Independent features scheduled to wrap production this week

It's a wrap -- almost -- for two independent features scheduled to conclude principal photography this week.

"The Gambler" -- a made-in-Vegas update of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel -- will split its time between downtown and Strip-area locations during its final shooting days, according to Rich Hopkins, one of the U.S. producers for the drama from Hungarian-born producer Zoltan Miklos Hajdu and his writer-director brother, Szabolcs .

On Monday, the production is scheduled to shoot at the Westin, east of the Strip, while "The Gambler" moves downtown to the Soho Lofts on Tuesday. The Fremont Street Experience, in front of the venerable Golden Gate, provides the production's final-day location.

"For movie sets, I think it's a great location," producer Zoltan Miklos Hajdu says of Las Vegas, where he performed in Cirque du Soleil's "Ka" before becoming a personal trainer -- and a movie producer. "The landscape of the city, the buildings, the people -- it's a paradise" for filmmakers.

"Liars, Fires and Bears," meanwhile, is back in action following a one-week break to attend Utah's Sundance film festival, reports producer Constanza Castro.

Writer-director Jeremy Cloe's feature debut focuses on a street-savvy 9-year-old orphan (played by Megli Micek) who enlists an immature 27-year-old (Lundon Boyd, Cloe's co-writer) to help her reunite with her brother.

Production is scheduled to pick up Tuesday and conclude Saturday at a variety of locations, including Red Rock Canyon highways, a Spring Valley school, the police station at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the nearby University Crest neighborhood and the downtown bus station, Castro notes.

"It's just an exhausting process," Cloe says of his feature debut, which is an expansion of an award-winning student short he made at UNLV. "In our case, we wrap at 3:30 a.m. and we're back at it at 1 p.m."

What's cooking: Chef Hubert Keller continues to make himself at home at KLVX-TV, Channel 10, where the third season of "Hubert Keller: Secrets of a Chef" is now shooting in a custom-designed kitchen studio.

So far, things are "going great," reports producer Marjorie Poore . "That's the advantage of being the third season -- you've done it before."

Moving from a California winery to the new studio, however, "is a real luxury," she says.

Even so, "every show is different -- you can't just rip through them," Poore acknowledges. As a result, the shooting pace is "about six recipes a day," enough for two shows.

"Cooking on TV is like cooking in traffic," she explains, with "a lot of stops and starts."

Vegas haunts: The legendary Sands may be long gone, but it's hardly forgotten.

Especially inside Madame Tussauds at The Venetian, where museum staffers have reported strange doings at a variety of exhibits featuring the wax likenesses of Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and other Vegas veterans.

That's enough to draw the interest of Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures," which is expected to focus on (among other things that go bump in the night) eerie incidents at the Elvis Presley installation. An unplugged jukebox playing at 4 a.m., for example.

"This is the mother lode when it comes to the whole history of the mob, Hollywood, murder, revenge and their interplay," notes the Travel Channel's Katelyn Balach. Which explains why the "Ghost Adventures" shoot "is featuring the famous scandals, sins and angry ghosts" of Neon Nirvana.

Quick takes: In this week's reality parade, the Food Network's "Last Cake Standing" is expected to join History's "Pawn Stars" and "American Restorations," Animal Planet's "Tanked" and E!'s "Holly's World" on location.

Carol Cling's Shooting Stars column appears Mondays. Contact her at (702) 383-0272 or
ccling@reviewjournal. com.