Newport Beach Scenes: Sophie Monk Filming “Hard Breakers,” World’s Most Expensive Baskeball Court & Black Cats

Only one more day left in Newport Beach before heading back to the UK, at least until the permanent move this summer. Below, a few random photos from beachside: the filming of Hard Breakers, the world’s most expensive basketball court, a freaky weird cat and the deal with that picture above.

I’ll take the skywriting picture first. Skywriting is pretty common on a hot day when folks are on the beach. But I got a chuckle out of this. “This is a sky” in the sky — perhaps tagging has made it into the air? It went on to say “…sky billboard…” then spelled out more, but I couldn’t read the rest as the winds quickly obliterated the words.

The big excitement was a movie being filmed down here. Movies are like never shot in Orange County. OK, a few, and someday I’ll do a post about them.

This movie is called Hard Breakers, and there’s virtually nothing about it online that I can find. Nor was the film crew that talkative. When I asked about any stars, first we were told none — then later we were told Tia Carrera and Sophie Monk were part of it. You can see Sophie on a set of the movie somewhere here. We never saw her when passing by in Newport, nor Tia. But here are a few shots of what was going on:

Elsewhere on the boardwalk, I had to move out of the path of this black cat — not that it was moving itself:

Finally, I love this basketball court. It’s right on the beach and takes up the space where a house would normally stand. With beachfront houses selling for millions of dollars, to take up an entire lot — you must really love basketball and not care about the cost. And no, I never see anyone using it: