A collection of large, bright pink blobby sculptures will be seen around the Quartier des Spectacles and downtown over the summer. The name of the collective work is Monsieur Rose and I’m already seeing photos of the pieces on social media.
Updates from May, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
American movie productions are back in town, including a location which has involved installing palm trees in the Village.
Robert H
I think it’s wonderful that Montreal is attracting more film production from out of the city, especially the bigger budget American and international projects that bring so much money to the city and opportunities for local technicians, actors and studios. This is gratifying to see given the ferocious competition with other cities for this type of business.
I’ve become used to recognizing bits and pieces of the city in various movies and I feel like I have a little insider connection. More than once, I’ve been amused to follow a scene of characters walking down a street I know and then watch them turn a corner only to find themselves in a part of town I know is kilometres away.
I’m a bit jaded now, though; as a viewer, I only get really excited about movies where Montreal plays itself. Such movies where Ville Marie is actually a co-star are quite rare, even rarer if they’re any good. The only three that come to mind are Jésus de Montréal (directed by Denys Arcand), The Score (one of Brando’s last performances), and Afterglow (Julie Christie!)…wait, there was something else from the early sixties with the late Robert Shaw, which I’ll have to google…
Kate
You’re thinking of The Luck of Ginger Coffey in which Montreal plays itself. There’s also a cameo at 7:14 which old Montreal anglos will recognize.
You should also enjoy the car chase from Blazing Magnum (1976) part 1 and part 2 which was shot all over town but spliced together interestingly.
Nicholas
Wikipedia has a good list of films shot in Montreal, including ones shot and set here. It’s (obviously) not complete (doesn’t have Blazing Magnum, for example).
Kate
Not even under its alternative titles, Strange Shadows in an Empty Room or Una magnum special per Tony Saitta. Will have to fix that.
Robert H
Yes, Kate, that’s it! Robert Shaw as Ginger Coffey, affable but feckless, and Montreal in wintery black and white looking rather Edinburgh-ish. I’ve only seen clips, so I’ll give this a watch. It should be interesting to see Shaw, a fine actor, between his white-haired Spectre assasin in From Russia With Love and his doomed shark hunter in Jaws over a decade later.
That Blazing Magnum (never seen it) car chase was hilarious and complete with cheesy seventies soundtrack muzak, not quite Bullitt, French Connection, or Bond level, but pretty good, and they managed to cover a lot of central Montreal: Look! There they are at what used to be the Park/Pins gordian knot; next shot: down by the elevated Bonaventure expressway! My favorite shot, which they caught from three angles, was the three cars zooming in formation, momentarily airborne, down the Hôtel-de-Ville slope just south of Sherbrooke by the pedestrian stairs. I’m also struck by how seedy and gritty the city looks: parking lots, rundown buildings, the shabbiest locations. Even with all the graffiti and orange cones, Montreal looks better now.
P.S. I appreciate your editing. I do go on, and on!
Uatu
The TV show Ransom featured Montreal as the city where the head office of the negotiation firm was located.
MarcG
I wonder if the Fourniers were involved in that car chase scene.
walkerp
Wait you seem to be suggesting that Strange Shadows in an Empty Room is watchable somewhere. I missed it when they screened it at Fantasia and have been looking for it everywhere without any success. Do you all have a link or a place it can be purchased?
Ian
it’s on MGM+, Prime Video, and a bunch of other places online
CE
I have a friend who lived in LA and said it was difficult to watch movies because he got distracted by how much locations would shift around from scene to scene.
Another American movie where Montreal very much plays itself is The Whole Nine Yards (2000) which is not a very good movie and the supposedly Francophone character speaks English with a French from France accent.
What was the name of the movie from, I think, the 80s where a scene or two are shot in Le Lux? There are a couple great scenes shot around Place des Arts where the whole area looks almost bombed out.
dhomas
@Ian your link is to letterboxd for US streaming services. It is not available to stream on any Canadian streaming services, unfortunately. Unless you count piracy.
As for movies filmed in Montreal, I remember recognizing parts of Mirabel airport in the film Warm Bodies.
Kate
CE, you made a comment about it four years ago – Crazy Moon.
