FILM 1988: LOVE POTION NO. 9

FILM 1988: LOVE POTION NO. 9 

TRIVIA: Although the movie is called Love potion #9. The love potion used throughout most of the film is love potion #8

The film grossed $754,935 at the box office.

BOOK 196: THE LITTLE PRINCE: ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

BOOK 196: THE LITTLE PRINCE: ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

The novella has been voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into 300 languages and dialects, selling nearly two million copies annually, and with year-to-date sales of over 140 million copies worldwide,it has become one of the best-selling and most translated books ever published.

Since its first publication, the novella has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera.

Though ostensibly styled as a children's book, The Little Prince makes several observations about life and human nature. For example, Saint-Exupéry tells of a fox meeting the young prince during his travels on Earth. The story's essence is contained in the fox saying that "One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye." Other key morals articulated by the fox are: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," and "It is the time you have lost for your rose that makes your rose so important." The fox's messages are arguably the book's most famous quotations because they deal with human relationships.

In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on Saint-Exupéry's own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal described in detail in his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars(original French: Terre des hommes).

TRIVIA:  The B612 Foundation is a private foundation created to track Near-Earth objectsthat might pose a threat to Earth, and is dedicated to protecting the planet from asteroid strikes, similar to the Tunguska event of 1908. The private foundationwas founded by a group of U.S. scientists and astronauts, including Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, Rusty Schweickart and Ed Lu in October 2002. The non-profit organization is named in honour of the prince's home asteroid.

An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the author of The Little Prince.

FILM 1632: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 

TRIVIA: Ryan Gosling was offered the role of the Beast, but turned it down to appear in La La Land (2016) instead. Emma Watson was offered the lead role in that film, but turned down that film to star in this one.

Sir Ian McKellen originally turned down the voice of Cogsworth in the original Beauty and the Beast (1991).

According to Ewan McGregor, the hardest part about playing Lumiere was getting the character's French accent right, although his wife of twenty years is in fact French. He said his voice ended up sounding Mexican instead of French, so he had to redo his dialogue after filming had completed.

Alan Menken, who scored Beauty and the Beast (1991), returns to score this live-action adaptation, which includes new recordings of the original songs in addition to new songs written by Menken and Tim Rice.

Ewan McGregor performed Lumiere's dances in motion-capture. However, he was embarrassed at wearing the motion-capture suit, and couldn't dance properly, unless he was completely alone with the filming crew.

During the ballroom scene, Emma Watson had a hard time not looking at her feet, because Dan Stevens was wearing steel toed shoes, and she was afraid he would step on her.

According to Disney, the first teaser trailer was viewed 91.8 million times in its first 24 hours. This marks the first teaser trailer of "Beauty and the Beast" to be the most viewed teaser trailer in history. Beating the previous record by Star Wars: The Force Awakens' (88 million views), followed by Captain America: Civil War (61 million views), each of them Disney films as well.

Bill Condon had actors sing The Lion King (1994)'s "Hakuna Matata" at the auditions to measure their singing voices. This was how he chose the final cast for this film.

Luke Evans (Gaston) had to wear fake teeth during filming due to having canines that are longer than normal, which he said would have made Gaston look like a vampire. Interestingly, he did in fact play a vampire in 2014's Dracula Untold as the title character.

Hidden Mickey: The lock on the stagecoach that Maurice and Belle are imprisoned in

In the 1991 classic the Beast's castle is shown to be quite close to the village, close enough for an angry mob to reach it in a few hours at most, yet nobody in the village know about it or notices the absence of those who live there when they are cursed. The prologue of the 2017 version elaborates on the story of the curse, stating part of the curse involved the world forgetting about the castle and its inhabitants.

During Belle and Beast's waltz, the letters WD can be seen in the coat of arms design on the floor. This is a nod to Walt Disney.

Jean Dujardin was strongly considered, and was the filmmakers' choice, for the role of Lumiere.

Bill Condon was chosen to direct Beauty and the Beast (2017), based solely on his previous work on Dreamgirls (2006).

When Maurice first enters the castle, he takes a second glance at the sconce holding up a lantern, as it resembles a human arm. This is a nod to the Jean Cocteau 1946's French film version of La Belle et la Bête (1946), where the halls of the castle are lit by human arms covered in gold holding up candelabras.

In the first half of the film, the Beast wears raggedy clothes, symbolizing his initially savage persona. After the song "Days in the Sun", the Beast's outfits become more refined and princely. This mirrors him slowly regaining his humanity.

The fictional town of Villeneuve is so named for the original author of "La Belle et la Bête," and Production Designer Sarah Greenwood used the real French village of Conques in Southern France for the inspiration.

Film 928: Sleeping Beauty

Trivia: Art direction for this movie was inspired by European medieval painting and architecture.

HIDDEN MICKEY: When the fairies discuss how to help the king and queen, Merryweather makes cookies in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

For the first time on a Disney animated feature, one man, Eyvind Earle, was in charge of the color styling, background design, and the overall look of the film, even painting the great majority of the production backgrounds for this film. Earle's modernistic approach to design and painting resulted provided this film a bold, unique art style, even though his colleagues did not care for his production methods and art style while the film was in production. The elaborate background paintings usually took seven to ten days to paint. By contrast, a typical animation background takes one workday to complete.

Much of the musical score is based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet "Sleeping Beauty". The musical score throughout the film was recorded by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. The ominous piece of music to which Maleficent hypnotizes Aurora into pricking her finger is called "Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat." In Tchaikovsky's ballet, it is used for a comic number in which two cats snarl at and try to scratch each other. Various movements from The Sleeping Beauty ballet underwent some reworking for the Disney film. The opening song (Hail to the Princess Aurora) is actually the ballet's second movement, after the overture. Also, the theme playing when the three fairies clean the cottage is based on "The Silver Fairy" movement, which, in its original form, is barely a minute long.

The third Disney film to undergo a painstaking computer restoration, after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1987 and 1993, and Pinocchio in 1992.

Second only to Dumbo (who didn't speak at all), this Disney title character has only about 18 lines of actual dialogue throughout the entire film in which she only appears in the film for 18 minutes and which is actually about the three fairies who protect her, not about the Sleeping Beauty herself. Rose/Aurora is only featured in the film in very few scenes and hardly says anything. Her first line is spoken 19 minutes into the film, and her last is delivered after she learns of her betrothal 39 minutes into the film. However, she does sing two songs during this time frame.

Princess Aurora's long, thin, willowy body shape was inspired by that of Audrey Hepburn.

In the traditional Italian version of this fairy tale, the Sleeping Beauty is named Princess Aurora. In the German version, she is named Briar Rose. The film incorporates both names by having Princess Aurora use the name Briar Rose while undercover.

The prince is named after Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

The restoration process involved four painstaking steps. The first step was to scan the original negative into a computer and subject the entire print to a deflickering procedure, evening out all the worn images and creating a cohesive canvas upon which the restoration artists could work. This was then followed by roto-scoping to extract the principal characters, dust-busting to remove all traces of dust and scuffing, and then re-inserting the characters into their cleaned-up backgrounds. Then all 180,000 frames would be completely repainted by up to 40 people in a process that clocked up nearly 48,000 hours. Once complete, the final product is then scanned onto a new negative.

Animator Eric Cleworth based the dragon's head movements on those of a rattlesnake about to strike.