Sunday, May 19, 2013
Outtakes Premium
When Vincent Kartheiser sheds the Brooks Brothers suit that belongs to Pete Campbell, his uptight character on the AMC series "Mad Men," he turns into a pretty simple guy.
As he swam through the murky depths off the southeastern coast of the island of Hawaii, his underwater camera trained on molten lava entering the sea, Craig Musburger weighed his desire to shoot the best footage against the possibility of being boiled alive.
In the Australian winter of 2011, veteran surfers Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones embarked on a four-month quest to ride the largest waves their country had to offer.
When Anthony Ruivivar started working on TNT's gritty cop show "Southland," he didn't know how to answer his wife — actress Yvonne Jung — after she asked him how it was going.
The home of the world's most famous bounty hunter is an ocean-view retreat with high walls, security cameras and the trappings of an active family: photos of children, posters of his popular reality show, mementos of a well-lived life, bicycles by the garage, three dogs, a squawking rooster and a parrot.
The creative team behind the new fundraising video for the YMCA of Honolulu wanted something different this year and opted for an old-school approach.
When she accepted the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in "Pollock," Marcia Gay Harden was genuinely thrilled and just a bit surprised.
Every filmmaker knows the anxiety that Destin Cretton experienced while he watched, from a dark recess of a sold-out, 400-seat theater in Austin, Texas, an audience view his movie for the first time.
If there's something Aisha Tyler does not do, then please, point it out. Her resume on IMDB.com, an online database of films and television, lists a string of credits under actress, writer, producer, director, editor, composer and more.
Just like the farmer in "Field of Dreams," who replaced his Iowa corn field with a baseball diamond, Socrates Buenger has a tight grip on faith.
Two days after the death of her brother-in-law, jazz musician Thomas Chapin, Hawaii documentary filmmaker Stephanie Castillo found herself listening to a public radio tribute. In that moment she realized she had to make a film about Chapin, a man The called "one of the more exuberant saxophonists and bandleaders in jazz."
Ever since she could hold a crayon or a pencil, Brenda Chapman was drawing something. Drawing would become a career for Chapman, a story artist and director on animated features that include "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King."
Of all the gin joints in town, the "Hawaii Five-0" crew finds Nick's place, and if Nick reminds you of a club manager named Rick, well, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.
It's pilot season in Los Angeles, the time of year when new TV shows are being considered, and Brittany Ross is gearing up for the audition marathon.
For much of his long career, surf filmmaker Jack McCoy enjoyed what he calls the backstage perspective: underwater, just behind a translucent, coiling swell.
Funding repairs to the state's only film studio, an aging facility that has been described as "an embarrassment," headlines the Hawaii Film Office budget proposal, with a $5.46 million request now before the Legislature.
So many people were surprised by the good fortune that suddenly dropped onto actor-turned-producer Brian Yang and his film crew last February that even he started pinching himself.
Living as we do in an age where communication technology connects people oceans apart — and from their cellphones — it's hard to imagine the novelty of a concert that reached a global television audience.
With the online debut last month of "Hang Loose," the new feature from Kinetic Films, Hawaii filmmaker James Sereno has taken his movie marketing experiment to the masses.
Robert Pennybacker has the curiosity of a dreamer. Whenever the filmmaker is driving through the streets of Honolulu, his imagination takes over. He sees things — people, places, snapshots of city life — and makes up stories to go with them.
Whenever someone dies on AMC's wildly popular zombie series "The Walking Dead," it's usually with a spray of blood and gore. It happens so often, it's almost expected. But the show's creators found a way to peg the needle on the shock meter this season.
The idea that Hawaii could become a location for adult films alarmed those who cherish the state's family-friendly atmosphere, but the man who started the conversation insists he isn't going to give the islands an "XXX" rating any time soon.
For the last few weeks, as “Hawaii Five-0” introduced its third season, it looked like a ratings train wreck.
When it comes to evaluating the success of their show, the creators of ABC's "Last Resort" don't shy away from the lukewarm Nielsen numbers it has received. But they're also not shy when it comes to praising the drama they've created.
The high from his summer viral video, "Batman Maybe," a parody of Carly Rae Jepsen's megahit "Call Me Maybe," was starting to wear off when Maui-born actor Wesley Freitas had another snap-genius moment.
