The nominees for the 2012 Leo Awards have just been announced and Amanda Crew is a nominee for “Best Lead Performance by a Female in a Feature Length Drama”! Her film “Sisters&Brothers” is nominated in a total of eight categories!

There will be a celebration awards ceremony on May 25th and then a gala ceremony on May 26th. Both events are going to be held at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver.

Best Lead Performance by a Female in a Feature Length Drama
Gabrielle Rose – Everything and Everyone
Sara Canning – Hannah’s Law
Amanda Crew – Sisters&Brothers
Gabrielle Miller – Sisters&Brothers
Kacey Rohl – Sisters&Brothers

Best Feature Length Drama
Daydream Nation: Christine Haebler, Trish Dolman- Producers
Doppleganger Paul: Katherine Hazon, Oliver Linsley, Dylan Akio Smith, Kris Elgstrand – Producers
Marilyn: Christopher Petry, Kaleena Kiff, Bruce Borland – Producers
Sisters&Brothers: Carl Bessai, James Brown, Emily Alden – Producers
The Odds: Simon Davidson – Producer

Best Direction in a Feature Length Drama
Dylan Akio Smith, Kris Elgstrand – Doppleganger Paul
Paul A. Kaufman – Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story
Christopher Petry – Marilyn
Carl Bessai – Sisters&Brothers
Simon Davidson – The Odds

Best Picture Editing in a Feature Length Drama
Jamie Alain – Daydream Nation
Mark Shearer – Donovan’s Echo
Kirby Jinnah – Marilyn
Sabrina Pitre – Sisters&Brothers
Greg Ng – Sunflower Hour

Best Musical Score in a Feature Length Drama
Matthew Rogers – Gone
Schaun Tozer – Hamlet
Kirk Caouette, Jon Ritchie – Hit ‘n Strum
Devon Cody, Jason Solyom – Marilyn
Daniel Moxon – Sisters&Brothers

Best Supporting Performance by a Male in a Feature Length Drama
Ted Whittall – Daydream Nation
Peter Wingfield – Hamlet
Stephen Lobo – Hamlet
Tom Scholte – Sisters&Brothers
Peter New – Sunflower Hour

Best Supporting Performance by a Female in a Feature Length Drama
Lara Gilchrist – Hamlet
Camille Sullivan – Sisters&Brothers
Leena Manro – Sisters&Brothers
Gabrielle Rose – Sisters&Brothers
Johannah Newmarch – Sunflower Hour

Best Lead Performance by a Male in a Feature Length Drama
Tygh Runyan – Doppleganger Paul
Brad Dryborough – Doppleganger Paul
Ryan Robbins – Marilyn
Ben Ratner – Sisters&Brothers
Patrick Gilmore – Sunflower Hour

Amanda Crew considers herself lucky she hasn’t had to endure the deception that afflicts her character in Sisters & Brothers.

“I’ve never had anything super-shady, but the longer you’re in this industry, you can smell the BS sooner than when you first got in,” says Crew, who plays Nikki, a starstruck actress literally taken for a ride by Henry (Tom Scholte), a smarmy producer.

With dreams of a potential role as a female action hero dancing in her head, Nikki agrees to go on a road trip to Los Angeles with the oily opportunist. Her abrasive sister Maggie (Camille Sullivan) – the voice of reason – insists on joining them.

Such empty promises, says Crew, are sadly not uncommon – “especially in smaller towns where they actually believe this stuff.”

The Langley-born actress stars alongside Cory Monteith, Dustin Milligan, Benjamin Ratner, Gabrielle Miller, Kacey Rohl and other West Coast luminaries in the third and final installment of prolific Vancouver filmmaker Carl Bessai’s Family X trilogy.

The film, which screens Friday and Saturday at The Vic, interweaves humour and pathos within four narratives to explore the dynamics of brother-sister relationships.

Like her character, the Leo Award-winning actress, who got her start in YTV’s 15/Love and the CTV series Whistler before landing roles in Final Destination 3 and She’s the Man, was often asked “Why aren’t you in L.A.?”

