FILM 1414: EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY

TRIVIA: In the movie, Danielle rescues the prince from gypsies by carrying him on her back. According to legend, when King Conrad III defeated the Duke of Welf (in the year 1140) and placed Weinsberg under siege, the wives of the besieged castle negotiated a surrender which granted them the right to leave with whatever they could carry on their shoulders. The king allowed them that much. Leaving everything else aside, each woman took her own husband on her shoulders and carried him out. When the king's people saw what was happening, many of them said that that was not what had been meant and wanted to put a stop to it. But the king laughed and accepted the women's clever trick. "A king" he said, "should always stand by his word."

As depicted in the film, the real Leonardo da Vinci kept the Mona Lisa with him all the time until his death.

When Danielle is swimming in the lake, she is using the inverted breaststroke. It was popular in medieval and Renaissance Europe, and is still commonly taught as a survival stroke. In Australia, it is called the "survival backstroke."

Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller turned down the role of Prince Henry.

FILM 1324: THE RED SHOES

TRIVIA: When people complained to Hein Heckroth about the grim ending, he pointed out to them that in Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale, the ballerina had her feet hacked off by a woodsman to stop her dancing.

Technicolor founders Herbert T. Kalmus and Natalie Kalmus considered this film the best example of Three-Strip Technicolor. During the filming, however, Natalie Kalmus often complained that Jack Cardiff wasn't following the rules laid down for Technicolor films and demanded that they re-shoot various scenes. But Michael Powell always backed up Cardiff and they got the film they wanted.

When Ludovic Kennedy saw Moira Shearer in this film, he said that he knew instantly that she was going to be the girl he would marry. He actively sought her out and married her two years later, in February 1950 in the Chapel Royal in London's Hampton Court Palace.

Much to his surprise, Michael Powell had great difficulty persuading Moira Shearer to be in the film. She held out for a year before giving in to him. Shearer herself, however, did not particularly care for Powell. In later years, she described the making of the film as being a terrible ordeal. She said that Powell was distant and aloof and never really gave her much direction; and having to dance for hours on end on concrete floors also physically took its toll on all the dancers, making their legs swell up.

The film went massively over budget and the Rank Company (which financed it and was to release it) had little faith in its commercial potential. It tried to bury the film by not giving it a premiere (backer J. Arthur Rank walked out of its first performance) and by just letting it quietly show at late screenings at a cinema in London. Rank wasn't even prepared to strike a print for the American market. Slowly, however, audiences started to pick up on the film and Rank realized that it might have a potential breakout hit after all. Indeed, when an initial print was made for the US, it played at an off-Broadway theater for an unprecedented 110 weeks. That was enough to convince Universal to take up the distribution rights for the US, which it did in 1951.

The title ballet sequence took six weeks to shoot and employed over 120 paintings by Hein Heckroth. The dancing newspaper was achieved through careful cutting and use of wires.

Jack Cardiff deliberately manipulated camera speed during the Red Shoes ballet to create the effect of dancers almost hovering in mid-air at the peak of their jumps.

One of Martin Scorseses favorite films

The exterior of The Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate was shown in the rain because Michael Powell had often gone there to see plays or the ballet and he reminisced "it always seemed to be raining when one queued up for Madame Rambert's productions".

FILM 1233: TANGLED

TRIVIA: The longest animated Disney film since Fantasia (1940).

According to the animators for Flynn, he's meant to be 26 years old, thus making him 8 years older than Rapunzel, who is 18 in the film - the largest age gap between any other Disney princess couple.

This is the first animated Disney "princess" film to get a PG rating by the MPAA. All other Disney "princess" films got a G rating.

The character design of Flynn came from the process which was called the 'hot man meeting' by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, during which they set up a meeting with all of the female employees of the studio in one room and asked them for their opinions of what made a man good looking in order to create Flynn's character design with features such as eye color, hair color and style and body type. Video footage showed concept art and photos of various male celebrities, including Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, Brad Pitt, David Beckham and Gene Kelly on the walls of the room.

Rapunzel is the first Disney Princess with supernatural powers.

Disney's 50th animated feature.

The descending lantern that Rapunzel lifted back skyward was the one her parents, the king and queen launched from the palace veranda. It was the only one with the royal symbol of the sun on it.

You will find Pinocchio in the Snuggly Duckling, right after the cupid is swung to the right of the screen. You will find him in the top right corner in the rafters.

In the marketplace, when Rapunzel looks at the mosaic of herself, the camera cuts from her eyes to the tile eyes of the picture and - very briefly - there is a clarinet musical motif that is exactly the same as the motif in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), when Cameron is looking at the pointillist painting and the camera cuts between Cameron's eyes and that of the child in the painting. The moment is just a fraction of a second; just after that, Rapunzel looks at the clarinet player walking behind her and smiles.

According to Glen Keane, the movie's visual style (a three-dimensional painting) was greatly inspired by the Romantic painting "The Swing", by the French rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard: "A fairy tale world has to feel romantic and lush, very painterly." For a clear idea of what was intended, the animators duplicated the picture in 3D to achieve a shot containing depth and dimensions.

Natalie Portman was considered for Rapunzel and her audition recording was used for a pencil test.

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Film 942: The Princess Bride

Trivia: The fencing masters that Inigo and Westley talk about studying are all real fencing masters from the 14th to 16th centuries (although the styles of fighting they are using have little to do with what those masters actually taught).

Director Rob Reiner left the set during Billy Crystal's scenes because he would laugh so hard that he would feel nauseated.

Despite his character Fezzik's almost-superhuman strength, André the Giant's back problems at the time prevented him from actually lifting anything heavy. Robin Wright had to be attached to wires in the scene where Buttercup jumps from the castle window into Fezzik's arms because he couldn't support her himself.

The two rival kingdoms in the movie are Florin and Guilder. These are the names of two former Dutch currencies, the Florijn and Gulden.

According to author William Goldman, when he was first trying to get the movie made in the 1970s, a then-unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to play Fezzik, and he was strongly being considered because Goldman could never get his first choice, André the Giant, to read for the role. By the time the movie was made about 12 years later, Arnold was such a big star they could not afford him, Andre was cast after all and the two big men had gone on to become friends.

Most of the movie was filmed on location in England. The castle used for the film was Haddon Hall, a fortified country house (not a castle as such) that dates to before 1087 (when it was listed in the Domesday Book). The tapestries in Haddon Hall interiors are original, dating to the late medieval and renaissance periods.

The giant rodents were created with diminutive actors inside rat suits. On the day Westley was supposed to battle the giant rat, the "rat actor" was pulled over for speeding and subsequently arrested, and actually had to be bailed out of jail by the filmmakers so the scene could be filmed.

Mandy Patinkin claims that the only injury he sustained during the entire filming of this movie was a bruised rib due to stifling his laughter in his scenes with Billy Crystal.

Max and Valerie, played by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane respectively, were named after author William Goldman's parents, Max and Valerie.

There really was a "Dread Pirate Roberts" (Bartholomew Roberts, also known as Black Bart) who operated in the Caribbean in the early 18th century. He is reckoned by many to have been the most successful pirate of all time.

Cary Elwes was cast because of what Rob Reiner called his Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn quality. Fairbanks and Flynn both played Robin Hood (Fairbanks in Robin Hood and Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood). Later Elwes spoofed their performances in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Mandy Patinkin has said that the role of Inigo Montoya is his personal favourite over the course of his entire career.

Uma Thurman auditioned for the role of Buttercup.