The staff of the Hawaii International Film Festival is quite accustomed to gauging the mood of international celebrities, so hosting Japan's biggest movie star should have been free of surprise. But Koji Yakusho has been so accommodating that he's become the feel-good moment of the festival.
The last film Canadian director Quentin Lee screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival, his 2009 farce "The People I've Slept With," played to an enthusiastic, adult audience. After all, it was a film about a woman who can't get enough sex.
For many indie directors, the life cycle of their short films is often short indeed: a series of screenings at film festivals — hopefully — and when that's over, continued exposure through DVD sales and rentals. Hopefully.
The motivation behind Duane "Dog" Chapman's new reality show on CMT is deadly serious. In February, when the Hawaii bounty hunter was at a convention of his peers, two bright-faced young brothers from Bakersfield, Calif., introduced themselves as newcomers to the profession.
Dan Boulos wants to change the animation scene in Hawaii with a 15-minute cartoon and a talking monkey. He says why not? Everyone loves monkeys.
There's a point in every good story where the hero must decide whether the headlong dive to glory is worth the risk of failure. For Kenji Doughty that moment arrived when he was a production assistant whose job was to monitor life jackets on the film "Battleship."
Tropical beauty may be the face of “Hawaii Five-0,” but the uncredited star of the series is an aging building on Kapiolani Boulevard that was just bought by a developer who plans to evict the show as early as next spring.
Ten years ago Rann and Gina Watumull dreamed big and started Hawaii Film Partners. They wanted to produce movies at home and take on the Hollywood studios.
Wesley Freitas, an aspiring actor from Maui living in L.A., views his music video "Batman Maybe" as a marriage made in pop culture heaven.
When the action heats up in "Last Resort," the new ABC TV series being shot in Hawaii, the crew of the submarine USS Colorado is under attack after refusing to fire its nuclear missiles at Pakistan.
If there was an Emmy for ingenuity, it would have to go to Andy Bumatai, the Hawaii comedian who mounted cameras inside his car and turned it into a rolling talk-show interview for anyone willing to ride shotgun.
Camille Komine is bracing for the power of television. When her food truck is featured Monday in the Food Network series "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," the producers of the show told her to expect sales to increase anywhere from 30 percent to 400 percent.
The committee that selects the final nominations for an Emmy doesn't usually share the reasons behind a particular choice, but "Hawaii Five-0" stunt coordinator Jeff Cadiente is pretty sure he knows why the second-season episode "Kame‘e" got the nod.
Fans squealed across the Internet last week as "Hawaii Five-0" started production of its third season with a series of unrelated events that for all intents and purposes became a social media party for the CBS crime drama.
Most men, whether married with children or single, probably have had the same fantasy at some point — the one in which they escape jobs, responsibility and their routine existence for an adventure.
When Brian Watanabe presents his workshop on screenwriting basics next week, he figures he'll field more than a few questions about how to get an agent or how to persuade a director to read a script. Important questions, he says, but that's "jumping over the hard part."
Inspiration can happen anywhere, even in a rental car parking lot while you're on vacation. That's what happened to Tessa Blake and her husband, Ian Williams.
Growing up in Southern California, Richard Imamura often heard stories about the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, including accounts from his parents, who met while they were at the Gila River camp in Arizona.
No matter what you think about Duane "Dog" Chapman, his signature blond mullet or his Village People fashion statement, remember that before the bounty hunter's reality series was canceled last week, it survived eight seasons in one of television's most fickle genres.
There's a point in the new Universal Pictures film "Battleship" where the Navy, under assault from aliens, turns to the only sailors around who can help save the human race: the Old Salts.
Even with a latte in hand, Karl Herlinger looks like a villain or, at the very least, someone capable of extreme road rage. His eyes are set close together, his brow quick to furrow. The television actor from Kailua can wither with a glance.
From the bottom of Kona's Kailua Bay last October, in the shallow water beside the pier, the world above offered underwater cameraman Craig Musburger a magical panorama: hundreds of triathletes treading water at the start of the Ford Ironman World Championship while thousands of akule moved in and around them.
Joel Moffett has seen the same thing happen every time he attends a screening of work by the young filmmakers at the Academy for Creative Media, the film school where he teaches screenwriting and directing.
Kinetic Films, the local production house founded by director James Sereno, has turned to YouTube for inspiration for its Hawaii-based features.
