Sunday,April 21st – Deadline’s Primetime Pilot Panic: The Latest Buzz gives CBS pilot Intelligence a nod because of its “hunky actor” Josh Holloway & deems CBS pilot Backstrom with Rainn Wilson “a wild card”. Fox pilot Human with Karl Urban is called “strong”. ABC pilot Big Thunder & presentation OnceWonderland have buzz & preliminary good notices because in house. The CW pilot The 100 has lost steam but still in contention, Deadline says. But no mention of NBC pilot I Am Victor with John Stamos or The CW pilot Blink.
Sunday, April 21st – Second day of Fan Expo Vancouver at Canada Place.
Sunday, April 21st – Arrow wraps filming of its first hit season early in the morning.
Saturday, April 20th – Arrow films fight scene with Stephen Amell on the Hudson’s Bay rooftop overnight. Photos to come.
Saturday, April 20th – Simon Pegg’s Hector and the Search for Happiness wraps filming here after a three-day shoot (April 18-20) in a Yaletown penthouse.
Friday, April 19th – Godzilla films at old paper recycling plant in Coquitlam on Fraser River.
Thursday, April 18th – Supernatural wraps filming of season eight.
Thursday, April 18th – Bravo pilot Rita with Anna Gunn films at the University of British Columbia.
Thursday, April 18th – Continuum films at CBC Vancouver.
Thursday, April 18th – PaleyFest announces Bates Motel evening on May 10th – Reimagining a Cinema Icon – with cast Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore, Max Thieriot, Nestor Carbonell, Olivia Cooke, Nicola Peltz and showrunners Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin.
Wednesday, April 17th – Season two finale of Arctic Air goes interactive on CBC. Krista (Pascale Hutton) breaks up with Bobby (Adam Beach) at the airport. Read More »WEEK: April 15-21, 2013
A year ago, Fan Expo Vancouver hosted the first panel for Vancouver-cop-from-the-future series Continuum. And what a year it’s been. Continuum debuted on Showcase as an out-of-the-box hit. Almost one million Canadians watched, making it 2012’s number one cable drama here. Since sold to more than fifty countries around the world. Canadian Screen Award, Writers Guild Canada and Saturn Award nominations racked up. A debut in January on Syfy in the U.S. which led to rave reviews from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly TV critics. A second Continuum panel at Fan Expo Vancouver yesterday. And the premiere of a second season tonight on Showcase at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. No wonder the cast and creator got giddy yesterday in Ballroom A at Canada Place.
Continuum is part sci fi, part police procedural about a future police officer Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver today, swept up in an escape by a group of terrorists — Liber8 — who plan to change the future from the past by targeting the corporations that will come to rule the world. Cameron ends up being partnered with Vancouver police detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) and tasked with bringing down Liber8, with the unexpected help of teen tech genius Alec Sandler (Erik Knudsen), a boy who will grow up to become the head of mega-corp SadTech and seemingly the man responsible for sending Kiera and Liber8 back in time in the first place.
Continuum staged a big protest scene in Gastown’s Blood Alley today with Vancouver-cop-from-the-future Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) shoved around in a crowd as hundreds of protester extras battled police extras in full riot gear. In one scene, Kiera ran out of the melee in her black high-tech cat suit, boots and a sky-blue jacket. But this was a rare sighting. Most of the time you couldn’t see her in the throng of up to 250 background performers.
Luckily, there’s another chance to see her at the Continuum panel at Fan Expo Vancouver this Saturday, April 20th, at Canada Place. Cast Rachel Nichols, Victor Webster, Erik Knudsen, Lexa Doig, Luvia Petersen, Stephen Lobo, Jennifer Spence and Omari Newton are scheduled to be there at noon in Ballroom A. And fans are promised a sneak peek of season two, which premieres this Sunday, April 21st, at 9 p.m. on Showcase in Canada.
One Valentine’s night. Three shoots. Vancouver production crews worked late into the night on Valentine’s Day to film scenes for TV series Supernatural, Arrow and Vancouver’s own Continuum in the downtown area. I looped around from Supernatural on Station Street beside Pacific Central Station to Arrow on Franklin Street near the Terminal City Ironworks complex to Continuum at the Plaza of Nations and back again to capture our crews at work.
Supernatural crew worked inside and outside the Ivanhoe Hotel at the rear on Station Street, not packing up until 2 a.m. One exterior scene had Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) arriving at the motorhome below and possibly loading a prop dead body into the trunk of a car. Arrow set up on Franklin Street either in or near the Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver to film motorcycle scenes in the morning, Moira Queen (Susanna Thompson) in a rooftop meeting and much later, someone shooting arrows into a black town car. Wonder who? Arrow ran late so probably packed up past its scheduled 2 a.m. departure.. Continuum’s crew started early too at the Plaza of Nations on the dock to film scenes aboard Kellogg (Vancouver actor Stephen Lobo)’s yacht (Adriana), then moved inside their Vancouver police station set with background performers and back outside for night scenes aboard Kellogg’s yacht and a steadicam scene of mad time traveller Jason (Vancouver actor Ian Tracey).
6:22 p.m. – Supernatural crew ready to roll at motorhome.
Our crews work up to sixteen hours a day five days a week to bring scripts to life in all kinds of weather. Mostly cold and wet. Those lucky enough to still have jobs don’t have enough time to see their loved ones on Valentine’s Day far less watch the shows they work on. So no, these aren’t “Hollywood jobs”, but they are good well-paid ones. And they’re leaving for Toronto because of Ontario’s superior tax credits. As a result, Vancouver lost its bragging rights as North America’s third biggest film and TV production centre to Toronto (after Los Angeles and New York). And lately, it’s gone from bad to worse. British Columbia’s third biggest industry, generating over $1 billion, faced unprecedented unemployment last month. Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Film Crews at Work – #SaveBCFilm
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
How much does the CBC love its new hit drama series Arctic Air? Heaps. At the CBC upfronts earlier this month in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary to unveil next season’s schedule to advertisers and media, host George Stroumboulopoulos introduced the Arctic Air actors first in the opening Prime Time segment, ahead of the Dragon’s Den Dragons.
And for good reason — Arctic Air was the most-watched debut season for a CBC drama series in fifteen years, averaging just under a million viewers (965,000) for its first ten episodes. I watched all ten and even live-tweeted the finale in mid-March, along with so many other Canadians. Arctic Air is a classic adventure series — filmed mainly on permanent sets in Aldergrove with most exterior scenes filmed in Yellowknife — where the main trio are often in peril. It started with Bobby Martin (Adam Beach)’s return to Yellowknife to help keep alive the maverick airline co-founded by his dead father and the notorious curmudgeon Mel Ivarson (Kevin McNulty). There he reunites with Mel’s daughter Krista (Pascale Hutton), a former flame and hot-shot pilot. In the season finale cliffhanger, much of it filmed near Clinton in B.C.’s Cariboo country, Mel has internal bleeding after helping the other survivors of a plane crash. What? “Mr. Crankypants better be with us next season,” I tweeted.
TV rules at B.C.’s Leo Awards, which is the opposite of most American award ceremonies where the hierarchy goes film, then television. So it’s fitting that this year’s hosts on May 26th at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver will be Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne, the stars of homegrown sci fi series Sanctuary, which earned a whopping 18 nominations, including lead performance nominations for both Tapping and Dunne.
If you follow either of them on Twitter or tracked their progress at Comic-Con last year you’ll know that Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne are a madcap comedy duo off screen.
