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EMILY OWENS M.D.’s Justin Hartley: A Worthy Crush – Updated

With Emily Owens M.D. sadly heading for cancellation, I took advantage of a big shoot at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre last week to take some photos of Emily’s med school crush — Justin Hartley’s surgical intern Will Collins. No stranger to Vancouver, Smallville’s Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is definitely worthy of Emily’s romantic obsession.

Mamie Gummer’s Emily awkwardly confessed her love for Will in the season premiere and got shot down kindly, only to discover at episode’s end that her high school nemesis, Aja Naomi King’s Cassandra Kopelson, is pursuing a receptive Will.  Backtracking from embarrassment, Emily tries to pretend she is Okay with Will’s rejection until he clarifies that he does care for her but doesn’t want to wreck their friendship.

Last week, Emily fruitlessly looked for flaws in Will as he stripped off his shirt in front of her. Later he brought her a banana and a condom as a visual aid for her high school talk on safe sex and then helped her work off her anger at a STD boy recklessly infecting high school girls by teaching her how to bat balls off the roof of the Life Sciences Centre. So it doesn’t look like Emily will get over Will any time soon, even as Cassandra proves willing to do anything to get him, as we can see below in this scene from the [eleventh] episode.

But with Emily Owens M.D possibly wrapping filming in two more episodes, I anticipate a happy ending for Emily and her crush [Update: I’m not so sure about that now that the show is definitely wrapping at thirteen. Emily was “Done with Will” by the end of this episode after he showed himself to be blind to Cassandra’s rudeness at the gala. Her patience has run out. Maybe a different happy ending is in store for her.]

Read More »EMILY OWENS M.D.’s Justin Hartley: A Worthy Crush – Updated

WEEK: November 5-11, 2012

  • Sunday, November 11th – Once Upon a Time‘s Red Riding Hood/Ruby-centric episode 2×07 Child of the Moon.
  • Sunday, November 11th – Glen Schaefer (The Province)’s feature on Brent Butt’s big movie No Clue — No Bogart in this Joint
  • Friday, November 9th – Fringe reveals the child Observer whom Walter hid in a pocket universe in the sixth episode of the final season, Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found.
  • Friday, November 9th – Red Widow films on the North Vancouver waterfront.
  • Friday, November 9th – Bates Motel films in Fort Langley.
  • Friday, November 9th – Battlestar Galactica prequel Blood and Chrome with Ben Cotton debuts first and second webisodes
  • Thursday, November 8th – Sitcom Package Deal tapes its pilot in front of live studio audience in Burnaby.
  • Thursday, November 8th – Brent Butt’s No Clue films in Coal Harbour on a yacht with a follow boat and a technocrane photographed by Rusty Deluce.
  • Thrusday, November 8th – Emily Owens M.D.’s Mamie Gummer & Justin Hartley film at UBC’s Life Sciences Centre,
  • Thursday, November 8th – Fringe films episode eleven on the platform for the West Coast Express at the Waterfront station with Loyalist soldiers, Peter, Olivia, Walter and the child Observer.
  • Thursday, November 8th – News of AMC and Netflix nearing deal for surprise third season of The Killing via Deadline.com.
  • Thursday, November 8th – News of Twilight fans already lining up for Monday’s Los Angeles premiere of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 Read More »WEEK: November 5-11, 2012

WEEK: October 29 – November 4, 2012

BIG READ: PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Dinosaurs Terrorize Vancouver Neighbourhoods

Published October 25, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Dinosaurs are running amok in Vancouver. And they’re hungry. New TV series Primeval: New World debuts this Monday, October 29th, on the SPACE channel.

A North American spinoff of the popular British series Primeval, co-showrunner Martin Wood describes the Vancouver version as a cop drama, but with dinosaurs as the crooks of the week. Very very large crooks. These anomalies suddenly appear and create havoc in our neighbourhoods like Stanley Park, Coal Harbour, downtown Vancouver, the Olympic Village, UBC’s Thunderbird Arena  and even a local Canadian Tire store.  And our dinosaurs are just as kickass as the British ones thanks to visual effects whiz Mark Savela. See the trailer.

Primeval: New World filmed its first 13-episode season here from early March to late July and I was lucky to spot Chuck Campbell, the guy-in-the-grey-skin-suit-carrying-a-sphere who becomes the computer-generated dinosaurs, in action. He chased an actor–jogger at the Olympic Village, who suddenly stopped, looked behind him, yelled “Holy Shit” and lept over a bench to try to get away. Now that’s acting. PNW star Niall Matter told InnerSPACE that in the first week of filming he couldn’t stop laughing whenever he looked at Chuck but quickly got over it.

