The year 2154. The privileged live on Elysium. No poverty. No war. No sickness. The rest of us live on Earth. An over-populated, ruined planet… Read More »TRAILER: Neill Blomkamp’s ELYSIUM with Matt Damon Filmed in Vancouver & Mexico City
Published April12, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome
Jesse James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood is rooted in some of his own experiences: his love of golf which led him to turn pro at the age of 19 and hero-worship Jack Nicklaus’s six green-jacket wins at The Masters golf tournament; his hippie father’s flight to Canada as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War; and the shuttle back and forth between his parents after their divorce. But Miller never dreamed as a young boy that his parents would reunite if he beat Jack Nicklaus at The Masters, as 10-year-old Redwood Forest Hanson (Ryan Grantham) does in the Vancouver writer-director’s endearing film.
Becoming Redwood opens in Vancouver today at the Cineplex International Village, one day after the 77th Masters got underway in Augusta, Georgia, with the legendary Jack Nicklaus. who’s won the tournament more than any other golfer, as an honourary starter.
The Story: In 1969, two-year-old Redwood watches helpless from the backseat of a Volkswagen van as his mother Jade (Miller’s wife Jennifer Copping) leaves his draft-dodging father Ethan (Chad Willett) at the Canadian border. Eight years later, his father is arrested for dope dealing in B.C. and golf-obsessed long-haired Redwood (Ryan Grantham) must return to the U.S. to live with his mother, her two teen sons (Tyler Johnson and Todd Potter), her red-neck husband Arnold (Derek Hamilton) and Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl (Scott Hylands) in northern California. How to deal with all this trauma? Redwood imagines beating the “Golden Bear”, aka Jack Nicklaus, at the Masters will solve all his problems. Or as the movie’s poster puts it: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Turn Pro.
Read More »BIG READ: VIFF Favourite BECOMING REDWOOD Opens at International Village Today
Published Feburary 22, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome
Kokanee’s The Movie Out Here hits theatres next Friday. It’s a B.C. version of Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School populated with your favourite characters from the beer commercials like the Sasquatch, Kokanee Ranger and Glacier Girls plus a new buddy ranger duo Glacier and Fresh. Robin Nielsen, Viv Leacock and James Wallis co-star as old friends who band together to fight a land developer in the ski town of Fernie as itself. I met the Kokanee Ranger and his successors Glacier and Fresh and interviewed Nielsen and Leacock on set at Alouette Lake (before the two-week Fernie shoot), while crew filmed Wallis watching Glacier Girls change bikini tops on the beach for a Kokanee commercial within the movie.
Read More »BIG READ: Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE in Theatres Next Friday
If you follow Brent Butt (Corner Gas/Hiccups) on Twitter then his feature film No Clue won’t be news to you. It took about three years to get into production and started filming in Vancouver two weeks ago. It’s big. And local. And it will be funny. No Clue is a “comedic mystery thriller” starring Butt as an in-over-his-head guy trying to figure out whodunit from a cast of suspects including Amy Smart, David Koechner, David Cubitt, Dustin Milligan, Dan Payne, and Kirsten Prout.
Brent Butt wrote the script, his production company Sparrow Media is producing it and Vancouver’s own Carl Bessai (Sisters & Brothers/Fathers & Sons) is directing it. I found No Clue at dusk yesterday wrapping a scene inside Finch’s Tea and Coffee House at West Pender and Homer and then moving across the intersection to the opposite corner to film the next scene.
A steadicam crew filmed Amy Smart (Shamelss/Scrubs) walking from the curb lane of West Pender, up onto the sidewalk and into the stone building on the corner. Then they took the cameras inside and filmed another scene of her coming into the building where Brent Butt was. I’m not sure if he was in the scene with Smart or on set in his role as writer/producer.
Read More »SHOOT: Brent Butt’s Big Movie NO CLUE Films Downtown
Published October 19, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome.
It’s not often in this series that I get an opportunity to talk about movies where Vancouver plays itself, but once a year several locally-filmed features are screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival. This year I got to see director Katrin Bowen’s sold-out Vancouver film Random Acts of Romance on my third try last Friday night.
