My Hometown Blogathon: Montreal, Canada

Caz at Lets Go To The Movies hosted their first blogathon.

The theme is based on everyone’s hometowns.

The idea is to do a little bit of research to put together a blog post about your hometown and link it to film. – Let’s Go To The Movies

This is a pretty exciting blogathon for me because Montreal has been one of the go-to places to film movies.  In the last decade (or maybe more), Montreal has been turned into Paris or New York just to name two.

FILMS SET IN MONTREAL

Finding movies set in Montreal and isn’t a Quebec production tends to be harder to find.  The first to come to mind is The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. I don’t remember that movie much but it includes popular location like the Notre Dame Cathedral set in Old Montreal.

Taking Lives with Ethan Hawke and Angelina Jolie is set around Montreal.  Its been a while since I’ve seen it but it takes place in various other smaller towns around the province of Quebec as well as the metropolitan area. Life of Pi is also in that basket where I’m not sure the exact location.

However, some notable Quebec productions set in Montreal are:

• My Daughter, My Angel
• Bon Cop Bad Cop
• Incendies
• Polytechnique

Thats just to name a few because the list does go on…

FILMS FILMED IN MONTREAL

Increasingly, the amount of films shot in Montreal are growing.  Just this year, there’s been at least 4 films around my work area that has been filming.  Over the years, here are few titles that I’m familiar with in the list that I found.

A few surprises to me was Batman & Robin, Johnny Mnemonic, Death Race and Get Smart.

Some of the more famous titles are that the majority of The Day After Tomorrow was filmed in the Old Port of Montreal and around the city. Gothika also has a few scenes, one notably in a downtown park.  One of the biggest one that involved a lot of the Chinese community as extras including one of my mom’s good friend was The Art of War. Another one is the I’m Not There which I know takes a scene from the building right in front of my building in Old Montreal. Another one that I walked past a few years back on St. Catherine Street was The Factory where I saw John Cusack walking across the street in the scene from afar.  One that was filmed next to my work building and had a whole set and actually a lot of the Mont Royal view of Montreal (with an CGI wall) is Warm Bodies.  The biggest one of recent is X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Along some of the other titles that were shot in Montreal but I’m not sure where are these:

• Upside Down
• Orphan
• Journey to the Center of the Earth

While some of these had theirs shot in the Cite du Cinema in studio in Montreal, they also include Source Code and Immortals.

FAMOUS PEOPLE IN FILM BORN IN MONTREAL

Apparently there’s not a whole lot of famous people in film born in Montreal because I could only think of William Shatner.

And if you really want to stretch it, then there was one scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier with Georges St. Pierre fighting.  Does that make him an actor? Probably not. But he’s born in Montreal too.

My research also lead me to find that Emmanuelle Chriqui is also born in Montreal. She was in a movie that I reviewed a few months back called Women in Trouble.

FAMOUS PEOPLE IN FILM WHO GREW UP IN MONTREAL

Other than William Shatner, another famous person raised in the surrounding areas of Montreal is Christopher Plummer. Thats pretty cool, right? The man in one of my favorite musicals, The Sound of Music and who also did the extremely awesome movie, Beginners raised in Montreal, love it! 🙂

How can I do this category and not mention this next one?  The voice of Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon being his most memorable role in my mind, and thats Jay Baruchel. Although born in Ottawa, he was raised in one of the Montreal boroughs.  Wikipedia says he still lives there, and I have no idea how accurate that is.

Overall…

Montreal is becoming a growing place to shot a movie even though not many are set here.  Its diverse cultural architecture gives it that advantage.  Having European influence in Old Montreal and Cite du Cinema studios, its having a lot of nice opportunities.  In the summer, walking around Montreal, its hard to not see little no parking panels for filming times for certain movies.  With bigger Hollywood ones, there are even road closures and security to block off the road.  Its definitely an exciting time.  I look forward to seeing what other movies are filmed here.

A huge THANKS to Caz for coming up with this My Hometown Blogathon! I had a lot of fun researching Montreal and its filming locations and film sets along with certain actors.  There were some films that I already knew but some took me by surprise.