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SEVENTH SON Starts Filming on its Mega Medieval Castle Set – Updated

After months of construction, dark fantasy movie Seventh Son started filming today on its gigantic medieval castle set at Kent Hangar field in Vancouver. In addition to the huge wooden set, I counted eight generators and several giant blue screens attached to a wall of forty-two stacked shipping containers (crew had turned one of the bottom containers into a makeshift props department).

Seventh Son is about an apprentice Tom (Ben Barnes) — the seventh son of a seventh son — to the County Spook (Jeff Bridges) who has imprisoned an evil witch Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore). A young girl tricks Tom into helping the witch escape. I don’t know who was on set today because I could only see a sliver of the filming through a gap in the blue screens, revealing an interior market and real horses tethered to wooden rails.

Read More »SEVENTH SON Starts Filming on its Mega Medieval Castle Set – Updated

LEO AWARDS Nominations 2012 – Film Edition

For the first time in a long time, I have seen four of the feature films nominated for Leo Awards on the big screen, thanks to a Vancouver International Film Festival pass from Vancouver is Awesome dot com.

As expected, Carl Bessai’s Sisters & Brothers, the third in his trilogy about dysfunctional Vancouver families, leads the feature film nominations with twelve in total. How could it not with local talent like Corner Gas’s Gabrielle Miller and Benjaman Ratner as sister and brother; Intelligence’s Camille Sullivan and Amanda Crew as half-sisters on a road trip to L.A. with a sleezy hustler played by Tom Scholte; and The Killing’s Kacey Rohl and Leena Manro as another pair of half-sisters, whose mother is none other than local acting legend Gabrielle Rose? All eight of these B.C. actors are nominated either for lead or supporting performances in the film.

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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

YVRShoots Series – Making of THIS MEANS WAR in Vancouver

Published February 27, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Thanks to real bro chemistry between Chris Pine (Star Trek reboot’s Captain Kirk) and Tom Hardy (Bane in upcoming The Dark Night Rises), the bromance in This Means War works much better than the actual romance, which flounders on the premise that Reese Witherspoon’s character is so supremely attractive that these two men would risk their friendship to war over her. Witherspoon is beautiful and an acclaimed actress but she’s miscast in this role. On the other hand, I had no problem with the idea of blending of action, romance and comedy — if done well — in a story of spy versus spy, who use their CIA resources against each other after they discover they’ve fallen for the same woman. But the execution of this movie felt choppy and clumsy in both writing and editing, as if three different movies had been spliced into one.

That might have been the case, judging from the number of Vancouver scenes cut in editing, including the ones I photographed below in Yaletown and North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay Market, as well as some at Gastown’s Incendio restaurant. Director McG (in my Yaletown photo with Tom Hardy & Reese Witherspoon) even shot three alternate endings to the romance, including a fun “homoerotic” one of Pine and Hardy in each other’s arms and Witherspoon with nobody — which I might have preferred.

This Means War opens with a spectacular action sequence on the roof of the Bentall 4 tower in Vancouver as Hong Kong. CIA agents and best buds FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and Tuck Hensen (Tom Hardy) are on a mission to stop arms dealer Heinrich, played by Til Schweiger of Inglorious Basterds fame, from acquring a WMD at a fancy hotel rooftop party. Read More »YVRShoots Series – Making of THIS MEANS WAR in Vancouver