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Actor/comedian Martin Short hosts the inaugural Canadian Screen Awards Sunday.
The hard reality of TV these days is that viewing habits are already firmly established, especially on the most competitive, crowded night of the TV week ? Sundays.
The inaugural Canadian Screen Awards ? an arranged marriage between the movies? Genie Awards and TV?s Geminis ? faces an uphill battle for attention, and not just because of the optics of following one of the most talked-about, mulled-over and picked-apart Academy Award telecasts since Marlon Brando famously told the Motion Picture Academy where they could put his 1972 trophy for best actor.
If it?s true that the road to ratings oblivion is paved with good intentions ? Nature of Things, compelling as it might be, is not exactly reelin? them in opposite The Big Bang Theory ? this weekend?s Canadian Screen Awards will be seen by about as many viewers as switched off when Oscar host Seth MacFarlane signalled that, after all that, he would indeed turn Hollywood?s biggest night into an extended episode of Family Guy.
Martin Short, a worthy comedian and a versatile actor in his own right ? check out Damages? third season and Short?s eerily canny performance as haunted attorney-to-the-stars Leonard Winstone, if you doubt that ? will host Sunday?s Canadian Screen Awards ceremony in Toronto, broadcast live (live in some time zones only) on CBC. Short is an idealist at heart, with an abiding passion for Canada?s fragile but fearless homegrown film and TV community. He may have hosted Saturday Night Live?s post-Sandy Hook Christmas show for NBC, as well as playing pitchman for Lay?s potato chips in a Super Bowl ad, and narrated a Cat in the Hat children?s? series for PBS, but he hasn?t forgotten where he came from.
He put himself in the line of fire and willingly opened himself to potential ridicule as a judge on Canada?s Got Talent, not because he needed the gig but because he thought it would be fun, and because he believed that, yes, Canada does have talent, dammit, and it?s about time that talent was given a chance.
Short is just one reason to watch the Canadian Screen Awards, or at least give it a chance.
It?s not just about him, though, as he?s pointed out in pre-show interviews. While Short intends to do what any good host would do ? open big, aim for a hard laugh here followed by a soft sell there, and encourage people to loosen up, let it all out and allow themselves a little fun ? the evening is about honouring the work.
And before you write the work off as being somehow subpar, especially after the Oscars, just remember that this year?s CSA nominees include the Oscar nominated War Witch (also called Rebelle), and that Oscar-winning Life of Pi composer Mychael Danna composed the background score with his brother Jeff Danna for the (short-lived) CBC costume epic Camelot.
The CSA?s movie awards are potentially more significant than the TV awards, because they may encourage people to see a film they might otherwise not have heard of but could interest them. There are also fewer movie categories, and what categories there are make sense.
The TV categories, as with the Geminis, are largely a mess, with no rhyme or reason linking many of the nominated candidates ? virtually nothing for Allan Hawco?s Republic of Doyle, for example, but an absurd amount of overattention to Ken Finkelman?s Good God, almost to the point of satire.
Viewers won?t take a flyer on a TV show they haven?t seen just because it won a Canadian Screen Award, but they might choose to see a movie for that reason. Canadians choose to watch Canadian TV shows because they like what they see, not because they?ve been told to. Rick Mercer was snubbed by the Geminis time and time again, but that hasn?t stopped viewers from flocking to Rick Mercer Report in droves.
The fondly remembered Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys were largely ignored during their best seasons, and even a run of late-in-the-game Geminis for the retiring Flashpoint seemed more of an obligatory afterthought than an indication of genuine admiration.
The Canadian Screen Awards are a game effort, though. It will take several years of maturing before they take on the status and prestige of the U.K.?s BAFTA Awards, but they?ve made a start.
Another reason to watch is for the homegrown red-carpet list, which at press time included, among others, Catherine O?Hara, Kim Cattrall, Sandra Oh, Alan Thicke, Jay Baruchel, Enrico Colantoni, Adam Beach, Stephen Amell, Kristin Kreuk, Erica Durance, Kristin Lehman, Laura Vandervoort and the ever-elegant Genevieve Bujold, Canadian film royalty.
And, of course, the host. (Sunday, CBC, 8 p.m.)
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