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BIG READ: PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS’ Greek God Adventures in Vancouver

Published June 14, 2002 on Vancouver is Awesome

So Greek gods are running rampant in modern America, waging war and fathering children, like young Percy Jackson who discovers in the first film adaption, The Lightning Thief. that the father he never knew is the Greek god Poseidon. In the second of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians franchise, Percy and pals set out to retrieve the golden fleece in the Sea of Monsters to save their beloved Camp Half-Blood, the summer camp where children of the gods are trained and protected.

It’s been fun to watch some of the filming of the sequel these past two months, especially on the Camp Half-Blood sets in Robert Burnaby Park in Burnaby, built on the tennis courts and in the adjoining woods. Teen fans of Logan Lerman, who stars as Percy Jackson, tracked him all over the city on Twitter and flooded Tumblr with hundreds of photos-with, taken mainly in that park in May.

Joining Logan Lerman in this series of adventures based on Greek mythology are Brandon T. Jackson as his best pal and protector Grover Underwood, a satyr who hides his goat horns under toques and his goat legs with crutches; Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth Chase, daughter of the Greek god Athena; and Douglas Smith as his newly-discovered half-brother Tyson, a very tall, one-eyed cyclops.

As in the first film, the fun for adults is the casting of the Greek god parents. Geek God Nathan Fillion plays Greek god Hermes, the god of thieves, travellers and messengers, dressed as a UPS courier in shorts. Here he is peeking out of the prop The UPS Store set they built in late April at the corner of Pender and Abbott in downtown Vancouver. Percy Jackson and pals cross Pender (dressed as Monroe St NW in the District of Columbia), enter The UPS store and line up at the counter to pick up a package which apparently gives them what they need to head into the Sea of Monsters to find the golden fleece.

For once, the fans gathered near set weren’t clamouring for Logan Lerman. They wanted “Captain Tightpants”, as one Fillion fan yelled out. Another got her Firefly DVD signed as Fillion graciously took time to meet and sign for fans three times during that downtown shoot.

Also new to the sequel is Leven Rambin, last seen on the big screen as Glimmer in box office smash The Hunger Games. She plays Clarisse La Rue, the daughter of Ares, the god of war, who is given the quest to retrieve the golden fleece. Read More »BIG READ: PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS’ Greek God Adventures in Vancouver

BIG READ: LEO AWARDS Live-Tweets its Hotel Vancouver Gala

Published May 31, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Live-tweets turned out to be the best thing about last weekend’s Leo Awards celebrating the best of B.C.-made film and television. Tweets from @LeoAwards gave an award-by-award account plus details of all the hijinks in between at both the Celebration and Gala Awards: hijinks that ranged from Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott mock-fighting over their award to Gala co-hosts Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne calling each other evil twin and English MILF to Nancy Robertson and Ryan Robbins pitching a new comedy series to Emilie Ullerup re-enacting Angelina Jolie’s notorious one-leg Oscars pose to acting legend Gabrille Rose swearing on stage while presenting the final award to Sisters & Brothers for Best Feature Film.

It was a great way to let the public share in this celebration of artistic talent after a tough week, which had started with the official cancellation of homegrown sci-fi series Sanctuary, the most-recognized B.C. production by far with 18 Leo nominations going in. Sanctuary ended up winning four Leos for its fourth and final season, but only one on the night of the gala for a guest performance by Arctic Air’s Pascale Hutton, who sang beautifully and turned her head right around in the Glee-meets-The-Exorcist episode Fuge.

I’d hoped for a repeat of last year’s wild times on the red carpet outside the Hotel Vancouver on West Georgia Street, but organizers moved the red carpet inside the hotel this year to the conference floor and restricted access. Most of the nominees kept the party going after the red carpet to take a turn at the new Media Wall by the bar where I had a spot, but it was so dimly-lit I had to jack some light from the pro-photographers’ flashes. Here’s The Express’s Johanna Ward interviewing nominee and eventual winner Johannah Newmarch on the red carpet about her supporting performance in mockumentary Sunflower Hour. Ward later dropped by the Media Wall to wrangle nominees Ali Liebert from Bomb Girls and Emilie Ullerup from Arctic Air as a backdrop to her standup.

You can see the start of Emilie Ullerup’s one-leg Angelina homage and how the popular Cassini brothers photo-bombed the arrangement. That’s Frank on the left and John on the right. Frank Cassini later won a roar from the crowd and a Leo for his supporting performance on Read More »BIG READ: LEO AWARDS Live-Tweets its Hotel Vancouver Gala

BIG READ: Vancouver Cop-From-The-Future Series CONTINUUM Debuts This Sunday

Published May 24, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How did Continuum creator Simon Barry conceive of a Vancouver in 2077 which has become North America’s financial centre in a world where corporations have taken over failed governments? By reading and watching the news, of course. He calls it more science fact than science fiction. In this dystopian future, rising seas from global climate change have wiped out the east coast but Vancouver is protected by a dam across English Bay.

