Skip to content

Nokia

SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Japanese Nuclear Power Plant & its Quarantine Zone (in New Westminster)

Does the 3D Godzilla movie reboot reflect the real world event of Japan’s 2011 earthquake/tsunami and the resulting  nuclear crisis at some of the country’s older nuclear power plants? Is that the “contemporary issue” screenwriter Frank Darabont spoke of? It would seem so. “6.3 Earthquake Rocks Eastern Japan” said the news crawl on set screens at the Vancouver Convention Centre dressed as the Honolulu airport at the start of filming here in mid-March.

Janjira appears to be the fictional nuclear power plant in this modern-day re-imagining of the radioactive Japanese sea monster as a “terrifying force of nature”.

Godzilla used an abandoned Coquitlam paper recycling plant on the Fraser River to film a couple of weeks of scenes of the Janjira nuclear power station at risk of meltdown with radioactive leaks. Is this what wakes Godzilla (plural) from their slumber?

Related: Coquitlam paper recycling plant as Japanese nuclear power plant

Since Coquitlam, the Janjira plant has been played by an industrial building on Annacis Island and its offices by Nokia in Burnaby’s Glenlyon Business Park.  Godzilla also used  Steveston’s Japanese Cultural Centre to double as the Janjira International School Read More »SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Japanese Nuclear Power Plant & its Quarantine Zone (in New Westminster)

Jensen Ackles Directs Co-Star Jared Padalecki in Supernatural for Ep. 8×03

It’s deja vu all over again. Supernatural’s first location shoot of season eight is in the same area as the last location shoot of season seven — Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park opposite Nokia headquarters, which played nefarious Sucracorp in the finale. Even when I heard Supernatural was scouting the location a week or so ago, I didn’t think they would show up here today. But there on a bridge over the Fraser River Path at lunchtime were the Winchester Brothers themselves, aka Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, accompanied by their bodyguard Clif.

Jensen Ackles is directing the first filmed episode of the season, as he has for the past two. One of the scenes —  for what will be episode three entitled Heartache —  consisted of Jared Padalecki’s Sam Winchester calling out to “Amelia” and then running off the bridge. Played by Liane Balaban, Amelia is expected to become Sam’s first girlfriend [in a long while]. Padalecki filmed the scene on the bridge with a canine co-star, who seemed to be as confused as the rest of us about which tall man in the plaid shirt was Padalecki and which was his standin (that’s Padalecki’s standin in the first photo below)

And here’s Jared Padalecki and his director Jensen Ackles arriving on set to discuss the scene.

Read More »Jensen Ackles Directs Co-Star Jared Padalecki in Supernatural for Ep. 8×03

Welcome Back Baby – Look What Returns for Supernatural’s Season Seven Finale – Updated

Supernatural has been tough on the Winchester brothers and their fans in season seven, taking away so much of what they love — starting with angel-turned-God Castiel (Misha Collins) in the second episode and then Bobby (Jim Beaver) before Christmas in the heart-breaking episode ten, where the fatally-shot father figure comes out of a coma briefly for a final few moments with his beloved “idjits”. Gradually though, these loved ones are returning, albeit in different forms. Castiel is back but sadly and hilariously cuckoo-bananas after too long in the cage with Lucifer. And Bobby is back but as a ghost and a potentially vengeful one at that.

So that leaves Dean’s beloved black Impala unaccounted for, missing since Halloween when two Leviathans took on the forms of Sam and Dean to drive acoss the country in their own black Impala staging a series of public mass killings in the appropriately-titled episode six, Slash Fiction.

Ever since the Impala went into hiding, I have been looking for it each time I found Supernatural filming on location, scouting the area only to discover yet another in the series of not-the-Impalas. I did enjoy the SMD license plate on the chocolate crap-car-of-the-week though. That was a nice touch.

And let’s not forget the bright orange monstrosity driven in last Friday’s There Will Be Blood.

But enough is enough. Producers assured Jensen Ackles that the Impala would be back and it seems they saved the best for last. At a season finale shoot a month ago, not far from the Supernatural studios, look what I found parked on the road.

It was one of three Impalas on set that day. Further down the road at the Nokia head office dressed as Dick Roman’s latest acquisition Sucrocorp, the second Impala Read More »Welcome Back Baby – Look What Returns for Supernatural’s Season Seven Finale – Updated