Crew, 26, eventually moved there after her breakout roles – as Felicia, the tomboyish gal pal who accompanies the characters played by Josh Zuckerman and Clark Duke on a cross country trip in the racy comedy Sex Drive; opposite Virginia Madsen in The Haunting In Connecticut; and as the feisty oceangoing dream girl who locks lips with Zac Efron in Charlie St. Cloud.

“It’s a common question most Canadians get asked,” she says. ” ‘When are you going to move?’ ”

But if you try to rush it, the leap can ruin what you’ve built up, Crew says.

“I went through quite a transition moving here,” she says between rehearsals for Awesometown, the pilot for a potential ABC series about four young professionals in New York that co-stars Ben Rappaport, James Earl III and Dennis Miller.

“You have to establish yourself all over again with casting directors.”

Is Crew still “quirky and awkward,” as she has jokingly described herself?

“No, I decided to get rid of that,” she deadpans, unleashing the signature laugh she compares to a seagull taking flight.

“No, if anything I’ve decided to embrace that even more.”

Staying grounded is important to Crew, who laughs when told she’s on Smartasses Magazine’s Top 100 Sexiest Women list.

“I wasn’t aware of that or even being part of it,” the actress says. “Those lists are pretty silly to begin with.” Between auditions, gigs and acting classes, she’s too busy to pay much attention to lists.

Working with Bessai, whose minimalist films are largely improvised, was a learning experience in itself.

“It was such a great opportunity to play a role where you really get to sink your teeth into it and work with great actors,” said Crew, reflecting on Sisters & Brothers and Bessai’s thriller Repeaters, in which she plays a recovering addict.

“Doing something where it was on the fly and nothing set in stone, I thought he was the perfect director to do that with. It sounded extremely scary not to have dialogue from a script, but that’s why I wanted to do it.”

As daunting as such a high-wire experience can be, Crew allowed herself to be pushed out of her comfort zone because she knew she could trust Bessai.

“I knew in the end he’d never let me fall flat on my face,” said Crew, whose role in Sisters & Brothers was physically demanding, as when she had to do somersaults while demonstrating that Nikki had what it takes to play a Hollywood “huntress.”

A Bessai film doesn’t have a budget for stunt people.

“No stunts on the improv show,” she laughs. “I don’t even know how you’d do that.”

Crew says she wouldn’t have done Sisters & Brothers had she not already worked with Bessai on Repeaters.

“He’s got this little kid in him that loves to make films,” she said. “His passion is contagious. He’s down on the ground with the mud with us. He doesn’t have to do that, but he loves it so much.”

We’ll be seeing a lot more of Crew after Sisters & Brothers opens.

She’ll soon be seen in Canadian writer-director Robert Cuffley’s edgy thriller Ferocious as a TV actress who tries to covertly retrieve a sexually incriminating videotape.

She also reunited with Madsen on Long Time Gone, an indie drama that marks the directorial debut of Precious producer Sarah Siegel-Magness and co-stars Anthony LaPaglia as a husband whose infidelity destroys his family. And she appears in Knife Fight, a political drama starring Rob Lowe as a ruthless political-crisis specialist.

“He was awesome,” said Crew, who did two scenes with Lowe. “He was totally professional.”

TimesColonist.com

According to Deadline.com, Amanda Crew has joined a new pilot that will air on ABC if picked up in May at the Upfronts!

Glee’s James Earl III and Amanda Crew have been cast in ABC’s untitled Adam Sztykiel comedy pilot, a raw, hilarious peek behind the curtain of modern 20-something relationships. It centers on best friends and roommates Andrew (Nick Kocher) and Oliver (Earl). Crew will play a co-worker of Andrews who is friends both with him and Oliver.

Michael Eklund (The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, Fringe) and Amanda Crew (Sex Drive, Charlie St Cloud) talk about their experience performing with the Saskatoon Soaps! Can’t say enough nice stuff, they were all fantastic! Hope to do it again soon!

It’s been a homecoming for two Saskatoon-born actors currently shooting Ferocious in the alleys of Saskatoon.

The feature length thriller stars Amanda Crew, Kim Coates, Michael Eklund and Katie Boland.

