Foundation Features

Principal photography on writer/director Armen Evrensel’s comic sci-fi feature film Space Milkshake began this week in Saskatchewan, the province’s film commission, SaskFilm, announced on Tuesday.

The film, produced by Rob Merilees of Vancouver’s Foundation Features, Holly Baird  and Shane Putzlocher of Regina-based Trilight Entertainment, and Robin Dunne, is about four blue collar astronauts that become trapped on a sanitation station and fall prey to a maniacal mutant rubber duck after all life on earth mysteriously vanishes.

It stars Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings), Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Amanda Tapping (Stargate) and Robin Dunne (Sanctuary).

The shoot is taking place in Regina’s Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios from Nov. 14 to Dec.3.

It is being financed by Telefilm Canada, the SaskFilm Equity Investment Program, the Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit, The Movie Network, Movie Central and SPACE. Executive producers are Tim Brown, Amanda Tapping, Billy Boyd and Kristin Kreuk.

October 15, 2011 - New York Comic Con:  Comic book transmedia company Creative Impulse Entertainment (CIE), film and television production company Foundation Features, and rock 'n roll talent manager Paul Shull, announce a graphic novel based on the upcoming television series, "Mr. Butterscotch", following the adventures of Shull as he travels the globe dealing with his collective of rock stars.

Foundation Features' Executive in Charge of Television Rob LaBelle comments, "Foundation Features couldn't be more thrilled about teaming up with CIE to turn Mr. Butterscotch into a kick-ass graphic novel. Butterscotch’s real life already plays out like a graphic novel, so this is really a perfect opportunity for us. And CIE's the absolute best there is so Butterscotch couldn’t be in better hands. We’re currently producing the TV series Mr. Butterscotch, a reality-doc series following the maniacal adventures of Mr. Butterscotch, the wildly charismatic, heavily inked madman as he pursues the biggest game of all, the wild rock star. Butterscotch travels the world hanging with rock’s royalty and uses the tips and leads he gets from industry friends and music business insiders to propel his quest to find the next rock superstars.  And as the bad ass, sword fighting superhero in his own graphic novel, Butterscotch will take it all to the next level of insanity.  The Butterscotch graphic novel is an  incredible compliment to the TV series.  It’s a dynamic and unique approach to building a fan base in anticipation of the series as well as demonstrating the depth and richness of the Butterscotch brand."

Paul Shull adds,  "The new partnership between Creative Impulse Entertainment and Foundation Features to make a graphic novel about me is quite possibly the worst thing that could happen to my ego."

CIE CEO Jan Lucanus continues, "The 'Mr. Butterscotch' project will be a game changer for comic books and transmedia integration.  We're all pretty stoked on this one!"

CIE's flagship comic book, "JFH: Justice-For-Hire" has become one of the most downloaded martial arts comic books on the world's leading digital comic book store, Comics by ComiXology™.  Foundation Features production credits include "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", "Altitude", and the rock 'n roll feature-documentary"Hard Core Logo 2".  Paul Shull has worked with a slew of musical talent, including the Foo Fighters, MIA, and Robbie Williams.

For more information, go to www.CreativeImpulseEnt.com and www.FoundationFeatures.com

Last week and slightly beyond, in a series of small, dark venues, Canadian punk was dragged out from its burial place and praised.

Toronto indie bar The Garrison saw the launch of Dirty, Drunk and Punk, a lavish visual/text study of Toronto’s punk band BFG and its still-smashing leader, Steve Goof. Author Daniel Jones’s great punk novella 1978, reissued by Three O’Clock Press, was feted in Parkdale bar-restaurant Parts and Labour’s basement, along with Jones’s vile and luminous poetry collection The Brave Never Write Poetry, recently rereleased by Coach House Press. And last Tuesday night, Hard Core Logo II was quietly screened for film promoters, cast and crew members at The Royal cinema on College Street.

A small group of movie advertising strategists sat eating popcorn among the chipped-plaster goddesses in the blood-red room, waiting for what should surely be the Canadian movie event of the fall. (A commercial release date has not yet been set.)

Having been screened just once, to rave reviews, in Whistler, B.C., last December, the buzz about Hard Core Logo II is still slowly gathering momentum. The original 1996 mockumentary was director Bruce McDonald’s biggest commercial and artistic success, appearing in all taxonomies of classic or great Canadian films.

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HARDCORE LOGO 2

RATING: 4

Toronto filmmaker Bruce McDonald is "caught inside my own frame," as his fictional self says in his dizzyingly absurd and at times, unexpectedly tender followup to his 1996 cult hit, a quasi-documentary about a legendary Vancouver punk band's disastrous comeback tour. In wisely opting not to repeat themselves, McDonald and co-writer David Griffith have triumphed with a vastly different and more stationary animal, yet his cheekiness and flair for inspired juxtapositions is intact as he references the original. This time out, McDonald increases the profile of his alter-ego, the filmmaker who returns to Canada after a lucrative Hollywood career. His new mission takes McDonald and a Wiccan video artist to a Saskatchewan dance hall where Bucky Haight, the original's cadaverous punk legend, is producing an album for punk band Die Mannequin's lead singer Care Failure, who resembles a cross between Courtney Love and Catherine O'Hara and claims she's inhabited by the spirit of Joe Dick, the rocker who committed suicide in the original. This brilliantly edited film is at once contemplative and an over-the-top rush with a killer soundtrack. Just don't expect a carbon copy of the original.

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More than a decade after filming the final reunion tour of legendary (and fictional) Canadian punk band Hard Core Logo, filmmaker Bruce McDonald (again played with remarkable authenticity by... Bruce McDonald) remains disturbed by the swift and ugly death of the band's volatile lead singer, Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon in his first film role). When McDonald's vastly lucrative Hollywood career (as with the first Hard Core Logo, we're clearly in an alternate universe) takes a sudden dive, he can no longer contain his inquietude. It is then that the singer of punk band Die Mannequin, Care Failure (played wildly over the top and/or or dead straight by... yes, Care Failure of Die Mannequin) claims to be possessed by the spirit of Joe Dick, and McDonald sallies forth with a Wiccan video artist in search of the truth; in search of peace of mind; in search of a bad hangover, and a mid-life crisis babe, and unusual wildlife.

The original Hard Core Logo is hallowed ground in Canadian cinema, boldly stylistic, darkly funny, and so unrepentantly in-your-face that many of us could hardly believe it was a Canadian film at the time: but above all, it's honest. To call it a mockumentary is a misleading convenience; it's really a hilarious punk tragedy with a documentary conceit. Few films have ever galvanized my attention the way HCL did in the mid-nineties. Accordingly, this is essentially The Empire Strikes Back for my adult life. Like Empire, I've waited a significant percentage of my life to date from original to sequel, and like Empire, the sequel is a more brooding film and leaves us sensing a vastly more complicated world. Does Hard Core Logo II live up to the original? Absolutely, though they're rather different films. If the original HCL is an amphetamine-fueled street fighter trying to punch through your face to get to your brain, HCL II is a self-effacing, philosophical assassin, humbly and genially clowning around in front of you for your pleasure, and deftly screwing on the silencer when you turn your back. McDonald gets great effect using personal footage and facts about his real family to counterweight the comical absurdities of his fictional self. Die Mannequin's tunes keep the adrenaline pumping, and like Dillon, Failure has a furious presence. The edit is razor sharp. David Griffith and McDonald's screenplay meshes beautifully with the original film while still accomplishing something completely different. If there's one more HCL film out there in the ether to make it a trilogy, I'll be thrilled again. Hell, if McDonald makes a prequel trilogy, I'll probably love those, too.

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