FILM 1896: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

FILM 1896: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

TRIVIA: Tom Holland was not allowed to read the script for this movie, since he revealed too many secrets for Spider-Man Homecoming (2017). In one of the promotional videos for the movie, several of its cast members are in an interrogation room refusing to reveal any spoilers, and Holland's mouth is conspicuously taped shut.

Mark Ruffalo revealed that he was given a fake script due to his habit of accidentally spoiling past Marvel movies. He jokingly claimed in an interview that the fake script was better than the real one.

Thor confirms that "Groot" is a language that can be learned and spoken, as he took it as an elective in school on Asgard. This explains why only Rocket was originally able to understand Groot, and the other Guardians had to learn over time. This also confirms that Groot understands English (and likely other languages) but is only able to speak "Groot".

This became the fourth movie to gross over two billion dollars worldwide, after Avatar(2009), Titanic (1997), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) telling Peter Parker (Tom Holland) to cut it out with the pop culture references is quite hypocritical, as Stark often pokes fun at other characters by calling them by movie titles or character names. In Avengers Assemble (2012), Stark called Loki Reindeer Games (2000), Rock of Ages (2012), and Shakespeare in the Park(1995), he called Thor Point Break (1991), and he called Hawkeye "Legolas". In Captain America: Civil War (2016), he called Bucky The Manchurian Candidate (2004). In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), he called Peter Parker "Crockett", as a reference to Miami Vice(1984). In this movie, he scorned Ebony Maw by calling him "Squidward", and he called Star Lord Flash Gordon (1980).

The French dub has Tony use "Voldemort" as an insult to Ebony Maw in place of "Squidward". This is likely because Squidward's French name, "Carlo", was too ordinary for audiences to get the joke, and for the joke to work. The same applies to Squidward's German name, "Thaddäus".

Rocket carrying around a stolen eye is a callback to a running gag in both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as he has always been obsessed with prosthetic body parts.

At one point in the movie, Thanos (Josh Brolin) asks The Collector (Benicio del Toro), "Where is the stone?" The same line was said by Benicio del Toro in the opening scene of Snatch (2000).

On April 26, 2018, the day before it got a wide release, it received enough votes to take the number two spot on IMDb's Top 250 with a 9.2 out of 10, a record for a Marvel movie.

The cast features three Academy Award winners, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, and William Hurt, and seven nominees, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper, Josh Brolin, and Samuel L. Jackson.

There is a deleted scene with an appearance by Happy Hogan in the park.

When Thor tells the Guardians of the Galaxy about The Avengers, Mantis mentions the actor Kevin Bacon, Peter Quill's hero, and Thor says "He might have joined". Kevin Bacon played the Marvel supervillain Sebastian Shaw, antagonist of the X-Men, in X-Men: First Class (2011).

CAMEO: Stan Lee: The comic book writer who co-created most of the characters featured in this movie is featured here as Peter Parker's school bus driver. In addition, this movie also contains remnants from Stan's past cameos: Tony Stark uses the flip phone that Stan delivered to him in Captain America: Civil War (2016), and Thor still sports the haircut that Stan gave him in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). 

FILM 1799: JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

FILM 1799: JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

TRIVIA:Sam Neill was asked if he would return to the series as Dr. Alan Grant and responded, "You never say never, but I think it's moved on. It's different times."

During a recent visit to Entertainment Weekly Radio with costar Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt revealed that it was none other than the Spider-Man: Homecoming star who spoiled the entire plot of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom for him. The young actor spilled the beans while he and Pratt were working on the same lot shooting their respective Marvel projects. As for how he became privy to the top-secret details of the blockbuster franchise, Pratt shared that, "Tom, of course, knows [Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director] J.A. Bayona because of the film The Impossible -- Tom was the young guy in that movie." Soon after Bayona gave Holland a detailed account of the story line, he shared every detail with Pratt. "He told me the whole story, so I heard it right from Tom Holland first. And then when I read the script, I was like, Yeah, he wasn't messing with me, this is all real."

It's unclear how the Mosasaurus is still alive despite being trapped in an empty lagoon for years with nobody to feed it. Even the submersible operators lampshade how anything in the lagoon should have died a long time ago, but Colin Trevorrow explains the beginning of the film is set between a week or month after the first and argues that it could've ate the Indominus Rex slowly or picked off any pteranodon(s) that flew to close to the lagoon.

During a newscast, one of the chyrons on the bottom says "'President questions existence of dinosaurs in the first place'."