Coates, a University of Saskatchewan alumnus now living in Los Angeles, has built a successful career, starring in films such as Sons of Anarchy and Black Hawk Down. Eklund graduated from Mount Royal in 1993 and made his way to Vancouver to begin his acting career. Eklund says that growing up, he admired Coates.

“Kim was one of the guys who got out and made a name for himself. He was an inspiration for any actor that was coming through it in Saskatoon,” he says. Laughing, he adds “I told (Coates) that today and I think it touched him.”

The premise of Ferocious is a homecoming for a successful film actress. She’s promoting her film and coming home to a city much like Saskatoon. Director Robert Cuffley says Ferocious is about how dangerous people can become when they have nothing to lose.

Amanda Crew plays the female lead Leigh, a charming and determined actress who left her hometown to make it big in Hollywood. Leigh dumped then-boyfriend and bar manager Eric (Eklund) to make her career move. For five years he’s been heartbroken over the loss. After Leigh returns to her hometown, a plot to retrieve a sexually incriminating videotape from Eric’s bar unfolds as she encounters the ruthless and intimidating Sal (Coates).

The homecoming theme transcends Ferocious. Both Coates and Eklund are returning home after making it big in show business. They’re living the life they’re portraying on screen. The first two weeks of filming have been at night in the Glengarry building and the alley behind it. Dark and edgy, Ferocious can be labelled as film noir for its sexual motivations. Next up, the crew will move to the former Viper Room nightclub to shoot the shady bar scenes before filming wraps up in mid-December.

Playing the bad guy comes easily for Coates. While he loves comedy, he often chooses darker roles and says everyone is typecast at some level.

“My guy (Sal) is someone, that when I read it, right away I wanted to play him. I describe him as a king snake.”

Coates describes Sal as quiet and dark, with a funny side. He can be very violent when needed and something happens in the script to send him over the edge.

“I love being a character actor but I’m very careful with my bad guys. There are certain ones I will not play. Like pedophiles and rapists – I just won’t go there.”

Nearly all of the Ferocious crew members are from the province but most key technical positions had to be brought in from Regina. Producer Carolyn McMaster, of CHAOS, a film company, says this is a problem.

“My hope for the future of film in Saskatoon is that they develop more of an infrastructure moving forward. I hope the province is behind filmmaking.”

She says that while Saskatoon is a good training ground, more needs to be done to encourage highly qualified people to stay.

“I would encourage the students in filmmaking to stay in Saskatchewan and make this a viable film centre.”

One person who has done that is Daniel Ford Beavis. The owner of O’Shea’s Irish Pub and fight director for Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan is also a stunt performer in the Saskatchewan film industry. He says he doesn’t blame talented people for moving to larger centres to pursue their careers.

“I’ve decided I’ll stay here. The U of S drama department turned out much of our talent for (Ferocious).”

Coates agrees. He studied drama at the U of S from 1978 to 1982 and says he loves to watch the current graduates and what they do with their talent.

That talent has been ramping up production for the Saskatchewan film industry. Several feature length films have recently been made in the province. Anand Ramayya began the production company Karma Film in Saskatoon in 2002 and is one of the producers of Ferocious. He has watched the industry in Saskatchewan steadily grow over the past decade. Ramayya feels the province has much to offer filmmakers in the way of locations and artists, but that the film industry needs support.

“We have to get the community behind us (and) keep supporting the arts. We need to make Saskatoon an affordable and attractive place to shoot,” he says.

Cuffley says Saskatoon was his top choice for Ferocious and after scouting locations this summer, had to make a tough decision between the Bridge and Queen cities.

“I’m not trying to create a rivalry of course, but Saskatoon seemed to have a little more colour.”

Source

Amanda Crew (Final Destination) is starring in another thriller, this time playing a TV actress trying to secretly retrieve a sexually incriminating videotape from a seedy nightclub in the Canadian indie feature Ferocious.

The thriller by writer/director Robert Cuffley also stars Kim Coates and Michael Eklund and is shooting in Saskatoon through mid-December.

Crew just completed the role of a drug-addicted runaway in the Canadian urban thriller Charlie Zone from director Michael Melski.

Ferocious is produced by Calgary-based Chaos and Saskatoon based KarmaFilm.

