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PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS: Half-Brothers Percy & Tyson Running Up Granville Street in Vancouver

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters crew turned SFU’s Segal Graduate Business School into First National Savings Bank of D.C. with some American flags and plaques for a scene of Logan Lerman’s Percy Jackson and Douglas Smith’s Tyson turning and running up Granville Street this morning.

After each take, Logan Lerman and Douglas Smith sauntered back to their marks to start all over again. At one point, Lerman playfully punched the wrapped-in-plastic camera lense. I didn’t get any good photographs of them running, this being Granville Street where buses get backed up with two or three waiting to turn right on Pender St., blocking all views of the action on the other side of the street. Plus dread-locked Smith seemed uncomfortable being so exposed to passersby and others with cameras. There will be more filming this afternoon but I’m not sure if it’ll be visible.

Percy and his friends head into the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece to save Camp Half-Blood from attack by monsters in the second in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians franchise, a series of adventures based on Greek mythology.

Read More »PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS: Half-Brothers Percy & Tyson Running Up Granville Street in Vancouver

SHOOT: FAIRLY LEGAL’s Judge Nicastro Ain’t Riding With Us!

Last Friday night’s Fairly Legal episode on USA Network featured this wonderful scene of Gerald McRaney as Judge Nicastro and Sarah Shahi as Kate Reed fighting their way through transit workers extras after a contract dispute goes array, filmed at the south side of the Vancouver Art Gallery (a former courthouse) on a sunny afternoon in mid-February. As you can see, Judge Nicastro loses his temper and punches a protester near the bottom. And they did it all over again in take after take, with Shahi really getting into it. Between camera setups, the protester extras lounged in the sun with their signs, an odd sight for passersby who did double takes, wondering if this was yet another real protest in Vancouver.

Meatloaf, aka Martin Oday, played the union’s leader Charles McKay and he may have been on set at the Vancouver Art Gallery but I don’t think I photographed him. A pity. I’d love to have seen him.

We’ll have to wait several weeks to see this episode, Kiss me Kate, broadcast on Showcase in Canada.

Read More »SHOOT: FAIRLY LEGAL’s Judge Nicastro Ain’t Riding With Us!

CONTINUUM Wraps First Season With Big Downtown Shoot

Upcoming TV series Continuum didn’t wrap its first season quietly: filling a downtown block all day Saturday with 125 extras, flashing prop Vancouver police cars, emergency vehicle and firetruck to film scenes of a bomb scare evacuation featuring stars Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, with guest star Nicholas Lea in the Vancouver police vest. People stopped, photographed and tweeted the shoot, giving Continuum some extra social media buzz before its debut on Showcase on Sunday, May 27th.

Read More »CONTINUUM Wraps First Season With Big Downtown Shoot

THE KILLING – Recap of Days Seventeen to Nineteen of the Investigation

Linden & Holder. The dynamic detective duo are back together for days seventeen to nineteen of The Killing investigation into the death of Seattle teenager Rosie Larsen. And it’s wonderful to watch and listen to them. I got to see quite a bit of Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman filming these scenes inside lead homicide detective Sarah Linden’s silver car in various spots around Vancouver-as-Seattle’s downtown and downtown eastside, but couldn’t hear any of their often funny dialogue.

Day Sixteen ends with Linden & Holder staking out the Larsen residence and Holder attempting to explain his actions to her: “Linden, I thought the [Darren] Richmond photo was legit. Kay. I mean Gil saved my life. I had 10 days in when I met him.” Linden is having none of it: “I don’t care. We’re in the middle of a shit storm because of you.” They follow an S.A. Larsen truck to Janek’s restaurant. Holder points out they’re not Stan Larsen’s guys: “They don’t got the overalls.”

The next day, the detective duo meet up with a mob expert with the FBI, who shows them a photo of the body of a man hands-bound with a single shot to his head in the trunk of a car and tells them that it was Stan Larsen who whacked him. Back at the police station, it’s another fun food conversation with Linden asking Holder: “Mmmmm is that bacon?” He replies: “Nah this is ham, eggs and sausage.” Linden: “What happened your whole lacto ova vegan thing?” Holder: “Nothing. I’m just ready to embrace meat again.” And then after a while, Holder brainstorms: “Maybe Rosie’s BFF knows about tattoo boy?”

