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Summer Crossing was Capote’s first novel and he started writing it just before World War II was finished in 1943 when he was only 19 years of age. Capote ultimately threw it into the trash after a few minor revisions during subsequent years because he was dissatisfied with his effort.

As his financials became much improved with the publication of In Cold Blood in 1966, Capote moved out of his Brooklyn apartment and gave instruction to the housesitter that whatever he felt behind was meant to be destroyed. Yet, the housesitter dusted off hand-written pages of Summer Crossing and the supplemental notes and kept them for 50 years. Everyone including the publisher thought the famous author’s book was lost forever. After the housesitter passed away, his family tried to auction off the manuscript but couldn’t because of the high asking price and a copyright technicality. Eventually, the novel published by Random House in 2005.

I hadn’t read the book but did read a plot summary from Wikipedia. It seems that the story is a bit like François Truffaut’s 1962 movie ‘Jules et Jim’ which was based on Henri-Pierre Roché’s 1953 semi-autobiographical novel that contains a love triangle and a tragic ending.

Summer Crossing also has a Jewish angle and a remote reference to The Holocaust. The story now is being turned into a movie and will be directed by one of Hollywood’s most famous actresses – Scarlett Johansson who is herself part-Jewish as so eloquently pointed out by the ever-observant Mel Gibson. The production is scheduled to begin in 2014 as announced in Cannes 2013 recently.

No word on whether Johansson will star in the movie or not.

Truman Capote and movies adapted from his work always have interesting co-relations. Audrey Hepburn’s iconic role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was based on the book by Capote of the same name. The movie was nominated in 1961 for a number of Academy Awards including one for Hepburn as Best Actress. However, it was Henry Mancini’s musical score and Johnny Mercer’s lyrics for ‘Moon River’ that won two soundtrack Oscars. As for Capote, it was his other book, the much darker ‘In Cold Blood’ that gained him the most fame.

In 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman played the author in the autobiographic ‘Capote’ and won an Oscar Best Actor. ‘Capote’ traces the life of the author during the writing of his book ‘In Cold Blood’ about the real-life story of two brutal murderers who killed Herb Clutter, a successful farmer, his wife and two children in the family home in Holcomb, Kansas during a robbery that gone terribly wrong in November 1959. The two mass murderers were later caught, tried, convicted and executed in 1965. Capote spent years researching the subject and interviewing the two convicts in prison.

Although based on facts, ‘In Cold Blood’ was considered a non-fiction novel as some important facts related to the case was altered by Capote in the re-telling as he himself admitted.

Fiction or not, ‘In Cold Blood’ was adapted into a movie and starring Robert Blake as Perry Smith, one of the killers in 1967. Of course, Blake himself was a murder suspect in his own high-profile case in Los Angeles in which he was accused of shooting his wife Bonnie Lee Bakley in his car parked just outside a restaurant in Studio City in 2001.

Blake was found not guilty in March 2005 and cleared of all charges including the murder and two failed attempts at hiring two separate stunntmen to do away with his wife. However, later that year, Blake was found to be liable for the death of Bakley in a civil trial brought on by Bakley’s three children. The jury ordered Blake to pay $30 million which was cut in half on appeal in 2008.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos was on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan, New York, NY. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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Iron Man 3 [Photo: Marvel/Disney]

It is May and regardless of what the weatherman says, officially it is the start of the summer season for the Hollywood studios that distribute movies. Friday (May 3rd) was the North American opening of the summer blockbuster Iron Man 3.

What a blockbuster it already is, as of Monday (May 6), the movie has grossed $679 Million internationally. The movie debuts in China on May 1 and broke the all-time one day Chinese boxoffice record by earning $21.5 Million. The previous record was ‘The Avengers’ at $18 Million for that country.

The Iron Man 3 is a Disney/Marvel production starring Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, a comic book hero created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and others with a screenplay by Drew Pearce and director Shane Black. The rest of the cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Jon Favreau, Rebecca Hall etc.

