I am typing this essentially 1 handed (still using my left hand...minimally....but mostly doing it right handed).

Something is wrong with my baby finger &/or wrist that has made using my left hand for typing quite...well...unbearable.

So this is just a short blog to let everyone know the Twilight Eclipse blog I was working on is still being worked on...but might not get posted for a few days. Had hoped for it to be posted Friday night...but, well, that hasnt worked out.

Also...sorry to anyone who emails me right now & was hoping for a reply... if I dont reply back...its probably because of my wrist problem.

The 2010 Leo Awards, the 12th annual awards show for excellence in TV & Movies in B.C. took place last weekend.

With an array of stars mainly from the sci-fi world there from such shows as Sanctuary & Stargate SGU dominating the red carpet, perhaps the most sought out star was from neither of those programs, and is merely 15 years old.

Of course Jodelle Ferland, the teenage girl who plays Bree Tanner in the 3rd installment Eclipse,  of the mega-hit movie series, The Twilight Saga was one of the most desired interviews there. Not even old enough to drive legally yet, the pint sized cutie from the lower mainland was in demand on the red carpet. She was there as a nominee for Best Performance by an actress in a short drama, for her role in "Everything's Coming Up Rosie", but it was her role in the hit movie series that was getting her the most attention.

Even though I still know her as the 1st girl Georgia Lass reaps in the TV series Dead Like Me, and to many, she is known in films like Silent Hill or Good Luck Chuck, it will be the Twilight series that for awhile people will know her from most likely.

To her credit, she handled it very well. With her agent at her side on the carpet, she answered questions about the film she was there for, as well as her upcoming work in Twilight Saga Eclipse that hits theatres later this month (June 30th).

She willingly signed autographs for the handful there asking. She posed for pictures with the fans & collectors, and even was willing to talk breifly on camera about the new book about her Twilight character "The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner" which hit the shelves that same day (you can see that clip in my 1st Leo Awards blog)

Here is some shots of her from her red carpet arrival.
More shots will be added later today or tomorrow.

The 2010 Leo Awards happened last night in Vancouver & all of the local stars of movies & TV were out to celebrate the 12th annual awards for British Columbia film.

This years version had a little Twilight flavour in the mix. Along with Christopher Heyerdahl from New Moon (Marcus), young up & coming cutie Jodelle Ferland was also at the awards, a nominee for Best Performance by a Female in a Short Drama. Ferland, 15, showed up & walked her way thru the couple dozen media outlets on her way into the show.

With a book being released the very same day (June 5th) about her character Bree Tanner "The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner" in the soon to be released movie "Twilight Saga: Eclipse" movie (in theatres June 30, 2010 ), Ferland was excited, to the point of not really following what I was asking of her when we had the quite short talk about the book by Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer.

Jodelle earlier in the day had eagerly told her Twitter followers to go out & get the book & tell all their friends. She seemed truly proud of the book, even if she seemed at a loss for words what to say about it when questioned about it.

Although Jodelle failed to win in her nominated category, the young up & coming star certainly had an exciting day already. Afterall, it is not everyday that you have a book come out on a character you portrayed, in 1 of the largest phenomenons of your generation.

The hardest working doctor in show business  was in Vancouver this past weekend for a Twilight fan convention.

The double shifting doc, known to the rabid Twilight series fanbase as Dr. Carlisle Cullen, or at his second doctoring job as Dr. Fitch Cooper on the television show Nurse Jackie spent several hours meeting, greeting and talking to fans at the convention.

While other stars were whisked away from the fans like they were recluse rock stars thru private corridors, Peter opted for a more low key & personable departure from the convention. He simply walked out the front door into an awaiting vehicle.

Outside he greeted fans, signing autographs & posing with fans.,..FOR FREE. Despite the absurd $30 an autograph & $50 for a photo with price the convention hawkers were gouging fans for inside, Peter did it for no extra charge outside upon his departure.

Once at the airport, a group of 8 people were awaiting his arrival. Fans & hounds waited for his arrival & when he finally showed up, he acted as if we were just as special as the people who in total might have shelled out over $360 for a complete Twilight fan package that weekend.

