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Downtown Eastside

WEEK: May 6-12, 2013

WEEK: April 29 – May 5, 2013

WEEK: April 22-28, 2013

  • Sunday, April 28th – Vancouver cop-from-the -future series Continuum 2×02 airs on Showcase. Some of it filmed in Squamish with Rachel Nichols in a big helicopter scene. New York Times’s Neil Genzlinger wrote about his Squamish set visit in TV article praising the series.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Red Widow 1×07 The Coke airs on ABC. Marta (Radha Mitchell) learns new information about her husband’s killer. Photos of one of the deaths filmed in Downtown Eastside alley.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Once Upon a Time 2×20 The Evil Queen airs on ABC. Hook pretends to help Regina (Lana Parilla) with a plan to transport her and Henry (Jared Padalecki) back to Fairytale land. Big scene of Regina talking to Henry filmed in Steveston. And in flashbacks, the Evil Queen gets Rumplestiltskin to transform her into a peasant so she can kill Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin). Village scenes were filmed in Robert Burnaby Park in Burnaby in front of visiting #EvilRegals fans (one from Mozambique). Look for opening scene of The Dark one (Robert Carlyle) & The Tramp (Emilie de Ravin) staggering out of the “Rabbit Hole” pub in Steveston too.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Latest  buzz from Deadline’s Primetime Pilot Panic says Wonderland (Once Upon a Time spinoff) “penciled in” and Big Thunder a “major contender” at ABC; I Am a Victor with John Stamos has a shot at NBC;  Human with Karl Urban”still solid” at FOX; Intelligence with Josh Holloway and Backstrom with Rainn Wilson in the mix at CBS; The 100 still under consideration at The CW but no mention of Blink.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Upcoming TNT series King & Maxwell preps Incendio in Gastown for before and after explosion shoots next week.
  • Saturday, April 28th – Arrow‘s Colton Haynes attends the White House Correspondents Dinner. WHCD’s hilarious & apt hashtag is #nerdprom.
  • Saturday, April 27th – King & Maxwell films downtown at two locations, the last at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
  • Saturday, April 27th – ABC Christmas movie Christmas Bounty wraps three nights (April 25-27th) of overnight filming in holiday-decorated Coquitlam Centre mall.
  • Friday, April 26th – Vancouver director Jeff Renfroe’s new Ice Age thriller The Colony opens nationwide in Canada. YVRShoots series interview with Renfroe.
  • Friday, April 26th – Vancouver director Jesse James Miller’s endearing 1970s-set film Becoming Redwood premieres in Toronto at Cineplex Yonge & Dundas. YVRShoots series interview with Miller.
  • Friday, April 26th – Robert Redford’s Weather Underground film The Company You Keep starring Shia LaBeouf and Redford opens in theatres. Filmed at Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia Hotel and other locations around Vancouver. 
  • Friday, April 26th – Continuum films inside CBC Vancouver.
  • Friday, April 26th – Arrow actors Byron Mann and Celina Jade featured in Vancouver Sun article about actors making it big in China.
  • Friday, April 26th – Entertainment Weekly scoop about season 3 of Falling Skies. 
  • Friday, April 26th – Entertainment Weekly’s excusive season 3 trailer for The Killing features Peter Sarsgaard as death-row inmate.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Joel Kinnaman & Mireille Enos film a walk-and-talk for  The Killing near Cobalt Hotel on Main Street. Then moved into parking lot behind for scene in car.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Continuum films inside CBC Vancouver and on Cambie Street.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Vancouver whydunit Motive 1×10 airs. Dustin Milligan guest-stars Read More »WEEK: April 22-28, 2013

WEEK: April 15-21, 2013

SHOOT: Road Biker Extras at Two Chefs & a Table for WORDS AND PICTURES

Last Thursday feature film Words and Pictures had a last-minute casting call for bike rider extras to film on Monday. Turns out the scene was not a road race as expected but a gathering of friends in bike gear inside Two Chefs & a Table restaurant on Alexander Street in the Downtown Eastside.

The scene: outside the restaurant — renamed The Grill — a man in spandex bike attire talks on his cellphone before going inside to join his road racer friends.

