Merry Christmas and happy birthday

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2011 (5464 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LUCKY CHRISTMAS BIRTHDAY: Winnipegger Mitchell Kummen played the son of the character played by star Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls, Saved By The Bell) in the movie Lucky Christmas, which just finished shooting in Winnipeg this week. Though Kummen (Shattered, The Don Cherry Movie) played eight-year-old Max, he’s small for his age and actually turned 12 on the set.

Berkley, his movie mom, filled his whole trailer with balloons and the cast gave him a birthday cake. The young actor played 12 days out of 16 in the heat wave — not easy work for a kid. But, his mom, Karen Mitchell, said he still shed a tear at the end because he fell in love with the cast. “I don’t want it to be finished!” he told her.

— — —

PSST! Juliette Hagopian, producer of Lucky Christmas, told Yours Truly the reason they were working on Albert Street around the Haberdashery store this week was “because it was the only location that could look like a Hallmark movie. It worked for us because we could shoot under the trees so we didn’t have to see the green.” This romantic holiday movie shot for America’s Hallmark Channel is about a single mother who buys a lottery ticket and her car gets inadvertently “stolen” by Mike Ronoski, played by Jason Gray-Stanford (Monk). He gives her back the car and ticket and then tries to dupe her into falling in love with him so he can share in the money.

— — —

HOT TIMES IN THE CITY: Sax god Walle Larsson is off to play with R&B/rocker Don Bouchat and members of the Big Roll Band, to blow out the carbon.

It’s a special show at the downtown Pony Corral Saturday night starting around 9:30 — hardly the smooth jazz Larsson is famous for. “I was surprised when Walle was available, and he was excited to do it,” says piano man and gravelly voiced singer Bouchat, who was looking for a hot sax replacement for vacationing Brian Klowak.

The band lineup is an amazing group of Winnipeg movers and shakers. The bass guitarist is Dave McCrea, professor of physiology in the U of M faculty of medicine and director of the Spinal Cord Research Centre. Drummer is Fred Dawes, a Realtor for Quest Residential Real Estate. Trumpet player Darren Ritchie is the high school music program director at Dakota Collegiate (subbing for Dave Lawton, who’s in rehearsals for Hairspray).

“I conduct Dakota’s concert band plus their two jazz bands, and I’m taking 60 students to Japan for a band trip.”

Lead guitarist B.J. Garrison is no slouch, either. He teaches eight instruments privately and plays in eight bands including Polygon Wild, Ukrajun (a Ukrainian and Cajun polka band), Blues on First, BJ’s Greasy Spoon, Mad Dogs and Englishman, a Joe Cocker tribute band. Feeling lazy yet?

— — —

EUROPEAN ACCOLADES! Winnipeg country music singer/songwriter Ashley Robertson has just been named best female vocalist by the Country Music Association in Europe.

“I’m really excited,” says the 27-year-old, who beat out superstar Carrie Underwood to receive the honour.

“The latest single I released was called Return to Me and it hit No. 2 on the European Country Music radio charts. Country music is on the rise in Europe,” Robertson said from Nashville, where she’s working on a follow-up album to Woman in the White Dress.

“They like to get into it and dress up in cowboy hats and stuff like that. There’s definitely a country lifestyle that exists in Europe with rural areas that are quiet and beautiful farmland, like in Canada,” says the singer, who’s been well-received in Europe several times at large country fests.

— — —

HIDDEN GEM: Thousands of Winnipeggers will be streaming down the Trans-Canada Highway to Lake of the Woods this weekend. So why are people screeching to the right about 30 kilometres west of Falcon Lake and doglegging it off the road towards McMunn (population, er, maybe 50). Yours Truly found out they’re really going into the bush to Birch River Village — a hidden crafts and antiques farm. It’s owned by Renaissance man Gord Taylor and international string puppeteer Estee Taylor.

Lillian Taylor, a 76-year-old Winnipeg artist (that’s Gord’s mom, who started the biz) creates truckloads of rustic crafts for the shop, like whole villages of birdhouses with funny signage that look like a crazy northern town. Example? Lovebird Lodge, All Chicks Welcome. Disney people saw the crazy birdhouses at a Toronto crafts show and wanted to sell them at Epcot Center, but Taylor turned them down flat. “I’d have been doing nothing but birdhouses for the rest of my life!”

At 76, she travels between her Winnipeg home and the family biz, with no plans to retire. “We have a lot of fun. My life is never dull!”

Got tips, events, sightings, unusual things going on? Call Maureen’s tip line at 474-1116, email her at Maureen.Scurfield@winnipegfreepress.com or send mail to The Insider, c/o The Winnipeg Free Press at 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, R2X 3B6.