Jan Rubeš

Jan Rubeš

Birth : 1920-06-06, Volyně, Czechoslovakia

Death : 2009-06-29

History

Born in Czechoslovakia. After graduating in 1945 from the Conservatory of Music in Prague, Jan Rubes went on to join the Prague Opera House as their youngest basso singer. He also performed at the Pilsen Opera House in leading roles in his early years. By 1948, he was chosen to represent Czechoslovakia at the International Music Festival held in Geneva and won first prize in his category. He emigrated to Canada on New Year's Eve 1948 with hopes of creating a greater musical career. As a member of the Canadian Opera Company, he achieved recognition for his roles, as Boris in "Boris Godunov", Schigolch in "Lulu" and as Mephisto in "Faust". As well, he served as the company's director of touring and program development. Branching out into radio and, eventually, TV, he wrote and hosted from 1975-83 TVOntario's "Guess What?" and acted in many TV dramas, later receiving the Earle Grey Award for lifetime work in Canadian television.

Profile

Jan Rubeš
Jan Rubeš

Movies

Our Fathers
Pope John Paul
In the '80s, priests and especially the Father Geoghan arrested for sexual abuse of minors. Cardinal Law, also indicted, and the diocese was aware of the actions of these men of the church and was kept secret for years, until the victims decide to seek redress.
Daniel and the Superdogs
The Colonel
A young boy still recovering from his mother's recent death teams with his two best friends to turn a regular pooch into a stunt-performing super-dog in this affectionate comedy for the whole family. Losing a parent is never easy, but for 11 year old Daniel it's been especially hard; when his father dives into work in an attempt to keep his grief at bay, Daniel starts causing mischief around the neighborhood with his best friends William and Colin. When the kids catch wind of a canine.
Anthrax
Arthur Kowalski
When cattle mysteriously start dying of anthrax in a small Alberta ranching community, an RCMP officer tries to keep the peace as ranchers lay the blame on a local agricultural research center. A reporter encourages the angry ranchers - led by the Mountie's mother-in-law - to stage a sit-in at the research center. When an eccentric old rancher dies after being exposed to a deadly strain of anthrax, the protesters are quarantined. No one notices that the reporter has disappeared - along with several vials of the deadly bacteria. The RCMP officer begins his own investigation, gleaning information from a U.S. government agent. He finds himself racing against time to recover the stolen anthrax.
Believe
Jason Stiles
After being continually kicked out of boarding schools, Ben is sent to live with his stern Grandfather in a small town. Almost as soon as he arrives he begins to see the ghost of a woman around his grandfather's house. He also gets to know a girl named Kathrine and the two fast become friends. They both want to help the ghost who holds a connection to both of their families. As they research the past, Ben and Katherine find out that sometimes all you need to do to help someone is to believe.
Snow Falling on Cedars
Ole Jurgensen
In the 1950s, a Japanese-American fisherman is suspected of killing his neighbour at sea — and race is a factor in the trial. So is reporter, Ishmael.
Nightmare Man
Evan Hannibal
After recovering from a near-fatal wound, a cop develops the ability to see crime scenes through psychic flashes.
The White Raven
Markus Strand
A journalist gets pulled into an intrigue by his editor that involves a story that he received a Pulitzer for years before. It seems that the second largest diamond ever mined was used during World War II to buy a Jewish woman freedom from a prison camp. Only trouble is it disappeared after the war and now everyone is after it, including the Russians, former Nazis, gangsters, and the original owner. Somehow, the story that the journalist originally wrote about a camp survivor is believed to have leads to the diamond.
Rescuers: Stories of Courage – Two Couples
Hendrick de Vries
Two fact-based tales about citizens who risked everything, including their lives, to save Holocaust victims.
Music from Another Room
Louis Klammer
Music From Another Room is a romantic comedy that follows the exploits of Danny, a young man who grew up believing he was destined to marry the girl he helped deliver as a five year old boy when his neighbor went into emergency labor. Twenty-five years later, Danny returns to his hometown and finds the irresistible Anna Swann but she finds it easy to resist him since she is already engaged to dreamboat Eric, a very practical match. In pursuit of Anna, Danny finds himself entangled with each of the eccentric Swanns including blind, sheltered Nina, cynical sister Karen, big brother Bill and dramatic mother Grace as he fights to prove that fate should never be messed with and passion should never be practical.
Flood: A River's Rampage
Jacob Gunderson