After first stopping in to see the widow of the man killed by Stan Larsen, Linden & Holder go to Rosie’s school to ask her BFF, played by Vancouver’s own Kacey Rohl, what she knows about the Boy with the Manga Tattoo. She confirms seeing this boy hanging around Rosie’s place but that’s all.

They go to a juvenile hall to question the tattoo artist and discover the boy was a foster kid, Alexi Giffords, who lived three blocks from the Larsens. And then onto the stakeout scenes I saw being filmed in Strathcona. It was a long one and Holder got on Linden’s nerves to the point she made him get out of the car and left.

I couldn’t help but laugh. He was so Holder: “Yo I gotta piss. So Rosie likes bad boys like her father.” Linden doesn’t buy it but Holder presses on: “It’s in the DNA…sins of the fathers.” Linden: “Did you read that in O magazine?”

Then he teases her about the FBI Mob guy: “Oh snap, Linden rocked a booty call. Dial 1-900-Linden.” Linden replies: “It’s not even enough numbers.”  But when Holder starts pushing her Foster kid buttons she snaps. He reminds her she was a runner in her day and she gives him a warning look but he continues on: “I’m just making conversation since we’re wasting our time anyway.” Linden barks: “You’re right this is a waste of time. Get out!” Holder: “Come on Linden. What am I supposed to do out here?”. Linden: “Your job.” Holder: “Least we’re back to normal.” They are.

Linden goes to see Regi to ask to read a file on an ex-foster kid. The Regi and Linden talking on the dock scenes were filmed in late January at the Quayside Marina in Yaletown. Here are my photographs of Mireille Enos and Annie Corley being battered by wind and rain on their way to set and on set.

Meanwhile Holder is taking a piss when Alexi returns home. He chases him but can’t manage the fence. And Linden gets a peek at the file which tells her Alexi is the son of the man Stan Larsen whacked.

Read More »THE KILLING – Recap of Days Seventeen to Nineteen of the Investigation

Run Percy Jackson Run in Downtown Vancouver for PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS

The main cast for the Percy Jackson sequel Sea of Monsters had a lot of fun working yesterday. Logan Lerman’s Percy Jackson, Douglas Smith’s Tyson and Alexandra Daddario’s Annabeth jumped on the spot to warm up for a morning scene of the trio running from 500 Beatty Street in downtown Vancouver dressed as the Delaware School of Culinary Arts. And then in the afternoon, they moved a block east for fun scenes with Nathan Fillion as god Hermes in shorts in a fake UPS store. A very good day, indeed.

Fixing the flag.

Warming up for the run.

Read More »Run Percy Jackson Run in Downtown Vancouver for PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS

RECAP: FRINGE’s The Consultant With Set Photos

Does David Robert Jones want to destroy both Fringeverses? Is that his ultimate game plan? In The Consultant he experiments with syncing the two parallel universes of Fringe.

Episode eighteen opens with the funeral of Captain Lee (Seth Gabel), killed on David Robert Jones (Jared Harris)’s orders with information from Col. Broyles (Lance Reddick), the mole in the alternate universe’s Department of Defence. I’d heard about this shoot filmed in Vancouver’s Mountainview Cemetary on a miserably wet February day with a hundred extras and now that I know what it was, I’m not sorry to have missed it.

Still in Manhatan (only one t), Fauxlivia (Anna Torv) confronts Meana (Blair Brown’s evil alt-Nina Sharp) in prison to try to get her to give up the name of the DOD mole, without success.

This week’s Fringe case starts at a business meeting in our universe where an executive is about to get fired when his boss suddenly levitates and then falls down on the conference table with such force that it breaks bones in his body.

Junior agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) drives Walter Bishop (John Noble) to the crime scene in the Bishop wagon, while he complains about her “wild driving”. They meet up with Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), aka POlivia, as shippers have dubbed them. “Look. It’s my son and his girlfriend,” exclaims a giddy Walter. Our Fringe family is back together and outside of Walter’s lab, filming at CBC Vancouver in mid-February.

