Posts Tagged ‘Worcester’

Denis Leary’s critically acclaimed series, “Rescue Me” premiered its final season on Wednesday, but the comedian is keeping busy with multiple projects, including his charity, The Leary Firefighters Foundation.  The Worcester native maintains a longtime connection with the firefighter community that began long before he starred as fireman Tommy Gavin in the FX dramedy.

After a fire in his hometown claimed the life of his cousin, childhood friend and four other firefighters in 1999, Leary started the foundation to provide financial support for the victims families and providing new equipment for fire departments.  Through his foundation Leary raised over $2 million dollars for the families of firefighters who died on September 11 and donated over a dozen boats to New Orleans fire departments after hurricane Katrina.

Leary’s comedy career is also booming.  He just completed his #ThinningTheHerd Tour, which featured Cambridge native and “Rescue Me” co-star Lenny Clarke.  Leary also recently released a stand-up DVD and a snarky new book.  Also in the works for Leary is the fourth installment of the Ice Age films, in which Leary reprises his role as Diego.

“Rescue Me” premiered in 2004 and will conclude when the seventh series ends on September 7, 2011.  The season will reportedly center on Tommy Gavin’s struggle with 9/11 sightings and his anger at those who continue to benefit financially from the disaster.

★ Denis Leary appears at the 10 year anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the cold storage warehouse fire in Worcester, Mass.

★ Commercials reap tax benefits by filming in Massachusetts.

★ More bad news for Emerson grad Jay Leno; DVRs are eating up his audience.

★ Gisele gives birth to a little Brady Boy, thank goodness she put off her helicopter pilot licensing exam until after the birth.

★ Celebrity connections, HEC exclusive: The day before she played the Wang and delayed her stage time in order to Skype into interviews on the West Coast after her 5 Grammy nominations, Lady GaGa’s make-up artist was spotted shopping at the Sephora in the Prudential Center.

★ Well that didn’t take long; Connecticut’s James Van Der Beek has a new lady friend.

★ Joss Whedon talks about why Fox show, “Dollhouse”, starring Watertown’s Eliza Dushku, failed.

★ Do you know your Massachusetts connections? Take this Boston Globe quiz and find out!

Tom Cruise‘s Untitled Wichita Project has recently been renamed Knight and Day. The action comedy screenplay, co-written by James Mangold and Scott Frank (Marley & Me, Minority Report), follows a fugitive couple–Cruise and Cameron Diaz–on a glamorous, yet deadly adventure around the globe. Cruise and Diaz will share the screen with Wilton, CT native Paul Dano in the role of an eccentric genius behind a revolutionary technology.

Directed by Mangold (Walk the Line; Girl, Interrupted), the film production was spotted on the streets of Charlestown and South Boston just last weekend. Previous filming locations include the Worcester airport, Bridgewater and Somerville. While there has been talk of production in Woburn, sources reveal that the Commerce Way outpost is merely a storage station rather than a film set.

According to an October 13 press release, Knight and Day will also film in less local locales, including Austria, Spain, and the tropics. The Twentieth Century Fox/ New Regency co-production is scheduled to hit theaters on July 2, 2010.

★ Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz on the Jay Leno Show, live via a satellite from the set of Wichita at the Worcester Airport.

★ Boston-born Maura Tierney drops out of “Parenthood” TV show for NBC to concentrate on treating her breast cancer.

★ Gisele manages to walk around Boston, while being pregnant, at the same time.

★ Zookeeper animals in peril: the Toys-R-Us giraffe dies at the Franklin Park Zoo and movie star monkeys evacuated from Boston hotel.

★ Cruise’n: TomKat goes for a jog in the Back Bay, then the complete set of Cruise’s go grocery shopping in Boston.

★ Jennifer Garner and daughter Violet visit daddy director Ben Affleck at work near Fenway.

★ Massachusetts-bred Jenny Slate drops the F-bomb in her SNL debut

The fall movie season is ramping up, and the next month contains not one but two star-studded, filmed-in-Boston flicks ready to thrill you, or tickle your funny bone.

First up, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, and Rosamund Pike; this futuristic, sci-fi thriller follows the story of a cop (Willis) who must leave his home after years in isolation in order to investigate the murders of surrogate robots through which humans are able to interact. This 2008 production happened all over Boston and beyond, with other towns including Hopedale, Lawrence, Lynn, Wayland, and Woburn, Massachusetts all playing host to scenes in the film. Other areas included the old Paul Dever School in Taunton, the former Worcester courthouse in Worcester. Boston’s South End and South Street in the Leather District were also used during filming. The Human Scale office at 179 South Street was transformed into a futuristic robot salon where Willis shot scenes in July of ’08. Surrogates will be in theaters September 25.

The Invention of Lying, starring Jennifer Garner, Rob Low, Jason Bateman, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor, and the incredibly talented Tina Fey will be sure to please those in search of a snicker on October 2. The playful film takes place in a world where no one has ever lied before, until a writer devises the mechanics for his own purposes. Also filmed in 2008, production took the stars all over Boston, Lowell, Quincy, and North Andover.