When Maisie Lockwood is attempting to hide from the Indoraptor she climbs into a dumb waiter (a lift found in many stately homes and mansions for transporting food and other items from the servant quarters) and tries to pull the door closed in a clear reference to Lex attempting to hide from the Raptors in the kitchen.

Colin Trevorrow pushed Michael Giacchino for an emotional score that would serve as the film's backbone, referring to it as "going to Dino Church." Giacchino found the evolving tone of Bayona's film to be an exciting challenge. "The film starts out like what you expect a Jurassic film to be, but it quickly evolves into a scary, tense, Gothic pool of craziness," said Giacchino. "I was heavily influenced by Bernard Herrmann growing up, and at the end of the film with the Gothic choir you feel like you're in an old horror film."

J.A. Bayona reveals that he had a trick up his sleeve on set to get the most out of his actors for that scene. In a new interview, he talked about the emotional scene from Jurassic World 2 and revealed why it has an even deeper meaning for fans of the Jurassic Park franchise. The Brachiosaurus is the very first dinosaur that was shown in the first Jurassic Park and then the last to be seen on the Isla of Nublar, which was no accident. Bayona reveals that the idea for the scene was planted 25 years ago. He explains. "That scene represents the ending of a dream that started 25 years ago. You are telling the ending of that island and the ending of that dream." While the Brachiosaurus scene was tough on moviegoers watching Jurassic World 2 in theaters, it was a challenge for J.A. Bayona to come up with a way to get the actors prepared for just how emotional the scene was. In order to get the right feel, the director pulled out a very familiar piece of music to play for the cast as they looked at a dot on a green screen. According to Bayona, the music had just the emotional impact that he desired from Chris Pratt and especially Bryce Dallas Howard. The director had this to say. "I played a very sweet and a little sad version of the Jurassic Park melody. So that was very effective for the actors, especially for Bryce. Being there, telling that story, listening to music from John Williams, they were all very emotional."

Rafe Spall was cast after being in The BFG (2016) which was directed by the executive producer of this film Steven Spielberg.

For Super Bowl LII (2018), Colin Trevorrow directed a Jeep commercial starring Jeff Goldblum and featuring a T. rex. Within 24 hours of its release, the commercial received 39.7 million online views, which was more than any film trailer that was watched online following its Super Bowl LII television debut.

A trio of Pteranodon flew off in the sunset mirrors exactly when Alan took glance on a trio of pelicans after escaping the island at the end of Jurassic Park (1993).

The Indoraptor has several themes relating to wolves: Being semi-quadrupedal, there is a somewhat lupine appearance to its posture and mannerisms. There is a discussion with Dr. Wu where he compares the domestication of dinosaurs with that of dogs. The Indoraptor, being feral and untamable, is the "wolf" of this scenario, which they are planning to breed out their aggression and lack of empathy to make them "dogs". The Indoraptor menaces a little girl, which recalls the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tales, Maisie wearing a red jacket. And of course the scene where it roars/howls at the full moon from the rooftop of Lockwood Manor, and a callback to Jurassic World (2015) when Hoskins told a story of keeping a wolf cub which eventually mauled his wife? Lockwood's vision comes to fruition in this movie, and again, the "wolf" cannot be tamed.

Tom Holland was terrified of the movie, J.A. Bayona explained, "I invited his whole family to a screening, I was sitting with him and it was so much fun to see how he was reacting to the movie, in the emotional moments he was just like, 'No!' and then jumping- he had alot of fun, but the one shot that really got him was the Indoraptor clawing Maisies ponytail through the cage, that is the shot that Tom like shit on his pants!"

J.A. Bayona wanted the Indoraptor to be black, with oily snakeskin, so that it felt like a deadly shadow. Early on in production, he showed the special effects crew a picture of a shell-shocked soldier during World War I, the haunting image of a man with the craziest eyes you'd ever seen he wanted those eyes on the Indo. 

The beach that Owen and Claire and Franklin wash up on after the gyrosphere sequence was the same one from From Here to Eternity (1953) J.A. Bayona stated "I said, 'OK we need to do the same shot, the famous kiss shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, so we did the same with Owen and Claire, without kissing each other." 

FILM 1734: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 2

TRIVIA: According to the Visual Effects Artists, Ego's planet comprises a trillion polygons, and is considered to be the biggest visual effect ever made.