Since Iron Man 3 also had a Chinese partner, Beijing’s DMG Entertainment, it was classified as a joint-production which should provide an easier entrance to the world’s second biggest movie market but still not officially a co-production which would enjoy certain screening and profit-sharing privileges for the American producers in China.

According to The Hollywood Reporter (THR) reporting from Hong Kong, the Chinese version included four extra minutes not seen anywhere in the world. The additional screening time is used for product placement for such Chinese consumer goods as Gu Li Duo milk-drinks and TCL cell phones. The localized Chinese version also contains cameos from top Chinese actor Wang Xueqi and actress Fan Bingbing with scenes shot inside China.

Iron Man creator Stan Lee was eyeing the Chinese market.

In Beijing last year, Stan Lee said he was working on a Chinese comic strip hero (similar to Iron Man) for the Chinese and international market. Imagine that, Stan Lee is 90 years old and still has China in his mind. You can’t be global and leave China out these days. He was in Vancouver recently attending a cosplay event. I planned to go and if possible talk to him but just didn’t have the time.

Many moviegoers are still unaware of the ever closer ties that Hollywood is forging with China which will ultimately change how movies are made and what everyone will be watching in the future.

Robert Downey Jr. went to Beijing to promote the launching of Iron Man 3 in China and he declared, “I am interested in all things Chinese.” The Hollywood mega-star doesn’t have a Twitter account in the U.S. yet he has an equivalent one in China called Sina Weibo and that’s where he tweeted that he also ‘live(s) a very Chinese life in America.’ I don’t exactly know what that means, although he was said to be into Chinese medicine and martial arts that kind of stuff.

Here is an interesting point though. For the Chinese audience, the villain’s name Mandarin (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) has been changed to Man Daren, in an attempt to soften the negative Chinese reference. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese audience reacts to this. On the other hand, I wonder if an American audience would feel offended if a Chinese movie had an evil character called Uncle Sam or Yankee Doodle? Just a thought.

Can Iron Man 3 hit the $1 Billion mark worldwide when all is said and done? That just might be within reach for this high-voltage summer tentpole.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos is currently on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan, New York, NY. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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Shooting in Berlin right now is George Clooney’ latest production Monuments Men.

The screenplay is co-written by Clooney and his long-time producer Grant Heslov and based on the non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel.

The movie is about a special group of allied soldiers and cultural workers whose mission is to recover hundreds of thousands of artworks stolen by the Germans during WWII before Hitler ordered them destroyed.

Set in 1942, Monuments Men has an all-star cast that includes George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Jean Dujardin, Daniel Craig, John Goodman, Bill Murray etc. The WWII period drama will come out in Dec 2013 which could become a serious Oscar contender for Oscar 2014.

The movie is said to be inspired by true events which usually means that some facts maybe altered for dramatic effects. And experts are pointing out historical inaccuracies in the story e.g. there is no evidence that Hitler ordered the artwork destroyed when he realized that he was losing the war.

Many priceless artworks were stolen by the Nazis which Hitler wanted to build a museum in Linz, Germany, his birthplace to host some of the stolen treasures. That didn’t pan out and the evil Fuhrer committed suicide just before the Russia army stormed Berlin which ended the war.

Hitler himself was a failed artist as he had been rejected entry to the Vienna Academy of Art, one time in 1908 when he wasn’t even allowed to take part in the exam. In later years when he came into political power, he saw himself as a connoisseur of fine arts and certainly regarded his looted artworks as his prized treasures.

As the monuments men discovered, many of the stolen artworks were found in caves and mines which guarded against allied bombings during the war and provided an ideal environment that is not too wet and not too dry for the treasures.

As it turned out, some of today’s tourist hotspots including the Neuschwanstein Castle in Schwangau, Germany was one of the places that hid thousands of stolen paintings and artifacts during the war.

Ironic as it may seem, the enemy is within and not from the German troops. One of the monuments men’s major tasks is to protect the cultural treasures of a city that are in the battlefield. These included museums, churches and other monuments form being damaged. As the Allied force kept advancing in the battlefield, the bombings became more indiscreet without adequate knowledge of the surrounding that they were destroying. In saving these cultural objects during the war, very often the group’s major concern was to avoid being killed by friendly fires.