Next Monday’s premiere introduces us to Niall Matter’s Vancouver software genius Evan Cross, Sara Canning’s animal attack behaviour expert Dylan Weir, Danny Rahim’s adventurer Mac Rendell Read More »BIG READ: PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Dinosaurs Terrorize Vancouver Neighbourhoods

WEEK: October 15-21, 2012

SHOOT: Olivia & the FRINGE Resistance in 2036 – Updated

Now that Olivia has been de-ambered in Fringe’s fifth season premiere, it’s time (overdue) to share her reunion with her scattered family and ongoing role in the Fringe resistance in 2036. In tonight’s episode, In Absentia, Olivia (Anna Torv) is part of the team searching the under-Observer-control Harvard campus for a hidden tunnel into Walter’s lab, played by the west entrance to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia, not by the main entrance to the CHEM building like it has been in the past.

I came to the scene late in mid-August and so was at the wrong end to capture the Fringe team’s faces like a set photographer did here. It was the first time I’d seen Olivia (after 20 years encased in amber) on location with her estranged husband Peter (Joshua Jackson), her father-in-law Walter (John Noble), her grownup daughter Etta (Georgina Haig) and her colleague and friend Astrid (Jasika Nicole) in 2036.

Read More »SHOOT: Olivia & the FRINGE Resistance in 2036 – Updated

SHOOT: Mamie Gummer of EMILY OWENS M.D. Filming at University of British Columbia

It’s been almost six months since I saw Emily Owens M.D. film scenes for its pilot at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre of its star Mamie Gummer (Meryl Streep’s daughter) walking in and out the front doors as Emily, a social nerd and surgical intern who finds life at Denver Memorial Hospital a lot like high school. Gummer returned yesterday in the autumn sunshine to film scenes of Emily picking up juice at a juice bar by the main entrance, with a prop Denver Memorial ambulance parked out front and lot of background performers milling about.

This Emily doesn’t look anywhere near as frazzled as she does in the show poster — Practicing Medicine. Working on Life.

Read More »SHOOT: Mamie Gummer of EMILY OWENS M.D. Filming at University of British Columbia

TIFF: Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is Tonight’s Gala Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival

Robert Redford’s political thriller The Company You Keep gets a Toronto International Film Festival gala presentation tonight at Roy Thomson Hall. Filmed last fall in the Vancouver area, The Company You Keep stars Redford as widowed civil rights lawyer Jim Grant, who’s really a former Weather Underground militant and fugitive wanted for over thirty years for a bank robbery and murder of a guard. Shia LaBeouf is the young reporter Ben Shepard who exposes Grant’s secret, forcing him to go on the run to find the one person who can clear his name before he’s caught by the FBI in a nation-wide manhunt.

The official TIFF trailer opens with these typed words: “In 1969 a group of radical anti-war protestors began a campaign of bombings on American soil. They were called the “Weather Underground”. Some were sent to prison. A few … vanished…until today.” Then we see fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) arrested at a gas station. Ben Shepard (LaBeouf), a reporter for a struggling local newspaper, watches this on TV — Breaking News: Sharon Solarz Arrested. Jim Grant reads about the arrest in the newspaper — Weather Underground Most Wanted Caught — at home with his young daughter (Jackie Evancho, an 11-year-old finalist on America’s Got Talent): “What’s wrong? You look weird.” Grant: “I’m fine, honey. ” With help from an old college friend now FBI agent (Anna Kendrick), Shepard begins to focus on Grant, catching up with him at a shoot filmed in Gastown. Shepard: “Mr. Grant, I’m just trying to put the pieces together.” Grant: “I don’t have time for this…”

But Grant decides to run. He tells his daughter: “We’re not going to school. We’re gonna go on a little trip.” Wearing a baseball cap, Grant (Redford) and his daughter (Evancho) check into the remodeled Hotel Georgia complex downtown made to look like a Manhattan hotel with prop NY cabs coming and going.

The trailer continues with more typed words: “One reporter. Has discovered a secret. That can connect them all. And reveal the truth.” Shepard: “I don’t think he’s running away. I think he’s trying to clear his name.”

The biggest and most public scenes in Vancouver took place at the west entrance to the Vancouver Art Gallery (the former Vancouver Court House) with Grant (Redford) scrummed by media as he gets into a car driven by Chris Cooper. Reporter Shepard (LaBeouf) is there but at a remove from the scrum.