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SHOOT: Happy Halloween PSYCH-Os. James Roday & Dule Hill Film in the North Vancouver Rain

Here’s the Blueberry and James Roday’s Shawn Spencer and Dule Hill’s Burton “Gus” Guster filming inside it in North Vancouver rain this Halloween day. Psych wraps filming of its seventh season tomorrow. So I was lucky to see the Blueberry scenes and then Shawn and Gus grabbing a whole mess of hot dogs from Santa Barbara’s Footlong and Fancy Free truck as another character drove by flashing a cardboard sign at them which read “Suck It”. No idea why but it looks like it will be fun.

Read More »SHOOT: Happy Halloween PSYCH-Os. James Roday & Dule Hill Film in the North Vancouver Rain

SHOOT: PSYCH’s Hit-and-Run Stunt Outside the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Vancouver

Uh-oh. Barry Bostwick of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame might not survive TV series Psych’s 2-hour musical episode. He’s cast as the owner of a ritzy Santa Barbara theatre, probably played by the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Vancouver, where Psych is filming today and tomorrow. This afternoon Psych filmed Bostwick’s stunt double stumbling from the alley by the theatre onto Smithe Street where he is struck by a Cadillac in an apparent hit-and-run. It was a spectacular stunt, especially on the second take.

Read More »SHOOT: PSYCH’s Hit-and-Run Stunt Outside the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Vancouver

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

PSYCH Films on July 4th And Returns to Comic-Con Next Week for 4th Year in a Row

I didn’t expect to see Psych —  American TV’s hottest fake psychic detective agency — filming on the most American holiday of the year:  July 4th, Independence Day.  I walked up to the set inside a Tudor-style apartment building on the southern edge of the South Granville neighbourhood in a rare bit of Vancouver sunshine. James Roday (fake psychic Shawn Spencer who solves crimes for the Santa Barbara police department with his superior observational skills); Dulé Hill (Shawn’s BFF and reluctant sidekick Burton “Gus” Guster) and Maggie Lawson (Santa Barbara police detective Juliet O’Hara and Shawn’s girlfriend) sat in their cast chairs outside, on a break from filming. Timothy Omundson (Santa Barbara police detective Carlton “Lassie” Lassiter and Shawn skeptic) joined them after hitting the craft table. It’s the first time I’ve seen Lassie on location this season.

Next week, more than four thousand lucky PSYCH-Os (either dressed as a pineapple or carrying one) will have the chance to both see and hear from all four leads at the standing-room-only, people-turned-away Psych panel at San Diego Comic-Con.

Read More »PSYCH Films on July 4th And Returns to Comic-Con Next Week for 4th Year in a Row

PSYCH Plays Ball in Nat Bailey Stadium for 6×05 Tonight on Global TV – Updated

Vancouver Canadians fans who stayed after the game in Nat Bailey Stadium a year ago to play extras in a Psych series baseball episode can see themselves in the crowd tonight on Global TV.

Psych’s fifth epsiode — Dead Man’s Curve Ball — of the sixth season is about the mysterious death of the fictional minor league Santa Barbara Seabirds’ hitting coach, with Danny Glover (of Lethal Weapon fame), Michael Trucco (Fairly Legal/Battlestar Galactica) and Baseball Hall of Famer and 1996 World Series Champ Wade Boggs as guest stars. James Roday’s “psychic” detective Shawn Spencer infiltrates the team as a hitting coach and Dule Hill’s Burton “Gus” Buster as Sammy the Seagull, a big white bird mascot with giant yellow webbed feet (looking very much like Mascot Hall of Famer, the San Diego Chicken).

Trained tap dancer Dule Hill performs some tap dance moves in a routine that doesn’t please the fake fans but ends with him face down on a platform near the field doing the worm as his giant yellow feet flop up and down.

Michel Trucco plays the Santa Barbara Seabirds catcher and a childhood idol of Shawn Spencer’s.

Read More »PSYCH Plays Ball in Nat Bailey Stadium for 6×05 Tonight on Global TV – 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

SHOOT: FAIRLY LEGAL’s Judge Nicastro Ain’t Riding With Us!

Last Friday night’s Fairly Legal episode on USA Network featured this wonderful scene of Gerald McRaney as Judge Nicastro and Sarah Shahi as Kate Reed fighting their way through transit workers extras after a contract dispute goes array, filmed at the south side of the Vancouver Art Gallery (a former courthouse) on a sunny afternoon in mid-February. As you can see, Judge Nicastro loses his temper and punches a protester near the bottom. And they did it all over again in take after take, with Shahi really getting into it. Between camera setups, the protester extras lounged in the sun with their signs, an odd sight for passersby who did double takes, wondering if this was yet another real protest in Vancouver.

Meatloaf, aka Martin Oday, played the union’s leader Charles McKay and he may have been on set at the Vancouver Art Gallery but I don’t think I photographed him. A pity. I’d love to have seen him.

We’ll have to wait several weeks to see this episode, Kiss me Kate, broadcast on Showcase in Canada.

Read More »SHOOT: FAIRLY LEGAL’s Judge Nicastro Ain’t Riding With Us!