The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 64

UJ iHtiuwumoaiw Wflay, uecember 18. 1998 Megaplexes and other movie musings Sid Adilman Eye on Entertainment HERES MORE on the rush for yet more movie megaplexes. Following the lead of AMC, Cinemark, another large American megaplex owner, is coming to Canada and not only in Vancouver, where its first theatre is confirmed. Cinemark has targeted a site in Greater Toronto, at the northwest comer of Islington Ave. and the Queen Elizabeth Way, which is likely to open in the year 2000.

Alliance Atlantis is building a theatre with six screens at Queen St. E. and Eastern Ave. for specialty movies like those showing at the midtown Cumberland it operates. Plans are to open the theatre, which will also house a bookstore (the franchisee has not yet been contracted), on April 18.

PARTY POOPER: The merger of Alliance and Atlantis, Canadas most electrifying TV and movie news of the year, raised a key question: Can the staffs of the countrys two largest production-distribution companies harmonize, considering their different corporate cultures? Maybe not. They couldnt even agree on where to hold their recent joint staff Christmas party. A senior executive on the Alliance side set the party for the classy Four Seasons The merger Alliance raised a Can the harmonize, considering different cultures? of and Atlantis key question: two staffs their corjxirate BIG DRAW: Margaret Kemper (formerly Trudeau) is the most xrpular personality profiled this season on Life tfr Times. The fall-released comedy, CVa ton tour, Laura Cadieux, based on Michel Tremblay's novel, The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, reaped a box office of $2.5 million in that province. It has three Genie nominations, including best actress for Quebec singing star Ginette Reno.

Reno is so popular that Quebec Premier Luden Bouchards government loaned her and the cast its jet plane to promote the movie across the province. For sure, Ontario Premier Mike I Iarris won't be doing that when the movie opens in Toronto next month. Canadas top box-office movie of the year? Les Bays, a low-budget Hotel. A senior executive on the Atlantis side overruled and shifted die party to the downmarket Guvemment, the cavernous, inhospitable nightclub on Ticket prices expected to hit $10 BySidAdilman ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST A $10 admission price for nighttime adult movie-goers could go into effect next year at some megaplexes in Greater Toronto, according to industry observers. That would be the highest movie ticket price in Canada.

U.S.-owned AMC raised the current price bar with an adult night-time tab of $9.75 at its first two megaplexes in Canada Winston Churchill in Oakville and Kennedy Commons in the former Scarborough, both of which open today. The $9.75 tariff is the highest for movies in Greater Toronto. Famous Players and Cineplex Ode-on have kept their top night price for adults at $9.50 or lower at their megaplexes, which show the same movies as AMC, but in different geographic locations. Cineplex Odeon charges $9.50 only at its uptown Grande for night-time adult patrons, but $9 at die Varsity and $8.75 (a 25-cent increase as of late November at all its other theatres. Famous Players adult price at night is $9.50.

Executives at both companies say those prices will not rise for the holiday season. Thomas Velde, AMCs senior vice-president for Canada, argued this week that AMC patrons should be prepared to pay more for the same movies than at rival company theatres, because, he insisted, AMC offers better facilities. AMC charges adults $7.50 for matinees, lower twilight-time prices, and offers patrons a card with discounts for attending 10 or more times. Velde agreed the companys nighttime patrons are being targeted. The adult patron coming at 8 p.m.

will bear the brunt of this (lower prices at other times of die day, he said. Asked when the $10 tab will be reached, at least at AMC theatres, he replied, I dont know." But industry observers predict the hike will come next year for AMC when it opens four Ontario megaplexes one of diem with 30 screens in Vaughan (which will be Canadas largest) and in preparation for its scheduled Year 2000 openings of a 30-screen theatre at Yonge and Dundas Sts. and a 30-screen conversion of the Montreal Forum. Alls well with script jvCotlanedfrofliDl and Henslowe face bankruptcy and the threat of kneecapping by the local godfather to mention trouble from Queen Elizabeth I (Dench), who is both a theatre-goer and all-powerful critic when shes not waging war against Europe. Shakespeare gets his mojo restarted after being smitten by the sight of Paltrow on stage, auditioning for a part in his play.

But shes dressed as a man, to skirt the royal edict against female actors. Clothes are soon doffed to remove all doubt Shakespeare In Love at times threatens to bog down in confusion like the recent Elizabeth, which also set Fiennes and Rush in the 16th century. (The two movies would make for an intriguing double bill) But Madden manages to keep his storylines untangled, and adds a screwball tone to keep the picture light. As with the films of Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch, which Shakespeare successfully recalls, a large amount of goodwill is required to accept the central premise of a peek-a-boo muse for a nascent genius. Not for one second should we believe that a woman as feminine as Paltrow would succeed in passing herself off as a man, at least not in the way its presented here.

But Paltrow, giving her finest performance since Emma, blends silliness with sexiness and makes it easy to buy the nonsense. And Fiennes, who is building a reputation playing tortured lovers, pulls off a credible Shakespeare, smoldering and sarcastic by turns. Shakespeare bi Love soars Hon loves light wings, as the Bard himself said in Romeo And Juliet once he had that title figured out Queens Quay E. BOX OFFICE The Red Violin has passed the $1 million mark in Canada and will wind up at 1 5 million. That equals the Canadian box office for David Cronenbergs Crash and a bit more than Atom Fgoyans The Sweet Hereafter English Canada's most recent top two homemade draws.

The Red Violin, a $14 million epic about a rare violin passed through the ages, is nominated for 10 Genie Awards, which will be presented Feb. 4 at the Mississauga Living Arts Centre. Last Night, which follows off-beat characters in Toronto on the last night of the world, ties Such A Long Journey with 12 nominations. Last Nights Canadian box office was $500,000, considerably less than its virtually unanimous reviews would have indicated. Quebec, as always, patronizes its own movies in much larger numbers.

PIXAR Quebec hockey comedy, which brought in $6 million in that province, but ran only one or two weeks for a miniscule box office in the rest of Canada. It won the annual Golden Reel Award, which will be presented at the Genies. CONFIRM OR KNYi Francois Macerola, who quit as executive director of Telefilm Canada to run for the Liberals in the recent Quebec election and lost, has signaled to federal politicians that he wants one of two jobs: either a return to the Telefilm Canada post or to become Canadas ambassador to Italy. Reinstating Macerola, now an avowed Liberal, at Telefilm Canada goes against the policy of keeping the heads of federal arts agencies at arms length from politics. And Jeremy Kinsman, former deputy minister at the federal communications and external affairs departments, is doing a splendid job as ambassador to Italy and should not be removed to make way for Macerola, who is said to be pressing his Italian ancestry.

PERSONALITY POU: Margaret Kemper (formerly Margaret Trudeau) and the late Lome Greene are the most popular personalities profiled so far this season on CBC-TVs Life Times Canadian biography series. Kemper drew 1 ,09 1 ,000 viewers on Oct. 26 and Greene, 1,056,000 on Nov. 23. They were followed by Vancouver businessman Jimmy Pattison, painter Ken Danby, social activist-writer June Callwood, Terry Fox, bank robber Edward Alonzo Boyd, 433,000 and last, Mary Pickford, 404,000.

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