His willingness to sign multiple items per person, stop and pose for photos with several of the fans, answer a few questions as best as he could, and do it all without even a sign of disdain is why I have him on my top 10 nicest celebs list. Because truthfully, most celebs in his position after just getting paid to sign autographs & pose for photos wouldnt have lifted a finger.

To top it off, you could clearly tell he was a bit worn down & probably, truthfully, would have been just as happy to leave with no fanfare. But instead of being gruff & anti-social he took it all in & seemed genuinely happy for the attention. He thanked the fans for coming out. He thanked the other photographer there and myself for coming out, shook our hands & went on his way.

Another great experience with Peter Facinelli wrapped up. With news that Breaking Dawn may be done in Louisiana, its possible this was my last interaction with Mister Twitter 2009. If it was, he left an incredible impression.

Like the lead slasher in all the successful horror movie empires, just when you thought they were gone for good....they come back unexpectedly.

The "big 3" of Twilight fame, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson have re-shoots to do in Vancouver this week for the June 30th release date movie, Twilight Saga Eclipse.

Tonight was the official return of the castmates who refuse to leave our city it seems. I thought I may never see them again as there were rumours the 4th film in this saga was rumoured to be heading to Portland, then I heard its coming here & thought "well, I guess the crazy picks up again later this fall"...but nooooo, they had to come back NOW.

So, today I went out to YVR to await the arrival of Taylor Lautner & Kristen Stewart who were scheduled to arrive from LAX in the alte afternoon/early evening.

As predicted a throng of fans, paps & other hounds were out there, Pretty much all the regulars were out in force.

With both cast members having pulled magic tricks getting in & out of the terminal in the past, the posse was actually actively keeping all potential spots they could vacate relatively covered. With no less than 3 possible escape routes on 3 different levels of an airport wing that is probably 2+ football fields long. The task of covering off all potential routes was actually a bit of a challenge.

The vehicles cleverly parked away from the arrivals area on an upper level and waited till they were needed. Eventually John, the "manager" (or as some angrily tweeted to me"assistant") of Kristen came out with a couple others & loaded up the SUVs. Then left....with out Taylor or Kristen. Everyone instantly went into WTF mode & scrambled to come up with ideas on where they are, where the vehicles might be going & again, the crowd had dispersed around the terminal.

About 20 minutes later, and after 2 or 3 moments of "where did they go", the 2 SUVS rolled back in, to the arrivals door. Within seconds Taylor & Kristen came out, with handlers holding umbrellas to try & cover them from photos. I was unfortunately covering off the furthest possible spot from where this happened. I got there JUST in time to see the group of fans & paps starting to disperse as the 2 stars were clearly inside their vehicles.

I went & grabbed a ride with 1 of the photogs & we made the trip into the downtown core. Unsure if the cast wound change hotels or not, we did a well played follow that eventually lead us to their current hideaway.

As we watched Kristens vehicle go into the secured parking area, the group of 6 or 8 hounds & paps & 2 fans that kept up, saw Taylor roll by moments later.

It was then a waiting game for Rob. Within an hour we saw John & another security type guy go for a walk. It was probably 2 more hours of nothingness, when we saw a bodyguard that we remembered from the last Eclipse shoot who followed Rob around like he thought he was supposed to be part of him. That was all we needed to see to know they had managed to get RPatts by us somehow, or before we got there.

We fruitlessly waited it out for about another hour or so before we gave in & decided this evening was not going to produce much more results & packed it in.

So, not much to report from the 1st day of Eclipse re-shoots.

Last week, Eclipse, the 3rd film in the Twilight Saga series, wrapped here in Vancouver. To be brutally honest, I was relieved.
 
Lets take you back to the beginning when the cast was first in town for New Moon, the 2nd film in the series, coming out in theatres everywhere November 20th.
 
