Acting
Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and are now also sold on DVD. The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV Network. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, Canada Post Power Broadcasting, and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The Dominion Institute to become The Historica-Dominion Institute. While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes, they have made them freely available, and in the early years paid to have them run in cinemas across the country. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each minute counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.
This spooky anthology series for kids recounts ghost stories told by the young members of the Midnight Society as they gather around a campfire. Each episode opens with members of the Midnight Society at their secret spot in the woods, where they prepare their fire and the night's storyteller announces the title of the his or her offering. However, the cameras soon leave the storyteller and switch to the tale being told.
A dissatisfied Montreal director of TV commercials is taught to astrally project himself by a mysterious woman. But soon he finds that he does it against his will when he sleeps, and while he does it, he commits savage acts against those in his life.
Marine officer Rob Cutter and his wife Barbara have a son named Johnny. Rob discovers that two newly delivered helicopters in his squadron have crashed because a defective part, a C-ring, has been made of a weaker, less expensive alloy. Before Rob can go public with this, Rob is killed on the orders of corrupt General Howard, who did not want Rob to go public with the defective part. Howard believes that Barbara, who is also a marine, now has the part, so Howard and his henchmen set out to kill Barbara and Johnny and get the part, but Howard is underestimating what Barbara is willing to do to protect Johnny.
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.
Fourteen-year-old Watts Davies is estranged from his dad, a former International Karting Federation (IKF) champion. Watts's resolve to race in the upcoming IKF Regional Championships rekindles their relationship as they pursue the dream together.
The film is the coming-of-age story of the child in the opening sequence, now a chicken delivery boy (although he hates chicken). Alienated from his father, and with an uneasy relationship with his (not gay-friendly) best friend, he meets a new customer. A lawyer going through a divorce, the customer is also alienated and lonely.
Fifteen years after the events of The Boys of St. Vincent took place, the various boys involved are brought in to testify against the brothers, now finally standing trial, who assaulted them when they were children.
A master art forger and his partner in crime, an art expert who can vouch for the authenticity of the forgeries, are making a bundle. An art dealer figures out their scheme but agrees to keep quiet if they forge some art lost in WWII.
Browning is a PI with a bad cold, who's sent to investigate a case by a mysterious client. He stumbles across the body of a young woman and is stabbed to death, and when he wakes up in heaven, they tell him he's "marginal material," and they can only decide on his final destination through one last assignment: to go back and solve his own murder. As a dog. A cute fluffy little dog (Benji). Undaunted, Browning begins to investigate the case as best he can around his canine disabilities (dialing the phone presents a special challenge) to solve the murders, save the girl, and see justice done.
Stuck in a sexless marriage, a frustrated well-to-do couple agrees to see a female sex therapist. Unfortunately, she only helps escalate the tensions between them. Meanwhile, the police are baffled by a string of brutal nightly killings.
Biographic movie of the witty, overachieving, hot-tempered Rudy Giuliani, spanning from his rising days as a New York district attorney in the early 1980s to his marriage to part-time actress Donna Hanover, to his candidacy for mayor of New York City and his controversial methods to tackle the city's crime and urban problems, as well as his romance with his assistant Cristyne Lategano which lead to the failure of his marriage, to his battle with prostate cancer, all leading up to the terrible day of September 11, 2001 which Guiliani himself narrowly escaped death after suicide terrorists hijacked and crashed two passenger airliners into the twin World Trade Center towers leading to their collapse in which Guiliani's toughness and spirited personality help calm the city's residents to face the chaos on that day which made him a national hero.
Legal scholar, jurist, and human rights advocate John Humphrey drafts the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The daughter of a leading politician tries to carve out a career in the world of international journalism.
A gifted classical pianist, fueled by poverty, Wladiziu Valentino Liberace was already playing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17. Through a variety of his highs and lows, chaptered in TV-style format, Liberace's life from his early years through his death are chronicled.
A Canadian couple reunites with the German POW they befriended during World War II.
A man and a woman, who are both trying to run away from the banalities of life, fall in love.
When Hap Anderson, a widowed 83-year-old Minnesota farmer that thinks he's still quite the ladies' man, sells his family farm, he finds himself adrift and staring a short future in the face. Driven by the possibility of showing up with an old flame and impressing his old army buddies, he sets out to attend his 65th WWII reunion in California with his directionless and unreasonably self-confident granddaughter, Ashley. Each with their own issues and agendas, they head west in a dilapidated Winnebago. Encountering oddball tourist attractions and eccentric characters, they find themselves in seemingly impossible situations with only each other for support. As the journey progresses so does their relationship and they begin to understand and appreciate each other as individuals while discovering that being young and being old, aren't all that different.