After heavy rain, the Mississippi is breaking it's banks flooding small towns. Richard Thomas and Kate Vernon realise their town is next on the hit list. Lots and lots of sand bags might not do the trick but a huge explosion might. In the meantime the plot is filled up with a predictable story about a family dreading their mistake of staying behind when they become entrapped in their own home.
Sarabande
Dr. Kassovitz
The film explores the relationships that a limousine driver, a doctor, and a real estate agent have amongst each other and with Yo-Yo Ma as he travels to Canada to perform Bach's Cello Suites.
The Third Twin
Never Too Late
Joseph
Four old friends reunite to investigate the death of a good friend.
Roommates
Bolek Krupa
An elderly, yet young-at-heart man, moves in with his grandson, and both their lives turn upside-down.
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story
Far
After serving in the military for more than twenty years, including a tour of duty in Vietnam, Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer (Glenn Close) had seen her share of battles. But nothing could prepare her for the fight ahead: an intensely personal struggle against the U.S. Army when she becomes the highest ranking officer ever to be discharged for being a lesbian. With the support of her partner Diane (Judy Davis), Cammermeyer undertakes an against-all-odds battle against the Army's policy. But to do so, she must risk everything – her career, her privacy and even the love of her family.
Lamb Chop in the Haunted Studio
Phantom
Shari, Lamb Chop, and the gang visit a studio haunted by a mysterious phantom.
Mesmer
Professor Stoerk
A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of "animal magnetism."
D2: The Mighty Ducks
Jan
After Gordon Bombay's hockey comeback is cut short he is named coach of Team USA Hockey for the Junior Goodwill Games. Bombay reunites the Mighty Ducks and introduces a few new players, however, he finds himself distracted by his newfound fame and must regather if the Ducks are to defeat tournament favourites Iceland.
The Birds II: Land's End
Karl
Still haunted by the memory of the son they lost to an accident years ago, Ted and Mary Hocken take up residence with their two young daughters on the remote, windswept reaches of a tiny East Coast island. The Hockens are determined to forget their painful past and spend a quiet, uneventful summer. But as immense flocks of birds begin massing around the island, it becomes clear that something is very wrong in this isolated, deceptively calm oasis. Before long, the sky is darkened by a hideous onslaught of the screeching, winged creatures. It's an assault unlike anything in the history of man or beast – or is it? For one old timer recalls a similar, horrific outbreak that gripped the West Coast decades ago...
On My Own
The Colonel
Simon Henderson is at boarding school in Canada while his father works in Hong Kong, and his mother lives in England. When his parents visit him in the holidays, Simon discovers that his mother has schizophrenia.
Deceived
Tomasz
The murder of a museum curator places art dealer Jack Saunders under suspicion for selling forged treasures to museums. When Jack suddenly dies in a car crash, his wife Adrienne tries to discover what he did on her own. She finds that she knew little about the man she was married to. The more she learns about her husband's possible illegal activities and double life, the more she places her daughter, and herself, in grave danger.
Class Action
Pavel
A liberal activist lawyer alienated his daughter Maggie years ago when she discovered his many affairs. Now a conservative corporate lawyer, Maggie agrees to go up against her father in court. To gain promotion, she must defend an auto manufacturer against charges that their explosion-prone station wagons are unsafe. As her mother begs for peace, Maggie takes on her dad in a trial that turns increasingly personal and nasty.
Descending Angel
Bishop Dancu
A recently engaged man getting to know his future father-in-law better unearths clues that the man may have been a Nazi collaborator and a mass murderer.
Cold Front
Zoubov
An American cop teams up with a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and together they uncover a plot to hide international terrorists in Vancouver.
The Amityville Curse
The Priest
Five people spend the night in an abandoned house, the Amityville haunted house, and soon find themselves terrorized by assorted ghosts, venomous insects and ghostly apparitions.
Courage Mountain
Grandfather
At the beginning of World War I, a young Swiss girl is sent off to boarding school.
The Experts
Illyich
Travis and Wendell are two down-on-their-luck New Yorkers who think they're relocating to a small town in Nebraska to open a nightclub. What they don't know is they have actually been abducted by a KGB operative and flown to the Soviet Union, where they'll unwittingly serve as "experts" on all things cool in America. The town, created expressly for KGB spies-in-training is meant to serve as a training ground for Soviet agents. What can these two hapless Americans possibly teach the Soviet spies and will they ever learn they are not actually in Nebraska?
Blind Fear
Lasky
A blind employee at a New England lodge is in danger when a gang of killers arrives to stay at the lodge.
