FILM 1691: MERCURY RISING 

TRIVIA: Actor Miko Hughes spent time with many autistic children at a special school. He also worked with a Chicago child psychologist to understand how to portray an autistic child.

Alec Baldwin appeared in this film due to a contractual obligation to Universal Pictures. Baldwin had previously backed out of a film for Universal and signed an agreement promising the studio another film. Years later, this film was presented to him and he did it to avoid further litigation.

The scene is Kudrow's wine cellar has Kudrow accusing Jeffries of watching too many SUV commercials. The irony of this, is that both Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin have done voice over work for those types of ads. Willis has done ads for the Toyota Tundra and Baldwin has done ads for Chevy/GMC.

Second film Alec Baldwin did with director Harold Becker. The first was Malice (1993).

FILM 1322: ANTITRUST

TRIVIA: What appears in the beginning credits around the title and the actors' names is HTML code, with some alterations. Much of the HTML is taken from the Internet Movie Database's homepage.

At Gary's party the song playing in the background is "Heroes." A different version of this same song plays in the Microsoft commercials.

The jacket number (and reference in the NURV computer database) for Richard Roundtree's character, Lyle Burton, is ND47. The number 47 occurs frequently in science fiction (most notably in Star Trek) due to a "joke proof" written by Donald Bentley in 1964, showing all numbers to be equal to 47.

A poster for the movie Hackers (1995) can be seen on the wall of one of the programmers Phil surveys in the day-care center.

Three of Winston's thugs have the last names Schmeichel, Sheringham and Solskjaer. This is a reference to the goalkeeper and goal scorers on Manchester United's 1999 U.E.F.A. Champions League winning team. The director is a Man. U fan.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/february/designing-for-the-imitation-game

FILM 1294: THE IMITATION GAME

TRIVIA: Winston Churchill stated that Turing made the single greatest contribution in Britain's war effort.

Benedict Cumberbatch confessed that in one of the final scenes of the film he couldn't stop crying and had a breakdown. It was, as he said, "being an actor or a person that had grown incredibly fond of the character and thinking what he had suffered and how that had affected him."

On 27 November 2014, ahead of the film's US release, The New York Times reprinted the original 1942 crossword puzzle from The Daily Telegraph used in recruiting code breakers at Bletchley Park during World War II. Entrants who solve the puzzle can mail in their results for a chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of the famous Bletchley Park facilities.

In an interview with USA Today, Benedict Cumberbatch said of Turing's Royal Pardon, "The only person who should be pardoning anybody is him (Turing). Hopefully, the film will bring to the fore what an extraordinary human being he was and how appalling (his treatment by the government was). It's a really shameful, disgraceful part of our history."

Framed tortoise shells are seen hanging on the walls of Turing's home. This is an allusion to his later work showing that the patterns on tortoise shells, despite their apparent complexity (and beauty), can come about from a rather simple set of rules or instructions, i.e. the underlying genetic code. This convinced Turing that exceedingly complex biological entities can stem from simple programs, i.e. from simple changes in the DNA. This insight has profound implications for evolution, especially to those arguments asserting that the complexity of life could not have arisen by chance alone.

http://www.aisleone.net

BOOK 108: MR PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE: ROBIN SLOAN

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a 2012 novel by American writer Robin Sloan. It was chosen one of the best 100 books of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, and was on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list[3] as well as the NPR Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List.[4] The US book cover, which glows in the dark, was done by Rodrigo Corral and chosen as one of the 25 best book covers for 2012 by BookPage.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore combines elements of fantasy, mystery, friendship and adventure as a way of looking at the modern conflict and transition between new technology (electronic) and old (print books). The main protagonist is a laid off Silicon Valley tech worker who begins working at a dusty bookstore with very few customers, only to start discovering one secret after another. The mysterious old books, along with the store's owner, lead to a 500-year-old secret society.