L.A. is not a lady by MATTHEW HAYS Sugar Town is the latest cinematic effort to lay bare the ugly truth about Tinseltown. Did you know it's a skanky place where people will do just about anything to get ahead? Did you realize just how dang empty everyone around this place is? Eeegads, so very empty it's surprising there haven't been tons of books, movies and various other cultural artifacts reflecting this nasty truth. Okay, so I'm a bit heavy on the sarcasm (yet again), but the well-trodden territory Sugar Town's filmmakers attempt to illuminate is so well-lit we need ultradark sunglasses to view it once more. There aren't so many surprises here, just highly ambitious characters who will do various things to claw their way to the top. The film's casting, however, is well worth noting. Former Duran Duran band member John Taylor does admirably playing a former rocker who longs for the limelight once more. Rosanna Arquette plays his mate, a former ingenue who starred in all sorts of B-movie tripe. And Ally Sheedy, who finds that looking for love in the city of angels is no easy feat (another one of the film's surprises), is always a pleasure to watch. Sugar Town opens Friday, January 26. There's news from Montreal filmmaker Hunt Hoe, who's currently in India on the festival circuit with his latest feature, Seducing Maarya. The film, which had its premiere last August at our own World Film Fest, had its Indian debut at the New Delhi International Film Fest on Monday. Apparently Hoe has become worried about violent reactions to the film after the local media responded to the film's content with a good deal of hostility. Critics slammed the film for its depictions of homosexuality and incest, alleging the film is immoral and a promotion of interreligious violence. Three years ago, Hoe released his first feature, Foreign Ghosts, an anthology film which told stories of immigrant struggle in Montreal. Maarya is the story of an arranged marriage between an Indian woman and a closeted gay man in Montreal's immigrant Indian community. When the husband's father arrives for a visit, he seduces his daughter-in-law. Seducing Maarya's New Delhi screenings have sold out and fest organizers are reportedly setting up additional screenings to sate the demand for tickets. For those in the production film and TV community who want to take a crash course in crashing the CBC, a Web site has been launched to meet your needs. It's called eTVip (an abbreviated version of English Television Independent Production, located at www.indiepro.cbc.ca), and the site is described by the CBC's executive director of arts & entertainment programming Phyllis Platt as "our open invitation to the independent production community." The site includes details about submission policies and terms of trade, recent news of awards and CBC-related industry events and a message board where you can leave notices for CBC execs. : COMMENTS: matt_hays@babylon.montreal.qc.ca