Something About Love
Wally Olynyk (Stefan Wodoslawsky) returns home to the Cape Breton region of Nova Scotia in this somber drama. After years of living in Los Angeles, he hopes to attend his high-school reunion and visit with his father Stan (Jan Rubes). Stan is the local mortician who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, but the 63-year-old father is too stubborn to admit anything is wrong. The contrast between Los Angeles and the grim Canadian steel town clashes like the father and son.
The Kiss
Gordon Tobin
After the death of her mother, a teenage girl is faced with bizarre supernatural occurrences when her mother's estranged sister arrives and begins to infiltrate her and her father's lives.
The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick
Augustus Glick
The early 1960s: In preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy, Max Glick (Noam Zylberman) from a small Manitoba community with an overbearing family tries to navigate his coming-of-age with his family's condescension and bigotry using his sarcastic, Jewish humour. The town's rabbi dies, and a sub-plot develops in which Max's father (Aaron Schwartz) and grandfather (Jan Rubes)-both synagogue leaders-are saddled with a traditional Hassidic rabbi who sticks out like a sore thumb among the otherwise assimilated Jewish community. To make matters more difficult, Max likes a Catholic girl (14 year old Fairuza Baulk in just her third film), whom he later competes with in a piano competition. The quirky, fun-loving rabbi tries to help him with his problems, yet harbours a secret ambition of his own. Filmed in Winnipeg and rural Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada.
Blood Relations
Andreas
A trip to meet her fiance's family becomes a descent into hell when Marie discovers that her future husband wants more than just a wife... Dying for a rich husband, Marie is thrilled when Thomas brings her home to his family's massive estate. But there is something wrong in the house, and as the days go by and Marie wanders the dim halls, she makes a gruesome discovery. There is a lab underground, and a body, and all that's missing is a brain...
Dead of Winter
Dr. Joseph Lewis
A fledgling actress is lured to a remote mansion for a screen-test, soon discovering she is actually a prisoner in the middle of a blackmail plot.
The Marriage Bed
Max Ehrlich
Linda Griffiths stars as very pregnant Annie Graham, who's about to give birth to her third child in seven years. Annie looks back via flashbacks at how her own plans for a career got sidetracked and how her marriage suddenly went off the rails on a crazy train. At the same time she's trying to cope with a Christmas season full of inlaws, family and neighbours.. and a husband who's gone awol in order to 'find himself'.
One Magic Christmas
Santa Claus
Ginny Grainger, a young mother, rediscovers the joy and beauty of Christmas, thanks to the unshakable faith of her six-year-old daughter Abbie and Gideon, Ginny's very own guardian angel.
Murder: By Reason of Insanity
Giorgi Denerenko (uncredited)
A married couple from Poland emigrates to the U.S.,. but things don't turn out as well as they had imaged. The husband's business fails, while his wife's career really takes off. The husband, unable to cope with the pressures of his failed business, his failing marriage and the adjustments necessary to live in a completely different society, begins to take out his frustrations on his wife.
Murder in Space
Gregory Denarenko
Set in the "not-so-distant future", the crew of an international space station are set to return triumphantly to Earth, until someone starts killing the other crew members.
Witness
Eli Lapp
A sheltered Amish child is the sole witness of a brutal murder in a restroom at a Philadelphia train station, and he must be protected. The assignment falls to a taciturn detective who goes undercover in a Pennsylvania Dutch community. On the farm, he slowly assimilates despite his urban grit and forges a romantic bond with the child's beautiful mother.
Charlie Grant's War
Jacob
A Canadian artist turned diamond merchant in Vienna, Austria risks his life to smuggle Jews out of the Third Reich.
The Amateur
Kaplan
A researcher for the CIA who convinces his superiors to send him to the eastern bloc in order to avenge the murder of his wife by enemy agents discovers a web of deception underneath his wife's death.
Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid
Psychiatrist
Set within the super-rich jet-set society of Paris, Richard Harris portrays a man whose life is gradually being destroyed. From sexual trauma to financial disaster, he slowly descends into a world of insanity, perversion and finally the bottomless pit!
Mr. Patman
Vrakettas
Women, patients and paranoia surround an Irish night-shift orderly in a Canadian mental ward.
Deadly Harvest
Swenson
Farmer struggles to keep food on the table, and regain his son who has joined a gang of marauding city-folk during the world's worst famine.
The Incredible Journey
Carl Nurmi
The story of three pets, a cat and two dogs, who lose their owners when they are all on vacation. Can they find their way home?