Read More »SHOOT: Road Biker Extras at Two Chefs & a Table for WORDS AND PICTURES

Russian Mob Drama RED WIDOW’s Two-Hour Debut on ABC Tonight

Are we ready for a female version of Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) or Walter White (Breaking Bad) on American broadcast TV? Red Widow is about San Francisco widow Marta Walraven (Radha Mitchell) forced to replace her husband in the Russian mob after his murder in order to repay his debt and protect her family — son Gabriel (Sterling Beaumon),daughter Natalie (Erin Moriarty) and son Boris (Jakob Salvati).

Her husband was killed by the mafia. In order to erase a [$1.5  million] debt and protect her family, she is willing to work with his killers. How far would you go? For one mother, the only way out is deeper in. No time to mourn.

That debt is owed to crime lord Nicholae Schiller (Goran Visnjic). “I don’t play games Mrs. Walraven. Ever.”  – Schiller

ABC/BOB D’AMICO

By the end of the first set of eight episodes, Marta Walraven won’t be as bad as Tony Soprano or Walter White but she will have gone from packing lunches to packing guns — with room to go darker.

Read More »Russian Mob Drama RED WIDOW’s Two-Hour Debut on ABC Tonight

SHOOT: ROGUE Wraps Season One with Thandie Newton & Marton Csokas

Marton Csokas, Thandie Newton & Matthew Beard @2013

DirecTV’s  first original series Rogue stars Thandie Newton (Mission Impossible 2, Crash) as Grace, a morally-compromised undercover cop in Oakland, who’s cavorting with Marton Csokas’s crime boss, who may have been involved in her son’s death. Now that’s a complicated relationship. Rogue wrapped filming of its first season of ten episodes on Friday in Vancouver.

I found them on location twice this past week, filming their season finale. First on Monday in the pouring rain on a closed block of Heatley Avenue in the Downtown Eastside, dressed as Oakland. Thandie Newton walked back and forth between two of the sets in small houses, wearing a blue baseball cap, hoodie, coat, striped track pants and running shoes. If I didn’t know her role as an undercover cop, I would not have recognized her. And then on Tuesday in the pouring rain at the Burrard Ironworks building near the Main Street overpass dressed as MacArthur’s Bar, Marton Csoka came out on breaks carrying his own umbrella to read his script (Csoka also drives his own vehicle from circus to set). It’s unfortunate that miserable, neverending rain was a theme this week.

Here are more photos of Thandie Newton on Heatley Avenue as Oakland, California.

Read More »SHOOT: ROGUE Wraps Season One with Thandie Newton & Marton Csokas

WEEK: October 29 – November 4, 2012

WEEK: October 22-28, 2012

  • Sunday, October 28th – Once Upon a Time‘s Halloween episode 2×06 reveals Dr. Whale’s Fairytale Land identity as Dr. Frankenstein.
  • Sunday, October 28th – City sitcom Package Deal with Hartland Williams, Julia Voth, Jay Malone and Randal Edwards tapes in front of a live studio audience in Burnaby.
  • Saturday, October 27th – Primeval: New World panel at London Comic-con with Niall Matter, Sara Canning, Danny Rahim and Andrew-Lee Potts.
  • Friday, October 26th – Fringe‘s shocker death of “Baby Bishop” in the pivotal fourth episode of the final season.
  • Friday, October 26th – Once Upon a Time back filming in Steveston for third day in same week. That’s a lot of on-location filming in one spot.
  • Friday, October 26th – The CW releases Supernatural promo photos of Misha Collins as angel Castiel and Stargate/Sanctuary’s Amanda Tapping as angel Naomi for upcoming episode 8×07 via TVLine.com.
  • Thursday, October 25th – Red Widow films a kiss that goes wrong in a Downtown Eastside alley with Wil Traval and Erin Cahill.
  • Thursday, October 25th – Arrow films a simulated fire inside the Terminal City Ironworks compound in east Vancouver with Stephen Amell on set.
  • Thursday, October 25th – The CW releases an Arrow November Sweeps month poster featuring Stephen Amell via TVLine.com
  • Thursday, October 25th – Cult films at Pacific Central Station with Matt Davis on set.Read More »WEEK: October 22-28, 2012