SUBMITTED BY flikchik

January 29, 2004 — Fresh off "The Missing" and recording voice-overs for "Arrested Development" on Fox, Ron Howard was in Toronto checking out locations for his upcoming movie "Cinderella Man". One locale that caught his eye was the shuttered Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto's historic hockey arena.

The defunct Gardens, scene of the classic Ali/Chuvalo fights among others, will be the arena of combat for Depression-era "people's choice" boxer Jim Braddock, whose defeat of champ Max Baer was a Rocky tale of its era.

"We'll be shooting there a lot ... before they turn it into a grocery store," Howard said, drawing laughs from a sold-out crowd of young film buffs at U of T's Isabel Bader theatre at a Canadian Film Centre program in his honour. (Loblaws had recently intended to buy the Gardens, but backed out of the deal last month).

Howard arrived in Toronto Sunday, and has been scouting locations for the movie. It starts filming March 1 through the end of June. Howard says it'll be more of a mental than a physical challenge for Crowe after their previous film A Beautiful Mind. "The guy Russell's playing is a more straight-ahead guy, he's not all that complicated.

"But Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee is with him (Crowe) in Australia as we speak -- and he's hitting him hard with the workouts."

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