FILM 1951: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

FILM 1951: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

TRIVIA: Matt Damon actually sang the song "My Funny Valentine."

Jude Law learned to play the saxophone and Matt Damon learned to play the piano for this film. However while Damon's training enabled him to recreate the proper keyboard fingering the music heard in the film is played by Sally Heath (the Bach) and Gabriel Yared (the Vivaldi).

This is Matt Damon's favorite film he has made.

Leonardo DiCaprio was considered for the role of Tom Ripley.

Fausto and Dickie (and Tom, later) sing "Tu Vuo' Fa' L'Americano," a humorous song about an Italian man in the 50s who wants to imitate the American lifestyle he sees in the movies. But American food doesn't do him any good and in the end, the money he spends comes from his mother's purse.

After viewing this film, Tommy Wiseau was so emotionally moved that he vowed to make a film just as, if not more compelling. This film would become The Room (2003).

When Anthony Minghella learned that Cate Blanchett was interested in playing the small supporting role of Meredith - as opposed to the female lead - he duly expanded the role to get her on board.

FILM 1613: LA LA LAND

TRIVIA: According to composer Justin Hurwitz, all the piano performance featured in the film was first recorded by pianist Randy Kerber during pre-production. Ryan Gosling then spent two hours a day, six days a week in piano lessons learning the music by heart. By the time filming had begun, Gosling was able to play all the piano sequences seen in the film without the use of a hand double or CGI.

Emma Watson turned down the role of Mia due to scheduling conflicts with Beauty and the Beast (2017), while Ryan Gosling turned down the role of the Beast in that film to appear in this one. Coincidentally, both are musicals.

The audition scene, where the casting director interrupts Mia's emotional performance to take a phone call, was actually inspired by one of Ryan Gosling's auditions in real life.

Won seven Golden Globes, more than any other movie ever.

John Legend, singer and pianist, had to learn how to play the guitar for his role.

The express lane freeway ramp used for the opening number, Another Day Of Sun, is the same stretch of freeway as used for the iconic "bus jump" sequence from Speed (1994), where a 50-foot section of the ramp was digitally removed using CGI to create the gap the bus must jump over.

The line in the film said by Sebastian (Ryan Gosling): "That's LA. They worship everything and they value nothing.", was actually added in by Ryan himself, when he heard his real life girlfriend, Eva Mendes, mention it as a "joke".

Films that were inspirations/influences and screened for the cast/crew include: Singin' in the Rain (1952), Top Hat (1935), An American in Paris (1951), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Swing Time (1936), The Band Wagon (1953), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and even 8 1/2 (1963) for the film's opening traffic number.

Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz came out with the idea of the film during their senior year at Harvard University in 2010 with Hurwitz writing the musical tracks and Chazelle on dialogue. Initially they found two financial backers and a producer for a budget of $1 million. However the demand for a lot of script changes made them to drop the project off. After Whiplash found critical success, the project was resurrected with the studio increasing the budget to $30 million; this allowed the filmmakers to rent the Griffith Observatory for filming (a full day rental there costs $10 thousand).

The crew had a limited time window of 30 minutes within two days to film the dusky purple twilight Hollywood Hills dance sequence. According to Damien Chazelle, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling managed five takes per day, where after each take, they would go back to the starting point with the assistants wiping their sweat before starting the dance routine again.

The phrase "pisi-kaka" that Ryan Gosling says twice is Hungarian for pee and feces. Meaning that it is not important. Ryan Gosling spent 5 months living in Budapest, Hungary whilst filming the sequel to the 1982 Sci-fi film Blade Runner.

FILM 1505: THAT THING YOU DO!

TRIVIA: Tom Hanks's writer-directorial film debut.

The four actors playing The Wonders rehearsed as a band for eight weeks to get the feel of performing - but most of their performances in the film were dubbed by other musicians.

Film debut of Tom Everett Scott. Tom Hanks was initially opposed to hiring Scott because of Scott's strong resemblance to a younger Hanks. He was finally convinced by his wife, Rita Wilson, who thought Scott was cute.

Adam Schlesinger, the bassist of Fountains of Wayne, penned the title song in response to a contest being held by the studio. Their song won, being used in the movie. The movie was released shortly after their first album.

Tom Hanks claimed that he wrote the script while on the promotional tour for Forrest Gump (1994) due to his boredom doing non-stop interviews.

Including full versions, alternative versions, live versions and snippets, the song "That Thing You Do" is heard eleven times in the movie.

Frequent Tom Hanks collaborator, Ron Howard's, brother plays a DJ in the film. It's Howard's director hallmark to feature his brother in his work.

FILM 1470: WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?

A documentary about the life and legend Nina Simone, an American singer, pianist, and civil rights activist labeled the "High Priestess of Soul."

TRIVIA: Nina Simone was born on February 21, 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, USA as Eunice Kathleen Waymon. She was married to Andrew Stroud and Donald Ross. She died on April 21, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France.

Sixth of seven children. She Studied at Julliard School of Music in New York.

Her professional name is a combination of Nina ("little one"), from an Hispanic boyfriend, and Simone from French film actress Simone Signoret.

In 1995 she was given a suspended eight-month jail term after firing a scatter-gun at a pair of noisy teenagers playing next to her home in Bouc-Bel-Air near Aix-en-Provence. That same year she was fined $US 5,000 for leaving the scene of a car accident that had occurred in 1993.

SIMONE STANDARDS: Throughout her career, Simone assembled a collection of songs that would later become standards in her repertoire. Some were songs that she wrote herself, while others were new arrangements of other standards, and others had been written especially for the singer. Her first hit song in America was her rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (1958). It peaked at number 18 in the pop singles chart and number 2 on the black singles chart. During that same period Simone recorded "My Baby Just Cares for Me", which would become her biggest success years later, in 1987, after it was featured in a 1986 Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial. A music video was also created by Aardman Studios. Well known songs from her Philips albums include "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on Broadway-Blues-Ballads (1964), "I Put a Spell on You", "Ne me quitte pas" (a rendition of a Jacques Brel song) and "Feeling Good" on I Put a Spell On You (1965), "Lilac Wine" and "Wild Is the Wind" on Wild is the Wind (1966).

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "Feeling Good", and "Sinner Man" (Pastel Blues, 1965) have remained popular in terms of cover versions (most notably a version of the former song by The Animals), sample usage, and its use on soundtracks for various movies, TV-series, and video games. "Sinner Man" has been featured in the TV series Scrubs, Person of Interest, The Blacklist, and Sherlock, and on movies such as The Thomas Crown Affair, Miami Vice, and Inland Empire, and sampled by artists such as Talib Kweli and Timbaland. The song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was sampled by Devo Springsteen on "Misunderstood" from Common's 2007 album Finding Forever, and by little-known producers Rodnae and Mousa for the song "Don't Get It" on Lil Wayne's 2008 album Tha Carter III. "See-Line Woman" was sampled by Kanye West for "Bad News" on his album 808s & Heartbreak. The 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit" originally by Billie Holiday was sampled by Kanye West for "Blood on the Leaves" on his album Yeezus.

Simone's years at RCA-Victor spawned a number of singles and album tracks that were popular, particularly in Europe. In 1968, it was "Ain't Got No, I Got Life", a medley from the musical Hair from the album 'Nuff Said! (1968) that became a surprise hit for Simone, reaching number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and introducing her to a younger audience. In 2006, it returned to the UK Top 30 in a remixed version by Groovefinder.

The following single, a rendition of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody", also reached the UK Top 10 in 1969. "The House of the Rising Sun" was featured on Nina Simone Sings the Blues in 1967, but Simone had recorded the song in 1961 and it was featured on Nina at the Village Gate (1962), predating the versions by Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan. It was later covered by The Animals, for whom it became a signature hit.

Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title "High Priestess of Soul". She was a piano player, singer and performer, "separately and simultaneously". As a composer and arranger, Simone moved from gospel to blues, jazz, and folk, and to numbers with European classical styling. Besides using Bach-style counterpoint, she called upon the particular virtuosity of the 19th-century Romantic piano repertoire—Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and others. Onstage, she incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element. She compared it to "mass hypnosis. I use it all the time". Throughout most of her life and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Fleming and guitarist and musical director Al Schackman.

FILM 1402: AMY

TRIVIA: Amy Winehouse's immediate family were initially willing to work with the film's producers and director, having heard about the success of their earlier documentary, Senna (2010). They granted the filmmakers access to hours of archive footage of Amy and her family, as well as giving the filmmakers' their blessing to interview Amy's family and friends. However, they - in particular, Amy's father, Mitch Winehouse - soon began to feel they were being misrepresented in the documentary, that the negative aspects of Amy's life were receiving much more attention than the positive, and that footage had been edited in order to produce an inaccurate narrative of Amy's story, especially the last three years of her life. Mitch Winehouse has said that Amy's fans should consider seeing the film for the rare, previously unseen, archive footage of his daughter, but should pay no attention to the film's general portrayal of her, which he has labeled "preposterous".