It sure looks as though Canada has a star system
The show: Canadian Screen Awards The moment: The birth of a star system
Midway through the two-hour ceremony honouring excellence in film, television and digital, the director Atom Egoyan introduced Lifetime Achievement Award winner Christopher Plummer as “quite simply, the best stage and screen actor this country has produced.”
Plummer was as professionally modest as ever. “I’m so old my first word as a baby was in Latin,” he began, and concluded with, “The curtain has not yet fallen (on my career). It’s simply stuck.”
So clearly deserving is Plummer, you have to wonder who the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television could have given this award to before him. But the night provided some candidates who might earn it down the road.
Tatiana Maslany won Best Actress for both the film The Other Half and the TV series Orphan Black. Wunderkind- turned-Wunderadult Xavier Dolan won for writing and directing It’s Only the End of the World. Other awardees included Stephan James, Molly Parker, Vincent Cassel, Catherine O’Hara and Tantoo Cardinal.
Notice a pattern? Canada keeps insisting it doesn’t have a star system, but it sure looks to me like we have stars.
Yeah, Dave Chappelle got a standing ovation just for showing up, but the Icon Award he presented was a worthy one, to Montreal’s Just for Laughs. And guess why: because it creates and nurtures comedy stars.
Then, in the most promising development, the Fan Choice Award went to Natasha Negovanlis, who plays the title character, a queer vampire, on Carmilla, a digital series.
It wasn’t exactly the Big Bang, but small explosions create stars, too. The Canadian Screen Awards aired on CBC and can be rewatched on the CBC Arts Facebook page. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.