Inside the conference room, Peter Bishop notices seat belt marks on the body which leads to the discovery that the boss’s doppleganger in the alt-universe died in a plane crash. What is causing these in-sync deaths?

Walter decides to go to the Other Side to act as a consultant to their investigation. “I always like to empty my bladder before a long trip,” he declares, before crossing the bridge that links the two universes. Read More »RECAP: FRINGE’s The Consultant With Set Photos

RECAP: Everything in its Right Place on FRINGE – Updated

Oh how I’ve missed you, alt-universe. Fringe returns to the Other Side in episode seventeen, Everything in its Right Place, with Anna Torv’s Fauxlivia toting a big gun as Seth Gabel’s Agent Lee faces off with Seth Gabel’s Captain Lee (Fringenuity‘s episode hash tag was a spot-on #FaceYourself).

So we had a double dose of Lincoln Lees but when Seth Gabel played both in Victory Square in downtown Vancouver on February 8th, I only managed to get decent shots of Fauxlivia, although I did see Captain Lee get shot (a spoiler I kept to myself because I couldn’t bear the thought of Fauxlivia losing her Lincoln Lee).

This episode opened in Walter’s lab with Gene the cow wearing an FBI “jacket” while grazing as Jasika Nicole’s Astrid complains to our Lincoln Lee about having to cross over to the other universe to help investigate a vigilante with a connection to the shapeshifters. Agent Lee offers to take her place on the bridge to the other side where he meets up with Fauxlivia and Captain Lee. Clearly Seth Gabel is as good as Anna Torv at playing dopplegangers: Captain Lee is so macho and Agent Lee is borderline dweeb.

From there we go to the top of a parkade at night where the vigilante shapeshifter is killing a criminal in the act. When Fauxlivia, Captain Lee and Agent Lee show up at the crime scene, filmed on February 13th, @MartiniHoudini had a window seat on the action on the Bentall Parkade and Seth Gabel as our Lincoln Lee, an alt-Lincoln Lee double and Anna Torv as Fauxlivia below.

Some of the funniest moments took place on this parkade like Fauxlivia weedling Agent Lee’s middle name out of him and then pranking Captain Lee with a “What’s up Tyrone?” Followed by a superhero debate: “What’s a Batman?” asks Fauxlivia, explaining their superhero is Mantis. “Seriously? Your superhero is an insect?” says our Lincoln Lee. “Because nothing says badass like a flying rat!” retorts Fauxlivia.

And then we’re at a Fringe Division Quarantine Zone at  St. James’ Anglican Church in the Downtown Eastside, where Containment Unit workers are reopening an amber area. Fringe crew turned almost an entire block of Gore Avenue into this quarantine zone on February 9th with DO NOT ENTER signs posted on the entrance doors to the church and FRINGE SITE – DO NOT CROSS red tape stretched across the corner of Gore & East Cordova. The red tape also kept spectators off set — although it’s amazing how close half-a-dozen fans were allowed to stand to watch the steadi-cam crew filming Anna Torv and Seth Gabel. And hidden in among all this set decoration, fans spied a Fringe Division Renewal poster, widely thought to be a subtle plea for a fifth season renewal. Well played Fringe. Well played. I photographed Seth Gabel and Anna Torv having fun in the rain ahead of filming a scene of them entering the church.
I didn’t catch Seth Gabel in character as Captain Lee at this set; only a Captain Lee photo double. But I saw quite a bit of Agent Lee looking dweeby.
A month later on March 15th, Fringe filmed a pickup scene on Gore Avenue recreating much of the Quarantine Zone and then moved to Oppenheimer Park to film the soccer scene with some Fringe fans from France and  NYC prop cabs in the background.
Much of the action shifted to the Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver, which you should recognize from the season four premiere. The two Lincoln Lees get into it about how their paths diverged until Fauxlivia quips, “Get off the line Girls”. They do have a vigilante shapeshifter to chase down and then interrogate.