Better Time-Slot for Heche's "Men In Trees"

ABC TV will bump actress Anne Heche's Vancouver-filmed TV series Men in Trees from Fridays at 9 to Thursdays at 10, behind Grey's Anatomy.

In addition, the network has ordered up nine more episodes of the Warner Bros. show, for a full-season total of 22.

Created by Jenny Bicks, Men In Trees is executive produced by Bicks, James "Walk The Line" Mangold and Cathy Konrad.

The romantic comedy follows the mis-adventures of relationship coach, author, radio host 'Marin Frist' (Heche), who has relocated her life to Alaska.

The show first aired on ABC September 12, 2006 with season premiere Dancing with the Stars.

Men In Trees will shift to its new time-slot November 30.

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"Whistler Film Festival" Screening 93 Films

At a news conference Tuesday, November 7 at the Art & Soul Gallery, Pacific Palisades Hotel, 1277 Robson Street, Vancouver, it was announced that this year's Whistler Film Festival (WFF), presented by American Express, will screen 93 films during the sixth annual festival running November 30 to December 3.

The Festival program is divided into six sections: Borsos Competition, Documentary, Mountain Culture, World Cinema, Late Nite Screenings and Shortfest.

WFF is a competitive festival with five distinct awards: the $15,000 Borsos Award for Best New Canadian Feature presented by the Directors Guild of Canada-BC District Council, the People's Choice Best Feature Award, the $5,000 best Documentary Award presented by CBC Newsworld, the $1,000 best Short Film Award presented by Movieola-The Short Film Channel and the best Mountain Culture Film presented by Whistler Blackcomb.

Special screening events include a Tribute to Norman Jewison, the world debut of the doc Citizen Sam and the opening gala screening of Whistler Stories, the WWFF legacy program for short films, preceeding the screening of Jacques Russo's Let It Ride!.

Finalists for the $15,000 Borsos Competition for Best New Canadian Feature Film are :

Bojan Bodruzic's Immigrant
Joshua Dorsey's The Point
Stephane Lapointe's The Secret Life of Happy People
S. Wyeth Clarkson's SK8
David Gow and Mark Adam's Steel Toes
Matt Bissonette's Who Loves The Sun

Additional world premieres include Carolyn Allain's A Safer Sex Trade, Barbara K. Lee's Between The Laughter, D. B. Sweeney's Dirt Nap, Danielle Agnello and Joe Hall's Lime Salted Love and Liam Walsh's Pipe Dream.

Other films of note include Zachary Adler's I'm A Reed Fish, Alexandra Lipsitz's Air Guitar Nation, Mark Harvey's A Land Out Of Time, Brooke Goldstein/Alistair Leyland's The Making of a Martyr, Michael O. Dayan's Glimpses of Heaven, John Paskievich's Unspeakable, Douglas Buck's Sisters and Jean Beaudin's Without Her.

This year's WFF Closing Night Film is "Snow Cake".

The WFF Nov 7 announcements were followed by a reception at Zin Restaurant, attended by BC filmmakers, actors, media and corporate sponsors.

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"Raymond" Writer Believes In "BLIP TV"

Ellen Sandler, former writer/co-producer of hit TV series "Everybody Loves Raymond", attended Vancouver's recent Film and Television Expo West (FTX West) where she talked about her new projects, including BLIP TV.

Although Sandler has worn many hats in her career, including executive producer, TV script writer, consultant, teacher and author, her main passion is working as a playwright, recently writing/producing the play "How It Go" starring actress Megan Mullay for HBO/Warner Bros. which later developed into a TV pilot for the Oxygen Network.

Sandler grew up in Iowa and moved to New York to attend film school, receiving a B.S. from Syracuse University and an MFA from The American Film Institute.

She was nominated for an Emmy as co-executive producer, writer of CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond" and writer for ABC’s "Coach", also creating pilots for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox Family, Disney, Oxygen and the Australian Children’s TV Foundation in Melbourne.

Her consulting company "Sandler Ink" was started five years ago to educate and help emerging writers, providing script development and career coaching for professionals.

Her most recent book "The TV Writer’s Workbook: A Creative Approach to Television Scripts" was published by Bantam.

Sandler also taught five classes at this year's FTX West Expo and attended the FTX West 'Great Canadian PitchFest' October 15, listening in on many pitches as Director of Development for BLIP TV, looking for character-based comedy for short videos /webisodes 30 seconds to ten minutes in length, to be distributed by Sprint PCS and other cellular phone content providers.

Created 3 years ago by CEO Paula Montondo, Sandler anticipates that in the coming years, BLIP TV will be on the cutting edge of the new digital media.

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