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PHOTO RECAP: Of Steveston Scenes in ONCE UPON A TIME 1×19 — Updated

We’ve been specualating for a while that Eion Bailey’s August W. Booth, aka The Stranger, could be Rumplestiltskin’s long-lost son Baelfire. It turns out he’s not, but Robert Carlyle’s Rumpelstiltskin/Mr.Gold has some hope early on in episode nineteen called The Return.

It opens with a seemingly-disabled August struggling to get out of bed and to walk. He meets up with Jared Gilmore’s Henry across the street from Mr. Gold’s Pawn Shop, asking for the boy’s help in “accelerating the plan” while pretending it’s part of Operation Cobra. “We’re a go,” he says as Henry runs into Mr. Gold’s to buy a gift for Miss Blanchard “since she didn’t kill that woman” (one of the funniest scenes is the accompanying “We’re glad you didn’t kill Mrs. Nolan” card from her class), while August searches Mr. Gold’s back office. I saw them film the exterior scenes in a mid-February downpour in Steveston dressed as Storybrooke, and then move inside Mr. Gold’s for interior scenes with Robert Carlyle.

Once Upon a Time intercut these scenes with the fairytale world where Bae tries to get his now clearly evil father Rumple to return to his original self, untainted by magic. They make a deal that if Bae can find a way to rid him of the Dark One’s powers, his father will go along with it.

Back in Storybrooke, a suspicious Mr. Gold decides to follow August out of town to the local convent. That’s Eion Bailey on the motor bike below but his stunt double rode it down the Moncton Street in Steveston. And that’s Mr. Gold’s ride, the big Cadillac parked outside his pawn shop.

Bae obtains a special bean from the Blue Fairy which will open a portal to a land without magic where his father will have no dark powers. But when Rumple sees the gigantic swirling vortex he loses his nerve, reneging on his deal Read More »PHOTO RECAP: Of Steveston Scenes in ONCE UPON A TIME 1×19 — Updated

BIG READ: FRINGE’s Epic Future Filmed at Olympic Village & B.C. Place

Published April 20, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Tonight’s Fringe — called Letters of Transit — promises to be epic, apparently set in the year 2036 in the world of the Observers, with big scenes of background performers dressed in their grey suits and fedoras filmed at the Olympic Village and on a concourse in B.C. Place stadium. Can you remember any TV production ever renting out even part of new B.C. Place for filming?

This is huge. Why is John Noble’s Walter Bishop in the future with Lost’s Desmond, aka Henry Ian Cusick? Vancouver’s own Fringe star Joshua Jackson has said this is where “the door to [Fringe’s] fifth season is opened” and plays into the decision to film two season four endings, one that would be used if Fringe is renewed (presumably related to the future Observer world) and the other if the show is cancelled.

.Joshua Jackson will be live-tweeting tonight with his handle @VanCityJax using the Fringenuity hashtag #FighttheFuture, along with Fringe showrunners Joel Wyman, @jwfringe, and Jeff Pinker, @jpfringe.

The Fringe Campaign, launched by Fringe fans at Fringenuity and adopted by Fringies the world over, is now backed by Fringe Read More »BIG READ: FRINGE’s Epic Future Filmed at Olympic Village & B.C. Place

SHOOT: A SINGLE SHOT’s Sam Rockwell method-acting in Langley

If you meet Sam Rockwell coming out of his trailer for the film A Single Shot, he’s a pleasant, genial guy, happy to sign autographs and pose for photos with fans. But as he crosses the street to set he turns into his surly character John Moon, a hunter who’s being tracked by hardened backwater crooks after stumbling into a deep woods campground filled with drugs, cash and the body of a young woman that Moon just killed by accident with a single fatal shot.

Outside Dot’s Diner turned Puffy’s Diner in old town Langley, Sam Rockwell walked head down around and around in a circle before going in the diner door and brushing past a Devon County Sheriff (West Virginia) for the scene. Later Rockwell kicked a garbage can again and again before doing a take of entering the diner. And even later, Rockwell picked up an umbrella and started whacking plastic cartons to get into character. I’d never seen someone method acting like this on location before. It was fascinating to watch.

