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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Nightclub Confidential shimmies into Season 3

I stopped going out to clubs a long time ago. Back then, the local place I ended up featured requisite creamy shooters like Sex on the Beach and I drank my weight in Long Island Iced Teas. Now, over two decades later, I’m reliving the experience through the eyes of the folks working at Tequila NightClub in Nightclub Confidential.

Returning Thursday on City Saskatchewan—and available following each broadcast on the show’s website—Season 3 of Fahrenheit Films’ Nightclub Confidential catches up with owners Simon Papadopoulos and Bryan “Chunk” Pawlachuk as they try to make a go of it in the nightclub scene.

Season 2 ended on a sad note: Chunk decided to retire from the club game, prepped to sell off Tequila and went on vacation with his wife and kids. That left president Simon with a boring daytime gig and bouncer Mitch Gauvin out of the business and focusing on fitness and his relationship with Gina.

Picking up several months later, the plan to sell off the building fell through and Simon has taken on the day-to-day running of Tequila. Chunk is the landlord and looks for excuses to drop by and judge Simon’s way of running a business. And while Simon is enjoying playing boss, he’s having a hard time acting like one: he’s happy to hold staff nights and be the nice guy but a lack of respect from the DJs in Episode 1 grates on his nerves. Chunk, busier than ever thanks to a gig at Metric Design Centre and another child on the way with wife Nathalie, has nothing but stern words for Simon, who’s struggling to organize a New Year’s Eve party to ring in 2015.

Featuring smoke machines, blinding spotlights, a throbbing beat, scantily-clad customers and larger-than-life characters, Nightclub Confidential is an entertaining fly-on-the-wall peek at the successes and stresses of running a nightclub. It ain’t all shooters and sexiness.

Nightclub Confidential airs Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. on City Saskatchewan. Episodes stream for the rest of the country on the show’s website.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary, The Nature of Things

The Nature of Things explores the “Curious” world of vitamins and supplements

We’re told that if we stick to Canada’s Food Guide and supplement it with vitamins, we’re getting enough good stuff into our systems to lead healthy lives. But is that truly the case? Self-professed former fat kid turned health nut/filmmaker Bryce Sage plotted to find out.

“The Curious Case of Vitamins and Me,” airing on The Nature of Things this Thursday, is an entertaining journey across North America to find out if what we’re eating and taking is enough … or if things like multivitamins are doing more harm than good. Beginning with evolutionary history, the entertaining Sage—he reminds me of an even geekier Alton Brown—visits the San Francisco Zoo to find out how what primates eat compares to humans. He quickly discovers that we’re not able to manufacture all of the 13 essential vitamins needed to survive (Who else grew up reading “12 essential vitamins!” emblazoned on their cereal boxes?), so they must be found in nature. It’s not long until Sage discovers we’re deficient when it comes to vitamins C, A, D, E and B-9 and digs deeper into the Nutrition Facts box we find on everything nowadays.

Turns out those boxes are cobbled together by a panel of Canadians and Americans. In place since the Second World War, they were originally designed to help soldiers ensure they were getting the recommended daily dose of the 13 essential vitamins to fight. Now they’re used in our everyday lives, a guide to the base amounts of each vitamin to ensure we don’t suffer from vitamin deficiency.

The most fascinating part of “The Curious Case of Vitamins and Me” was watching Sage—armed with a nutritional textbook—head to the grocery store to purchase everything needed to fulfill those daily requirements. He soon learns exactly what those “fortified vitamins” are contained in cereal, and it isn’t good news. Also cool? Sage’s visit to an organic farm, where he discovers modern farming may result in fruits and veggies with less nutritional value than heirloom varieties. Those interested in how vitamins and supplements are made—and where the ingredients are sourced—get their fix when Sage drops by NutraLab Canada.

Far from fear-mongering, “The Curious Case of Vitamins and Me” is a fun, funny and educational guide to making sure you and your family are getting enough out of their diet to be healthy.

“The Curious Case of Vitamins and Me” airs on The Nature of Things, Thursday at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Season 2 of The Other Side returns Oct. 31 to APTN

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From a media release:

Saskatoon’s Angel Entertainment is pleased to announce that the second season of the paranormal investigation television series The Other Side will premiere on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) on Halloween weekend.

SECOND SEASON BROADCAST PREMIERE:
The Other Side – Season II on APTN

Ø  Premieres with back-to-back episodes on Saturday, October 31st at 8:00pm & 8:30pm

Ø  New episodes will air each weekend on Saturdays at 8:00pm & 8:30pm

Ø  (Please check local listings to confirm)

ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE:
The Other Side is a 13-part half-hour documentary series that follows a team of paranormal investigators who, with the guidance of an Aboriginal Elder, seek the truth behind real life hauntings and the most unsettled spirits on the Canadian prairies.

Intuitive Jeff Richards, paranormal investigator Bill Connelly, researcher Priscilla Wolf and Aboriginal Elder and Spirit Guide Tom Charles embark on a paranormal expedition to find out why. The team engages the spirits through a mix of technology, intuition, and Aboriginal spirituality and ceremony, all with the hope of restoring balance between our world and the world where spirits walk.

