The Rock’s Instagram. For three nights in a row, Mr. Excellent held up a giant print of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s face at the railroad… Read More »FANS: “Mr. Excellent” Meets Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in North Vancouver at SKYSCRAPER Set
Sunday, February 16th – Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy author E. L. James’s book-signing at Chapters-Indigo in downtown Vancouver. Friday, February 14th – Once Upon… Read More »WEEK: February 10-16, 2014
Superman Begins. Clark Kent becomes Superman in the new official Man of Steel trailer released today. Scenes of grownup Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) as a fisherman were shot in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island. Other scenes of Clark Kent as a logger were filmed partly in Nanaimo at the Cassidy Hotel. And those of a shirtless Clark Kent leading a rescue on an oil rig in stormy seas were shot partly on a vast green screen stage at the Vancouver Drydocks in North Vancouver.
Related: Shirtless Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel on a North Shore Green Screen Stage
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After returning to the Wapi Eagle Casino again, our detective duo Linden & Holder find themselves on the run in Day 24 of the investigation into the murder of 17-year-old Rosie Larsen this Sunday on AMC.
At the end of March, Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden and Joel Kinnaman as Stephen Holder arrived on location in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to film their parts in a chase scene. A stunt double had been driving Holder’s beater car south on Prior Street (dressed with a 22 Ave NW street sign) through the Powell Street intersection in take after take. A blue unmarked chase vehicle gets boxed in as Holder’s car speeds away. Mireille Enos replaced her stunt double in the passenger seat for a shorter scene of Holder’s car making a sharp left turn into an alley.
Less than a week later, I watched them filming Linden & Holder on the run at night at Richmond City Hall dressed as Seattle City Hall, but I’ll hold onto those photos until I know if it’s in Day 24, entitled Bulldog.
To backtrack: Day 22 of the investigation found BFFs Linden & Holder returning to the casino where Rosie Larsen was last seen alive to get access to the 10th floor using her key. While Linden sneaks by, Holder distracts security in a hilarious scene. He’s single-handedly turned The Killing from a dead serious, morose drama into a dramedy: “Hey, what’s up guys. You winning?….Johnny Knoxville you doin’ it man…show me your cards man…I love your haircut man. It’s slick. It’s old-school slick…Where are the ladies?…I’m talkin’ real ladies. Ain’t no party without no trim….What’s up Bobby [casino security chief Roberta Drays] …I just want my phone back cupcake….Probably fell out of my pocket when you kicked the shit out of me the other day…Beware of the She-Wolf, she’ll crack your ribs…..Look at that [lifts up his shirt to show bruises]….Oh I found my phone…My Bad….My boss at SPD will love this one [takes photo with phone]…..Oh I’ll see myself out….Sayonara, Hiawatha!”
Read More »Sneak Peek of THE KILLING’s Linden & Holder on the Run + Recap of Days 22 & 23
Published January 10, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome
UPDATE: Worldwide Box Office — US$695 million.
The round-the-world spy thriller Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol has more Vancouver in it than the Mumbai running scene outside the Vancouver Convention Centre which I wrote about in my inaugural #YVRShoots series post and the Seattle post-mission team beer at a table on Granville Island which I covered in my second post about the Tom Cruise franchise filming here. Director Brad Bird filmed the last shot of Josh Holloway’s Budapest alley death scene in between the Dunsmuir and Georgia Viaducts; the Moscow scene where the team gets its Kremlin mission beneath the Burrard Bridge; the Kremlin explosion in a giant blue screen box at a gravel field near the Fraser River path; some of the Dubai sandstorm scene at an Arab market set at that same gravel field; the Sun Network station in Mumbai at a Richmond office park and the Mumbai automated car park scene inside a vast Vancouver Drydocks warehouse in North Vancouver.
Tom Cruise and his co-stars did go on location with Brad Bird and crew to Prague and Dubai before their final three months of shooting in Vancouver in late 2010 and early 2011, with the second unit filming scenes without cast in Moscow for a week and in Mumbai for the BMW coupe racing-through-the-streets sequence. Prague doubled for Budapest and Moscow, with some exceptions. And the Dubai showpiece of Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt scaling and swinging from the tallest building in the world could not have be done anywhere but the actual Burj Khalifa.
Almost everything else happened here in studio at Canada Motion Picture Park or on location in the Vancouver area. It’s a credit to our crews and VFX expertise that the only things that give us away are glimpses of the Vancouver Convention Centre and a lit-up southwest False Creek between the Burrard and Granville Bridges.
So far, I’ve seen Mission Impossible -Ghost Protocol twice in theatres. Once to simply enjoy Brad Bird’s 
first big action movie with a non-animated cast and the second time to nail down as many of the Vancouver locations as possible. Despite my best efforts I’m sure I missed several.
The fourth in the Mission Impossible movie franchise opens with Josh Holloway as IMF agent Trevor Hanaway in Prague-as-Budapest trying to intercept a courier of a threat codenamed COBALT at a train station. Then we’re treated to Tom Cruise’s Moscow prison escape to the tune of Dean Martin’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head, likely filmed here given the numerous Vancouver paparrazi shots of Cruise in his dirty white muscle shirt from prison. Post-escape Cruise meets his new team: Simon Pegg as newly promoted field agent Benji Dunn and Paula Patton as Hanaway’s team leader Jane Carter while they drive around in a Russian van. Read More »BIG READ: Making of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL