FILM 1619: BIG HERO 6

TRIVIA: According to Scott Watanabe, the movie is set in an alternate future where after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was rebuilt by Japanese immigrants using techniques that allow movement and flexibility in a seismic event. After the city was finished being rebuilt, it was renamed San Fransokyo due to it being a city with Japanese and American architecture combined.

The production team watched videos of fire ants as an inspiration of the movement of the Microbots.

In order to create the thousands of civilians living in San Fransokyo, the production team invented a program called the "Denizen Factory", which allowed them to build a whole series of background characters that each have a distinct design.

Over 200 different signs were created for the advertisements of San Fransokyo.

The inflatable, vinyl, truly huggable design of Baymax is inspired by 'soft robotics' research at Carnegie Mellon University.

The model of the design of Baymax's eyes is a Japanese traditional bell which is called Suzu. Don Hall, the director, says that he got an inspiration when he visited a temple in Japan.

One of the few Disney Films that is partially owned by both Pixar and Marvel.

This is Alan Tudyk's third Disney movie in a row (Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and Frozen (2013)).

During the first twenty minutes of the movie, Tadashi's breathing is also animated.

Fred's father, seen in the family portrait the six heros walk past upon first entering Fred's house, is based on Stan Lee (who has had a cameo in every Marvel movie to date).

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FILM 1413: THE FLY

TRIVIA: The infamous cat-monkey scene where Brundlefly fuses a cat and the remaining baboon and then beats it to death with a lead pipe was cut following a Toronto screening. According to producer Stuart Cornfeld the audience felt that there was no turning back for Seth and they lost all sympathy for his plight, which caused the rest of the film to not play as well. In Cornfeld's own words: "If you beat an animal to death, even a monkey-cat, your audience is not gonna be interested in your problems anymore".

After watching some of his early films, director Martin Scorsese asked to meet David Cronenberg. Upon meeting him, Scorsese said he looked like a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. This inspired Cronenberg to give himself a cameo as a doctor.

In a 1987 interview on Sinister Image (1987) Vincent Price revealed that when this remake was released, star Jeff Goldblum wrote him a letter saying, "I hope you like it as much as I liked yours." Price was touched by the letter, he composed a reply and went to see the film, which he described as "wonderful right up to a certain point... it went a little too far."

The line, "I'm saying I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake," is a reference to author Zhuangzi's famous Butterfly Dream story. It's also a reference to Franz Kafka's famous short story, The Metamorphosis.

David Cronenberg met with some opposition when he announced that he wanted to cast Jeff Goldblum in the lead role. The executive at Fox who was supervising the project felt that Goldblum was not a bankable star, and Chris Walas felt that his face would be difficult to work with for the make-up effects. Both, however, deferred to Cronenberg's judgment. Cronenberg himself later had reservations when Goldblum suggested Geena Davis, his girlfriend at the time, for the other lead role, as he did not want to have to work with a real-life couple. Cronenberg was convinced after Davis's first reading that she was right for the role. Producer Stuart Cornfeld suggested that they audition more actresses saying that it's the "script that is brilliant". Cornfeld relented after "nobody else even came close".

Michael Keaton was offered the role of Seth Brundle, but he declined.

FILM 1339: EX MACHINA

TRIVIA: Director Alex Garland has described the future presented in the film as 'ten minutes from now'. Meaning that 'if somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we wouldn't be that surprised'.

When Caleb sits down at Nathan's computer and begins coding, the code he types is for an algorithm called the Sieve of Eratosthenes an algorithm for finding prime numbers. However it also chooses primes that form an ISBN = 9780199226559. This ISBN is for the book "Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds", a book about the history of Artificial Intelligence.

The title derives from the Latin phrase 'Deus Ex-Machina', meaning 'a god From the Machine', a phrase that originated in Greek tragedies. An actor playing a god would be lowered down via a platform (machine) and solve the characters issues, resulting in a happy ending for all.

Early in the movie, Caleb listens to the OMD song "Enola Gay" (1980). The Enola Gay was the airplane used to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Later, in talking to Nathan about how AI will transform the world, Caleb shares J. Robert Oppenheimer's quote from the Bhagavad Gita about the making of that atomic bomb ("I am become death, the destroyer of worlds").

Alex Garland's directorial debut.

Throughout the film, the colors red, blue, and green are prominently displayed in each scene (the green forest, the red brick hallway, the keypad's red and blue functions, etc.) This is a nod to the RGB color model, which is used to display images in electronic systems, such as computers. Ava, of course, being the main computer in the film.

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Film 931: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Trivia: The external appearance of Flint's laboratory is modeled after Wardenclyffe Tower, which was Nikola Tesla's laboratory for wireless transmission experiments.

This was the first Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation film to have an altered logo sequence. When the Columbia Pictures logo appears, a banana hits the Torch Lady and knocks her out of the image. During the Sony Pictures Animation logo sequence, dark clouds uncover the end of the logo.

Near the end of the film when character Earl Devereaux jumps through a tortilla chip, a giant letter T is left behind, representing the voice actor Mr. T.

The door lock on Flint's laboratory is operated by a 1970s 'Simon' game.

In one scene, a rainbow of little colored bite-sized candies ends in children's mouths. This is a reference to Skittles, a fruity bite-sized candy whose slogan is "Taste The Rainbow".

Flint's e-mail address is flockwood@flinternet.com. At the time of the movie's release, going to Flinternet.com would redirect you to the movie's official website.

The island on which the town of Swallow Falls (later Chewandswallow) is located corresponds to the real-life geographic location of Bermuda. This is implied at the beginning when the island is said to be under the first "A" in Atlantic, as Bermuda is the only island in the West Atlantic north of the tropics. It is later confirmed on a weather map towards the climax of the movie, when the weather storm is clearly seen to originate several hundred miles of the coast of the Carolinas.

Bill Hader (Flint), Andy Samberg (Baby Brent), and Will Forte (Joe Towne) were all cast members of Saturday Night Live together for several seasons before this film.

Amy Poehler and Will Arnett planned to produce and star in the film during the early development stages.