Prop Master Russell Bobbitt had difficulty finding the cassette decks used in the first film, and all of the Sony Walkman headphones they found were broken. Bobbitt contacted Sony to see if they had any available for filming, which they did not, so he eventually created six from scratch.

Dave Bautista's Drax make-up took only ninety minutes to apply, down from four hours for the first film. However, he would have to sit in a sauna at the end of the day, to get the make-up off.

James Gunn choreographed and served as the motion-capture model for Groot's dance during the opening credits sequence. It took the visual effects team nearly two years to complete the CG rendering of the scene for the final film.

According to James Gunn, Kurt Russell was de-aged for the film's opening flashback (set in the 1980s) by visual effects company Lola VFX, in what was a "long, painstaking process that took many, many months to accomplish." He continued, "I know Lola did Michael Douglas, and I think they did Tony Stark and Steve Rogers as well. They're the best at what they do, and keep getting better."

Vin Diesel recorded Groot's voice for sixteen foreign-language releases of the film, up from six in the first film.

PARKS AND RECREATION (2009–2015)

TRIVIA: The writers didn't know Nick Offerman could already play the saxophone when they made his character, Ron Swanson, a secret saxophone player.

Ron's second ex-wife ("Tammy Two") is played by Megan Mullally, who in her real life is married to Nick Offerman (Ron).

Jay Jackson, the actor who plays the comically literal Pawnee newscaster Perd Hapley, was for many years an actual print and broadcast journalist and anchor at news outlets in San Diego and Los Angeles. After he retired from journalism in the mid-2000s, through a friend's manager he got a small role as a reporter on a 2007 episode of Dexter. He agreed to allow the manager to send him on other auditions, but only as long as they only were for reporter roles, since that was his professional background, so he ended up also playing reporters on TV shows such as Scandal, Revenge, The Closer, The Mentalist, Body of Proof, and Braindead, as well as in movies such as Battleship and Fast Five.

In the episode "London parts 1 & 2" Ben says to Andy "So all you did is stop drinking beer?" and Andy replies "Yea I lost like 50lbs in a month." This is a reference to Chris Pratt's real life weight loss for his role in Zero Dark Thirty. He actually lost 60lbs.

Mayfair Games, makers of Settlers of Catan, were contracted to make Ben Wyatt's Cones of Duneshire look like a professional board game. Instead, Mayfair Games made a playable game with a full set of rules. However, it's complex and dense, so it has not been produced for the market. It was played at GenCon 2014 in Indiana, where 33 people paid $100 each for a ticket to play and the Ledgerman position (the scorekeeper who doesn't play) was auctioned off. The event made more than $20,000 for an Indiana food bank.

Chris Pratt modelled Andy's singing voice after Eddie Vedder, frontman of the band Pearl Jam, of whom Andy Dwyer is a huge fan.

In Season 7 Episode 12, one of the children trick or treating at Andy and April's house is wearing a Star Lord costume. Chris Pratt (Andy Dwyer) played the character of Star Lord in Marvel's Guardians of The Galaxy (2014).

FILM 1636: PASSENGERS 

TRIVIA: The voice of The Starship Avalon belongs to voiceover artist Emma Clarke, who is also one of the iconic 'Mind the Gap' voices on London Underground.

The bar scenes in Passengers (2016) are seem to be inspired by the bar scenes in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Similarities include: the bartenders are dressed in red tuxedos, carry themselves in a sophisticated manner, have a strange friendship with the lead male, are not concerned with payment, bartenders are unable to leave. In addition, the primary light source in the bar and lounge shines from below rather than above. Finally, the iconic orange and red carpet design from Overlook Hotel can be seen in the seating area.

On the poster, under the title contains the symbols: dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot - morse code for S.O.S

Jennifer Lawrence's character is named Aurora, a nod to Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959).

According to a news article by The Hollywood Reporter, both leads will be pulling down double digit millions: Chris Pratt will be paid $12 Million while Jennifer Lawrence is looking at $20 Million against 30% of the profits.

The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2007 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.

The Starship Avalon, shares its name with the mythical location where King Arthur is taken to recover from his wounds - the place whence he would one day return. As such, the bartender, Arthur, is aptly named.

David Fincher was attached to direct this film at an early stage after it was green-lit by Sony but left the project before any casting decisions were made. Rumors that Darren Aronofsky had considered directing the film were false; they were based largely on Aranofsky directing Jennifer Lawrence in a different film right before she began her work on this movie.