One of the cool features of the DVD release of "The Descendants" is a collection of short behind-the-scenes videos shot by film editor Cameron Spencer.
"One Kine Day," the local indie film from Chuck Mitsui that taps into the rhythms of life in Windward Oahu, is getting a significant boost in exposure thanks to a Hawaii theatrical release and a distribution deal with DVD rental companies here and on the mainland.
The job opening that Wainani Young Tomich advertised a few years ago on Craigslist came with a daunting description: "You will come in before the sun comes up and you will go home after the sun goes down and you will be yelled at by people who have no business yelling at you and they will be yelling at you for things that aren't your fault and you will have to take it with a smile."
Starring in a series about flesh-eating zombies wasn't what initially worried Sarah Wayne Callies when the cable network AMC asked her to audition for "The Walking Dead."
With only two episodes left, no one at ABC is publicly discussing the future of "The River," the creepy drama shot in Hawaii that's told in the style of a dark reality show.
It's one thing to be invited to an Oscar party to celebrate your film's nominations and quite another to sit there and watch the awards go to other people. The thrill can go to "thud" pretty quickly.
The creators of “Last Resort,” an ABC pilot about to start shooting here this week, have gone where no TV drama has gone in recent years. They’re auditioning — and casting — Hawaii actors for potential series regulars.
Hawaii has another contestant on the long-running CBS reality show “Survivor”: Jonas Otsuji.
An untold story is always a powerful lure, especially if it happened in your own backyard. Ryan Kawamoto, a local film and TV director with Kinetic Productions, found one near Kunia, on plantation land used during World War II as an internment camp.
Jimmy Borges is one of the most likable entertainers you'll ever meet — friendly, personable and humorous.
In the last few months, whenever someone from Hawaii praised "The Descendants" for its honest portrayal of island life, producer Jim Burke felt as if it were getting an Academy Award nomination. Now the film really does have some nominations — five.
Film and television production spending in Hawaii last year declined more than 54 percent from 2010, but local officials say the industry is doing well.
Hawaii is a long way from the sands of Arabia, but it's going to be used as a location for "Arabian Nights," a new 3-D action film co-produced by the same folks who turned Lanai into the setting for Shakespeare.
From old television footage to home movies, the moving images of Hawaii's history are in peril. The warm, moist weather in the tropics can easily damage unprotected material, and a lot of the equipment that was used to display each format is obsolete.
Chin Ho Kelly is getting married Monday, but it won't be for the first time. The "Hawaii Five-0" character already has a wife and children — in the original series, which, of course, doesn't count in the rebooted reality of the hit CBS police drama.
When Hollywood knocks on someone's door with the intent to rent a house for a movie, it's not uncommon for a director to replace the owner's furniture with items that better fit the vision or theme of the film.
F or nearly a week, the four women worried about what would happen if their quest failed.
If you ask local film commissioners about next year's industry forecast, they'll tell you a "Star Trek" sequel and "Tomb Raider" prequel and pilots for two new Hawaii-based TV dramas are so far from reality that they are barely worth discussion. They're in development.
Hollywood director Peter Berg brought his "Battleship" cameras back to Hawaii last week to shoot additional scenes with the film's biggest star: the Mighty Mo.
Not long after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008, after the radiation had left him weak and depressed, documentary filmmaker Tom Vendetti felt an inexplicable tug on his soul.
For the record, Todd Bradley is not dead. The gunshot wound in his chest just made it look that way as he sank to the bottom of a pool during a scene from last week's "Hawaii Five-0."
In the months prior to filming "The Descendants," director Alexander Payne often found himself crisscrossing Oahu and Kauai in a rental car with the music of Gabby Pahinui as a soundtrack to his Hawaiian immersion.
The case of the kolohe (naughty) jaywalkers is probably the funniest crime spree ever solved by "Hawaii Five-0," but you'll never see those crazy crooks caught on network television.
Anyone who knows even a little bit about the college experience knows it's not strictly about hitting the books.
The vast, empty plains of Inner Mongolia were an amazing sight, but Chuck Boller, executive director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, found something even more startling during a recent business trip to the region.
At 68, Don Stroud thought he had pretty much retired to a life of surfing and hanging out with his friends at Kuhio Beach in Waikiki. The Hawaii-born actor had been a Hollywood tough guy with parts in more than 100 movies and 175 TV episodes dating to the late 1960s.