“Sex, Abduction, Stalking and You Thought Romance Was Dead” is the tagline. The film opens in east Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel with our two married couples out for the evening: Amanda Tapping’s Dianne married to Zak Santiago’s younger man Matt and Laura Bertram’s young wife Holly married to Robert Moloney’s David. Elsewhere in the restaurant is Ted Whittall’s single sleezeball Richard, breaking up with his latest conquest. Add Sonja Bennett’s single, completely wacko stalker Lynne and Katharine Isabelle’s lesbian Bud to this mix of interconnected Vancouverites and you get random acts of violent romance.
At last Friday’s screening, the very tall Katrin Bowen (below) spoke about the importance of setting her movie in Vancouver in all its “rain, sex and awkwardness.” She wanted the city to “take on a personna”. It helps that 95% of the movie soundtrack is music from Vancouver indie bands, many discovered at the Biltmore and Cobalt Hotels. And that there are so many scenes set in recognizable locations like the denouement of an abduction under the south end of the Burrard Bridge.
But the big question for the director last Friday was: how did you get Vancouver’s Sci-fii Queen Amanda Tapping to star in your movie? It turns out Katrin Bowen and Tapping became fast-friends years ago when Bowen worked as Tapping’s photo double/standin on the first Stargate TV series, Stargate SG-1. Read More »VIFF: Vancouver as Vancouver in RANDOM ACTS OF ROMANCE
Kokanee and Alliance Films invited (social) media to visit them on location deep in Golden Ears Park yesterday for the upcoming feature film The Movie Out Here. They lured us out with the promise of seeing a real Sasquatch (he has his own VIP trailer) but we saw a “fake” one instead filming a “fake” Kokanee commercial within the real movie — it has the working title Big Hairy Movie. No one seemed to mind about the fake Sasquatch though because of the Glacier Girls changing their bikini tops on camera and the Kokanee Ranger (John Novak) looking on.
The Movie Out Here is more than an extended Kokanee beer commercial, although I’m sure that would be entertaining too. But it’s no serious drama. Think Caddyshack not Schindler’s List. Or “Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School” as one marketing manager put it. Robin Nielsen, Viv Leacock and James Wallis co-star as old friends who band together to fight a land developer in the ski town of Fernie in Kokanee country (the movie will film in Fernie before it wraps mid-month). Two of the buddies came out to set to chat with us even though they weren’t in the Kokanee commercial scenes.
Glacier Girls changing bikini tops on camera for fake commercial and real movie.
Electric Playground interviews stars Robin Nielsen and Viv Leocock on the set at Alouette Lake.
Robin Nielsen (grand nephew of Leslie Nielsen), who plays the straight man Adam, a Toronto lawyer, in this buddy movie.
Viv Leocock who plays Jason.
Winners of the Live Auditions for new Kokanee Rangers.
A Kokanee beer truck on the beach for the fake Kokanee commercial.
Read More »Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE On Location in Golden Ears Park
So we have some scoop on what director Neill Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi project Elysium is about, after Collider.com got its hands on an advance sceening ticket which had a detailed plot synopsis. I’d worked out some of the story last summer during the film’s three-month shoot in Vancouver, which I wrote about in my YVRShoots series, but there is still a lot we don’t know.
Elysium turns out to be the name of the vast, luxurious space station constructed by Armadyne where the very rich live in the year 2159 (want-ads for Armadyne popped up at last year’s Comic-Con in San Diego, the start of a viral campaign for the movie). The rest of us– the 99% if you will — live on the over-populated, ruined planet Earth below. A bald, buff Matt Damon is Max (link to first official photo), who takes on the mission to bring equality to these polarized classes. He’s going up against Jody Foster as Minister Delacourt [corrected], a hard-line govenment official, who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the grandiose lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium in space (Foster returned for reshoots this spring but not Damon).
Since Matt Damon was seen filming scenes in blue workmen’s garb [corrected] last summer at Vancouver Technical School, Riverview Hospital and out in Delta, could this be how Max is forced to take on the mission? And could this be how Max will save his own life? The Grouse Grinder also spent weeks filming at a mansion facade and temporarily-planted tropical garden on the vast gravel field at Kent and Boundary in Vancouver. The blue rectangles are thought to be a spaceship, the fake palm trees have no fronds, the small piles of sand seem to represent a manmade beachs and huge blue screens ringed the set. Interior scenes were filmed at the other end of Vancouver in a real-life mansion at 51st and Macdonald behind Jurassic Park-sized hedges. I’m now wondering if this mansion is on the Elysium space station, not on Earth as I originally thought.