So why hasn’t the Lions Gate Bridge been dealt with in 2077?, joked one of the Continuum panel at Vancouver Fan Expo in April. Is the city all bike lanes in the future?, joked a fan during the Q&A, prompting Barry to respond that there are no cars at all in his future Vancouver. And apparently no horses either.

Continuum, originally called Out of Time in his pilot script, is part sci fi, part police procedural about a future police officer Kiera Cameron, played by Rachel Nichols, who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past by targeting the corporations that will come to rule the world. But are they really terrorists? Perhaps they are freedom fighters?

One such corporation is fictional Exotrol, where Continuum staged an Occupy Vancouver-style protest at CBC Vancouver in mid-March for an upcoming episode. Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, as her 2012 Vancouver police detectuve partner Carlos Fonnegra, arrived on the scene in an unmarked blue police car.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Cop-From-The-Future Series CONTINUUM Debuts This Sunday

BIG READ: SEVENTH SON Films on its Mega Medieval Castle Set

Published May 11, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

After months of construction, dark fantasy movie Seventh Son started filming this week on its gigantic castle set on the gravel field at Boundary and Kent in Vancouver, known as the Kent Hangar field. A set so big that @tessacpliu tweeted on a drive-by: “Holy! HUGE production #SeventhSon bus drove by to see the whole sizzle! Wow! Blue screen too! #yvrshoots.”

In addition to the vast wooden set, I counted eight generators, several giant blue screens attached to a wall of forty-two stacked shipping containers on the north side (crew had turned one of the bottom containers into a makeshift props department) and several more giant blue screens attached to a smaller wall of stacked shipping containers on the south side. Crew park, tents, craft services for background performers both human and equine, trailers, trucks and a large steel tank took up most of the remaining space.

Unfortunately, I could only a see a sliver of the filming on Monday afternoon through a gap in the blue screens, revealing an interior market with background performers dressed in medieval garb and real horses tethered to wood railings. Main cast must have been on set, judging by the waiting “star cars”, but the actors were being driven to and from their trailers in the southeast corner of Kent Hangar field to the north entrance to the castle set unseen.

Read More »BIG READ: SEVENTH SON Films on its Mega Medieval Castle Set

BIG READ: FRINGE’s Epic Future Filmed at Olympic Village & B.C. Place

Published April 20, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Tonight’s Fringe — called Letters of Transit — promises to be epic, apparently set in the year 2036 in the world of the Observers, with big scenes of background performers dressed in their grey suits and fedoras filmed at the Olympic Village and on a concourse in B.C. Place stadium. Can you remember any TV production ever renting out even part of new B.C. Place for filming?

This is huge. Why is John Noble’s Walter Bishop in the future with Lost’s Desmond, aka Henry Ian Cusick? Vancouver’s own Fringe star Joshua Jackson has said this is where “the door to [Fringe’s] fifth season is opened” and plays into the decision to film two season four endings, one that would be used if Fringe is renewed (presumably related to the future Observer world) and the other if the show is cancelled.

.Joshua Jackson will be live-tweeting tonight with his handle @VanCityJax using the Fringenuity hashtag #FighttheFuture, along with Fringe showrunners Joel Wyman, @jwfringe, and Jeff Pinker, @jpfringe.

The Fringe Campaign, launched by Fringe fans at Fringenuity and adopted by Fringies the world over, is now backed by Fringe Read More »BIG READ: FRINGE’s Epic Future Filmed at Olympic Village & B.C. Place

BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 17, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Imagine two Vancouver-as-Vancouver TV series filming here, with B.C. Place stadium, the central Vancouver Public Library, Woodwards’ revolving “W”, Granville Island, Stanley Park and other local landmarks as themselves. It’s so rare for us to have one Vancouver-set series filming here, far less two. So come to our city’s first Fan Expo this Saturday, where you’ll get sneak peeks of both, as well as the chance to meet the showrunners and cast.

Continuum is about some kind of future officer named Kiera Cameron who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past. You may have seen some of the spectacular-future-downtown-skyline teasers on Showcase, where the 10-episode series debuts in late May. Or the 2077/2012 split skylines on the Continuum show poster.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, who joins the local Vancouver police force with Victor Webster as her 2012 detetective partner. You can see Nichols as her character filming in Vancouver with the Woodwards “W” in the background in a promo photo from the show. I’ve photographed Continuum filming at Victory Square, outside and inside the central Vancouver Public Library, The Centre and CBC Vancouver so far with prop Vancouver Police cars and VPD extras alongside real ones. Below is my photo of Nichols exiting an unmarked police car with the Vancouver Public Library reflected in the windshield. And below that is my photo of  Nichols and her co-star Victor Webster filming in a snowstorm at Victory Square. It will be a veritable Vancouver-palooza in each episode.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

BIG READ: Darker Season 2 of FALLING SKIES Filmed in Vancouver

Published April 5, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

The second season of sci-fi summer hit Falling Skies takes place three months after Noah Wyle‘s father of three boys boarded an alien spacecraft in a bid to protect his middle son. It’s said to be an even darker look at the trials and tribulations of a small band of insurgents fighting against an occupying alien force which has killed most of the world’s adults and captured their children. So it’s appropriate they filmed it in Vancouver over the fall and winter durng our Rainocalypse, instead of in the Toronto area over the summer and fall in the mainly sunny weather of season one.

