Crazy Stable

Trailers? On-street breakfast catering? No parking signs plastered everywhere? Oh, yawn...not another major motion picture shoot in the neighborhood! The perils of life in Victorian Flatbush! 

A short walk down Rugby Road revealed the location of the shoot: a lovely corner home that was surrealistically swathed in snow and Christmas decorations. (A nearby platform-lift truck must have been used to apply the rooftop snow earlier this morning.) A crew member told me that the movie was "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie, and that, no, Angie wasn't here today. From the trailer, the flick is a darkly fantastical shoot-em-up, slated for release this June; I wonder if these were very late re-takes, since most of it appears to be "in the can."

How do you make it snow on a sunny day in Brooklyn? Here's how: buckets of white stuff and a steam-producing flare, and lots of running around when the director yells "Snow!" (The director of this flick is supposedly Russian, but the guy today had no Russian accent; maybe it was an AD.)

The whole scene was just a quick Steadicam shot of an actor getting out of a car and walking up the festively decorated steps of the house. The Steadicam looks very cumbersome in use.  Here's the shot.

Right across the street, two parties had reason to feel snubbed by Hollywood's minions. One was  this mockingbird, who ran through an amazing repertoire of calls but was non-union and therefore couldn't be included even as background.  

The other was the neighboring "Spiderweb House," which was a location for "My Super Ex-Girlfriend." This house had been feeling pretty cool about the whole Uma Thurman connection...and then the one across the street scores Angelina!