, along come the Desperate Housewives (ABC, CTV, 9 p.m.), and those ladies would just crush the Geminis.

The purpose of the Geminis is to celebrate excellence in Canadian English-language television. The problem is that their standards and methods have been questioned too often for the existing system to remain.


He goes on to criticize and criticize, and a lot of his points are valid...but I kept waiting for some solutions. Nada. And slamming something and saying it's broken without any suggestions for how to make it better is like trashing a screenplay without giving any notes on how to fix it...you're just not helping.

But all in all, a good weekend. The biz was celebrated, saw a lot of friends and colleagues from in town and across the country, plus came away with a new gig...and what more do you want from an industry awards affair, really.

2 comments:

Frank "Dolly" Dillon said...

Well I guess you are not easily embarassed.

Here's a couple of thoughts -- if it's gonna only be a hour, please lose the skits and let people who have won something have the time instead of using it to pimp George S's "charms".

Here's another one -- we may have hit an all time low when the last award of the night is for "a performance in a program not eligible for a Gemini" drop this catagory now.

And one more, even though I was a producer on a show that won one of them, can there be anything more patronizing than the "Canada Award"?

wcdixon said...

"blushing"

1) agreed (cutting off Paul Gross..."awkward") but c'mon, the opening bit was okay

2) agreed

3) extra agreed

Okay, you've articulated what I admit a lot of us were thinking....so I'll rephrase - not 'really' embarrassing.