FILM 1778: 88 MINUTES

FILM 1778: 88 MINUTES

TRIVIA: The film runs in "real time" meaning that at the moment Jack Gramm is first told he has only 88 minutes to live, the remaining running time of the motion picture until the identity of the person who set Gramm up is exactly 88 minutes.

Was scheduled for release in 2005 but the release date was pushed back numerous times.

This movie reunites Al Pacino and Damien Leake from Sea of Love 1989.

This movie reunites Al Pacino and Amy Brenneman from Heat 1995.

FILM 1768: EVOLUTION

FILM 1768: EVOLUTION

TRIVIA: David Duchovny turned down a role in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) to appear in this movie.

Initially written as a serious science-fiction thriller, Ivan Reitman hired David Diamond and David Weissman to re-write the project as a comedy. The original writer, Don Jakoby, actually enjoyed the changes so much, he continued working on the film alongside the other writers.

Shot in December, DreamWorks asked the locals to delay putting up their Christmas decorations. Following the shoot, DreamWorks paid the city employees overtime to light up the town in time for Christmas.

The placement of the element selenium in Head and Shoulders shampoo is technically correct. Though regular Head and Shoulders shampoo does not have any of the element, Head and Shoulders Intensive Treatment Shampoo actually does consist of approximately 1% selenium sulfide.

In certain point Orlando Jones's character tells David Duchovny to call the government, but he answers "No government, I know those guys". This is a reference to his character in The X Files.

FILM 1650: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

TRIVIA: Edward G. Robinson, Dan Duryea, and Joan Bennett would go on to play the three leads in Fritz Lang's next film Scarlet Street (1945).

FILM 1501: EXPERIMENTER

TRIVIA: Peter Sarsgaard also appeared in "Kinsey"(2004) which was a film about another controversial researcher in the field of human behavior/psychology.

PRODUCTION: Although Almereyda was aware of Milgram's work, it wasn't until his girlfriend began taking a class on him that Almereyda became interested. Subsequently, the director found himself reading Milgram's Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. According to Almereyda once he started reading "[he] instantly saw how filmable it was" becoming increasingly interested in making it into a film the more he went on. In filming, Almereyda wanted it to be "playful" in nature as he felt that's how Stanley Milgram himself would have made it. Almereyda decided to have Milgram break the fourth wall based on viewing films of his in which Milgram would talk to the camera, reminding him of Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock. From this Almereyda figured having the character talk to the camera "seemed natural and in fact essential to include that in the movie.” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimenter_(film) )

FILM 1459: WILD STRAWBERRIES

TRIVIA: Ingmar Bergman has described in the interview how he came up with the idea while driving from Stockholm to Dalarna, stopping in Uppsala where he had been born and raised, and driving by outside his grandmother's old house, when he suddenly began to think about how it would be if he could open the door and inside it would be just as it had been during his childhood. "So it struck me - what if you could make a film about this; that you just walk up in a realistic way and open a door, and then you walk into your childhood, and then you open another door and come back to reality, and then you make a turn around a street corner and arrive in some other period of your existence, and everything goes on, lives. That was actually the idea behind Wild Strawberries (1957)"

Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer says that several scenes had to be shot indoors due to Victor Sjöström's poor health. "We had to make some very bad back-projection in the car because we never knew if Victor would come back alive the next day." Nevertheless, as long as Victor was home by 5:15 P.M. each day, "and had his whiskey punctually, all went well."

The dummy that Isak Borg mistakes for a pedestrian during the dream sequence was constructed from a balloon and a silk stocking.

FILM 1295: THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

TRIVIA: In an e-mail to director James Marsh about the portrayal by Eddie Redmayne, Stephen Hawking said there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself.

In addition to his copyrighted voice, Stephen Hawking also lent the filmmakers his Medal of Freedom medallion and his signed thesis to use as genuine props in the film.

Eddie Redmayne met with Stephen Hawking only once before filming. "In the three hours I spent with him, he said maybe eight sentences," recalls Redmayne. "I just didn't feel like I could ask him intimate things." Therefore, he found other ways to prepare for the role. He lost about 15 pounds and trained for four months with a dancer to learn how to control his body. He met with 40 ALS patients, kept a chart tracking the order in which Hawking's muscles declined, and stood in front of a mirror for hours on end, contorting his face. Lastly, he remained motionless and hunched over between takes, so much so that an osteopath told him he had altered the alignment of his spine. "I fear I'm a bit of a control freak," Redmayne admits. "I was obsessive. I'm not sure it was healthy."

The quote "Daisy, Daisy Give me your answer, do" that Hawking uses while experimenting with his new speech-generating device, comes from the lyrics of the well-known song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)", written by Harry Dacre in 1892. This is the song that was used for the earliest known demonstration of computer speech synthesis in 1961, when it was "sung" by an IBM 704 computer. As a tribute to that event "Daisy Bell" was also sung by the fictional HAL 9000 computer in a memorable scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).