Skip to content

Gastown

BIG READ: Hooded-Vigilante Series ARROW’s Record-Breaking Premiere

Published October 11, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Being Bad Never Looked So Good. Last night’s series premiere of Vancouver (and Victoria)-shot Arrow broke records with four million viewers and bragging rights as the biggest show on the American network The CW in three years.

Loosely-based on DC Comics The Green Arrow, the TV series Arrow is less Smallville-ish and more like The Dark Knight trilogy’s re-imagined Batman. The story: missing and thought dead for five years after a shipwreck, Stephen Amell’s billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns home a changed man. He secretly creates the persona of vigilante Arrow to fight crime and corruption in Starling City with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.

By day, Oliver Queen continues to play the part of the billionaire cad he used to be, while trying to make amends with those he wronged, like his former girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance, who works for a legal aid group called CNRI (Canary!). But she’s having none of it. “I didn’t grieve. I was too angry,” Katie Cassidy’s Lance tells Amell’s Queen Read More »BIG READ: Hooded-Vigilante Series ARROW’s Record-Breaking Premiere

Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

Being Bad Never Looked So Good. Check out the abs on Stephen Amell’s billionaire playboy Oliver Queen tonight in the series premiere of Arrow on the CW and CTV Two. Missing and thought dead for five years after a shipwreck, Queen returns home a changed man. He secretly creates the persona of vigilante Arrow to fight crime and corruption in Starling City with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.

By day, Queen continues to play the part of the billionaire cad he used to be while trying to make amends with those he wronged, like his former girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance, who works for a legal aid group called CNRI (Canary!). But she’s having none of it. “I didn’t grieve. I was too angry,” Katie Cassidy’s Lance tells Amell’s Queen in a scene filmed for the premiere in Gastown next to Chill Winston last March.

Read More »Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

TIFF: Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is Tonight’s Gala Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival

Robert Redford’s political thriller The Company You Keep gets a Toronto International Film Festival gala presentation tonight at Roy Thomson Hall. Filmed last fall in the Vancouver area, The Company You Keep stars Redford as widowed civil rights lawyer Jim Grant, who’s really a former Weather Underground militant and fugitive wanted for over thirty years for a bank robbery and murder of a guard. Shia LaBeouf is the young reporter Ben Shepard who exposes Grant’s secret, forcing him to go on the run to find the one person who can clear his name before he’s caught by the FBI in a nation-wide manhunt.

The official TIFF trailer opens with these typed words: “In 1969 a group of radical anti-war protestors began a campaign of bombings on American soil. They were called the “Weather Underground”. Some were sent to prison. A few … vanished…until today.” Then we see fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) arrested at a gas station. Ben Shepard (LaBeouf), a reporter for a struggling local newspaper, watches this on TV — Breaking News: Sharon Solarz Arrested. Jim Grant reads about the arrest in the newspaper — Weather Underground Most Wanted Caught — at home with his young daughter (Jackie Evancho, an 11-year-old finalist on America’s Got Talent): “What’s wrong? You look weird.” Grant: “I’m fine, honey. ” With help from an old college friend now FBI agent (Anna Kendrick), Shepard begins to focus on Grant, catching up with him at a shoot filmed in Gastown. Shepard: “Mr. Grant, I’m just trying to put the pieces together.” Grant: “I don’t have time for this…”

But Grant decides to run. He tells his daughter: “We’re not going to school. We’re gonna go on a little trip.” Wearing a baseball cap, Grant (Redford) and his daughter (Evancho) check into the remodeled Hotel Georgia complex downtown made to look like a Manhattan hotel with prop NY cabs coming and going.

The trailer continues with more typed words: “One reporter. Has discovered a secret. That can connect them all. And reveal the truth.” Shepard: “I don’t think he’s running away. I think he’s trying to clear his name.”

The biggest and most public scenes in Vancouver took place at the west entrance to the Vancouver Art Gallery (the former Vancouver Court House) with Grant (Redford) scrummed by media as he gets into a car driven by Chris Cooper. Reporter Shepard (LaBeouf) is there but at a remove from the scrum.

BIG READ: Vancouver Productions Working the Comic-Con Craziness

Published July 9th, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How’s this for Comic-Con craziness? Comic-Con tweeted Twilight fans today asking them not to start lining up outside the San Diego Convention Center three days before the convention starts on Thursday like they did last year. The anual geekfest doesn’t want them to erect another Camp Twilight tent city either. Any Twihard or TwiMom who tries to line up earlier than tomorrow or brings more than a chair and a sleeping bag with them, risks not being among the six thousand-plus lucky enough to get into the final vampires & werewolves panel at lunchtime on Thursday. If asked to leave, they’ll miss seeing exclusive footage from the mainly Vancouver-shot The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 and celebrity trio Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattison and Taylor Lautner in person. Organizers have scheduled the final Twilight movie as the first official panel in marquee Hall H so that Twilight teens and their Moms can’t ruin Comic-Con like they have in the past.

[Update: A Twilight fan who’d been camping outside the San Diego Convention Center since Sunday was struck and killed by an SUV on Tuesday morning while rushing to cross the street to get back to the lineup which Comic-Con organizers were moving. Fellow fans are trying to organize a moment of silence in her honour during the Breaking Dawn 2 panel.]

