FILM 1734: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 2

TRIVIA: According to the Visual Effects Artists, Ego's planet comprises a trillion polygons, and is considered to be the biggest visual effect ever made.

Prop Master Russell Bobbitt had difficulty finding the cassette decks used in the first film, and all of the Sony Walkman headphones they found were broken. Bobbitt contacted Sony to see if they had any available for filming, which they did not, so he eventually created six from scratch.

Dave Bautista's Drax make-up took only ninety minutes to apply, down from four hours for the first film. However, he would have to sit in a sauna at the end of the day, to get the make-up off.

James Gunn choreographed and served as the motion-capture model for Groot's dance during the opening credits sequence. It took the visual effects team nearly two years to complete the CG rendering of the scene for the final film.

According to James Gunn, Kurt Russell was de-aged for the film's opening flashback (set in the 1980s) by visual effects company Lola VFX, in what was a "long, painstaking process that took many, many months to accomplish." He continued, "I know Lola did Michael Douglas, and I think they did Tony Stark and Steve Rogers as well. They're the best at what they do, and keep getting better."

Vin Diesel recorded Groot's voice for sixteen foreign-language releases of the film, up from six in the first film.

FILM 1682: ALIEN: COVENANT 

TRIVIA: This movie contains a scene where a toy bird drinking water (named, aptly, a "drinky-bird") is visible. In the opening scene of Alien (1979), there is such a toy bird shown on board the Nostromo's bridge.

This was the first "Alien" film to be released after the death of H.R. Giger. Giger inadvertently designed the original "Alien" looks and environments in his "Necronomicon" book, which led to Ridley Scott hiring him as Art Director for the film (and franchise). Giger essentially gave birth to the entire "Alien" look that we all know.

Walter breaks the pattern of the androids' names proceeding in alphabetical order (Ash, Bishop, Call, David). There is another pattern to their names, however. "D" is the fourth letter of the alphabet, and "W" is the fourth-to-last. The characters are named for David Giler and Walter Hill.

FILM 1644: ARRIVAL

TRIVIA: Director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer created a fully functioning, visual, alien language. Heisserer, Villeneuve and their teams managed to create a "logogram bible," which included over a hundred different completely operative logo-grams, seventy-one of which are actually featured in the movie.

The inky circular alien language was created by Montreal artist Martine Bertrand. It is also the artist's son who created Hannah's drawings.

Louise tells Colonel Weber that the word 'kangaroo' comes from an historical misunderstanding, and actually means "I don't know", only to tell Ian that the story is untrue but illustrates her point. This is an actual myth, not just a made up story. It involves Lieutenant James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks who arrived in Australia in the 18th century, where they made contact with the Guugo Yimithirr, a coastal Aboriginal tribe. They were puzzled by the sight of a kangaroo, and asked a tribesman what it was. According to the myth, the tribesman responded with the word "gangurru", meaning "I don't understand" in his language. Banks mistook it for the local term for the animal, spelling it as "kanguru" in his diary. The myth was debunked in the 1970s by linguist John B. Haviland. In reality, the word gangurru specifically refers to the grey kangaroo in the Guugo Yimithirr language. When Cook and Banks traveled 1,400 miles inland, they encountered the Baagandji tribe, who were unfamiliar with the other tribe and the word gangurru, and thought it meant "unknown animal". The Baagandji then started to use the word to describe Cook's and Banks' horses.

While the shape of the ship was decided early on, Denis Villeneuve had great difficulty imagining an interior that would allow humans to easily navigate through such a steep and vertical design. The later decision to turn gravity sideways offered an obvious and convenient solution.

Ted Chiang, who wrote the story the film is based upon, approved the film, saying, "I think it's that rarest of the rare in that it's both a good movie and a good adaptation... And when you consider the track record of adaptations of written science fiction, that's almost literally a miracle."

"Dirty Sci-fi" is what director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Bradford Young called the look they created together for Arrival. Villeneuve wanted it to feel like "This was happening on a bad Tuesday morning, like when you were a kid on the school bus on a rainy day and you'd dream while looking out the window at the clouds."

Scandinavian photographer Martina Hoogland Ivanow was a major influence on cinematographer Bradford Young's look of this film, especially with her exhibition and book "Speedway."

In writing the story, Ted Chiang had in mind the following quote of the great physicist Albert Einstein: "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

The siren emitted throughout the movie signaling the scientists' preparation to approach the ship is identical to the siren used in The Purge (2013) and its sequels.

Abbott and Costello resemble Kang and Kodos, the aliens from The Simpsons (1989) Treehouse of Horror segments.

  

FILM 1354: PITCH BLACK

TRIVIA: The contact lenses Vin Diesel wore in the movie, while a prototype during production, were briefly available to the public from Lens Quest following the release of the film. They were called Shine Job, like in the movie.

The contacts that Vin Diesel wore to play Riddick were a prototype. After the first day of filming, when they tried to remove the contact lenses, they couldn't. Due to where they were filming, they had to have an optometrist flown in from the nearest town, three hours away. Diesel called the contacts hubcaps.

In one of the shots showing cargo pods being jettisoned from the ship before the crash, one of the pods is numbered '2E', a jokey reference to the director's name ('Dave Twohy') from the effects crew.

Although Riddick narrates the beginning of the story, his first dialogue with another character (Carolyn) does not occur until almost thirty minutes into the movie.

FILM 1234: EVENT HORIZON

TRIVIA: The rotational shot of the space station over earth took nearly a third of the film's budget.

Paul W.S. Anderson's initial cut of the film ran to 130 minutes and was quite graphically violent, so much so that both test audiences and the studio baulked at the finished product. Paramount ordered him to cut the film by 30 minutes and tone down some of the violence, a decision he now regrets.

The script originally described the Gateway machine as a smooth and featureless black orb suspended in midair between large, rotating mechanical arms. It also was said to contain a stable black hole within it at all times (which the ship used as a power source), as opposed to briefly creating a temporary one. Paul Anderson decided to redesign it to involve interlocking circles as a homage to the puzzle box in Hellraiser (1987), which served as an inspiration.

For his final scenes, Sam Neill would come to the studio at 3am so that he could spend 7-8 hours in make-up.

Everyone's space suit has a flag showing future political changes on Earth. Characters portrayed by American actors wear a flag of the United States with 55 stars. Characters portrayed by British actors wear a European Union flag with 22 stars, replacing the former Union Jack. Sam Neill's character wears a modified Australian flag, with the Union Jack removed from the top left-hand corner, and the Aboriginal flag in place of the Union Jack.

This movie was produced entirely within the UK, even the special effects.

When Doctor Weir opens the blinds in his room during the opening sequence of the film, a whooshing sound effect can be heard. This sound effect is taken from the video game Doom, heard when the player opens a door.

Paul W.S. Anderson was offered the movie on the strength of the box office success of his previous film, Mortal Kombat (1995). It meant he had to turn down the opportunity to direct X-Men (2000), The X Files (1998) and Alien: Resurrection (1997).

Writer Philip Eisner visited the set while the space suit sequences were being filmed. The suits were so heavy that the actors risked back injuries, prompting Laurence Fishburne to stop between takes, point at Eisner, and shout mock-angrily: "You! You Eisner! You did this to me!".