The list of films that screen at the annual Telluride Film Festival in Colorado is always a secret until opening day but it's no secret that audience members loved the slice of Hawaii in Alexander Payne's new movie, "The Descendants."
Imagine the temptation for anyone with a smartphone sitting in the audience of Saturday's "Hawaii Five-0" Sunset on the Beach celebration. After waiting four months since the season one finale — an episode packed with mayhem, murder and lots of cliffhangers — they'll get to see an advance screening of the season two kickoff nine days ahead of the network premiere.
For the second time this year, Maui County officials have reshaped their film office, hiring local underwater cinematographer-photographer Harry Donenfeld to help create a more indigenous film industry.
For a lot of Hawaii residents, even kamaaina, the Kamehameha Schools song contest is a notable event, but it isn't something they know much about.
The world will surely forgive Kelly Hu for skipping the season one finale of "Hawaii Five-0." It didn't end well for the Honolulu-born actress when the show's writers swapped the air bag in her convertible BMW for a claymore mine that exploded when she turned on the ignition.
On the surface, "White Frog," the indie film being produced by Hawaii's Chris Lee, appears to be a niche story that would appeal only to an Asian-American audience. That would be a case of mistaken identity.
The waiting continues for Hawaii's Anthony Ruivivar, who's hoping A&E will order a season of "Big Mike," a police drama that shot a pilot this past spring.
Audiences are generating buzz for a small independent movie from Maui called "Get a Job," which is on the film festival circuit.
When it comes to television reruns, the checks are always in the mail. It's like winning the lottery. The royalty checks — commonly called residuals — can arrive long after a series has left prime time, a surprise delivery that keeps on paying for decades.
As she read the script for a guest spot on ABC's new war drama, "Combat Hospital," Tia Carrere felt like she was holding a gift in her hands. "I flipped," she said. "It was awesome."
The idea sounded simple enough to Rachel Sutton, the local casting agent for the CBS hit "Hawaii Five-0." She wanted to minimize the time background actors spend waiting at casting calls by creating an online database.
Those were real flames, but the car spewing them wasn't really burning in the parking lot of Aliiolani Hale last week, thanks to the special-effects crew with "Hawaii Five-0.
As he swam through the murky depths off the southeastern coast of the island of Hawaii, his underwater camera trained on molten lava entering the sea, Craig Musburger weighed his desire to shoot the best footage against the possibility of being boiled alive.
In the Australian winter of 2011, veteran surfers Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones embarked on a four-month quest to ride the largest waves their country had to offer.
When Anthony Ruivivar started working on TNT's gritty cop show "Southland," he didn't know how to answer his wife — actress Yvonne Jung — after she asked him how it was going.
The home of the world's most famous bounty hunter is an ocean-view retreat with high walls, security cameras and the trappings of an active family: photos of children, posters of his popular reality show, mementos of a well-lived life, bicycles by the garage, three dogs, a squawking rooster and a parrot.
The creative team behind the new fundraising video for the YMCA of Honolulu wanted something different this year and opted for an old-school approach.
When she accepted the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in "Pollock," Marcia Gay Harden was genuinely thrilled and just a bit surprised.
Every filmmaker knows the anxiety that Destin Cretton experienced while he watched, from a dark recess of a sold-out, 400-seat theater in Austin, Texas, an audience view his movie for the first time.
If there's something Aisha Tyler does not do, then please, point it out. Her resume on IMDB.com, an online database of films and television, lists a string of credits under actress, writer, producer, director, editor, composer and more.
Just like the farmer in "Field of Dreams," who replaced his Iowa corn field with a baseball diamond, Socrates Buenger has a tight grip on faith.
Two days after the death of her brother-in-law, jazz musician Thomas Chapin, Hawaii documentary filmmaker Stephanie Castillo found herself listening to a public radio tribute. In that moment she realized she had to make a film about Chapin, a man The called "one of the more exuberant saxophonists and bandleaders in jazz."
Ever since she could hold a crayon or a pencil, Brenda Chapman was drawing something. Drawing would become a career for Chapman, a story artist and director on animated features that include "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King."
Of all the gin joints in town, the "Hawaii Five-0" crew finds Nick's place, and if Nick reminds you of a club manager named Rick, well, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.
It's pilot season in Los Angeles, the time of year when new TV shows are being considered, and Brittany Ross is gearing up for the audition marathon.
