We previously called our annual report on emerging talent 10 to Watch. But the field of topnotch young actors, writers and directors in this country continues to expand, so we had to make it bigger, and we have added producers to the mix for the inaugural Next 25. These up-and-coming men and women have made a splash in 2008 - or they will be doing so soon - on the big screen, the small screen and/or the third screen.

CBC has had its fall-launch liftoff, offering up a balanced mix of shows of generally strong quality. That much is not surprising. What is especially heartening to Ceeb folks is that a number of these shows are drawing solid ratings, with a couple of excellent tallies.

Strong contingent of homegrown features at TIFF signals maturing industry

This year's bumper crop of Canadian movies at TIFF will send people to their basements in search of old program books to see if there has ever been a comparable lineup in the festival's 32-year history. But they won't find one quite like it, because this is the year our film industry comes of age.

Whether it makes you bolt for the vomitorium or head for moral high ground, horror is big business for the entertainment industry.

The television medium can learn from its own history when mapping out its digital future.

Director Richie Mehta was so determined to get his passion project made that he was willing to go all the way to India to shoot his debut feature using a prosumer camera that he could fit in the palm of his hand. But that was before he met cinematographer Mitch Ness, whose experience with high-def opened his eyes to the possibilities of the medium.

After a three-year hiatus from directing feature films, Atom Egoyan is back in preproduction on Adoration, a drama set for a Sept. 17 start date in Toronto. His eleventh movie - and seventh with producer Robert Lantos - explores familiar thematic territory for the Oscar-nominated auteur, exploring intimacy and the nature of our relationship to media.

Atom Egoyan and Robert Lantos are re-teaming for Adoration, the Oscar-nominated director's 11th feature film and his seventh collaboration with the head of Serendipity Point Films

What's the magic formula that feeds and nurtures the Quebec feature film industry to hit after hit - and has for the past decade? The latest example of its seemingly inexhaustible surge came the Canada Day weekend, when Alain DesRochers' thriller Nitro opened to $1.2 million on 124 screens in its home province.

At first glance it may seem that the success of Apple's Final Cut Pro nonlinear editing software has prompted a return of Adobe's own Premiere application to the Mac platform, after more than a six-year absence.

There's no bigger cheerleader for Canadian production than Norman Jewison. He was reading through his morning newspaper recently, he told me, when an item caught his attention. It was an article about how Rhombus Media producer Niv Fichman crisscrossed the globe in order to secure the movie rights to Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel Blindness, which goes to camera in Ontario in late July with an eye to a spring 2008 release.

Norman Jewison's downtown office overlooks a City of Toronto park that bears his name. The master filmmaker's single request to the city was to include a dog fountain - named after longtime family pet Barney - with a trigger pedal so that canines could release cool water with a press of their paw.

YOU won't find the CBC on a multimillion-dollar spending spree for U.S. product, but this year's fall lineup has media buyers lauding the pubcaster for the breadth of its primetime offerings, from returning comedy to new reality and family fare.

Until going fully CG is as cheap as shooting live action, we need to remember that the most important relationship on the film set will continue to be the one between the director and the cinematographer.

One gets the impression in talking with renowned performer Colm Feore that only a tornado - which had ripped through his neighborhood in Stratford, ON the night before he spoke with Playback - could keep him in his living room for very long.

Given the evolution and dependency on digital technology over the past decade, it's arguable that color correction software has become the most powerful toolset in the post-production cycle. "We can fix it in post" means that day can swiftly turn to night with a few keystrokes, and dull lighting can be manipulated into a moody-toned masterpiece.

News flash: Uwe Boll is here to stay. According to his publicist, Bill Wanstrom, the prolific German director who recently challenged his critics to a boxing match (and won) is officially a landed immigrant. I'll explain why this is a fantastic development for the Canadian production community.