An artfully dishevelled Clive Owen is shooting a father-and-son scene for feature film Word and Pictures in Gastown today directed by Fred Schepisi. A not-exactly-close… Read More »SHOOT: Clive Owen Films WORDS AND PICTURES in Gastown
Update: July 26, 2013. Bravo passes on the pilot Rita. Will not be picked up to series.
Crew for Bravo’s first original drama pilot Rita turned the east parking lot of the West Vancouver Community Centre into a rich parents’ pickup point for fictional Connecticut private school Cabott Academy today. Adapted from a Danish series, Rita (Anna Gunn of Breaking Bad) is a forthright but witty teacher at Cabott Academy, one with a different view of life than the affluent, overprotective parents of her students. In a scene this afternoon, she walks out of the school’s Learning Annex where she has words with a parent and then talks with the school prinicpal Terrence (Josh Hamilton), who has a big crush on the sexy staffer, before she walks away.
It sounds like an easy scene to shoot until you consider the dozens of student and parent background performers leaving school at the same time and walking through a gridlock of luxury vehicles moving in a small confined area (extras were asked to bring their own high-end cars but wardrobe did a little upgrading to make the drivers look more like American east coast 1 per-centers). Director Miguel Arteta used a technocrane to cover the melee of students leaving and a second camera to focus on the two cast members.
Read More »SHOOT: Anna Gunn & Josh Hamilton Film Bravo Pilot RITA at West Vancouver Community Centre
Update: King & Maxwell 1×02 Second Chances aired June 17, 2013 on TNT.
Upcoming TNT series King & Maxwell filmed in and around the Ivanhoe Hotel on Main Street last week with Sean King (Jon Tenney from The Closer) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn from The X-Men franchise) arriving at a Washington, D.C. crime scene on Station Street behind the hotel. And then moved into Pacific Central station to film more scenes.
King & Maxwell — characters from the David Baldacci books — are secret service agents turned private investigators.
Read More »SHOOT: Jon Tenney & Rebecca Romijn Film KING & MAXWELL 1×02 at Ivanhoe Hotel
Crew for the FOX pilot Almost Human (formerly Human) built a futuristic coffee kiosk on a sidewalk under the Cambie Bridge to shoot a scene on Easter Monday of masked kidnappers abducting a plainclothes Los Angeles police officer and driving away. I got there too late to see the abduction so I don’t know which actor was taken, but this is probably the officer whom John Kennex (Karl Urban of Star Trek) and his android cop partner Dorian (Michael Ealy) try to rescue from Gastown’s Winters Hotel.
Related: Karl Urban and Michael Ealy Film Almost Human at Gastown’s Winters Hotel
J.J. Abrams and Fringe showrunner Joel Wyman’s futuristic buddy cop show is about LAPD officers partnered with androids and focuses on one particular pairing between John Kemnex and android Dorian, where the android displays more emotions than the human because the human is shut down after getting seriously hurt on a mission. Other characters include a cop-with-strong-morals Valerie Stahl (Minka Kelly), another police officer (Michael Irby) and the police captain (Lili Taylor).
Related: Karl Urban and Minka Kelly film Almost Human in Vancouver’s Business District
Brad Anderson (The Machinist) directed the pilot not Joel Wyman but Wyman was in Vancouver overseeing production. I spotted him without his mohawk on set last week conferring with Anderson between takes under the Cambie Bridge.
Read More »SHOOT: FOX Pilot ALMOST HUMAN Films Under Cambie Bridge with Joel Wyman on Set
Published April12, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome
Jesse James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood is rooted in some of his own experiences: his love of golf which led him to turn pro at the age of 19 and hero-worship Jack Nicklaus’s six green-jacket wins at The Masters golf tournament; his hippie father’s flight to Canada as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War; and the shuttle back and forth between his parents after their divorce. But Miller never dreamed as a young boy that his parents would reunite if he beat Jack Nicklaus at The Masters, as 10-year-old Redwood Forest Hanson (Ryan Grantham) does in the Vancouver writer-director’s endearing film.
Becoming Redwood opens in Vancouver today at the Cineplex International Village, one day after the 77th Masters got underway in Augusta, Georgia, with the legendary Jack Nicklaus. who’s won the tournament more than any other golfer, as an honourary starter.
The Story: In 1969, two-year-old Redwood watches helpless from the backseat of a Volkswagen van as his mother Jade (Miller’s wife Jennifer Copping) leaves his draft-dodging father Ethan (Chad Willett) at the Canadian border. Eight years later, his father is arrested for dope dealing in B.C. and golf-obsessed long-haired Redwood (Ryan Grantham) must return to the U.S. to live with his mother, her two teen sons (Tyler Johnson and Todd Potter), her red-neck husband Arnold (Derek Hamilton) and Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl (Scott Hylands) in northern California. How to deal with all this trauma? Redwood imagines beating the “Golden Bear”, aka Jack Nicklaus, at the Masters will solve all his problems. Or as the movie’s poster puts it: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Turn Pro.
Read More »BIG READ: VIFF Favourite BECOMING REDWOOD Opens at International Village Today
Update: “You’re Henry’s grandfather.” – Regina to Rumple
Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold (Robert Carlyle) and the Evil Queen/Regina (Lana Parrilla) seem to be on friendlier terms in 2×19 Lacey despite Cora and Regina’s efforts to kill him in The Miller’s Daughter. Of course the actors are real friends with no hard feelings about who tried to kill whom. Once Upon a Time filmed a scene in late February of the two evilish characters walking and talking in the background of Rumple’s son Baelfire/Neal (Michael Raymond-James)’s play swordfight with his son Henry (Jared Gilmore) in Fisherman’s Park.
Related: Father-and-Son (Michael Raymond-James & Jared Gilmore)’s Play Swordfight in Steveston
Read More »SHOOT: Robert Carlyle & Lana Parrilla Film ONCE UPON A TIME 2×19 in Steveston – Updated
Corrupt Vancouver politician Jim Martin (Tahmoh Penikett) returns to Continuum in the second season. We met him in the seventh episode, The Politics of Time, when Liber8 killed the investigative reporter Alicia Fuentes (Pascale Hutton) looking into the financing of Martin’s campaign to be head of the local dock workers union. Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) investigates Alicia’s murder without telling his Vancouver-police-partner-from-the-future Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) that the murder victim is the woman he slept with the night before, making him the prime suspect and testing Kiera’s loyalty. It proved to be a tangled web of old friendships gone wrong so it’s no wonder that Carlos isn’t friendly with Jim Martin when they meet on the north steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery this season.
Continuum filmed for three days outside and inside the Vancouver Art Gallery last week, mainly in an old courtroom at the south end. Could this be the trial of young Liber8 apprentice Julian Randol (Richard Harmann)?
Good friends Tahmoh Penikett and Victor Webster between takes.
Spectators watch the action.
Update: MUTO (massive unidentified terrestrial organism) contained at Janjira nuclear power plant breaks free. Japanese monster 3D reboot Godzilla has started its fourth week of filming in… Read More »SHOOT: GODZILLA Films Overnight at Paper Recycling Plant in Coquitlam as Nuclear Power Plant
