FILM 1847: WILD WILD WEST

FILM 1847: WILD WILD WEST

TRIVIA: Will Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix (1999) to star in this movie, being a fan of the television series. He later said this was the worst decision he made in his career.

The film underwent costly re-shoots in an attempt to inject some humor after it was found that test audiences weren't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy.

Though a box-office failure in the U.S. (it managed to turn a profit overseas), it's commonly joked that the only reason the film earned any money at all is because unaccompanied minors would buy tickets to this film, then use them to sneak into screenings of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) and American Pie (1999).

Belle was originally cast with, and filmed with British actress Phina Oruche. Reportedly, the chemistry needed for the bathtub love scene wasn't there. The scene was recast and re-shot with Garcelle Beauvais. However, Oruche was not told, and found out she was no longer in the film at the premiere in Los Angeles.

Kevin Smith has said that the giant spider was producer Jon Peters' idea for the later-abandoned "Superman Lives" project with Nicolas Cage and Tim Burton.

Wild Wild West is featured in episode 257 of the "bad movie" podcast, We Hate Movies.

FILM 1517: MYSTERY MEN

TRIVIA: According to Ben Stiller in an interview on Late Show with David Letterman (1993), he and Greg Kinnear got into a heated argument on the set. Afterwards, Stiller tried to be released from the film.

Tom Waits' odd hand gestures when explaining the psychofrakulator were the result of him writing his dialogue on his fingers and reading the words as he went along.

A number of the sets used in the film are the same sets used in Batman Forever (1995).

The Mystery Men were the supporting cast of an underground superhero comic book called the Flaming Carrot. Mr. Furious and the Shoveler were the only ones from the comic to make it into the movie. Captain Amazing was created as a replacement for the Flaming Carrot, who was felt to be too bizarre to bring to the silver screen.

The Bowler's stream-of-consciousness monologue in support of independent filmmaking at the conclusion of the film was originally not intended to be included in the finished print. Janeane Garofalo was instructed by director Kinka Usher to say whatever came to her mind at the time (Usher simply wanted to use up some excess film.) Usher liked her performance so much he edited it into the final print.

CAMEOS: Michael Bay (noted action director) and Riki Rachtman, (former host of MTV's Headbangers Ball (1987)) as two of the Frat Boys. Bay asks "can we bring the brewskies?".

According to Hank Azaria, the cast argued constantly with each other over the comedic tone of the film.

As the team enters Dr. Heller's amusement park workshop, creepy music is heard. This is not just incidental music, but turns out to be Dr. Heller practicing on a 'waterphone', the strange cylindrical device with steel wires he can briefly be seen holding. The waterphone is primarily used in the motion picture industry in the composition of creepy incidental music.

In an odd parallel, Tom Waits actually creates curious machines from junk and hardware store purchases, in the same way that his character (Dr. Heller) does. Waits' machines are musical, and one is 6-stringed steel dumpster.

A subtle reference to William Shatner: once, while recording lines for the video game Star Trek: Judgment Rites (1993), Shatner pronounced "sabotage" strangely and was asked twice to repeat the line. He finally blurted, "Don't tell me how to act - it sickens me!" In Mystery Men (1999), this line is repeated by Ben Stiller. Later, Janeane Garofalo says to Stiller, "You say 'sabotage', I say 'saboTAGE'," another Shatner quote from the Star Trek recording session.

Ricky Jay's character tells Captain Amazing, "I'm a publicist, not a magician." Jay is in fact a well-known magician.

In a 2011 interview with A.V. Club, Hank Azaria claimed that during production Kinka Usher declared "I'm going back to commercials when this is done. I've had enough. I'd much rather do my cool little one-minute shorts that I make than deal with all this nonsense."

http://www.booooooom.com/2015/06/09/trippy-invention-of-the-day-the-sisyphus-machine/

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.

FILM 1136: SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

TRIVIA: The original classified ad upon which the film is based first appeared in Backwoods Home Magazine in 1997. It was written as last-minute filler by John Silveira, an employee of the magazine, who is credited in the film as "Time Travel Consultant" and also has a cameo. The ad was later featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) in the "Headlines" segment, and eventually turned into an Internet meme before being developed into a screenplay.

The part of Darius was written for Aubrey Plaza, because writer Derek Connolly wanted to work with her. Jake Johnson was likewise director Colin Trevorrow's first choice for the part of Jeff.