Last week, my old stomping grounds in Abbotsford turned from BC in Juneuary to Sunny Miami with the help of some fake palm trees and high-powered studio lights. “Christmas in Miami” will star the Karate Kid’s Ralph Maccio as a Dance instructor whose studio has fallen on hard times. The National Martial Arts training center served as the studio (which is a little disappointing when you think about it). Other businesses like Anne Marie’s Cafe and Mac and Mango were also used during the shoot.

Source: Abbotsford Times

The B.C. Securities Commission has pulled the plug on a Vancouver native film producer after he was soliciting investors on Craigslist.

Yes, it looks like Paul Stiles will be trying his luck on Party Poker for a while to come now. According to BCSC enforcement staff, Stiles posted an advertisement to promote investments in his company Velocity Entertainment Inc in July and August of 2011 on Craigslist.

When an investigator posing as a prospective investor responded to the advertisement, Stiles claimed a $15,000 investment would get a 100 percent return of $30,000, within six months of the investment. All the more confusing because the initial advertisement quoted 12 percent within one year.

Stiles told the investigator that the investment was totally secure, and mailed an agreement that claimed Velocity would produce two feature films, credit the investor as a producer, and repay them with interest within six months.

The plot thickened when another advertisement was found on Craigslist in March 2012, which investigators quickly pursued. This time they were quoted returns of 20 to 30 percent within 60 days, a third of the original time quoted before.

The commission said that not only was Stiles promising an impossible rate of returns, but Velocity Entertainment was officially dissolved in 2005. It just goes to show that even in Vancouver, the movie industry attracts its share of shady characters.

This article was written by Our Partners.

The movie industry in Vancouver is feeling a significant amount of anguish over the disappearance of the Wolverine series of movies from the Lower Mainland. According to the Vancouver Sun, the total loss was “2,000 jobs and 82 Million dollars”. The Australian government offered a $13 million tax incentive to move the production down under. With places like Ontario essentially buying productions with their tax credits, It looks like Vancouver is just going to have to accept that its movie industry is maturing. Political concerns like the scrapping of the HST aren’t helping. If we want to keep big budget productions going up here, we may have to stop relying on Hollywood to supply them and start figuring out how to get completely homegrown productions to make money.

Source: Vancouver Sun.