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Amanda Crew was recently featured on ET Canada where she took the show on the set of her new movie, “Long Time Gone”. You can watch the video below.

Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sisters & Brothers is a film you want to like thanks to its fleshed-out characters but it devolves into cliches and predictable outcomes, sinking the storylines to an unpalatable level.

Sibling relationships are under the microscope in Sisters & Brothers, the latest film from Canadian director Carl Bessai, who also used the ensemble technique for Mothers & Daughters and Fathers & Sons. If you have a brother or sister, you’ll be able to relate any of the pairs profiled in the film, as the writing is often sharp in the first half.
We meet Jerry (Benjamin Ratner) and Louise (Gabrielle Miller, of Corner Gas fame), a bro and sis with a decidedly tough problem: Jerry suffers from schizophrenia and Louise has to nurse him back to normalcy. She soothes him during his fits and tries to understand why he chooses a homeless man as a lawyer. The tension between the two is displayed perfectly, and you start to sympathize with both Jerry and Louise as they try to find peace with each other.

In another storyline, Justin (Cory Monteith from Glee) is a famous young actor meeting his brother Rory (Dustin Mulligan) at the airport as screaming girls mob them. Rory explains why he’s passionate about helping children in Africa as Justin looks out the limo window absent-mindedly. They don’t vibe as well as they thought they would; Rory complains Justin is obsessed with fame while still remaining lonely and Justin criticizes Rory for not helping their mother. After all, the hotshot actor can afford to send his mom cheques every month. Some of the arguments between the two showcase some of the best dialogue in the film.

We’re then shuttled to two sisters, Nikki (Amanda Crew) and Maggie (Camille Sullivan), and Bessai sticks with the starstruck-actor theme – Nikki wants to make it in Hollywood while Maggie tries to bring her down to earth. When Nikki meets an ambitious but foolhardy producer looking for his leading lady, the three go on a road trip to L.A. destined to either bring them together or shatter their relationships.

Finally, we peek into the lives of a mother and daughter relationship, where teenager Elizabeth (Nicola Anderson) is a single child…until her mom surprises her with a long-lost sister from India. The shock segues to hate and resentment, and Anderson does a fantastic job embodying the frustrated teen angry at how a new element will disrupt her family.
As intriguing as these characters become, the second half of the film is contrived and riddled with cliches. Lest this review reveal too many spoilers, let’s just say you can see where these characters go before we even get there. It’s annoying, especially since Sisters & Brothers had such a promising beginning.

Also, Bessai uses comic-book cutaways and thought-bubbles throughout the film, something we recently saw in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It works for the latter film but not for this real-life drama. The cartoony technique comes off as immature, even if it breaks apart the many varying plots.

Sisters & Brothers provides some insight into sibling relationships, so it might be worth the ticket price for those who can relate to some of its themes. But to be a truly great film it needs a tighter ending and less predictable outcomes.

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“Hellcats” star Aly Michalka, model-turned-actor Travis Fimmel and “Californication” thesp Madeline Zima have joined the cast of Smokewood Entertainment’s “Long Time Gone.”

“Precious” producer Sarah Siegel-Magness makes her directorial debut with the pic, which stars Meg Ryan as a woman who suffers a nervous breakdown after her cheating husband leaves her. Zach Gilford and Graham Rogers co-star as her two sons who, along with the latter’s live-in girlfriend (Amanda Crew), attempt to comfort Ryan in her time of need.

Michalka will play Janine, a local girl who went to high school with Rogers and finds herself attracted to him despite being a few years older.

Fimmel will play Jeff, an intelligent Grateful Dead fan who sells pot to Rogers, while Zima will play Annie, an earnest hippie who works at a food co-op and gets fixed up with Gilford.

Karen McCullah (“The House Bunny”) wrote the script, which is based on April Stevens’ novel “Angel, Angel.” Scribe will also produce with Bobbi Sue Luther and Gary Magness, while Andrew Sugerman and Seth Jaret will exec produce.

Production will start next month in Los Angeles.

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Last week, Amanda Crew was a guest star on the TV show “Suits”. I have just added 281 HD screen captures from the show into our photo gallery!