FILM 2017: THE MUMMY

FILM 2017: THE MUMMY

TRIVIA: This film is intended to be the first installment in a possible Universal Monsters shared universe, also known as "Dark Universe."

The film's tagline, "Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters," is a quote from Bride of Frankenstein (1935), which was also produced by Universal and will be the next installment in the Dark Universe franchise.

The zero gravity scene took sixty-four takes and was shot for two days in a falling plane. Reportedly, a lot of the crew got nauseous during the scene and vomited, except for the main stars, Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis, who were really proud of the stunt.

When Jake Johnson was offered his part in the movie, he loved the idea and the opportunity to work with Tom Cruise, knowing that Cruise does most of his own stunts. He signed on immediately, but when he read the full script and learned what kind of dangerous actions were expected of him, he admitted to getting cold feet. However, Cruise allowed Johnson access to his private facilities for a rigorous 4.5 month training course, making him well prepared for all the stunts he was required to do.

Director Alex Kurtzman stated that there is no post credits scene because "That's Marvel's domain."

Due to the film's lukewarm reception and box office, Universal's proposed Dark Universe franchise was shelved indefinitely.

The Mummy had a relatively disappointing box office run, grossing just over $400m worldwide. Studio sources have said that Tom Cruise exerted too much control on the set, and that his input into editing and marketing greatly changed the pace and style of the movie.

When Ahmanet is mummified and is put the sarcophagus, the lid was too close to Sofia Boutella's face. And it hit her right in the nose, and all the bandages around her head were soaked with blood. After the bloody bandages were removed, a second take was done, only this time, the lid was further away from her face.

FILM 2008: THE HAPPENING

FILM 2008: THE HAPPENING

TRIVIA: The movie was shot completely in sequence.

M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated film.

Mark Wahlberg admitted that he regrets working on this movie, but said, "You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn't playing a cop or a crook."

Director M. Night Shyamalan's first film in which he does not physically appear for a cameo. He is the voice of "Joey," who calls Alma a few times throughout the movie. The audience never sees him, nor learns of his fate.

Bystander apathy is a real psychological phenomenon, with a strong theoretical and evidential base.

The film's tagline, "We've sensed it. We've seen the signs. Now...it's happening," referring to M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed The Sixth Sense (1999), Signs (2002), and The Happening (2008).

Mark Wahlberg's line "Be scientific, douchebag" was improvised.

FILM 2007: NEXT

FILM 2007: NEXT

TRIVIA: (at around 4 mins) The "girl with necklace" at his magic show is played by Alice Kim Cage, Nicolas Cage's wife.

The diner where Nicolas Cage runs into Jessica Biel's character is the same diner used in xXx (2002) with Vin Diesel.

At the cabin, Cage tells a joke about a Buddhist monk ordering a hot dog. He actually ruins the joke when he messes up the punchline, saying "I'll have one with everything." However, the actual line is "Make me one with everything", a subtle but extremely important difference.

FILM 1996: THE FRIGHTENERS

FILM 1996: THE FRIGHTENERS 

TRIVIA: It was during filming this on-location in New Zealand, that Michael J. Fox made up his mind that he'd had enough of being away from his family making movies, and decided to head back to the small screen and star in a new sitcom (Spin City (1996)). This turned out to be his last leading role in a film.

When Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson were writing the part of the Drill Sergeant in the graveyard, they wrote the part as a spoof of R. Lee Ermey's character in Full Metal Jacket(1987) with the intention of getting an actor in New Zealand for the role. But they didn't feel the actors who auditioned were right, and finally ended up approaching Ermey himself.

Danny Elfman was so impressed with Peter Jackson's previous movie, Heavenly Creatures(1994), that he offered to do the score for one of Jackson's next movies, and agreed to this movie without even knowing what it was about.

Was originally planned as a Tales from the Crypt (1989) feature, but Executive Producer Robert Zemeckis liked the script so much, he decided it should stand on its own and not be part of a series.

The film was not released to theaters in Tasmania. The Port Arthur Massacre rather spookily mirrored the film's content and ihappened not long before the film's release. It was released on video and subsequently broadcast.

When Frank's ghost friends attack the Lyskey residence, a mini statue of Elvis Presley floats in front of Ray. Peter Dobson, who plays Ray, previously appeared in Forrest Gump (1994) as Elvis Presley.

Roughly 21 minutes into the film Michael J. Fox's character is eating by his window. If you look closely he is eating one of General Mills famed Monster Cereals. The flavor, Boo Berry which is the ghost cereal.