I started this entire venture, NOT LIKING the idea of Twilight. I had never seen the movie & vowed I wouldnt. In the first couple weeks, I even found it easy to justify my disdain for it as the stars we were seeing were few & far between & had been to say the least, unwilling to interact. From KStew staring at us as she walked into the hotel ignoring our requests to RPattz speed walking by us when we picked him out in mid day, they were giving us a negative vibe.
 
The first turning point came when meeting Taylor Lautner for the first time. He was extremely friendly, pleasant, signed everything that was asked of him & I watched as he talked on a fans phone to her friend in another city, just because she asked him to. I wasnt about to run out & see the film just because of that, but I was about to start softening on this cast.
 
Over the next while a variety of actions happened. I called out KStew publically, and she responded by becoming more cordial, cast members befriended the locals, and in general, cast came across as extremely friendly & easy to deal with. We liked them and they seemingly liked us (compared to other entertainers we encounter often who dont show any respect without any prior reason.). After I got my first Kristen Stewart autograph, I conceded that I would infact give the film a chance. She was the one hold out of the primary cast for signing at that point, and now she had signed & in fact done a 180 from what she was like in the early weeks. I rented the film, watched it with a couple friends. Not exactly Casablanca, but a moderately entertaining & watchable movie. I stated at that time I likely could see myself going to see New Moon when it comes out.
 
By the time the filming for New Moon ended, we were seeing the cast almost every couple days, Rob here, Taylor there, Kristen here etc. They were exceptionally good to us & on more than 1 occasion, 1 of those 3 said "I dont care, I know you have a job to do" when we asked for more autographs or a photo. They were finally understanding they had reached a certain level of fame, and had found a happy medium in their lives with dealing with it.
 
I was pro-Twilight by the time they left here at the end of New Moon. In the time between the end of New Moon & the start of Eclipse, a LOT happened in their lives (mostly with Rob & Kristen) & to be brutally honest, I had no idea how much it clearly affected them till I had to deal with them again.

They went to Italy where they got their first true big time encounters with paps since their fame had skyrocketed. Oddly enough days before leaving Vancouver, many fans who were not actually here constantly were saying "cant wait for them to leave Van, so they can get a break from all the crazy fans there etc etc etc" only to learn it actually is worse everywhere else. Italy likely stressed them some, but it was NOTHING like what they endured in NYC & LA where they were under 24/7 surveillance. At least in Vancouver, we were only on them at major events & some weekends. The fact that Rob had gone to the same bar about 8-10 times before we ever actually saw him going there tells you just how much they were going out here undetected. They didnt have that luxury anymore. It changed them for the worse.
 
When they came back for Eclipse, we again had a small slump at the beginning. Cast were being elusive. But this time it was not so much because of dumb luck as it was with the crowds waiting. Summer time in Vancouver, and growing hype around this series meant much larger crowds. To top it off, the mentally challenged gerbils in charge of Summit decided in their infinite wisdom to book the ENTIRE cast in 1 place. Imagine whatever your idea of hell is. This is surely what Rob & Kristen felt, if not, the smaller cast members as well.
 
By the 2nd week of production there was about 25 paps in town & on average 30-50 fans waiting in & around the Sheraton Wall Centre hotel. Cast were becoming elusive & quick. Regular casual castmates like Nikki Rieed, Kellan Lutz & Peter Facinelli were out far less this film than the film prior, and Nikki opted to move away from the hotel with Elizabeth Reaser to a different hotel. I never got a chance to ask them why, but by Nikkis new "dont look at me" attitude she spawned in this film, I am guessing it was obviously a "I dont want to be around the hype" change of address. They wanted quiet, so they moved away.
 
My question to Summit. Why the hell didnt you do what you did from the beginning? 3 hotels= moderate crowds most days. 1 hotel= everyone at the same place. It was literally ground zero & the cast were prisoners of their film companies incompetence. It made the fans more desperate, it made the paps more desperate, it made us autograph hounds more desperate. So what happens when you have that much desperation building? Stupidity. With 20+ out of town paps here, the first real uh oh was the night they went to a sushi bar for a cast party. Upon their return, Robs cab went underground, and without hesitation, the out of towners with nothing to lose since they dont live here, followed them in. This was a no-no amongst the regulars, but these out of towners who would onyl stay here for a week or two did not care. This action made the cast even less willing to go out. Soon, sightings were quite rare & it was usually the same couple guys. Kellan in full sprint for a jog. Xavier for a walk. Peter Facinelli out for a short stroll. The big 3 were hiding. Rob, Kristen & Taylor were practically ghosts except for group functions or at the set.
 