Recently, seven paintings that were hanging in the Louvre are being returned to their rightful owners, the Jewish families who fled Europe during WWII some 70 years earlier. To be fair, not just the Nazis stole artworks, the Russian army and even American soldiers participated in looting. Not all stolen artworks are recovered. Some are still missing and some artworks’ ownership is unknown and they continue to hang in galleries around the world until someone can prove that the artwork belongs to them.

Edsel described the work of the Monuments Men as “the greatest treasure hunt in history — one that continues to this day.”

By 1951, the Monuments Men had processed and returned more than 5 million stolen objects. Yet, hundreds of thousands of works remained missing. Edsel further added that “no similar effort has been made by the U.S. in any subsequent conflict,” citing the American invasion of Iraq as an example where looters took a tremendous amounts of treasures dating back 5,000 years or more at the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer/Videographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos is currently on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan, New York, NY. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

City of Berlin, Germany

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Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg may be adversaries in the 2013 Oscar race, but they have one thing in common. They both admire the work of the late great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

Ang Lee, when asked about whether he would make another 3D movie again, the Oscar-winning Life of Pi director said he’d love to remake ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’

In the meantime, Steven Spielberg is working on a pet project that Kubrick had worked on in the 1960s but was forced to abandon it because no studio was interested in financing it due to scope of the movie even with such stars such as Oskar Werner and Audrey Hepburn playing the leading roles.

Kubrick spent years in developing the biopic on the French conqueror’s life and amassed a tremendous amount of research material and indicated that he ‘expect to make the best movie ever made’. Now Spielberg will likely try to carry on the torch and fulfill that vision.

Will that be a movie or TV mini-series?

That is a question Steven Spielberg has faced before. When ‘Lincoln’ screenwriter Tony Kushner first delivered his script to Steven Spielberg it was 500 pages long which translated to a little over 8 hours of screen-time. Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, the two ‘Lincoln’ producers wondered if they should turn it into a min-series. At the end, they decided to use the latter part of Kushner’s script and make that into a movie.

This time around with Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’, it is the other way around. Spielberg is developing the movie screenplay that Kubrick has written in the 1970s as a TV mini-series. The Oscar-winning Schneider List director is no stranger to the television media of course, having directed, produced and executive-produced dozens of TV movies and miniseries such as Taken (starring Joel Gretsch, Ryan Hurst and Dakota Fanning and filmed in Vancouver BC), Band of Brothers (with Tom Hank writing, directing and producing) etc.

As for how serious is Ang Lee in remaking ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, there is no word on that. However, I hope he was just joking and won’t mess with such as a classic and iconic work. There really isn’t much to gain to even emulate the immense success of Kubrick’s ground-breaking sci-fi film.

On the other hand, Ang Lee indicated that he is also interested in remaking ‘Cleopatra’ especially after Angelina Jolie (who will play the Egyptian Queen) had urged him to come onboard to direct.

Let the future unfold for that movie instead, Mr. Lee, please.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer/Videographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos is currently on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan, New York, NY. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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Word on the street is that Ben Affleck is deciding if he should direct a crime movie with Mat Damon starring as Boston Irish-American gangster Whitey Bulger.

The 83-year old mobster was on the FBI Top 10 Most Wanted List and had been on the run since 1994. He was finally captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, CA. Should the Argo Oscar Best Picture producer decided to direct this movie, he would be in contention with Johnny Depp who is scheduled to shoot a movie also based on Bulger’s life later this year.

Matt Damon or Johnny Depp – who would make a better Irish gangster?

Matt Damon plays mostly good guys while Jonny Depp has John Dillinger (Public Enemies) and Donnie Brasco (the Joe Pistone undercover story) on his resume. In terms of acting experience, Depp has an edge here, but Damon would have a fresh new role to play as a bad guy and that may have an appeal for the audience.