Cameo 

Melanie Lynskey: Star of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) is the Deputy taking Lucy Lynskey's statement at the police station. Lucy's last name is a reference to the actress as well.

FILM 1933: VELVET BUZZSAW

FILM 1933: VELVET BUZZSAW

TRIVIA: When Dan Gilroy was asked by Vanity Fair what he wants audiences take away from the film, he said: "I hope people look at art in a slightly different way. Any time you listen to a piece of music or look at a sculpture or a painting or a film, you realize the artists behind that have invested what I believe to be their creative soul into the work. To me, that's a bit of a sacred thing and I think we've lost that a little bit. I would love it if we could return to that."

Dan Gilroy was struck by the idea for Velvet Buzzsaw after having visited the Dia contemporary-art gallery in Beacon, New York in 2017 and hours after came up with a rough plot. In an interview with Vanity Fair he described: "It was the Tuesday after Christmas, at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and no one was there. I was wandering around this huge, empty warehouse with all this rather disturbing contemporary art. And I wound up in the basement in a video installation with, like, dentist chairs and rats running around. And I just thought, 'Man, this would be a great place for a horror movie.' The idea that artists invest their souls in their work and it's more than a commodity--that has always interested me. I suddenly saw a way of incorporating it all, to explore how, when art and commerce are dangerously out of balance, bad things can happen. It clicked very quickly."

After Dan Gilroy's debut film Nightcrawler (2014), as well as his sophomore movie Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017), this is his third feature film set in Los Angeles. Gilroy often praises the city for having such natural beauty to it, and even more importantly, people that have been working there for ages who are all experts on their various crafts.

FILM 1761: WHITE NOISE

FILM 1761: WHITE NOISE

TRIVIA: The recording used in the trailer that is attributed to Stanley Searles ("I love you") is thought to be the "ghostly" voice of Searles, a former politician who died in 2002. The recording was said to have been made by Searles' daughter, a well-known EVP researcher named Karen Mossey.

The EVP recording from the trailer ("I will see you no more") that is attributed to a woman named Ruth Baxter, who died in 1987, is supposedly a recording from Point Lookout, a "haunted" lighthouse in Maryland, made by an EVP researcher named Sarah Estep. The lighthouse was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and some interpretations of the recording believe it to say, "I was seeing the war", or "I was seeing the water". While the recording is said to be authentic by the AAEVP, the Ruth Baxter story is fictional.

(At around one minute) Approximately one second before the WHITE NOISE title card appears, there is a split-second subliminal "flash" image of a skeletal figure. Immediately after the final blackout at the end of the film, there is another "flash" image, this time (presumably) of Michael Keaton, which fades into the static.

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017)

TRIVIA: Everett McGill came out of retirement after 17 years to reprise his role as Big Ed Hurley.

This belated season was first teased by simultaneous tweets, "That gum you like is going to come back in style," from Mark Frost and David Lynch at 11:30am, the same time that Agent Dale Cooper is first seen dictating to his secretary Diane and "entering the town of Twin Peaks" in the original pilot episode of Twin Peaks (1990).

During the audition process for Twin Peaks (2017), David Lynch requested the actors to perform a lengthy monologue about themselves.

During a Q&A on the annual TLV International Student Film Festival on June 2016, David Lynch said that working on Twin Peaks (2017) again after so many years was one of the greatest experiences he ever had.

Michael J. Anderson was approached to reprise his role as The Man From Another Place, but negotiations fell through over pay disputes. Anderson later took his anger to social media, going so far as to accuse Lynch of rape, incest, murder and encouraging suicide. A spokesperson for Anderson denied to comment further, only to say that Anderson would not be doing any interviews "for the foreseeable future."

The actor who portrays the Security Guard, Michael Bisping, is the 2016 UFC Middleweight world champion.

FILM 1530: PREMONITION

TRIVIA: When Sandra Bullock was restrained and struggling in the hospital scene she really did cut herself by accident. So instead of using a body double for the injection, it really was Bullock who got the Tetanus shot in the scene.

The story is nearly identical to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode "The Ides of March," which originally aired more than two decades previous on 10 September 1975.

FILM 1484: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE 

TRIVIA: Although the film was granted a '15' certificate for video in 1987 by the BBFC in the UK, there is no evidence that Warner Home Video actually released this film on any media in the UK until the DVD release in 2007. Indeed, the film was once slated to form part of Warner's 1995 UK 'Terror Vision The Crypt Collection' with a proposed release date of 30 October 1995 quoted in some release catalogs inserted into the collection's earlier releases but this release never materialized until in 2007 it was released in the UK on DVD.