From the editor.

Once again Quebec is having a banner year, while English-Canadian cinema lags behind. Luc Dionne's Aurore and Jean-Marc Vallde's C.R.A.Z.Y. have been playing in Quebec to packed houses and stand a chance of turning over $5 million each at the box office. Ricardo Trogi's Horlgoe biologique brought in over half-a--million in its opening weekend. English--Canadian filmmakers can hardly dream of such audience figures.

As usual, it's been a mixed year for the rest of Canada, outside of Quebec. There have been limited successes such as Istvan Szabo's Being Julia and Geoffrey Sax's White Noise, but both are co-productions and by foreign directors, so they don't fit into the official canon of bonafide Canadian cinema. Michael Dowse's It's All Gone Pete Tong had a moderate run in Toronto, but that again is a co-production, set in Ibiza, Spain, about a British DJ, albeit directed by a Canadian. The bonafide English--Canadian cinema as represented by Michael McCowan's Saint Ralph also had a moderately successful run and is now being launched in the U.S., a market generally denied to the homegrown Quebec hits.

But in the minds of most people, English-Canadian cinema is more properly represented by Ruba Nadda's Sabah, a critical favourite with a box office of less than $100,000. Quebec has plenty of its own well-intentioned first-time films that have limited box-office appeal, but it also has the hits, and that mix is what makes its cinema so vibrant and healthy right now; while English-Canadian cinema remains the sick child in need of a cure--an entire film industry stuck in development hell.

There is hope for a stronger fall with several features such as Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, Deepa Mehta's Water, Sturla Gunnarsson's Beowulf & Grendel and Clement Virgo's Lie with Me scheduled for release. And for the first time ever, an Atom Egoyan film and a David Cronenberg film are being released at the same time. As luck would have it, Cronenberg's A History of Violence is not a Canadian film no matter how hard some people wish it would be. Still the two English--Canadian heavyweights going head-to-head at the box office with their most commercial films to date--and both with substantial production budgets--is a contest worth watching for any true Canadian cineaphile. No matter how well these two films perform in Toronto or Vancouver or Ottawa, however, the measure of their success will be the U.S. market, and a major breakthrough there can make the difference between taking in $2 million at the Canadian box office or $35 million in the U.S.

A large portion of our filmmaking talent makes a better living in Los Angeles, and this cold fact is one of the contributing factors why we don't have a thriving English-Canadian cinema. Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, James Cameron and Ivan Reitman are only some of the expat Ontario talent working in Hollywood. Wouldn't it be sweet if Ivan Reitman produced a James Cameron film starring Jim Carrey and Mike Myers, co-starring Sarah Polley, which was 100 per cent Canadian. It would put an end the notion that English-Canadian filmmakers can't make money at the box office. Actually, Reitman is producing the Trailer Park Boys, which should be in theatres early next year. Who knows? Maybe Picky, Julian or Bubbles--already major stars in Canada--could be on of the next generation of Hollywood A-lists.

Wyndham Wise, Editor-in-Chief