Home 
 Map 
 ⇑ 

 ⇍   October 16th, 2005   ⇏ 

Copyright 2005 Michael Anttila

Angela and I went to the Ontario Science Centre this weekend to check out Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds 2 exhibit. It was really amazing, but cameras were prohibited so I couldn't get a picture.

However, I also bought a new computer this week, and it has a DVD drive. To celebrate, I popped in my copy of Spinning Boris, and quickly scanned through the film to find every scene containing my Ladas. For those that don't know: Parts of the film were shot in Toronto and Hamilton, and I was called upon to provide my two Russian cars for the backgrounds. In the end, my cars made it into 8 different scenes in the movie.

This frame contains both of my cars, stuck in a traffic jam. The first red car on the left (just behind the blue car in front) is mine and is being driven by Georg Hentsch, and the red car on the right with its passenger door open is also mine. I'm in the driver's seat of that car, and the guy holding my door open is an extra arguing with one of the other drivers.

There are a few interesting things to note about this scene. First of all, it was filmed in downtown Toronto on one of the hottest days of that year. The sky was completely blue without a single cloud. Unfortunately for the actors, the scene was supposed to take place during a Moscow winter. So, all of the people you see huddled in parkas trying to stay warm are actually very very hot. Secondly, the background has been digitally removed and replaced with a scene from Russia. The big trucks at the back of the line were all added digitally, except for the army truck in front of the large white truck. That Russian army vehicle is actually owned by the president of the Toronto Lada Club. The truck on the far right really looks like it was just tacked on at the last minute.

I will probably do another Picture Of The Week on this topic... there are some other interesting scenes featuring my cars.

Comments

sweet... i know the movie never made it out into theatres... i'm glad its
available on dvd... i'd like to see this movie sometime!  do we actually get to
see you at all in the movie?  i remember you saying at one point you stuck your
head out the window during the traffic jam scene!
-- aaron

My face is visible for about two frames in the movie.  The good part is that
I'm driving right by the camera, so my face takes up about 25% of the shot. 
The bad part is that I'm driving by pretty fast, and I'm so blurry you can't
recognize me.
-- Michael

POTW - Photo Map - Home - Feedback

Hosted by theorem.ca