Blork
I made a blog post about locations in “The Luck of Ginger Coffey” back in 2017: https://www.blork.org/blorkblog/2017/03/08/montreal-location-scouting-with-ginger-coffey/
BTW, the film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Brian Moore, who lived here in the 1950s. He later wrote (among other things) “Black Robe,” which was adapted to film in 1991. His little known “The Revolution Script” is a fictionalization of the October Crisis, and is really worth a read if you can find a copy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Script
Kate
Good blog entry, Blork. But when the movie was made, that wasn’t the Gazette building, it was the Montreal Star.
walkerp
The DVD is $106!
I can’t even find it on the darkweb.dhomas
@walkerp I got a digital copy I got from… “online sources” some time ago (possibly after the last time it was discussed on this blog!). I’m a bit of a digital hoarder, so I hang onto everything. I don’t know if the source I got it from still exists, and even if it did, I wouldn’t want to post it here. If you want it, maybe Kate can put me in contact with you and I can send you a direct link to it from my library.
Blork
I don’t think so Kate. According to my reading, the Montreal Star had two addresses in its lifetime, and the last one was on St-Jacques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Star Unless that was just the editorial offices with the printing presses being on St-Antoine, but I can’t find any reference to that.
-
Kate
The summer’s cruise season has opened with the arrival of Holland America’s Volendam in the Old Port.
-
Kate
Some are trying to push the city’s public markets to install composting to process the inevitable quantities of superfluous produce. This follows an open letter to various honchos that was published by La Presse on Friday.
-
Kate
One hundred firefighters were called out Sunday morning for an empty building on fire on Robert Burns Street, in NDG right near the border of Côte St‑Luc.
CTV says the arson squad is on it.
Ian
Kate
Yes. I had to look up Rue Robert Burns too because it’s so obscure.
I was interested by the single-storey building next door, which has a sign saying PUB and nothing else, because it put me in mind of the gurdwara on St‑Roch in Park Ex.
Ian
If you look around the back alley of that same building there is another sign that just says BAR. Oddly according to Google Maps it’s a caterer, though.
Kate
I wonder whether it was ever a low-budget movie set.
Dan
So, answering about the weird signage as a local. That complex is old. it usta be a major shopping complex with the building behind being a large bar called robert burns pub, food (ive heard that their liver and onions was great) BUT that was a long time ago, Back in the 70’s or 80’s (never got conformation on which, stories would vary) it was converted from the full building large staff to a small bar, room for about 50 seated or 100 standing, and all the extra space, no food, just one bartender pulling pitchers for locals to get drunk on. Nothing special but the ONLY place in the hood to go get a beer within walking home distance for a very long time. The rest of the space, and a huge portion of the first floor and basement of the other building was rented by a large production kosher catering/wholesale place.
The “Bar” sign in the space basement space between the building is the best part. So back in the long long ago when it was a full building bar that door was the entrance to the “Server Sexy” part of the bar, where the waitress were topless.
I’m almost in my 50’s now, but in my 20s/30s I heard a tone of stories about the old place from the oldies who were there, lots contradictory, plenty of the same story with shockingly different details.
It’s a shame we never had a final night there. Covid hit about a few months before the last night party, and that was that.
Kate
Thank you, Dan. Great bit of local history.
Ian
Sounds like a classic, RIP.
Uatu 16:50 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
Mr. Pink? Do they look like Steve Buscemi? lol
Ian 19:27 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
I saw one up behind the MBA and wondered what was going on.
You are getting a lot of spam comments these days, are you using Akismet? Just curious.
Kate 19:33 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
I have Akismet running. But every so often I’m still getting hit.
I wonder what it is about this city and pink. There were the pink baubles over the Village, the pink forest inside the Palais de congrès, and now this.
DeWolf 21:11 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
What’s wrong with pink?
Kate 21:37 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
Nothing.
Janet 11:44 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
Not a coincidence about the pink baubles in the village and the pink forest inside the Palais des congrès; both were created by Claude Cormier.
Mozai 12:44 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
I’m reminded of the pink dented hippos on rue St-Laurent south of Pins.
Kate 12:54 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
Janet, the pink does seem chosen as a nod to Cormier.