Read More »What Neill Blomkamp’s Upcoming Sci-Fi Film ELYSIUM is About
Published May 31, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome
Live-tweets turned out to be the best thing about last weekend’s Leo Awards celebrating the best of B.C.-made film and television. Tweets from @LeoAwards gave an award-by-award account plus details of all the hijinks in between at both the Celebration and Gala Awards: hijinks that ranged from Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott mock-fighting over their award to Gala co-hosts Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne calling each other evil twin and English MILF to Nancy Robertson and Ryan Robbins pitching a new comedy series to Emilie Ullerup re-enacting Angelina Jolie’s notorious one-leg Oscars pose to acting legend Gabrille Rose swearing on stage while presenting the final award to Sisters & Brothers for Best Feature Film.
It was a great way to let the public share in this celebration of artistic talent after a tough week, which had started with the official cancellation of homegrown sci-fi series Sanctuary, the most-recognized B.C. production by far with 18 Leo nominations going in. Sanctuary ended up winning four Leos for its fourth and final season, but only one on the night of the gala for a guest performance by Arctic Air’s Pascale Hutton, who sang beautifully and turned her head right around in the Glee-meets-The-Exorcist episode Fuge.
I’d hoped for a repeat of last year’s wild times on the red carpet outside the Hotel Vancouver on West Georgia Street, but organizers moved the red carpet inside the hotel this year to the conference floor and restricted access. Most of the nominees kept the party going after the red carpet to take a turn at the new Media Wall by the bar where I had a spot, but it was so dimly-lit I had to jack some light from the pro-photographers’ flashes. Here’s The Express’s Johanna Ward interviewing nominee and eventual winner Johannah Newmarch on the red carpet about her supporting performance in mockumentary Sunflower Hour. Ward later dropped by the Media Wall to wrangle nominees Ali Liebert from Bomb Girls and Emilie Ullerup from Arctic Air as a backdrop to her standup.
You can see the start of Emilie Ullerup’s one-leg Angelina homage and how the popular Cassini brothers photo-bombed the arrangement. That’s Frank on the left and John on the right. Frank Cassini later won a roar from the crowd and a Leo for his supporting performance on Read More »BIG READ: LEO AWARDS Live-Tweets its Hotel Vancouver Gala
When I caught up with nominee Patrick Gilmore’s tweets on Saturday ahead of the Leo Awards gala , I knew I wanted to do a short post about him primping and prepping for his big night. Like his wickedly-funny lead role in puppets and porn mockumentary Sunflower Hour, this read like a debauched twist on the traditional celeb diary:
9:46am – First task today is to lay out my lucky underwear. Granted I get more lucky when I don’t wear underwear, I’m hedging my bets. #Leos [He attached a photo of rows of swim wear/briefs? hanging on racks]
10:12am – Why screw with fate? It’s more likely I’ll lose my pants tonight. #Leos
11:34am – 1 hour of studying, I now have Stallone’s reaction to Peter Finch winning down pat. I’m gonna nail it. #Leos [He attached a link to a youtube video]
3:19pm – My attempt to get an authentic JBF Hair look has only led to Pillow Crease Face & an entire day spent sleeping. #Leos
4:49pm – 11mins from Red Carpet. Practicing my taking points, “P-a-t-r-i-c-k, Gilmore…that’s G-i-l…nevermind.” #Leos
5:42pm- Free champagne & autographs. [This tweet attached a photo taken by Sunflower Hour buddy Ben Cotton of Gilmore drinking champagne and signing grapher Justin’s chest at the top of the stairs to the convention floor of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.]
That’s the photo I wish I’d taken. The combination of a dimly-lit Media Wall and a non-professional camera defeated me. I did learn to adjust and got lucky once or twice but not in time for the Sunflower Hour boys — Ben Cotton, Patrick Gilmore and Peter New.
Read More »Patrick Gilmore’s Getting-Ready Tweets for the LEO AWARDS Gala
