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Big Picture: Dog days coming as third Pup Star set to start filming

Whether you’ve had your fill of the dog days of summer or can’t get enough of them, you might be surprised to learn they haven’t actually started yet, at least in movie terms.
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Makenzie Moss with Tiny in a scene from the original Pup Star, a Netflix hit that resurfaced at Cineplex theatres.

Whether you’ve had your fill of the dog days of summer or can’t get enough of them, you might be surprised to learn they haven’t actually started yet, at least in movie terms.

That’s about to change, however, as director Robert Vince and crews gear up for the start of principal photography on the third Pup Star movie to film here for Air Bud Entertainment since 2015.

There have already been telltale signs leading to the tentative Aug. 21 start date for the month-long shoot, which will take place at multiple capital region locations, including Sidney’s Mary Winspear Centre.

The seaside community’s cultural hub has been a beehive of pre-production activity, including a casting session for background performers ages 18 to 45 who are black, Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian or South Asian.

Vince and producer Anna McRoberts first came to the region in 1998 to film The Duke. The family comedy, starring John Neville and James Doohan, was about a bloodhound that inherits a benevolent Duke’s British estate.

Noteworthy sequences were filmed at Esquimalt’s Olde England Inn, as the historic 108-year-old English Inn hotel was then known.

Their new film, tentatively titled Pup Star 3: World Tour, continues the action-comedy series that originated as a girl-and-her-dog yarn starring Makenzie Moss and a Yorkie pup.

The original was a hit on Netflix and has resurfaced at Cineplex theatres. Last year’s sequel, Pup Star: Better 2Gether, is set for release on Digital HD on Aug. 29.

And while we’re on the subject of where local viewers can see locally filmed projects, dozens of readers have inquired about when they can see Chesapeake Shores Season 2 episodes on Canadian television.

While the second season of the series filmed in Oceanside premièred Aug. 6 on Hallmark Channel in the U.S., it isn’t scheduled to air here until Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. on the W Network.

Meanwhile, local crews are enjoying a brief hiatus, with Front Street Pictures having just wrapped Gourmet Detective 4.

The company is set to resume filming here next month on the next instalment of Hallmark’s A Fixer Upper Mystery series, starring Jewel as a mystery-solving home-restoration expert.

 

RAMBO REDUX: It has been 35 years since director Ted Kotcheff visited Hope to shoot First Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone as a Vietnam veteran who takes on Brian Dennehy’s abusive small-town sheriff, and a 35th anniversary celebration is in the works.

Destination B.C.’s Heather McGillivray, a former Tourism Victoria staffer, says the region will start celebrating Oct. 7 with events including family-friendly archery tag at Hope’s Visitor Centre, guided tours of filming locations, a display of movie vehicles and props, an exhibition of film-inspired works by local artists and a screening at the Hope Cinema.

Visitors can also stay at the Windsor Motel, across from the movie’s sheriff’s office, and visit the Silver Chalice Pub to taste its “monstrous” Rambo Burger, loaded with ingredients fit for an action hero.

 

RUSHES: Victoria’s Calum Worthy (Austin & Ally) has officially become part of the Marvel universe after being cast in Marvel’s New Warriors, Freeform’s new 10-episode comedy series about a group of emerging superheroes learning to cope with their powers.

In a cast headlined by Milana Vayntrub (This is Us) as Squirrel Girl, the Claremont Secondary School grad will play Robbie Baldwin, a.k.a. Speedball, a ridiculously confident, eager-to-please character who throws kinetic balls of energy around.

The Disney-owned network (formerly ABC Family) is scheduled to launch the project, its second Marvel series, next year.

 

Chances are Cineplex Entertainment’s SilverCity will be packed with local cyclists and wannabes Aug. 23 at 6:30 p.m., when Le Ride gets a one-night-only screening there. The award-winning documentary follows The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan and his friend Ben Cornell as they push their bodies to the limit while re-creating the 1928 Tour de France using vintage steel racing bikes.

 

Another surefire sign it’s summer in Victoria is the presence of celebrities around town who aren’t just here to shoot movies.

Recent sightings included Victoria-raised Jennifer Tilly. The actor and poker whiz tweeted: “My brother Steve is trying out his dance moves on me” with a photo of herself hamming it up with him on Courtney Street earlier this week.

The nighttime photo taken a poker chip’s throw from the Strathcona Hotel prompted flashbacks to 1999, when the former Belmont student unleashed her trademark wackiness as one of the honourees at David Foster’s Island of Champions fundraiser.

 

And, yes, that was Owen Wilson spotted Tuesday at La Taqueria Pinche Taco Shop on Fort street.

Seven years after he visited the island to shoot scenes for The Big Year in Tofino with Jack Black and Steve Martin, Wilson was back just for the fun of it.

“He was very friendly and approachable,” said server Alana Ahlstrom, who had to compose herself after spotting the actor and screenwriter with a well-documented passion for authentic Mexican tacos.

“I didn’t want to be a fan girl,” said Ahlstrom, 24, with a laugh. “He had his sunglasses on and his bike was parked next to mine.”