 

Here he is coming out of the diner after a take. Is that the hint of a smile? It was one of the few times I caughtRead More »SHOOT: A SINGLE SHOT’s Sam Rockwell method-acting in Langley

PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS Cast Ride Green Hippocampus Rainbow at Ambleside Pier in West Vancouver

For all those asking, Nathan Fillion has not been spotted on set yet. I’ll be looking for Fillion on a Vancouver beach (hopefully not Ambleside beach yesterday) since he’s playing the Greek god Hermes, who meets Percy Jackson at a beach and gives him what he needs  to head into the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical golden fleece to save Camp Half-Blood from attack, the second in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians franchise.

Logan Lerman is young Percy Jackson who embarks on a series of adventures based on Greek mythology. I saw Lerman yesterday at the end of the Ambleside Pier in West Vancouver riding a hippocampus, along with Douglas Smith as his half-brother Tyson and Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth Chase. The hippocamus was green screen so that CGI could be added later and had a removable head.

The only way up from this floating dock with the hippocampus was to climb the ladder so cast and crew were ferried by boat to a gang plank closer to shore between scenes. Read More »PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS Cast Ride Green Hippocampus Rainbow at Ambleside Pier in West Vancouver

BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 17, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Imagine two Vancouver-as-Vancouver TV series filming here, with B.C. Place stadium, the central Vancouver Public Library, Woodwards’ revolving “W”, Granville Island, Stanley Park and other local landmarks as themselves. It’s so rare for us to have one Vancouver-set series filming here, far less two. So come to our city’s first Fan Expo this Saturday, where you’ll get sneak peeks of both, as well as the chance to meet the showrunners and cast.

Continuum is about some kind of future officer named Kiera Cameron who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past. You may have seen some of the spectacular-future-downtown-skyline teasers on Showcase, where the 10-episode series debuts in late May. Or the 2077/2012 split skylines on the Continuum show poster.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, who joins the local Vancouver police force with Victor Webster as her 2012 detetective partner. You can see Nichols as her character filming in Vancouver with the Woodwards “W” in the background in a promo photo from the show. I’ve photographed Continuum filming at Victory Square, outside and inside the central Vancouver Public Library, The Centre and CBC Vancouver so far with prop Vancouver Police cars and VPD extras alongside real ones. Below is my photo of Nichols exiting an unmarked police car with the Vancouver Public Library reflected in the windshield. And below that is my photo of  Nichols and her co-star Victor Webster filming in a snowstorm at Victory Square. It will be a veritable Vancouver-palooza in each episode.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

RECAP: FRINGE’s The Consultant With Set Photos

Does David Robert Jones want to destroy both Fringeverses? Is that his ultimate game plan? In The Consultant he experiments with syncing the two parallel universes of Fringe.

Episode eighteen opens with the funeral of Captain Lee (Seth Gabel), killed on David Robert Jones (Jared Harris)’s orders with information from Col. Broyles (Lance Reddick), the mole in the alternate universe’s Department of Defence. I’d heard about this shoot filmed in Vancouver’s Mountainview Cemetary on a miserably wet February day with a hundred extras and now that I know what it was, I’m not sorry to have missed it.

Still in Manhatan (only one t), Fauxlivia (Anna Torv) confronts Meana (Blair Brown’s evil alt-Nina Sharp) in prison to try to get her to give up the name of the DOD mole, without success.

This week’s Fringe case starts at a business meeting in our universe where an executive is about to get fired when his boss suddenly levitates and then falls down on the conference table with such force that it breaks bones in his body.

Junior agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) drives Walter Bishop (John Noble) to the crime scene in the Bishop wagon, while he complains about her “wild driving”. They meet up with Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), aka POlivia, as shippers have dubbed them. “Look. It’s my son and his girlfriend,” exclaims a giddy Walter. Our Fringe family is back together and outside of Walter’s lab, filming at CBC Vancouver in mid-February.

Inside the conference room, Peter Bishop notices seat belt marks on the body which leads to the discovery that the boss’s doppleganger in the alt-universe died in a plane crash. What is causing these in-sync deaths?

Walter decides to go to the Other Side to act as a consultant to their investigation. “I always like to empty my bladder before a long trip,” he declares, before crossing the bridge that links the two universes. Read More »RECAP: FRINGE’s The Consultant With Set Photos