Depp’s new crime tale is called ‘Black Mass’ and is being directed by Barry Levinson who helmed Donnie Brasco. The Privates of the Caribbean star’s new movie is based on a 2001 New York Times bestseller book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance between the FBI and the Irish Mob.

Both Affleck and Damon were born and raised in Boston (the same with Whitey Bulger) and Ben had said that if he and Damon were to work on a movie again, this gangster movie would just seemed right. “It’s where my heart is”, Affleck said. The movie is being scripted by Terence Winter, best known as a writer/creator of the HBO TV series ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and writer for ‘The Sopranos’.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer/Videographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos is currently on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan, New York, NY. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

Boston MA, USA

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Two of the most important pre-Oscar Hollywood guild awards – Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Producers Guild of America (PGA) were held this past weekend (Jan 26 & 27, 2013) in Los Angeles, CA.

With the winning of the top PGA award, also known as the Daryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, Argo is now in a firm position to overtake Steven Spielberg/Daniel Day-Lewis’s Lincoln as the clear frontrunner to win the much-coveted Best Picture of the 2013 Oscar race.

Holy Christ, the Hollywood actors want Argo to win BIG!!

What a HUGE SURPRISE!!! Argo’s actors didn’t win any prizes at the SAG yet the Outstanding Performance by a Cast (aka Ensemble cast) award went to Argo. With Lincoln winning Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor but no ensemble cast!!!

The Ben Affleck directed political thriller is a dramatized true story of a CIA agent, Tony Mendez (played by Affleck himself), who with the help of the Canadian government devised an ingenious plan to rescue six American diplomats that were trapped in Iran in November 1979 to January 1980. This real-life story is also known as the Canadian Caper.

A passionate vote for Argo by SAG.

This Ensemble Cast vote for Argo is irrational and a passionate one that came from the heart of those 150,000 members and that is significant. Essentially, I think what these actors are saying is we recognize the work of the two fine actors in Lincoln but when it comes to Oscar Best Picture, we love Argo and shall vote for it. There is nothing anyone can do about it as the acting branch is the biggest voting block in the Academy.

With that out of the way, a number of questions still remain.

Historically, the Oscar Best Picture and Best Director go hand-in-hand. Winning one usually means winning the other too. Being the movie with the most nominations, Lincoln would be the logical candidate to win Best Picture and Best Director. Now, what if Argo got Best Picture but can’t win Best Director because Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated? Then what?

Will Steven Spielberg go on to win Oscar Best Director?

Many continued to think so. However, I do believe the race right now actually favors Ang Lee. Life of Pi is a director-driven movie and it is the most creatively-demanding among all others. Ang Lee’s skill as a filmmaker is also on full display here. BUT… there are others who have not won an Oscar before, namely David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) and Michael Haneke (Amour) so they have an edge here. Most would agree that Benh Zeitlin, the 30 year old director of the Beast of the Southern Wild is simply too green to secure a win. This is his first movie.

Daniel Day-Lewis is Lincoln & Lincoln is Daniel Day-Lewis

Lincoln is about Daniel Day-Lewis playing the U.S. Civil War President. There would be no ‘Lincoln’ without the participation of DDL. I think Steven Spielberg would admit to that. DDL was reluctant to take the role at first. It was only after years of trying on Spielberg’s part and a few script revisions later that DDL finally agreed. Lincoln took 13 years to make. You can’t blame Steven Spielberg for being so eager to win an Oscar or 2 for his effort.

Lincoln is a very very good movie. It is just that the entire movie is centered around Daniel Day-Lewis and everyone else including the director is subservient to this style of moviemaking. The production is set up by Spielberg the producer as an actor or actors’ movie and Spielberg the director seems to have receded into the background and that may not bode well for a Best Director win.

Silver Linings Playbook is still very much alive and it has Harvey Weinstein behind it.

The movie is nominated in all the major categories – ALL 4 acting prizes, director, screenplay and editing. Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar campaign is also working very well and the movie is well-supported among actors. All that may not matter though as I believe Argo really has the momentum now.

