Skip to content

Arrow

WEEK: October 8-14, 2012

Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

Being Bad Never Looked So Good. Check out the abs on Stephen Amell’s billionaire playboy Oliver Queen tonight in the series premiere of Arrow on the CW and CTV Two. Missing and thought dead for five years after a shipwreck, Queen returns home a changed man. He secretly creates the persona of vigilante Arrow to fight crime and corruption in Starling City with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.

By day, Queen continues to play the part of the billionaire cad he used to be while trying to make amends with those he wronged, like his former girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance, who works for a legal aid group called CNRI (Canary!). But she’s having none of it. “I didn’t grieve. I was too angry,” Katie Cassidy’s Lance tells Amell’s Queen in a scene filmed for the premiere in Gastown next to Chill Winston last March.

Read More »Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

WEEK: October 1-7, 2012

WEEK: September 24-30 2012

ARROW’s Stephen Amell Chases Shooter on Motorcycle in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 1×07 – Updated

Arrow’s Stephen Amell is a fast runner. So fast I only got one decent shot of him running up the stairs after a shooter on a motorcycle at Queen Consolidated, aka a tower at the corner of West Georgia and Homer in downtown Vancouver.

Shooter speeding away [UPDATE: a stunt double for Jessica De Gouw as Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress]

Read More »ARROW’s Stephen Amell Chases Shooter on Motorcycle in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 1×07 – Updated

ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

Upcoming CW series Arrow started its day today filming scenes of robbers entering the rear of a downtown heritage building and former bank at 330 West Pender Street turned into Starling Trust Bank. Then shortly after morning rush hour, Vancouver Police closed both east-bound lanes in the 300 block at the front of the building so that Arrow could film scenes of prop police cruisers arriving at the robbery and Roger Cross (Continuum’s cold-blooded Liber8 killer Travis) as a police officer with a megaphone telling those inside the bank to come out with their hands up. The bank hostages emerge wearing white playing card masks. Are the robbers among the hostages? Police then storm the building. Arrow wrapped the arrival of police scene around 2 p.m., the lanes re-opened and production moved inside the building to film the robbery.

What do these bank robbery scenes remind you of? The Dark Knight? Or maybe Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen? Arrow has big aspirations for a new TV series but from what I’ve seen of filming, it will meet them.

Read More »ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

ARROW Kicks Glass (and Ass) at CBC Vancouver for Ep. 1×03

Upcoming TV series Arrow kicked glass — literally — at CBC Vancouver late Friday night. A Green Arrow stunt double burst through a “candy glass” window on the east wall feet first to the sounds of prop gunfire. Crew had spent the day setting up for this and we were hopeful that star Stephen Amell, who quietly boasts of doing roughly 75% of his own stunts, would perform this one. But not when there’s glass involved. Even stunt glass. Filming lasted overnight so Amell could have got plenty of action inside, which we couldn’t see, facing off against arch-villain Deadshot played by Michael Rowe, who tweeted he was on set. It’s a good bet that it was Deadshot who fired a prop rifle out of the open window on the left earlier in the evening. We’ll have to wait to see the third episode to find out, but clearly this show has not let up on the kick-assedness of its pilot.

Read More »ARROW Kicks Glass (and Ass) at CBC Vancouver for Ep. 1×03

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