FILM 1678: LIFE

TRIVIA: Actress Rebecca Ferguson who plays Dr. Miranda North, British, Quarantine Officer, originally turned down the role. She thought she would not live up to standards. She was nervous and scared. She told it to the producer and was advised to talk with the director of the movie Daniel Espinosa. His philosophy and ideas for the film impressed her and decided to change her decision and eventually take part in the movie.

Second film to be written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and feature Ryan Reynolds. The first was Deadpool (2016)

FILM 1466: THE MARTIAN

TRIVIA: The Mars exteriors were shot in Wadi Rum, Jordan, which has a red colored desert. Another Mars mission film, Red Planet (2000), was shot there.

The writer of the novel, Andy Weir, first published his book for free on his own blog for fun. Then people asked him to put it in a downloadable form, then to put it on Amazon for Kindle download which he did at the then minimum price of $0.99.

The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 Pa (0.087 psi), about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure of 100 kPa (14.69 psi). It is so low that a "fierce storm", as they put it, would be something akin to a very light breeze messing up your hair. Author Andy Weir admitted this was his biggest inaccuracy in the story. Due to the low air density sound would not travel like it does on Earth and you would have to stand next to someone and scream for them to hear you, providing you could survive the freezing cold temperature, poisonous atmosphere and lack of pressure.

The name of the mission is Ares 3, a homage to the Greek god of war, Ares, whose Roman name is Mars. The name of the large ship traveling back and forth between Earth and Mars is Hermes, named after the Greek god who was the messenger and emissary. Hermes was seen as the patron and protector of travelers.

In the novel, Mark Watney has two Masters degrees, one in botany and one in mechanical engineering. In the film, however, he has a PhD in botany and no engineering background is mentioned, although he is shown to have a knowledge of engineering and maintenance of the mission equipment.

Drew Goddard, who wrote the screenplay for the film, was also at one point set to direct, but left that role to go direct The Sinister Six film. After that, Ridley Scott read the script and jumped into the project, rather than making a Prometheus (2012) sequel.

Author Andy Weir originally wrote the novel as a serial on his blog. Writing in this serialized approach allowed him to build the story as he went, essentially crafting each plot point around something that could go wrong, and then working out how Mark would get around it. Weir noted that he could not figure his way around failure of the crucial life support systems, so if the oxygenator, water reclaimer, or RTG failed, Mark would have died.

Here's what Mars is like, according to NASA:

Mars has a reddish-orange glow during the day from all the dust.

Sunrises and sunsets appear blue because Mars has almost no atmosphere.

One day or "sol" on Mars is about 37 minutes longer than an Earth day. The natural human circadian rhythm (or sleep-wake cycle) is about 24 hours and 11 minutes, but experiments have shown that humans have no problems adapting to cycles varying from 23 hours 30 minutes to 24 hours 36 minutes; so humans would not experience major disruptions of their biological clock on Mars.

One Martian year is nearly two Earth years. That's because Mars orbits the Sun much farther away than Earth, so it takes a lot longer for the red planet to complete one lap.

The average surface temperature on Mars is a chilly minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius). But temperatures can swing from a low of about minus-195 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-126 degrees Celsius) in winter, to a comfortable 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) during the summer.

Gravity on Mars is only about 40% that of Earth's, so a person would be 60% lighter (but not Moon-bouncing light).

Mars has barely any atmosphere - about 1% of the density of the cozy atmospheric blanket around Earth. That's not enough to protect the surface from dangerous space radiation.

The "steely-eye missile man" is a reference to flight controller John Aaron's actions following two lightning strikes to the Apollo 12 rocket in its first minute after liftoff. The electrical surge caused numerous problems in the telemetry system of the craft, which if unresolved would force a mission abort. Aaron recognized the telemetry problem as similar to one seen in testing a year before, and advised that the crew to switch the Signal Conditioning Electronics (SCE) system to the auxiliary position. This control was so obscure that neither the Capsule Commander, nor the Mission Commander knew what, or even where it was, but pilot Alan Bean did, following Aaron's advice. Altering the setting immediately fixed the problem, allowing the mission to continue. Aaron's quick, calm, and effective response to the crisis earned him the appellation, widely considered to be the highest praise possible within NASA. This can also be a reference to the 1995 movie Apollo 13.

Matt Damon has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in this film. This makes him the only nominee in the Best Actor category of the 84th Academy Awards who was nominated for playing a fictional character. All the other Best Actor nominees were nominated for playing historical figures.

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Film 893: Total Recall

Trivia: As many as seven directors were considered for and even hired to direct the movie, including Richard Rush, Bruce Beresford and David Cronenberg. Cronenberg had even written a few drafts of the script before Paul Verhoeven took over the Total Recall project.

Over 40 drafts of the script had already been written when Paul Verhoeven agreed to read the screenplay. Some of them depicted Quaid as a mild-mannered accountant (instead of a construction worker). Most scripts had a similar first half (Quaid visits Rekall and starts having altered memories), but they all varied widely in the ending. One of them even had Quaid discover that he was really an alien in human disguise (a twist that may have been inspired by another Philip K. Dick short story, "Impostor"). Verhoeven finally brought in Gary Goldman for additional work on the script. According to Verhoeven, although there were many changes made to each of the scripts, the final draft was very similar to the first draft by Ronald Shusett.

Johnnycab whistles the Norwegian national anthem.

When Quaid is dressed up as the fat lady, the passport he hands the guard is the actual passport of Priscilla Allen (who played the fat lady).

The short story on which it was based was first optioned in 1974, 16 years before the film finally was released.

Patrick Swayze was signed to play Quaid when the movie began preproduction in Australia with Bruce Beresford as the director. However, early in preproduction, Dino De Laurentiis' company went bankrupt. After Arnold Schwarzenegger heard about this, he persuaded Carolco to buy the script for him.

All of the crew fell ill due to food poisoning during production, with the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Shusett. Schwarzenegger escaped because he always had his food catered from the US. This was because three years earlier, he had fallen ill due to drinking tap water in Mexico during production of Predator. As for Shusett, he took extreme health precautions, such as only brushing his teeth with boiled or bottled water and insisting on getting a weekly vitamin B12 shot. Shusett was even mocked by the crew until they all got sick themselves.

As it is often done in futuristic movies, this one also uses contemporary design objects to depict future settings - among other things, the small cups with the black plastic ring, used by Quaid while preparing his breakfast smoothie, are Bodum Bistro coffee mugs from Denmark, and a desk lamp at Rekall is the Tolomeo from Italian manufacturer Artemide.

Although never mentioned in the film, the cover of the VHS-edition of the movie mentions that the movie takes place in the year 2084 AD.

The Spanish title for this movie is "Desafío Total", which translated to English means "Total challenge". This movie was also released under another Spanish title, "El Vengador del Futuro", which translates to "Future Avenger"

Jeff Bridges, Matthew Broderick and Richard Dreyfuss were each considered for the role of Quaid.

In the DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven said that for the love scene after Quaid wakes from his nightmare, he wanted Sharon Stone to show off more skin for the scene, but Stone had refused to do so. He settled for shooting the scene as it is shown, but mentions that he "got her back" while shooting the movie Basic Instinct.

When filming the fight scene between Lori and Melina, director Paul Verhoeven asked 2nd unit director Vic Armstrong to choreograph the fight not as a "cat fight" but more like a martial arts fight, to give the feel of two "warriors" fighting each other and not simply two women. Verhoeven remarks in the DVD commentary that this is probably the first time in a feature film where we see two women fighting each other normally, as opposed to a cat fight.