Noah Wyle (from ER) is former History professor Tom Mason, the civilian second-in-command of a Boston insurgent group named after the 2nd Massachusetts of the American Revolution and made up of about 300 fighters and civilians. Mason, whose wife was killed in the initial attack, has three sons —  Hal, played by Drew Roy, and Ben and Matt, played by  Connor Jessup and Maxim Knight.  Middle son Ben has been captured by the insectoid multi-legged aliens known as Skitters and harnessed. These harnesses are attached to the children’s spines and act as some kind of biomechancial device that allows the aliens to control their minds. Much of the first season is spent trying to get Ben back and to figure out how to remove his harness without killing him. But even when they do get the harness off Ben, it’s clear he’s not free from alien mind control. And that’s why his father boards the alien spaceship in the season one finale to find a way to protect Ben and stop the harnessing of kids.

This is the family show in a post-apocalyptic setting that legendary director Steven Spielberg had envisioned. Other key civilians are Moon Bloodgood as pediatrician Anne Glass and Seychelle Gabrielle as Lourdes, who’ve formed a makeshift medical clinic for the group. Will Patton is Captain Dan Weaver, the military leader of the 2nd Mass and Mpho Koaho as Thomas (a former Boston cop) and Peter Shinkoda as Dai are two of its best fighters. Jesse Schram is Karen Nadler, who starts off as Ben’s girlfriend and fellow scout until she is captured and harnessed. Sarah Carter‘s Maggie takes her place on the frontlines of 2nd Mass and maybe as Ben’s girlfriend too in the upcoming season.

Maggie happens to be the survivor of a gang of marauders headed up by Colin Cunningham’s charismatic and wickedly funny John Pope, an ex-con who causes mayhem wherever he goes, nicknaming Tom Mason, “Papa Smurf”; Karen, “Sexy Freedom Fighter”; Hal. “Strapping Young Man”; Anthony, “Black….Looks Like a Gangbanger”; and Dai, “Oriental of Some Kind” when they’re briefly in his custody early on. No one has better lines than Pope in this series, like his protest, “What am I? Canada”, when his 2nd Mass captors insist he go unarmed on a sortee. Here is Cunningham in character as John Pope on set in Vancouver.

At the Falling Skies panel at the Emerald City ComicCon last Friday in Seattle, new showrunner Remi Aubuchon (an SGU Stargate Universe writer/producer) and cast Colin Cunningham (SG-1’s Major Paul Davis) and Drew Roy talked about the upcoming second season and showed a three-minute teaser The Resistance Continues.

Noah Wyle’s Tom Mason has not been seen or heard from in three months. Many of 2nd Mass have died Read More »BIG READ: Darker Season 2 of FALLING SKIES Filmed in Vancouver

BIG READ: THE KILLING Investigation Returns for 2nd Season

Published March 30, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

The  investigation returns this Sunday night with The Killing‘s two-hour second season premiere on AMC and a new marketed tagline — Be Careful What You Uncover — on the show’s poster. Following a Twitter riot over last season’s finale, showrunner Veena Sud has promised that the central mystery and last season’s marketed tagline — Who Killed Rosie Larsen? — will be solved in this season’s finale.

In addition to not solving the murder in last June’s finale, The Killing turned Joel Kinnaman’s detective Stephen Holder, one of the few likable characters, into a seeming villain, who betrayed Mireille Enos’s lead detective Sarah Linden and set up Seattle mayoral candidate Darren Richmond for arrest. So it’s not surprising that in early filming of season two in Vancouver (which began in late November and is scheduled to wrap in late April), I never found Enos and Kinnaman at the same location shoot.

The set-in-Seattle cop drama debuted last spring with what is considered to be one of the smartest, most stylish and rainiest pilots in years but lost its lustre along the way with too many red herrings and erratic writing. I balked in the third episode when writers clumsily explained gallons of blood smeared on the walls around The Cage in the high school basement as the product of a nose bleed and the rape video as a young girl (Vancouver’s own Kacey Rohl)’s desire for attention. But I stuck with the series to the end and will be back on Sunday night because I developed an attachment to these characters. And that’s the dichotomy: the performances are sublime even when the plotting goes array.

Read More »BIG READ: THE KILLING Investigation Returns for 2nd Season