Is Life of Pi dead in the water for Oscar Best Picture?

It looks that way as Life of Pi lacks the all important acting nominations and popular support to win. The Life of Pi Oscar campaign is also very low-key. But I think if it were to have a chance at Best Picture at all, it would have to come in as a hidden dark horse that no one saw coming. That would be the only way to do it.

What about the rest?

Zero Dark Thirty seems have its Oscar dream dashed because of the torture controversy. Django Unchained is also tangled in controversy with some objecting to its treatment of racial matters, namely slavery in America in the 19th Century. Anytime a picture has too many issues that distract its merits, voting members tend to shy away from it or even ignore it all together. This is perhaps why both Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained were not even nominated in the Oscar Best Director race although both Kathryn Bigelow and Tarantino are both well-respected filmmakers.

Ray Van Eng is an award-winning Photographer/Videographer, Screenwriter and Movie & TV Producer. One of his videos is currently on view at the Hava Nagila Exhibit, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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Designer Jeff Garner and his company Prophetik brought a touch of Hollywood glamour to close the Vancouver Eco Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2012 which took place April 10-12, 2012.

As the world is more and more in tune with the environmental-friendly, green, recyclable, tree-hugging, carbon-reducing principles, you will see an abundance of Hollywood stars wearing greens as they walk the red carpet. Already, Jeff Garner Tinseltown clients include Cameron Diaz, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Sheryl Crow, the Kings of Leon and the Jonas Brothers.

Vancouver is one of the few cities in the world that host an independent ethical fashion show event.

VIDEO – Eco Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2012 – Prophetik

Robson Square Ice Rink, Vancouver BC

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In theatres everywhere this Friday (July 29, 2011) is Cowboys & Aliens, a movie that is quite interesting for us at Life For Mile from a production point of view.

This Ron Howards and Brian Grazer production wrestled with the same problems that we are facing with Life For Mile. One of the major challenges is how do you combine the western moviemaking style with another genre (in C&A’s case, it is Sci-Fi) and make that work.

Producer (not director) Ron Howard’s idea was to branch out from the western genre and somehow extend from it. That was the central idea and also what director Jon Favreau had been able to achieve. Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg was involved with the same production in a previous incarnation until Ron (Da Vinci Code) Howard ultimately took over and developed it into what Cowboys & Aliens is today.

Harrison Ford who played a supporting role in the movie described the production as taking the ‘humanity of a western and folds into it a sense of contemporary interests.’ Daniel Craig, the hero of the story, is somewhat of a superhuman endowed with alien technology. He is the crucial bridge that connects the Wild West and the Alien World in the movie.

I like the word ‘humanity’ that Ford used, which means that the movie is not all Action. There are story elements that appeal to the audience on a human level instead of just an assault on our ‘animal’ senses (though many of us, myself included, rather enjoy that unabashedly as well) like a pure action movie would do.

One of the western genre masters is John Ford. His classic western movies like The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, The Searchers etc., all have interesting human dramas in them. Many John Ford’s movies are not action movies but western dramas. It is the human conflicts, predicament with the environment, the times, character studies etc. that make the drama intriguing. This is what Harrison Ford is referring to.

C&A director Jon Favreau also described Harrison Ford as the iconic actor to Jon’s generation as John Wayne was to Harrison’s generation. This John Wayne reference is particularly interesting as Wayne was a star that was very much associated with the western movies that John Ford made. One of the approaches that Favreau took in making C&A was to be true to the structures of the western movies i.e. John Ford, Sam Peckinpah etc. One of Favreau’s concerns was to make sure the western genre of C&A be authentic and not a slapstick tongue-in-cheek version of it like Will Smith’s Wild Wild West or Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Noon was.

Life For Mile would be similar in the same vein. It is a real-life historical drama that has genuine western genre elements – the frontier town, railroad construction, gunslingers etc. The story also contains mystery, horror and supernatural subplots as well but Life For Mile won’t be all action-packed and of course, no sci-fi elements.

Life For Mile is a real-life drama that took place in the 1880s where the Old West was very much part of the story.