Eventually the crowds died out. Ironically it came in the form of Summit growing a functioning brain cell, and it had the added luck of falling right when school was starting. They moved a large chunk of the cast out of the Sheraton to a small, still not completed apartment building a few blocks away called Level. I still remember 2 days before the first people would stumble across it saying to a couple people "I think they have moved them out of here" because it was so rare seeing anyone there. Within a week, all the regulars that were in the know had the new address. Only ones left without that info were the obsessive 24/7 "I cant live without seeing Rob/Taylor" fanatics that were still lurking around the now nearly ghost town like Sheraton.
 
For a couple weeks, there was still moderate crowds around the Sheraton, while us regulars were finally getting a cast that was far more relaxed signing & posing for pics coming out of their new residence, they would sit around there on weekends hoping to see cast when there was only 3 elusive regulars there & occasionally a couple part time cast members. Eventually, even the die hards gave up. For the past month or so of filming the place had practically no one waiting there 5 out of 6 times.... Ironically, it coincidentally was around the same time a few fans were figuring out where the residence was. Soon there was crowds of 8-10 at the residence on any given day. It quickly became the end of the cast going out as often as they were those first couple weeks there. While the focus shifted to the smaller cast members, the likes of Rob & Kristen were finding it easier to get out & were seen often out on the town by fans. Thats something they had not enjoyed since as far back as New Moon production. They had to endure being "caught out" a handful of times, but for the mostpart, they went out with little fanfare... which brings me to why?
 
Why with so much freedom suddenly were they so put off when they were found out? It wasnt just some paps they were trying to evade. Even in moderately calm settings where they would have signed or taken a photo with in NM, they were speedwalking/running away from now. They made people more desperate, and because of that. Stupid actions like the elevator incident happen. I dont endorse what my friend did. But in the same breath, I get somewhat why he did it. Rob & Kristen were giving him no choice. A reasonable reaction to us being there would have been a short, head down walk into the hotel, isntead of the Usain Bolt impression Kristen was trying to pull off everytime she came in. If they had casually walked in, like they had dozens of times in the past, there would not have been the panicked desperation of someone to follow them inside, because they would have been satisfied enough with the 2-3 seconds of them walking in, like the dozens of encounters prior. But when you hastily try to run away, all it does is incite panic into the others. So they feel they need to get something out of this, so they follow inside.

Its sort of the same philosophy of what happened at the sushi place weeks earlier. They made a big production about getting the cast out of the restaurant, which included calling in police to escort Rob & Kristen to the garage... a private underground secured garage. They called POLICE in to help them escort them TO A PRIVATE SECURED UNDERGROUND GARAGE??!!!!, because there was 10-12 paps waiting 200 feet away on a sidewalk in the dark. I didnt even get to the pathetic part of this.... THEY WERE IN A SECURE BUILDING!!??? There was no need to drag officers off the street for this. All it did was again, like elevator gate, incite panic in those involved, and when panic is brought in, stupid decisions happen. So what did they do? Panicked & ran in after the cab to the underground. Every stupid action could have been prevented. That includes last weeks cab fiasco (which I still laugh at all the comments of people who have adapted the story to fit their own needs & act like there was a Fast & The Furious type race thru the crowded streets of Vancouver or something). Illogical actions lead to illogical actions.
 
So, the last few memories I have of the Eclipse cast, are primarily negative. Much of the respect I gained for Kristen in New Moon, was lost in Eclipse. I had respect for Rob, now, I am unsure. The rest of the cast became less pleasant as well, with the likes of Kellan literally ignoring 3 girls as he returned to his hotel & not even making eye contact with them, Nikki leaving her place in hoodie tied up and sunglasses at night & giving a shit excuse like "I cant right now" before I even asked her.... which I would have understood if she was late for something. But she literally brushed off 3 people to go across the street & grab groceries, which of course meant she couldnt when she returned. I think much of her attitude comes from Paris though. Others who saw her occasionally when he wasnt around said she was her old friendly self still. I never had such luck after pre-production.
 
