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BIG READ: Making of UNDERWORLD AWAKENING

Published February 7, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

The return of Kate Beckinsale and her cat suit powered supernatural thriller Underworld Awakening to a weekend North American box office win of $25 million+ for its late January opening but critics blasted the fourth installment of the franchise for its weak storyline. U4 box office halved for its second weekend and then halved again last weekend. I saw the film last week in 3D and enjoyed watching Beckinsale and her stunt double playing kickass-cool vampire Selene and Simon Fraser University as its unmistakable self playing nefarious bio-tech company Antigen.

Vengeance Returns is the Underworld Awakening tagline. Here is a plot synopsis with spoilers: Not long after the events of Underworld Evolution, vampire Selene and her hybrid vampire/Lycan lover Michael Corvin are captured during The Purge, a crusade by humans to rid the world of vampires and Lycans (evolved werewolfs who can shift between wolf and human form). Twelve years later, Selene is freed from cryogenic suspension in Antigen headquarters by her and Corvin’s vampire/Lycan hybrid daughter Eve — a daughter Selene never knew she had with a lover who appears to be dead. Antigen claims to be developing an antidote for the virus that creates vampires and Lycans, but is really run by Lycans who are injecting Eve’s hybrid blood into themselves to create a race of super Lycans, impervious to silver and with enhanced abilities and size.

Unfortunately Scott Speedman declined to return as Selene’s lover Michael Corvin in the fourth film so we only see him in flashbacks or as a blurred figure in Underworld Awakening. New to this Vancouver-shot movie franchise about vampires and werewolves that predates the Twilight craze is human Detective Sebastian played by Michael Ealy of The Good Wife (see photo below).

After a brief recap of the Underworld saga so far, the new film opens with scenes of a genocide of not one but two species — vampires and Lycans — that was filmed mainly downtown. For example, crew set up a security checkpoint with police/SWAT extras on Hamilton Street outside Pappas Furs for filming on May 1st last year. Read More »BIG READ: Making of UNDERWORLD AWAKENING

BIG READ: THE KILLING a “Damp, Good Mystery”

Published April 8, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

I would like to take credit for calling The Killing a “damp, good mystery” but Entertainment Weekly magazine coined that gem after the show’s two-hour premiere on AMC last Sunday. Filming in Vancouver for the past four months, the 13-part series about the murder of a teenage girl uses local rain and rain-making machines for atmosphere like horror series Supernatural uses local valley fog and smoke machines. I stood mouth agape on a wet, miserable day in early January watching The Killing crew set up a rain tower in Gastown outside their “Seattle Police Station” thinking: isn’t our rain good enough for TV? Some TV critics went so far as to list “heavy rain” as a co-star in the Seattle-set drama and you can see a damp, grey sheen overlaying the visuals.

A close adaptation of a hit Danish TV series, The Killing stars Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden, a pale, stoic, russett-haired homicide detective so consumed by the murder investigation she barely ever changes her sweater (although when I first photographed her near the Dunsmuir viaducts she had changed it from the Scandinavian sweater of the premiere to a serviceable grey wool one).

Mireille Enos’s detective character is not one for talking but she’s at peace with herself and provides a steady, calm focus Read More »BIG READ: THE KILLING a “Damp, Good Mystery”