Once the Twihards have gone home, Comic-Con is free to fly its geek flag until Sunday night, epitomized by what could be 2012’s hottest panel — the 10th Anniversary reunion of the cast (and creator) of space western Firefly, featuring Canada’s own browncoat Nathan “Captain Tightpants” Fillion. Is cult TV once again dominating big budget movies at Comic-Con with Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory panels all in high demand too?

Maybe, maybe not. Iron Man 3 is a hot ticket, as are the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures and Sony Pictures panels in Hall H. Who doesn’t want to see footage from The Hobbit, which just wrapped filming in New Zealand? Or get a first look at two other mainly Vancouver-shot movies: the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill (seen below filming a shirtless green screen rescue scene in North Vancouver) as part of the Warner Bros. panel on Saturday afternoon and mysterious space station movie Elysium starring Matt Damon (link to first official photo) and Jody Foster as part of the Sony panel on Friday afternoon. Vancouver director Neill Blomkamp will be on hand with his stars to answer questions about the followup to his Oscar-nominated first feature District 9. It turns out Elysium is the name of a vast space station constructed by a company called Armadyne where the very rich live in the year 2159  (want-ads for Armadyne  popped up at last year’s Comic-Con, 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  Damon is Max, who goes up against Foster as hard-line government official Minister Delacourt [corrected], who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the grandious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium in space (the mansion set below on Kent Hangar field could be on the space station).

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Productions Working the Comic-Con Craziness

PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Season Finale Turns Gastown Into London for PRIMEVAL’s Andrew-Lee Potts – Updated

Sometimes our city doesn’t play itself in upcoming Vancouver-as-Vancouver series Primeval: New World. Tonight a section of Gastown doubled as a London square and street with a prop red double-decker bus, prop black London cabs, prop red post box and a real British star.

Andrew-Lee Potts, aka Conner Temple from the original British series Primeval, is back to film another episode of the Vancouver spinoff, more than three months after guest-starring in the series premiere. He and Robert Lawrenson (Sanctuary) and two other ARC actors did take after take of the four of them chasing what will be a computer-generated dinosaur through Maple Square and along Alexander Street for half a block. It was a long run, especially when repeated over and over again (I did not envy the guy carrying the big case). Here are the ARC foursome walking back to the start point on Carrall Street, looking a bit like the cover of The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road album (should be a zebra crossing but it’s not part of the scene).

Read More »PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Season Finale Turns Gastown Into London for PRIMEVAL’s Andrew-Lee Potts – Updated

PSYCH 6×03 This Episode Sucks on Global TV Tonight

This is old news for American Psych-Os but may,be not for some Canadian ones. On tonight’s Psych, Timothy Omundson’s buttoned-down Santa Barbara police detective Lassiter falls for a woman who could be a vampire, played by none other than Kristy Swanson, who was on the other end of the stake in feature film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh and Psych stars James Roday, who directs This Episode Sucks, and Dule Hill dress up like Lestat from Interview with a Vampire and Blacula.

Lassitar meets the woman named Marlowe in a bar and is instantly attracted but she disappears on him. The next morning, Lassitar arrives at a crime scene with his police partner Juliet, played by Maggie Lawson, which turns out to be the roof of the Bay parkade in downtown Vancouver. I watched James Roday direct a scene of Lassitar and Juliet examining the body. They find puncture wounds on the throat and neck prompting Roday’s “psychic” detective Shawn to jokingly proclaim the killer a vampire.

Read More »PSYCH 6×03 This Episode Sucks on Global TV Tonight

#FairlyLegal – Kiss Me, Kate

Oh Kate. Successful in your professional life. And self-sabatoguing in your private one. Like so many women. How maddening was it in Kiss Me, Kate when she skipped a dinner date with Ben to fall into bed with her ex-husband Justin?

Mind you when your ex is played by Michael Trucco, it would be hard to resist. Here’s Sarah Shahi as Kate Reed on her way to Justin’s apartment, which turned out to be located on Cordova in the Koret Building in Gastown. (Episode 2×09 aired May 11th on the USA Network in the U.S. and last night on Showcase in Canada.)

Love how Sarah Shahi’s Uggs are the same colour as the pumps she wore in the scene.

Usually I’m pretty spoiler-free about Fairly Legal, despite having seen quite a bit of filming here in Vancouver, but I couldn’t help but catch the on-line tirades three weeks ago over Kate’s tryst with Justin. “I was so mad at Kate ..  . after last night’s episode, I decided it might be wise to cool my heels to avoid turning this review into one big rant, ” wrote Mary Powers at The Voice of TV. What Kate did may seem crazy but it’s very real. She’s fresh off a divorce from Justin who cheated on her so Ben suprising her with a kiss in the previous episode and then arranging a dinner date in this one scares the bejeesus out of her.  She tries to avoid the date and the possiblity of being hurt so desperately that she stands up Ben to sleep with familiar Justin. As Kate’s wise assistant Leo put it: “You know how you have the tendency to blow things up for no reason? BOOM!”

Earlier, I caught scenes of Justin, aka Michael Trucco  tracking down a street artist who’d paintbombed a valuable artwork that Lauren bought for the lobby of Reed & Reed. Turns out this street artist’s work had been “appropriated” by the name artist who’d sold the painting for $50,000.

The prop street art featured in this Gastown alley was spectacular. My photo of My Father Who Art in Heaven attracted over a thousand views on Flickr.

Read More »#FairlyLegal – Kiss Me, Kate