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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

Farewell to John Pope’s Harley, Destroyed in FALLING SKIES Season 2 Premiere -Updated

Who knew at a Falling Skies location shoot in Vancouver last November that we were seeing the last of  John Pope’s Harley, destroyed by a beamer that night in a scene for last week’s second season premiere? Or that this could be our first and last chance to see a 2nd Mass resistance attack on the alien invaders using  motorbikes?

Falling Skies crew turned the warehouses along Western Street near Pacific Central Station into a post-alien-invasion disaster zone dressed with ash, dried leaves, debris and overturned burnout cars for a scene of Colin Cunningham’s John Pope on his Harley rounding a corner from Northern Street onto Western Street, followed by new series regular Ryan Robbins’s Tector on a second bike. 2nd Mass’s new insurgent strategy was to ride the bikes fullout to draw fire from the aliens, so that the rest of the fighters could target the exposed Mechs and Skitters. I spotted the heads of Sarah Carter’s Maggie and Drew Roy’s Hal above the cab of the pickup truck as it headed towards watching fans on Western Street, and when they cleared out I spied Connor Jessup’s Ben and Dylan Authors’s Jimmy (someone I never thought I’d be lucky enough to see on location) in the back of the truck too. This must be the spot where the Harley was destroyed by the aliens, who’d learned to hone in on the heat of an engine. Sarah Carter’s Maggie and Drew Roy’s Hal started running  in our direction carrying their prop guns, as if escaping from some kind of explosion, followed by the others, including Peter Sinkoda’s Dai and Mpho Koaho’s Anthony. I’m not familiar with the actors who play Beserkers yet.

I wish I’d stayed on in the bitter cold that night to see the beamer explosion with its blinding white flash and noise, which scared cast and crew alike, who hadn’t expected anything of that magnitude. I also missed the filming of a scene of Colin Cunningham’s John Pope shooting his gun at the sky next to his Harley in flames. Poor man.

But I can’t really complain much since Colin Cunnigham, the star of this long night shoot, took time out to come over and talk to us early on, posing for photos with everyone who wanted one.

Colin Cunningham and Ryan Robbins round the corner from Northern Street onto Western Street on  motorcycles.

Read More »Farewell to John Pope’s Harley, Destroyed in FALLING SKIES Season 2 Premiere -Updated