It also was not helping sell the movie on me when certain minor stars tell me "I am only allowed to sign 1 & I have to put your name on it". Now if your Rob Pattinson, you can get away with that type of demand without raising red flags. But when you are Cameron Bright, well I really dont find that level of ego acceptable. Of course, its not entirely his fault. Most of it, is the people around him implementing such levels of narcissism. I wont name names, but a certain PARENT to him is a bitch...and its not just me and the regulars here who thinks it. I recently recieved an email from a fan who met him at a function overseas and she was with him there too, and she was no less pleasant to PAYING fans at an official function. Cam is gonna grow up thinking his shit doesnt stink because of his family, and one day hes going to learn they were wrong. The most disturbing part of this is, people from his school who were over here tell us he has the ego at school even. Its cast members who sell the movies....and unsell the movies. Even family members can help unsell a movie.
 
Dont get me wrong. Eclipse still had some class in the cast. Bryce Dallas Howard, Xavier Samuel, Peter Facinelli & Jackson Rathbone were all awesome when they were seen around. Booboo Stewart, Jack Huston, Bronson Pelletier & Chaske Spencer were all great as well in the brief time I saw them.

But just like I said during New Moon, when I said I wouldnt see Twilight till Kristen changed her ways. I wont see Eclipse because of the attitudes shown by them here. I'll still go see New Moon. I have good memories of that experience. But Eclipse, no. Its sad for Xavier & Bryce that I wont get to see the film that they did here, the one that they made such a positive influence on me with. For that, they can thank others, namely Kristen Stewart, Summit Entertainment, Stephenie Meyer, Kellan Lutz, and to a lesser extend Nikki Reed & Elizabeth Reaser.
 
I absolutely hope they take Breaking Dawn to Portland. It will be a relief to not have it here. Dont be confused if it goes there either. Its NOT because of security/fans/paps because it will be considerably worse there obviously. It is because of the all mighty dollar. Which is fine, it is a business. But those of you who naively think the Twilight series is moving there because it will be calmer need to get your head checked. Anyone with an IQ higher than single digits & even a minor knowledge of Portland can tell you it will be far far far worse there with a region only about 1/2 the size of Vancouver, closer proximity to the stories roots, and closer proximity to Los Angeles, the media and fan attention on the area will be overwhelming for the cast. Just like when I told you all that Vancouver would be better than Italy, NYC & LA for their privacy, trust me when I tell you, Portland will NOT be better in that aspect. Its just not logically possible. But as we all know, Summit doesnt make decisions in the interest of their stars, they make it in the interest of their pocket book. Which like I said, is fine. it is a business after all. Too bad for them, their business model doesnt include a public relations course for the cast, that might help then sell the movie on possible fans on the fence. Its all fine & dandy to do a mall tour where the actors pretend for a couple hours. You should teach them how to pretend outside the mall as well. Thats where you actually do win over people. The ones lining up for 2+ hrs to see a star will likely go to see the movie regardless. The random encounter with someone at a hotel or restaurant on the other hand, those people likely have not made a commitment to see the movie & the stars can unsell the movie far easier than they can sell the movie to those same people.
 
I started off as not a fan of Twilight, I was won over by the cast of New Moon, and was alienated by the cast of Eclipse. This month, I will go to see the LAST Twilight movie I intend to see from the series.

Xavier Samuel this summer impresed me with his casual non-challant attitude to his new found fame. Lots of new stars fall into the fame pit & get egos. He didnt, and may even have become more personable as it went on. The first time I met him I wasnt sure about him, but as time went on, I learned hes a good guy.

He also went out a lot with various cast members. Most common sidekicks were Bryce Dallas Howard & Ashley Greene.

Heres a few pics from his time out & about with them.