Browsing “TV”

The fifteenth anniversary of the Leo Awards, celebrating the best of B.C.-made television and film, couldn’t have been more homegrown from start to finish. Vancouver-cop-from-the-future television series Continuum and darkly comedic film Camera Shy, about a corrupt Vancouver city politician,won the big awards. Both sprung from the creative minds of University of British Columbia film grads –Continuum creator and showruuner Simon Barry and Camera Shy director and writer Mark Sawers.

Inside the Westin Bayshore Hotel gala, hometown comedy couple Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson entertained the BC Film crowd with non-stop jokes, as well as pitching projects and making mild jabs about the BC election and resulting loss of promised tax incentives  Jackson Davies took the stage at around 11 p.m. for the 40th anniversary tribute to The Beachcombers, which filmed 19 seasons of 357 episodes in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Remember Molly’s Reach? It’s still there. Then at 11:30 p.m., three hours-plus into the gala, Robertson changed from her pink frock and announced she was heading out because the show was just too effin’ long. Funny.

Ahead of the gala, Victoria’s Meghan Ory owned the almost block-long red carpet dotted with cameras and media outside the hotel. Ory is BC Film’s breakout star this past year, going from a recurring role on American fairy tale series Once Upon a Time filmed here, to main cast on upcoming American series Intelligence, shooting in Los Angeles. She attended the Leos to support her husband John Reardon, nominated for his supporting performance on filmed-in-Vancouver-and-Yellowknife CBC adventure series Arctic Air, which came into the Leos with a whopping 14 nominations.

Only to be trumped in TV drama by Continuum, which arrived at the Leos with 16 nominations and the privilege of sauntering the red carpet in prime time (the last half-hour of the hour-and-a-half spectacle). …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Hometown comedy couple Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson are set to co-host the 15th anniversary of the Leo Awards, celebrating the best of B.C.-made film and television, at the Westin Bayshore Hotel on Saturday, June 8th. Expect more than the usual hijinks with professional comedians as hosts and and a crowd of outstanding homegrown nominees led by Vancouver born-and-bred Jessie James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood with 14 nominations, Vancouver-cop-from-the-future series Continuum with 16 nominations and filmed-in-Vancouver-and-Yellowknife aerial adventure series Arctic Air with 14 nominations.. For tickets, click here.

The 1970s era coming-of-age film Becoming Redwood‘s 14 nominations include well-deserved director and writing nods for Jesse James Miller and performance nods for Ryan Grantham as the young golf-obsessed long-haired title character Redwood; Jennifer Copping (Miller’s wife) as Redwood’s mother; Chad Willett (producer) as Redwood’s draft-dodging, pot-dealing father; Derek Hamilton as Redwood’s red-neck stepfather Arnold and Scott Hylands as Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl. Miller shot the Vancouver International Film Festival’s most popular Canadian feature in rural Langley for 24 days in the late spring of 2011. By contrast, Random Acts of Romance, the only other motion picture nominee I’ve seen on screen, filmed in several downtown and East Van locations like the Waldorf Hotel, as befits a movie whose tagline is “Sex, Abduction, Stalking and You Thought Romance Was Dead” about interconnected Vancouverites. Director Katrin Bowen is nominated for the twisted romcom, as is Sonja Bennett for her performance as a wacky stalker.

Five American broadcast networks unveiled their fall plans in New York this week and four of the seven TV drama pilots and one TV presentation we saw filming in Vancouver this spring made the cut for next season. Once Upon a Time ’s Victorian-era spinoff Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is scheduled for Thursday nights on ABC. While Almost Human, starring Karl Urban (Star Trek’s Bones) and Michael Ealy as futuristic human and android police partners, will air Monday nights on FOX after the World Series. Intelligence starring Josh Holloway (Lost’s Sawyer) as “The Six Billion Dollar Man” will debut on CBS on Monday nights next year. And post-apocalyptic The 100 about a hundred juvenile delinquents sent back to Earth from space almost a hundred years after nuclear disaster is slated for early 2014 on The CW. Not a  bad outcome, considering there were  fifty odd drama pilots vying for thirty prime time slots this year (double the 15 drama openings  from last year after a slew of cancellations including locally-filmed Emily Owens, M.D., Cult and Red Widow).

Unfortunately, even in a big year for new dramas, some star vehicles didn’t make the cut. Uncle Jessie won’t be returning to film in Vancouver anytime soon. John Stamos (Full House/ER)’s  pilot Victor stayed in the mix until the end but NBC opted not to put the drama about a high-powered L.A. divorce attorney, who helps his clients find new faith in life, on its schedule.

Nor will Dwight Schrute be back. CBS held onto Rainn Wilson (The Office)’s pilot Backstrom in round after round of cuts but ultimately passed on the drama about a Portland detective version of Dr. House — self-destructive, offensive, irascible and brilliant. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

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 Sadler (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.

Creator Simon Barry led the panel by getting the cast — Erik Knudsen, Jennifer Spence, Roger Cross, Omari Newton, Victor Webster, Rachel Nichols, Lexa Doig, Luvia Petersen and Stephen Lobo (third photo below) — to Q&A themselves. American Rachel Nichols, who plays the cop-from–2077, was asked how she became so bad-ass on screen. She recalled her first appearance on genre series Alias as a Russian hooker in a red wig. “When you start there you want more”, she explained, especially after scenes are cut together with the stunt double’s and “you see yourself kicking ass”.  Attention also focused on young Erik Knudsen. Without spoiling exactly what’s coming, cast implied that his young Alec will be “going to a dark place” in season two.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>