For much of his long career, surf filmmaker Jack McCoy enjoyed what he calls the backstage perspective: underwater, just behind a translucent, coiling swell.
Funding repairs to the state's only film studio, an aging facility that has been described as "an embarrassment," headlines the Hawaii Film Office budget proposal, with a $5.46 million request now before the Legislature.
So many people were surprised by the good fortune that suddenly dropped onto actor-turned-producer Brian Yang and his film crew last February that even he started pinching himself.
Living as we do in an age where communication technology connects people oceans apart — and from their cellphones — it's hard to imagine the novelty of a concert that reached a global television audience.
With the online debut last month of "Hang Loose," the new feature from Kinetic Films, Hawaii filmmaker James Sereno has taken his movie marketing experiment to the masses.
Robert Pennybacker has the curiosity of a dreamer. Whenever the filmmaker is driving through the streets of Honolulu, his imagination takes over. He sees things — people, places, snapshots of city life — and makes up stories to go with them.
Whenever someone dies on AMC's wildly popular zombie series "The Walking Dead," it's usually with a spray of blood and gore. It happens so often, it's almost expected. But the show's creators found a way to peg the needle on the shock meter this season.
The idea that Hawaii could become a location for adult films alarmed those who cherish the state's family-friendly atmosphere, but the man who started the conversation insists he isn't going to give the islands an "XXX" rating any time soon.
For the last few weeks, as “Hawaii Five-0” introduced its third season, it looked like a ratings train wreck.
When it comes to evaluating the success of their show, the creators of ABC's "Last Resort" don't shy away from the lukewarm Nielsen numbers it has received. But they're also not shy when it comes to praising the drama they've created.
The high from his summer viral video, "Batman Maybe," a parody of Carly Rae Jepsen's megahit "Call Me Maybe," was starting to wear off when Maui-born actor Wesley Freitas had another snap-genius moment.
The staff of the Hawaii International Film Festival is quite accustomed to gauging the mood of international celebrities, so hosting Japan's biggest movie star should have been free of surprise. But Koji Yakusho has been so accommodating that he's become the feel-good moment of the festival.
The last film Canadian director Quentin Lee screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival, his 2009 farce "The People I've Slept With," played to an enthusiastic, adult audience. After all, it was a film about a woman who can't get enough sex.
For many indie directors, the life cycle of their short films is often short indeed: a series of screenings at film festivals — hopefully — and when that's over, continued exposure through DVD sales and rentals. Hopefully.
The motivation behind Duane "Dog" Chapman's new reality show on CMT is deadly serious. In February, when the Hawaii bounty hunter was at a convention of his peers, two bright-faced young brothers from Bakersfield, Calif., introduced themselves as newcomers to the profession.
Dan Boulos wants to change the animation scene in Hawaii with a 15-minute cartoon and a talking monkey. He says why not? Everyone loves monkeys.
There's a point in every good story where the hero must decide whether the headlong dive to glory is worth the risk of failure. For Kenji Doughty that moment arrived when he was a production assistant whose job was to monitor life jackets on the film "Battleship."
Tropical beauty may be the face of “Hawaii Five-0,” but the uncredited star of the series is an aging building on Kapiolani Boulevard that was just bought by a developer who plans to evict the show as early as next spring.
Ten years ago Rann and Gina Watumull dreamed big and started Hawaii Film Partners. They wanted to produce movies at home and take on the Hollywood studios.
Wesley Freitas, an aspiring actor from Maui living in L.A., views his music video "Batman Maybe" as a marriage made in pop culture heaven.
When the action heats up in "Last Resort," the new ABC TV series being shot in Hawaii, the crew of the submarine USS Colorado is under attack after refusing to fire its nuclear missiles at Pakistan.
If there was an Emmy for ingenuity, it would have to go to Andy Bumatai, the Hawaii comedian who mounted cameras inside his car and turned it into a rolling talk-show interview for anyone willing to ride shotgun.
Camille Komine is bracing for the power of television. When her food truck is featured Monday in the Food Network series "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," the producers of the show told her to expect sales to increase anywhere from 30 percent to 400 percent.
The committee that selects the final nominations for an Emmy doesn't usually share the reasons behind a particular choice, but "Hawaii Five-0" stunt coordinator Jeff Cadiente is pretty sure he knows why the second-season episode "Kame‘e" got the nod.
