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J. J. Makaro

STUNT: ARROW S2 The Hood Stunt with Simon Burnett

The Arrow Stunt Department spent most of last Friday rehearsing  in the sunshine for an integrated stunt to be filmed later that night of star Stephen Amell and Hood stunt double Simon Burnett shooting a rope ascender arrow up in the air and then rising on the zipline several stories off the ground. I didn’t hear about the shoot until quite late because I expected Arrow to be filming on private Port Metro Vancouver land, not in the Downtown Eastside with a grandstand public view from the Hastings Overpass. It turned out to be a relatively private location though, because people don’t loiter in that part of east Hastings at night unless they’re  hookers, pimps, dealers or locals. I was mistaken for one of these by a guy in a BMW and later had a lengthy, circular conversation with one of the locals about gentrification of the neighbourhood.

From the overpass, you could look down on the crane, wires, stunt mats and dozens of people who make up the Arrow Stunt Department. Two of the men behind the best stunts on TV were present: stunt coordinator J.J.Makaro, who picked up a Leo Award for stunt coordination of the Arrow pilot last month, and fight designer James “Bam Bam” Bamford, who won his own Leo for stunt co-ordination of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Arrow’s stunt department is doing double duty this season, designing stunts for Arrow and new series The Tomorrow People starring Robbie Amell, for what is being called Amell Wednesdays on The CW.

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WEEK: June 24-30, 2013

LEO AWARDS: Brent Butt & Nancy Robertson Host Leo Awards on June 8th

Published May 29, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

Hometown comedy couple Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson are set to co-host the 15th anniversary of the Leo Awards, celebrating the best of B.C.-made film and television, at the Westin Bayshore Hotel on Saturday, June 8th. Expect more than the usual hijinks with professional comedians as hosts and and a crowd of outstanding homegrown nominees led by Vancouver born-and-bred Jessie James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood with 14 nominations, Vancouver-cop-from-the-future series Continuum with 16 nominations and filmed-in-Vancouver-and-Yellowknife aerial adventure series Arctic Air with 14 nominations.. For tickets, click here.

The 1970s era coming-of-age film Becoming Redwood‘s 14 nominations include well-deserved director and writing nods for Jesse James Miller and performance nods for Ryan Grantham as the young golf-obsessed long-haired title character Redwood; Jennifer Copping (Miller’s wife) as Redwood’s mother; Chad Willett (producer) as Redwood’s draft-dodging, pot-dealing father; Derek Hamilton as Redwood’s red-neck stepfather Arnold and Scott Hylands as Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl. Miller shot the Vancouver International Film Festival’s most popular Canadian feature in rural Langley for 24 days in the late spring of 2011. By contrast, Random Acts of Romance, the only other motion picture nominee I’ve seen on screen, filmed in several downtown and East Van locations like the Waldorf Hotel, as befits a movie whose tagline is “Sex, Abduction, Stalking and You Thought Romance Was Dead” about interconnected Vancouverites. Director Katrin Bowen is nominated for the twisted romcom, as is Sonja Bennett for her performance as a wacky stalker.

Becoming Redwood production still – courtesy of Jesse James Miller

In the television category, Continuum dominates with 16 nominations for its first hit season, including nods for creator and UBC grad Simon Barry for his season finale script End Times about time traveller Kiera Cameron’s failure to stop “terrorist” group Liber8 from blowing up a downtown tower, a definitive moment in her corporations-rule-the-world future. Continuum digitally-imploded an Arthur Erickson-designed tower on West Georgia on screen and then filmed the aftermath on a blast-and-rubble set at CBC Vancouver.

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STUNTS: ARROW’s Top 20 Action Moments Countdown

Arrow does have the best fight scenes on TV right now – Ken Tucker, former EW TV critic.

No argument from me. Arrow has my favourite fight scenes and stunts on TV.

Arrow Fight Designer James “Bam Bam” Bamford recently presented a Top 20 Action Moments Countdown in three videos. Absent are any sequences from tonight’s season finale so there is no spoiler alert.

The Top 5 includes my personal favourite- the huge Parkour Sequence with Stephen Amell and stunt double Simon Burnett filmed in Gastown.

[sz-youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQQ7ke2FuJw&feature=player_embedded” /]

Related: Stephen Amell Jumps to Street, Slides over Cab and Runs Right at Me

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