Life For Mile Movie –

Actor/Executive Producer – Stephen Chang
Producer/Screenwriter – Ray Van Eng

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Life For Mile Pre-production stills #1


Life For Mile Pre-production stills #2

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The day after the Rambo Bridge Final Take event has taken place on July 10, 2011, a demolition crew started to take down the bridge. Piece by piece this iconic Kawkawa Bridge as it was known to locals will be gone. So will a part of Hollywood history that lasted almost 30 years.

Rambo fans in the hundreds turned out to reminisce and enjoyed one last stroll along the wood and steel structure before it finally disappeared. The former Mayor of Hope was on hand and told people why didn’t the government paid fans the demolition fee which is $100,000 and let them turned that into a tourist attraction. Many who were there probably had the same thought. In the name of progress and in this case, structure soundness possibly leaned heavily against saving the bridge. After all, there is a new and modern concert span running across the same section of the river serving what the old one did.

Maybe Rambo fans didn’t want to forget this part of Hollywood history but the Hollywood crowd who were most connected had chosen to ignore it. None of the original actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehey and dozens of others didn’t bother to show up to lend show, except Stephen Chang, the BC actor who played VC Commander in the movie.

All is not lost though because Stephen Chang has a new movie in the works. It is titled Life For Mile. It is a movie about the Chinese and native Indians building the transcontinental railway that united Canada as a nation in the 1880s. Life For Mile will be out in 2012.

Life For Mile is based on a true story and a real-life character, Ming, a Chinese railroad worker who used Kung Fu to unite with the aboriginals and the Asians. Together they fought discrimination and mistreatment of the days and ultimately restored some degree of dignity for themselves. History books have forgotten Ming’s story until now. Life For Mile is projected to have a theatrical release date of summer 2012.

VIDEO – Life For Mile takes shape

Rambo Bridge – Kawkawa Lake Road, Hope, BC

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On July 10, 2011, the iconic wood and steel bridge in Hope, BC that was featured in the 1982 movie Rambo: First Blood bid an emotional farewell to movie fans in an event dubbed Rambo Bridge Final Take.

Many movie fans dressed up like Sylvester Stallone in Rambo and offered themselves up for a voluntary arrest and have their pictures taken by friends and family just to capture a piece of Hollywood movie history that will soon be gone forever. Because starting from the next day, the structure that was known as Kawkawa Bridge by locals was scheduled to be taken down piece by piece by a demolition crew.

Not all will be forgotten though. At least one man will have memory of the bridge etched forever on canvas by artist Mary Haymes who finished the work in 2003. He was seen cradling the artwork in his arms anxious to share with anyone about the painting.

On its last glory day of existence, the bridge was surrounded by hundreds of Rambo fans, some of whom came from as far away as Australia and England. Hope Mayor Laurie French reenacted the sheriff role that Brian Dennehy portrayed to the delight of many who stood by and watched.

Almost the entire cast of Rambo: First Blood which consists of Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, David Caruso etc. were a no-show. The only star that showed up was BC actor Stephen Chang who played VC Commander in the Vietnam vet turned unstable civilian flick.

Stephen Chang used the opportunity to sell some autographed copies and promoted his new movie Life For Mile, a feature film about the Chinese and aboriginal involvement in the construction of the transcontinental railway that united Canada as a nation in the 1880s. Life For Mile is executive produced by Stephen Chang and he will act in it. He is currently producing the movie with Producer/Screenwriter Ray Van Eng of V21 Media.

The Final Take event began at 11:00 AM with a Rambo look-a-like contest and later a helicopter fly-by over Coquihalla Canyon as demoed by Valley Helicopters. Props such as a 1980s police car, a jeep and an army vehicle were on display to beef up the presentation.

When the day’s activities were finished, a screening of Rambo: First Blood was shown at 3:00 PM at the Hope Cinema. Rambo fans paid $5.00 to catch the matinee show.

VIDEO –Rambo Bridge Final Take & New Movie ‘Life For Mile’

Kawkawa Lake Road, Hope, BC

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