Fans squealed across the Internet last week as "Hawaii Five-0" started production of its third season with a series of unrelated events that for all intents and purposes became a social media party for the CBS crime drama.
Most men, whether married with children or single, probably have had the same fantasy at some point — the one in which they escape jobs, responsibility and their routine existence for an adventure.
When Brian Watanabe presents his workshop on screenwriting basics next week, he figures he'll field more than a few questions about how to get an agent or how to persuade a director to read a script. Important questions, he says, but that's "jumping over the hard part."
Inspiration can happen anywhere, even in a rental car parking lot while you're on vacation. That's what happened to Tessa Blake and her husband, Ian Williams.
Growing up in Southern California, Richard Imamura often heard stories about the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, including accounts from his parents, who met while they were at the Gila River camp in Arizona.
No matter what you think about Duane "Dog" Chapman, his signature blond mullet or his Village People fashion statement, remember that before the bounty hunter's reality series was canceled last week, it survived eight seasons in one of television's most fickle genres.
There's a point in the new Universal Pictures film "Battleship" where the Navy, under assault from aliens, turns to the only sailors around who can help save the human race: the Old Salts.
Even with a latte in hand, Karl Herlinger looks like a villain or, at the very least, someone capable of extreme road rage. His eyes are set close together, his brow quick to furrow. The television actor from Kailua can wither with a glance.
From the bottom of Kona's Kailua Bay last October, in the shallow water beside the pier, the world above offered underwater cameraman Craig Musburger a magical panorama: hundreds of triathletes treading water at the start of the Ford Ironman World Championship while thousands of akule moved in and around them.
Joel Moffett has seen the same thing happen every time he attends a screening of work by the young filmmakers at the Academy for Creative Media, the film school where he teaches screenwriting and directing.
Kinetic Films, the local production house founded by director James Sereno, has turned to YouTube for inspiration for its Hawaii-based features.
One of the cool features of the DVD release of "The Descendants" is a collection of short behind-the-scenes videos shot by film editor Cameron Spencer.
"One Kine Day," the local indie film from Chuck Mitsui that taps into the rhythms of life in Windward Oahu, is getting a significant boost in exposure thanks to a Hawaii theatrical release and a distribution deal with DVD rental companies here and on the mainland.
The job opening that Wainani Young Tomich advertised a few years ago on Craigslist came with a daunting description: "You will come in before the sun comes up and you will go home after the sun goes down and you will be yelled at by people who have no business yelling at you and they will be yelling at you for things that aren't your fault and you will have to take it with a smile."
Starring in a series about flesh-eating zombies wasn't what initially worried Sarah Wayne Callies when the cable network AMC asked her to audition for "The Walking Dead."
With only two episodes left, no one at ABC is publicly discussing the future of "The River," the creepy drama shot in Hawaii that's told in the style of a dark reality show.
It's one thing to be invited to an Oscar party to celebrate your film's nominations and quite another to sit there and watch the awards go to other people. The thrill can go to "thud" pretty quickly.
The creators of “Last Resort,” an ABC pilot about to start shooting here this week, have gone where no TV drama has gone in recent years. They’re auditioning — and casting — Hawaii actors for potential series regulars.
Hawaii has another contestant on the long-running CBS reality show “Survivor”: Jonas Otsuji.
And, yes, he’s from the same family that farms on the slopes of Koko Crater, just behind Kaiser High School in Hawaii Kai.
An untold story is always a powerful lure, especially if it happened in your own backyard. Ryan Kawamoto, a local film and TV director with Kinetic Productions, found one near Kunia, on plantation land used during World War II as an internment camp.
Jimmy Borges is one of the most likable entertainers you'll ever meet — friendly, personable and humorous.
In the last few months, whenever someone from Hawaii praised "The Descendants" for its honest portrayal of island life, producer Jim Burke felt as if it were getting an Academy Award nomination. Now the film really does have some nominations — five.
Film and television production spending in Hawaii last year declined more than 54 percent from 2010, but local officials say the industry is doing well.
Hawaii is a long way from the sands of Arabia, but it's going to be used as a location for "Arabian Nights," a new 3-D action film co-produced by the same folks who turned Lanai into the setting for Shakespeare.
From old television footage to home movies, the moving images of Hawaii's history are in peril. The warm, moist weather in the tropics can easily damage unprotected material, and a lot of the equipment that was used to display each format is obsolete.
