Hollywood is (kinda, not literally) in our backyard

For yonks now theres been an old abandoned cement works alongside the motorway near the entrance (well, when the farmland starts turning more into houses) to the the city i live in (Dunedin, New Zealand - apparently the FOURTH biggest city in the world in land size... - see pic).

Last few weeks theres been a little activity there, part of it had been knocked down (was due for destruction anyway and had been partially done for years but then they stopped).

Then one night last week or the week before i drove past it... and it was totally lit up with huge lights on cranes etc. I, naturally, was wondering what was going on. I initially thought it was because they were doing logging work (pine plantation right beside it).

Theeeeen i read the local paper a day or two later and saw that it was a location shoot for the new Xmen movie... and that Hugh Jackman etc are in town filming and using the local gyms etc.
May not seem like a biggy to most, but apart from a couple of NZ movies (Scarfies, Out Of The Blue) i've never seen this (awesome) city in the movies before.

Went past tonight, a week later, and the lights were on again - massively bright (almost like shooting in the daytime i'd assume). Wanted to take a pic of it but theres no real vantage points to get a good view (without getting houses in the way). May try again tomorrow night.

Satellite pic of the shoot location (circled). http://www.cityofdunedin.com/WebMap/viewer.htm?city


Information i spotted when at the Otago Museum one day:


Not sure if this is the right forum to post this or not - i don't come here often enough to know.

That is very cool! You'll have to see if you can be an extra.

BTW, did you make any headway with finding Charles?

Bellis, not Xavier.

That kind of happened to me recently, since I live right next to DC, where they shot National Treasure 2.

:-)

My brother-in-law handled landscaping and snow removal during the shooting of The Village. I got to see secret cellphone snaps of the set and some of the actors before the movie was released.

Wait, now. Waaiiit a second.


For "yonks" now?

Sleepless in Seattle was filmed in my town. As is Grey's Anatomy.

My elementary school's recess lot was used a place to keep all the trailers and equipment for Bad Boys II.

SkylineObsession, weren't the LotR movies filmed in New Zealand too?

Yup, Lord Of The Rings, King Kong (?), Last Samarai, Vertical Limit and a few more?
http://www.amazingnz.com/index page 16.htm

Out of curiosity (and I'm probably going to get an obvious answer), but Scarfies & Out Of The Blue wouldn't be some "remake" of Scarface & Into The Blue, would it?

That's nothing mate.

We had Last Samurai in our city. For months!

Hope you see someone famous. I did!

Scarfies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfies
Out Of The Blue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Blue_(2006_film)

Wikipedia is your friend.

Zrow

Wait, now. Waaiiit a second.


For "yonks" now?

Click to expand...

"Yonks" would be NZ slang for "a long time".

Also, 30 days of Night was filmed in Auckland. Didn't see anyone famous but did know someone who was an extra though.

Haha, yeah thats the one.

You wouldn't believe all the movies shot hear and around Calgary, the list is massive but a few include:

-"Brokeback Mountain"
-"Days of Heaven"
-"Superman," and sequels "Superman II" and "Superman III"
-"Shanghai Noon"
-"Rat Race"
-"Open Range"

etc etc.

Tons of western movies,

'The Full Monty' was filmed where i live

Powripper

You wouldn't believe all the movies shot hear and around Calgary, the list is massive but a few include:

-"Brokeback Mountain"
-"Days of Heaven"
-"Superman," and sequels "Superman II" and "Superman III"
-"Shanghai Noon"
-"Rat Race"
-"Open Range"

etc etc.

Tons of western movies,

Click to expand...

Wow.

I've had, uh..."Dallas" shot near me? 💡

Its because its way cheaper to shoot in Canada than in the US, thats why you'll find a lot of movies filmed here. Most likely if your watching a movie and its setting is some large US city it was probably shot mostly in cities like Vancouver or Toronto, and even sometimes in Calgary. except for the occasional scene with important landmarks in them of course.

Calgary is also sometimes nicknamed "Nashville of the north" due to it being quite a "western" city. A lot of rodeos and self proclaimed cowboys Its also (sadly) the country music capital of Canada. Its mostly prairies with mountains close by to the west, so you can imagine why a lot of western movies are shot here.

Just been looking around and discovered that these movies have also been filmed in or near Calgary:
- The Oscar-winning Unforgiven, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood,
- Legends of the Fall, starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins,
- Parts of the X-Men movies
- RV, the blockbuster summer comedy starring Robin Williams,
Also:
Calgary will provide locations for Resurrecting the Champ, a Hollywood-backed film starring Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett, Alan Alda, Desperate Housewives' Teri Hatcher, and Kathryn Morris, who plays Detective Lily Rush in Cold Case.

Untill I looked into it I really had no idea it was THAT much!

EDIT:
OH! cant forget the classic "cool runnings"! The oh-so epic story of the Jamaican bob sled team at the 1988 Calgary Olympics staring John Candy. My dads friend was actually a stunt double in that movie

The opening sequence of Die Another Day (up until the waterfall) was shot on army land about 2 miles from my house. It was difficult to imagine Korea as being some tracks I used to cycle around.

The American Pie series is actually based on the town I live in, a bunch of cultural references made to the area I actually grew up in.

- East Great Falls = East Grand Rapids
- "Central" = Forest Hills Central, the High School I went to
- Hotdog place = Yesterdog, the second best place for hot dogs in the area
- "The Lake" = Lake Michigan, mostly in the city of Grand Haven a few miles north of where Philly is right now

The movie The Polar Express also is grounded here in Grand Rapids, the main character also being from East Grand Rapids, and when they go by Hurpelsheimer's (probably spelled incorrectly), that is a HUGE cultural reference to our town for my parent's generation.

As for stuff that was filmed here, the only thing I can recall recently was a small portion of that 1920s Tom Hanks move Road to Perdition was shot out on Lake Michigan, Hanks spending a short amount of time here in Grand Rapids (about 30 miles inland).

Culturally, we're pretty influential. But not much is filmed here...

American Pie was originally going to be called Great Falls.

It was a fairly late change to American Pie as far as I know - they had plenty of posters and advertising for Great Falls already made.

Yeah, I had heard about that too. The creators of the franchise used to hang out around here a lot, but I haven't heard about them being here in a while. With the outrageous numbers of spin-off movies they've done as of late, I can't imagine them being anywhere near short on cash... Problem is, I have no idea if the references to my home town continued on. I often presume that the "band camp" (based on the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Muskegon) is still a running joke, but I haven't seen any of the movies past the third one...

There was one that was set at band camp. I think it was the fourth one?

Drove past last Monday (not the one just gone) and took these pics from various places (motorway offramp the first pic, motorway onramp the second).




But yeah, looks like they've all packed up and gone now.

Bump!

First Wolverine footage leaked (scroll down for the videos):
http://survivorsucks.yuku.com/topic/36150/t/First-Wolverine-footage-leaked.html?page=3

I don't think I could name all the movies that have been filmed here in the SF bay area region...