I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

VARIOUS VICARIOUS BRUSHES WITH FAME....

My brother, John, works at a post-production studio in Vancouver that proccesses film, synchronizes it with the sound, and does some other of those tasks too minor for him to get credited individually at the end of the movie.

Occasionally, they'll have stars drop by, either to offer encouragement, or, more likely, just because the star wants to get his first glimpse at how he looks on celluloid (since, contrary to popular belief, not all movies are shot digital these days, mainly because not all film production companies have yet been able to afford the new digital equipment, though sometimes it's an artistic decision as some directors still prefer the granular look of film; the downside for the actors when something is shot on film is that they have to wait until it's developed to see how the shots came out, compared to digital, when they can see themselves within seconds of shooting a scene).

One famous actor who recently dropped by was Ben Stiller from Zoolander, There's Something About Mary, Meet the Parents, and one of my all-time favourite movies, The Royal Tenenbaums. who was in Vancouver to film his scenes for the film Night at the Museum, a comedy set to be released in November about museum exhibits at New York's Museum of Natural History coming to life because of a curse and wreaking havoc, and some historical figures like Atilla the Hun and Theodore Roosevelt also come alive somehow.

Unfortunately, Ben Stiller didn't visit on my brother's shift, so John didn't get to see him.

But I think my brother will be able to catch another famous visitor, certainly the biggest (ha-ha) celebrity that'll probably ever drop by (but, even though he's big, he's spry).


Jorge Garcia as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on ABC's Lost.

Yep, John will hopefully get to meet Jorge Garcia, who plays Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on Lost. I'm not sure why Garcia is in Vancouver. Obviously, not for Lost, which is filmed on Oahu, Hawaii, and the new season of which doesn't even begin shooting until, I believe, the end of July. The Internet Movie Database indicates that Garcia is also in an upcoming movie called Sweetzer, but it doesn't give any information on where that one is being filmed.

According to Garcia's trivia page, he was in a video with Mr. T called "Recouping". If this information is true, and if it's the same one I found on YouTube, Jorge Garcia must be that young boy who unconvincingly falls on the sidewalk, and then a fat guy laughs at him, so "Doctor T" resets time and, instead of being a laughing stock, "recoups" by breakdancing . I can't see enough of the kids face for me to be able to determine whether it's really Jorge, or whether someone is trying to pass off an "absoludicrous" fabrication as fact.

There's an official Jorge Garcia site called "Pronounced Horhay" (since the actor, of Chilean descent, has a rather unconventional name for someone born in Omaha, Nebraska), but it hasn't been updated since last August.




Also, remember my old Japanese pen-pal turned model and actress?

I recently found out that she was in a Japanese horror movie that I've actually seen, in a small but pivotal role as a ghost of someone killed by whatever hard-to-understand evil entity that was going around killing people using a certain modern convenience that I won't identify here, as it would identify the movie which would identify my former pen-pal who doesn't want me to "name drop" her here, and I respect her wishes. (It's not any of the Ring films or Ju-On/The Grudge or Dark Water.)

I'm almost tempted to rent that movie again just to see her and hear her voice now that I know it was her, but the movie it is is typical of all too many Japanese horror movies in that it gets too weird and inexplicable halfway through, and it's one of many Japanese horror movies I've seen that has a climax set in a hospital or asylum that has been abandoned for years, which is illogical considering that land is at a premium in urban areas in Japan and, in the real world, the hospital would either have been demolished soon after closing or refurbished into condos.




In the "glad I looked it up before writing about it department", my second cousin, Julien Lecat, who had previously directed the "making of" documentary for Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement¹ (Un long dimanche de fiançailles), was now working on some large budget film with pirates and treasure, which my mother had led me to believe was a little movie called Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest.

But I looked him up, and he's actually shooting the behind-the-scenes footage for a French film called Trésors, an action comedy loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, being filmed in Budapest, England, and Thailand (damn, wish I could have tagged along on that last location... I want to take a million pictures of elephants in Chiang Mai!) by director Alain Berbérian and starring Vincent Rottiers as Jim Hawkins and Gérard Jugnot as Long John Silver. (Julien Lecat himself is listed as having a bit part as a fisherman in peril.)

Here's a video from France's TF1 that shows some behind-the-scenes footage on the set in Thailand (oh, it's in Krabi, which is located at pretty much the opposite end of the country from Chiang Mai, but I'm sure there are still some elephants to be seen there). I'm not sure if any of that footage is Julien's, but the movie still looks like a lot of fun regardless.

Julien is also directing the "making of" for a movie called Truands (Gangsters), a crime film from director Frédéric Schoendoerffer filmed in France and Senegal.

¹Which, unfortunately, I still haven't gotten around to seeing. When it was briefly in theatres over in this part of the world, I was in the process and/or aftermath of moving to Ontario, and I'm not sure that I've ever seen the DVD of it on the shelves of Merivale Blockbuster Video.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:51 PM