Chin Ho Kelly is getting married Monday, but it won't be for the first time. The "Hawaii Five-0" character already has a wife and children — in the original series, which, of course, doesn't count in the rebooted reality of the hit CBS police drama.
When Hollywood knocks on someone's door with the intent to rent a house for a movie, it's not uncommon for a director to replace the owner's furniture with items that better fit the vision or theme of the film.
F or nearly a week, the four women worried about what would happen if their quest failed.
If you ask local film commissioners about next year's industry forecast, they'll tell you a "Star Trek" sequel and "Tomb Raider" prequel and pilots for two new Hawaii-based TV dramas are so far from reality that they are barely worth discussion. They're in development.
Hollywood director Peter Berg brought his "Battleship" cameras back to Hawaii last week to shoot additional scenes with the film's biggest star: the Mighty Mo.
Not long after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008, after the radiation had left him weak and depressed, documentary filmmaker Tom Vendetti felt an inexplicable tug on his soul.
For the record, Todd Bradley is not dead. The gunshot wound in his chest just made it look that way as he sank to the bottom of a pool during a scene from last week's "Hawaii Five-0."
In the months prior to filming "The Descendants," director Alexander Payne often found himself crisscrossing Oahu and Kauai in a rental car with the music of Gabby Pahinui as a soundtrack to his Hawaiian immersion.
The case of the kolohe (naughty) jaywalkers is probably the funniest crime spree ever solved by "Hawaii Five-0," but you'll never see those crazy crooks caught on network television.
Anyone who knows even a little bit about the college experience knows it's not strictly about hitting the books.
The vast, empty plains of Inner Mongolia were an amazing sight, but Chuck Boller, executive director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, found something even more startling during a recent business trip to the region.
At 68, Don Stroud thought he had pretty much retired to a life of surfing and hanging out with his friends at Kuhio Beach in Waikiki. The Hawaii-born actor had been a Hollywood tough guy with parts in more than 100 movies and 175 TV episodes dating to the late 1960s.
The list of films that screen at the annual Telluride Film Festival in Colorado is always a secret until opening day but it's no secret that audience members loved the slice of Hawaii in Alexander Payne's new movie, "The Descendants."
Imagine the temptation for anyone with a smartphone sitting in the audience of Saturday's "Hawaii Five-0" Sunset on the Beach celebration. After waiting four months since the season one finale — an episode packed with mayhem, murder and lots of cliffhangers — they'll get to see an advance screening of the season two kickoff nine days ahead of the network premiere.
For the second time this year, Maui County officials have reshaped their film office, hiring local underwater cinematographer-photographer Harry Donenfeld to help create a more indigenous film industry.
For a lot of Hawaii residents, even kamaaina, the Kamehameha Schools song contest is a notable event, but it isn't something they know much about.
The world will surely forgive Kelly Hu for skipping the season one finale of "Hawaii Five-0." It didn't end well for the Honolulu-born actress when the show's writers swapped the air bag in her convertible BMW for a claymore mine that exploded when she turned on the ignition.
On the surface, "White Frog," the indie film being produced by Hawaii's Chris Lee, appears to be a niche story that would appeal only to an Asian-American audience. That would be a case of mistaken identity.
The start of a second season for "Hawaii Five-0" arrived earlier this month with a big media splash and a lot of face time for the show's major actors. But the smiles have been just as big off camera.
The waiting continues for Hawaii's Anthony Ruivivar, who's hoping A&E will order a season of "Big Mike," a police drama that shot a pilot this past spring.
Audiences are generating buzz for a small independent movie from Maui called "Get a Job," which is on the film festival circuit.
When it comes to television reruns, the checks are always in the mail. It's like winning the lottery. The royalty checks — commonly called residuals — can arrive long after a series has left prime time, a surprise delivery that keeps on paying for decades.
As she read the script for a guest spot on ABC's new war drama, "Combat Hospital," Tia Carrere felt like she was holding a gift in her hands. "I flipped," she said. "It was awesome."
The idea sounded simple enough to Rachel Sutton, the local casting agent for the CBS hit "Hawaii Five-0." She wanted to minimize the time background actors spend waiting at casting calls by creating an online database.
Those were real flames, but the car spewing them wasn't really burning in the parking lot of Aliiolani Hale last week, thanks to the special-effects crew with "Hawaii Five-0.
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