For each investigation, Jeff uses his abilities to initiate contact and reach out to the spirits, Bill attempts to capture evidence of their existence, and Priscilla digs for the story while seeking cultural guidance from Tom, who attempts to guide the spirits to the other side and restore balance and harmony. The team does their best to answer why the location is suspected of paranormal activity, who the spirit is, and why they’re communicating, while taking steps to enable the unsettled spirit to move on.

The Other Side – Season II is a co-production between Saskatoon’s Angel Entertainment and Toronto-based RedCloud Studios, with producers Bob Crowe, Wally Start and Jennifer Podemski.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Backroad Bounty looks for more deals and Canadian history in Season 2

If his Backroad Bounty gig ever ends, Peter “Bam Bam” Bamford is plotting his next TV role: Big Brother Canada.

“I think I would stand out, to say the least,” says Bamford, sporting his trademark cowboy hat, bushy beard, green army jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. “I’m very old-school train of thought, very militant and punctual, and I’m very OCD. I don’t know if I would get along with everybody, but it would make for some interesting TV.”

We think Bamford would do pretty well. After all, he does interact with strangers—alongside Marty Gebel—as they crisscross Ontario in search of quality antiques and oddities for Season 2 of Backroad Bounty, returning to Cottage Life tonight at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. Earlier this year, I tracked down the duo in Ingersoll, Ont.—home to Gebel’s Modern Hipster Antiques—as they got dusty and dirty hunting around the top floor of E. W. McKim Quality Home Hardware, seeking hidden treasure and discovering Canadian history in the process.

Season 1 tracked the fellows as they dusted off items and dickered with owners over prices, and that formula is in place for Season 2 too, though a focus on those folks and the hosts has been amped up.

“This season is going to be funnier,” Gebel teases. “We’ll be talking a little bit more about values and selling this year, because the audience wants to know how much things are worth.”

“Because we have a season under our belt, people are opening up to us a lot more,” Bamford explains. “It’s more like a road trip with two guys and the incredible people they meet along the way.” That road trip includes provincial stops in Grand Bend, Quinte West, Harcourt, Port Dover, Walkerton, Wiarton and Owen Sound.

When the cameras aren’t rolling, Bamford is working to expand his business. Always a buyer at trade shows, he’s evolving his Bamtiques brand on social media and at shows, selling items and seeing if he can make a go of it as a full-time gig.

And if the Big Brother Canada thing doesn’t work out? Bamford has another idea in the works where he travels the world exposing silly local rules and regulations.

“It’s called Bam Bam Breaks the Law,” he says. “There’s a law in Pennsylvania where you can’t carry an ice cream sandwich in your back pocket. I want to break that law. There are laws in France about dolls with certain faces. If they’re willing to arrest me for putting an ice cream sandwich in my back pocket, I’m willing to accept that charge.”

Backroad Bounty airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Cottage Life.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Tornado Hunters spins up wild weather drama on CMT Canada

Hollywood disaster movies never have much in the way of reality in them. Take Twister. Monster tornadoes tear up the American midwest, growling like Godzilla, spinning cows and water towers around while a couple on the verge of divorce alternately chase and outrun them? Outrageous, right?

“The only fake part of that movie is Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt’s love life,” says Greg Johnson. “They actually under-did the tornadoes.” He should know. The former Parliament Hill staffer, former hockey referee and former marketing executive left the rat race behind to race after tornadoes and other extreme weather. With veteran storm chaser Chris Chittick and extreme sport enthusiast Ricky Forbes alongside, the trio are the Tornado Hunters. Debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CMT Canada, Tornado Hunters climbs into a truck alongside the boys on a wild ride across the Canadian and American prairies in search of wild weather and, hopefully, some twisters.

Unlike other funnel-themed programming on the dial, Tornado Hunters showcases all kinds of extreme weather and captures it with video and still cameras, creating stunning works of photographic art. There’s nothing more awe-inspiring and educational than time-lapse images of bruised purple clouds roiling thousands of feet in the air while enrobed in bristles of lightning.

TornadoHunter

“You’ll watch a tornado once, and then that’s it,” Forbes says. Johnson concurs, explaining tornadoes are extremely rare; if his team captures a half-dozen on-camera in a summer season, it’s been a good year. To fill time in between storms—and to allow viewers to get to know them better—Saloon Media’s cameras follow the boys during various hijinks, from Chittick winning a push-ups bet against his buddies to Forbes’ phobia of snakes revealed in a hilarious way.

Technology has come a long way in the past several years, enabling photographers and camera people to capture images of incredible beauty. Chittick says the Tornado Hunters stand apart from other storm chasers because they use the latest tech to great effect.

Meanwhile, the three are protected by a souped-up Ford, capable of withstanding a violent beating at the hands of Mother Nature.

“People ask about safety, and we’re in an armoured truck that has a roll cage,” Forbes says. “We’re not being cowboys about this; we have radar and we have the training. There are three of us on the team and we have specific responsibilities and watch each other’s back.”

“There’s video of a truck like ours that rolls 15 times down a hill and the cab survives,” Johnson says. “Of course, we don’t want to be in that situation.”

Tornado Hunters airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CMT Canada.

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