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SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Golden Gate Bridge Set with Inflatable GreenScreens

For locals, Godzilla‘s Golden Gate Bridge set is Rise of the Planet of the Apes redux on the vast Kent Hangar gravel field at the Vancouver/Burnaby border. Rust-red street lights and railings. Giant greenscreens. Motorists and buses trapped on the bridge. Soldiers. Cop cars. Only this time the showdown is between the military/police and Godzilla not empowered apes. Plus the giant greenscreens are inflatable, something we haven’t seen before.

Related: Rise of the Planet of the Apes Reshoots on Golden Gate Bridge Set at Kent Hangar Field

Lieutenant Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson)’s son and schoolkid extras are on one of the Oakland, Alameda and Freemont school district buses evacuating San Francisco,  as tanks with soldiers rolled by yesterday.

Read More »SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Golden Gate Bridge Set with Inflatable GreenScreens

SHOOT: Rain Towers & Stunt for CONTINUUM’s Rachel Nichols at CBC Vancouver for 2×01 – Updated

Updated April 21, 2013.

Continuum‘s cop-from-the-corporate-future Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) is back in her black high-tech cat suit  for a second season and was spotted kicking the crap out of some bad guys in CBC Vancouver’s parking garage last night. Other cast members commiserated on Twitter ahead of the “rain tower” night shoot, where Nichols got good and wet in front of a handful of fans, photographers and passersby on a closed block of Cambie Street downtown.

Related: Invisible Green Skin Suit Fighting at CBC Vancouver Parking Garage

Crew set up rain towers on either side of the entrance for a “rain effect”. That seems odd to people who know how much it rains in Vancouver but it has to be a deluge to show up on camera.

Read More »SHOOT: Rain Towers & Stunt for CONTINUUM’s Rachel Nichols at CBC Vancouver for 2×01 – Updated

PROMOS: Who is Dr. Whale? ONCE UPON A TIME 2×05 The Doctor Spoiler Promo

So many of us were keeping the secret of Dr. Whale’s Fairytale Land identity on Once Upon a Time, not wanting to ruin the surprise. Too late. The promo for next Sunday’s The Doctor gave it away. Or as David Anders tweeted: “Hello Fans all over the globe & Bulgaria! Tune in next week 2 #OnceuponaTime 4 ‘The Doctor’ The promo ruined it but watch it anyway. Oy vey.”

In late July, an insider let slip Dr. Whale’s Fairytale Land identity to a friend of mine when she was on set in Steveston during the filming of the season two premiere and six weeks later in early September, I was one of the privileged few (along with half-a-dozen visiting Evil Regal fans from all over the U.S.) allowed to watch the filming of Lana Parrilla as a young woman in a tent deep in the woods of Robert Burnaby Park with David Anders as his Fairytale Land character apparently trying to re-animate a male corpse (played by a dummy when I was there).

A week earlier, fans in Steveston as Storybrooke had witnessed the ghostly appearance of Regina’s lost love Daniel in a rainstorm. A Daniel stunt double bore the brunt of the deluge but some are convinced they saw Noah Bean on set that night too.

If you still haven’t figured out Dr. Whale’s Fairytale Land identity and really don’t want to know, please stop reading now.

Read More »PROMOS: Who is Dr. Whale? ONCE UPON A TIME 2×05 The Doctor Spoiler Promo

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Makes Rain & Lightning in Steveston for 2×05 – Updated

On a clear, warmish Thursday night in Steveston south of Vancouver, Once Upon a Time made rain and lightning as Lana Parrilla drove Regina’s vintage Mercedes to the main intersection of Storybrooke in take after take. Fans lined both sides of Moncton Street to watch and cheered when Josh Dallas came by to say Hello. The lovely woman beside me with the iPhone couldn’t contain herself, calling out, “You’re so cute.” Which he is. And real-life charming too. Fans also got to see [an unidentified double in the Daniel costume who I assumed was Noah Bean because he was on set later in the dark when we were asked not to take photographs of the scene. My apologies for the confusion.].

And then the main event: the biggest rain tower I’ve ever seen deluged Regina’s Mercedes with water again and again.

Once Upon a Time had spent the afternoon filming scenes on Moncton Street in front of Granny’s Diner and inside Mr. Gold, while other crew Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Makes Rain & Lightning in Steveston for 2×05 – Updated

BIG READ: THE KILLING Reveals Who Killed Rosie Larsen

Published June 18, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

After a two-season investigation into the murder of Seattle teen Rosie Larsen, The Killing finally revealed who did it on last night’s season finale. Our dynamic detective duo Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder had a tough time of it in the second season as they closed in on the killer: starting with Joel Kinnaman’s Holder finding out he’d been set up to frame Seattle mayoral candidate Darren Richond with a doctored toll booth photo and then getting beat up by thugs at the Wapi Eagle casino and left for dead, while Mireille Enos’s Linden ditched her fiance, was suspended, lost custody of her son, got bashed on the head at the casino and committed to a psych ward for a day.

On the lam from their own Seattle police force, Linden & Holder strike an on-the-spot deal with Mayor Lesley Adams on Day 24 of the investigation to let them pursue two suspects (whom Holder dubbed “Donny and Marie”) from the rival Richmond campaign: campaign manager Jamie Wright and campaign adviser Gwen Eaton. After an interview with Wright’s grandfather, Kinnaman’s Holder is subjected to one more indignity while walking back to his beater car in an alley off Victory Square. The dreaded Vancouver rain tower.

Of course it wouldn’t be The Killing if the leads didn’t get completely soaked from time to time but I bet Joel Kinnaman regrets joking to EW magazine last year that one of the privileges of going to Swedish acting school is doing two months of rain tower. He was doused in take after take by a spectacular deluge, so spectacular I had to strip out some of the fake rain from my photographs so that you could see him.

Yet the second season has been nowhere near as damp or morose as the first thanks to Kinnaman’s Holder, who has single-handedly turned The Killing from a dead serious drama into an occasional dramedy. Apart from last night’s finale of course, which turned out to be nothing but sombre for Linden & Holder. Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know who killed Rosie Larsen.

Holder’s funniest moment had to be the one on Day 22 of the investigation when the motormouth provided a distractionRead More »BIG READ: THE KILLING Reveals Who Killed Rosie Larsen