Vancouver’s Brollywood
VANCOUVER, hosting an ever-lengthening list of American film and TV productions, these days is widely known as Hollywood North and in the rainy winter season, “Brollywood”.
More than 200 films and television programs are produced annually in and around the attractive city, its streets, parks, harbour and mountains to the north.
And many of its 600,000 population (out of two million in Greater Vancouver) have become blasé about seeing well-known actors shooting outdoors scenes in the streets, eating in fashionable restaurants or strolling through hotel lobbies.
You never know when or where a star might come into view.
Some hotels decline to disclose the names of celebrity guests for reasons of privacy, but the Metropolitan says notables it has hosted include Australia’s Hugh Jackman, Harrison Ford, Halle Berry, Tina Turner, Jessica Alba and David Arquette.
Visiting film and TV actors stay at a variety of hotels also including the two Fairmont properties in downtown Vancouver, the Sutton Place, and the Opus in the high-rise residential district of Yaletown.
The Opus’s Elixir bar and restaurant have been patronised by the likes of Cher, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Timberlake, Harrison Ford and Kevin Spacey.
Hollywood began sending casts and crews to Vancouver in the late 1970s for TV shows such as MacGyver and 21 Jump Street, then movies such as Sylvester Stallone’s First Blood.
Soon major studios and independent producers were heading north, attracted by lower costs and favourable exchange rates, state-of-the-art studios, equipment and post-production facilities plus spectacular nearby locations.
There has also been a growing pool of talented Canadian actors on which to draw for supporting actors, many graduates of the Vancouver Film School, founded in 1987 with six students and now graduates 1,100 a year in the fields of acting, writing, animation, and various technical divisions.
Hit films shot around and near Vancouver in recent years have included I Robot, Eight Below, Fantastic Four, the Scary Movie series, Spy Game, The Sixth Day and X-Men.
Among TV series are the X-Files, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, The Commish, The New Addams Family and Outer Limits.
This year there’s also Tale of Two Sisters co-starring Australia’s 18-year-old Emily Browning and Oscar nominee David Stratham, and action films based on comic books: The Watchman with Jude Law and sci-fi hero Flash Gordon, played by up-and-coming young Canadian Eric Johnson.
Other new titles: About a Girl, Aliens in America, Auntie Claus, Bionic Woman, Captive, Dr Dolittle 4 and 5, First Dog, Goin’ Hollywood, Far Cry, Ghost Prison, Iron Road, Smoke Jumpers and The Andromeda Strain.
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