Montreal concert film prodco FogoLabs picked up two awards at the 2006 Annual DVD Awards, hosted by film critic Leonard Maltin on Aug. 8 in Los Angeles.

The awards garnered by Fogo owners Pierre and François Lamoureux were in technical categories for the authoring design and video presentation of Rush: R30 - 30th Anniversary World Tour, directed by Pierre.

François is especially pleased with the best video award, as Fogo is already well-known for its audio prowess. Last year it won best audio presentation at the awards for The Stray Cats: Rumble in Brixton, which also won best musical performance.

"If we can go into Hollywood and win the best video... it proves we are a whole facility that can provide great quality right across the board," he says.

The Sudbury ON-born brothers began shooting concert films in 2000, establishing Fogo in 2002. They have produced DVDs for The Tragically Hip, Harry Connick Jr., The Who and Willie Nelson. Currently they are in post on releases for Metric and Great Big Sea, both due out in the fall.

According to Pierre, the company is growing quickly and will open a U.K. office in early 2007.

Another big Canadian win was for distrib ThinkFilm, which tied itself in the best independent theatrical release category with docs Murderball and The Boys of Baraka. Its release The Aristocrats was also nom'ed in the category.

Beowulf performing well

The home video release of Beowulf & Grendel - Sturla Gunnarsson's vision of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem - was the 16th best-selling video in Canada for the week ending July 23, according to Nielsen VideoScan.

The Equinoxe Films title was sandwiched on the chart between the fourth season of the NBC series The Pretender and a rerelease of Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, both from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. B&G also hit number 16 on Blockbuster Video's top 20 rentals list for the week ending July 30. Blockbuster preordered 10,000 copies of the title nationally.

"The numbers are solid," says Marc Beauséjour, Equinoxe director of video, Canada. "It is having a strong sell-off career and we should end up with close to 40,000 pieces sold when everything is said and done."

Giant controversy fuels sales

According to Jason Möring, national sales manager for Toronto home video distributor Morningstar Entertainment, its release of CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story has seen a decent 10,000 copies sold since May, despite - and perhaps thanks in part to - hullabaloo about its depiction of former Saskatchewan premier Jimmy Gardiner.

The controversy - stemming from the portrayal of Gardiner as a xenophobe and a drinker, which is inaccurate according to his family - didn't hurt the release, says Möring, even after CBC pulled the Minds Eye Entertainment production from its own DVD catalogue and abandoned the plan for a rerun on TV.

"Whether it is negative or positive, press just brings interest in a product," says Möring. "[With] the uproar about how Gardiner was represented, people became interested in watching it, and because Prairie Giant wasn't [replayed], the DVD has done well."

Morningstar recently rereleased a number of CBC MOW titles through its budget program, offering titles H20, Sex Traffic, Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, Net Worth, Betrayed, A Bear Named Winnie and Scar Tissue at a suggested $9.98 through retailers including HMV and Future Shop. Some of the titles have done well for Morningstar, says Möring, adding Shattered City has seen about 15,000 units sold, and H20 has sold in the 10,000-copies range.