FILM 1412: INTERSTELLAR

TRIVIA: Early in pre-production, Dr. Kip Thorne laid down two guidelines to strictly follow: nothing would violate established physical laws, and that all the wild speculations would spring from science and not from the creative mind of a screenwriter. Christopher Nolan accepted these terms as long as they did not get in the way of the making of the movie. That did not prevent clashes, though; at one point Thorne spent two weeks talking Nolan out of an idea about travelling faster than light.

To create the wormhole and black hole, Dr. Kip Thorne collaborated with VFX supervisor Paul J. Franklin and his team at Double Negative. Thorne provided pages of deeply sourced theoretical equations to the team, which then created new CGI software programs based on these equations to create accurate computer simulations of these phenomena. Some individual frames took up to 100 hours to render, and ultimately the whole CGI program reached to 800 terabytes of data. The resulting VFX provided Thorne with new insight into the effects of gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, and led to him writing two scientific papers--one for the astrophysics community and one for the computer graphics community.

For a cornfield scene, Christopher Nolan sought to grow 500 acres of corn, which he learned was feasible from his producing of Man of Steel (2013). The corn was then sold and actually made a profit.

The majority of shots of the robot TARS were not computer-generated. Rather, TARS was a practical puppet controlled and voiced on set by Bill Irwin, who was then digitally erased from the film. Irwin also puppeteered the robot CASE, but in that instance had his voice dubbed over by Josh Stewart.

The method of space travel in this film was based on physicist Kip Thorne's works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", and the resulting film adaptation, Contact (1997). Matthew McConaughey stars in both films.

The giant dust clouds were created on location using large fans to blow cellulose-based synthetic dust through the air.

The wormhole explanation using paper and pen is exactly the same as it appears in Event Horizon (1997).

Cooper's first name is never revealed throughout the entire film.

Kip Thorne won a scientific bet against Stephen Hawking upon the astrophysics theory that underlies Interstellar (2014). As a consequence, Hawking had to subscribe Penthouse magazine for a year. This famous bet is depicted in The Theory of Everything (2014) which was released in the same year as Interstellar.

Some space sequences were shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of a Learjet.

Production designer Nathan Crowley based the Endurance ship's design on the International Space Station: "It's a real mishmash of different kinds of technology; you need analog stuff as well as digital stuff, you need back-up systems and tangible switches. Every inch of space is used, everything has a purpose. It's really like a submarine in space".

The apocalyptic Earth setting in this film is inspired by the Dust Bowl disaster that took place in the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

This is Christopher Nolan's seventh film to be included in the IMDb Top 250.

Many of the characters' names are found on the books in Murph's room as authors.

The film began as a Paramount production. When Christopher Nolan took the director's chair, Warner Bros., which had released Nolan's recent productions, sought a stake in the project. In exchange for international distribution rights, Warners gave Paramount the rights to co-finance future sequels of Friday the 13th (2009) and South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999).

The "hyper-sleep" chambers place the astronauts' bodies in a cold liquid, as seen after they wake up, when they are covered on blankets or thermal blankets. This is likely a practical reference to studies that have shown a state of hibernation can be achieved in the human body by causing hypothermia. This technology has been used to treat brain damage, and has been proposed as a viable means of keeping people with severe injuries alive after accidents, while they are transported to medical facilities, where they can be treated by specialists.

The TARS robot, when standing upright, strongly resembled a much smaller version of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Cooper tells Murph her name means "whatever can happen, will happen." Murphy's law actually states "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

The documentary-style interviews of older survivors shown at the beginning of the film and again on the television playing in the farmhouse towards the end of the movie are from Ken Burns The Dust Bowl (2012). They are real survivors, not actors, of that natural disaster.

FILM 1373: SEVEN SAMURAI

TRIVIA: Akira Kurosawa's original idea for the film was to make it about a day in the life of a samurai, beginning with him rising from bed and ending with him making some mistake that required him to kill himself to save face. Despite a good deal of research, he did not feel he had enough solid factual information to make the movie, but came across an anecdote about a village hiring samurai to protect them and decided to use that idea. Kurosawa wrote a complete dossier for each character with a speaking role. In it were details about what they wore, their favorite foods, their past history, their speaking habits and every other detail he could think of about them. No other Japanese director had ever done this before.

After months of research, all of the seven major characters in the film wound up being based on historical samurai.

First use of a scene which is now commonplace in cinema: The approaching horde coming into view as they crest a hilltop, specifically when Kikuchiyo sees the mounted bandits approaching.

This was the first film on which Akira Kurosawa used multiple cameras, so he wouldn't interrupt the flow of the scenes and could edit the film together as he pleased in post-production. He used the multiple camera set-up on every subsequent film.

The movie is set in 1586. We learn during the scroll scene that the real Kikuchiyo was born in year two of the Tensho era (1574) and is now 13 years old. Japanese convention considered a child to be one year old when he was born and advanced his age one year each new year.

Filming had to be stopped several times due to a shortage of horses for the final battle sequences.

The three writers, Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, wrote the final script over 45 days taking no phone calls or visitors, with few exceptions. The constant writing took a toll on their bodies and sickness was rampant in post-war Japan; at one time Kurosawa wound up in the hospital with roundworms.

The favorite film of producer George Lucas.

Director Trademark: Akira Kurosawa:  [names]  Kikuchiyo is a girl's name made up of two parts, like Betty Sue in America. That's why the samurai laugh so hard at the name. Obviously Toshirô Mifune's character is illiterate, and it's a very subtle thing that the other samurai choose to tease him about the age and not choosing a girl's name! Kiku translates to Chrysanthemum and Chiyo to one thousand generations. This is in fact one of several occasions in which Mifune's character in a Kurosawa film has a name composed of a plant and a number of years.

FILM 1327: FIELD OF DREAMS

TRIVIA: After the movie was completed test audiences didn't like the name "Shoeless" Joe Jackson because they said it sounded like a movie about a bum or hobo. Universal called director-screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson to tell him that "Shoeless Joe" didn't work, and the studio changed the title of the film to "Field of Dreams". When Robinson heard the news of the change, he called W.P. Kinsella, the author of the book, and told him the "bad" news, but apparently he didn't care, saying that "Shoeless Joe" was the title the publishing company gave the book. Kinsella's original title was "Dream Field".

The studio built the baseball diamond on an actual farm in Dyersville, Iowa. After the filming was completed, the family owning the farm kept the field, and added a small hut where you could buy inexpensive souvenirs. As of 1990, visitors were free to come to the field and play baseball as they please.

The movie's line "If you build it, he will come." was voted as the #39 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

Thousands of pallets of green grass were brought in to make the baseball field, but due to the haste in planting because of the shooting schedule, the grass was not able to grow appropriately and died. In order to keep the grass green, the production crew painted the grass.

Then unknown, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are among the thousands of extras in the Fenway Park scene, and are uncredited. Over a decade later, when Phil Alden Robinson welcomed Affleck to the set of The Sum of All Fears (2002), Affleck said, "Nice working with you again." Robinson asked, "What do you mean 'again'?" and Affleck explained the connection.

J.D. Salinger, on whom the character Terence Mann is based, was very offended by the fictional portrayal of himself in W.P. Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe", upon which the film is based. His lawyers said that they would be "unhappy if it [the story] were transferred to other media," so the studio created the character of Terence Mann.

Moonlight Graham's one-game baseball career is not as rare as might be suspected. In fact, there are nearly 1,500 players whose entire Major League career consisted of just one game.

The last cinema film of Burt Lancaster. He was 74 at the time of filming.

Gaby Hoffman's first feature film performance.