Hello to everyone who has been following this blog for many years - I'm still blogging, I'm just moving over to https://www.claireheffer.com/blog - please continue to follow and let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been kind enough to visit over the years. May the lists continue...
Showing posts with label surreal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surreal. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 September 2017



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.



Thursday, 27 October 2016



FILM 1583: THE ONE I LOVE 

TRIVIA: About the script and the way it was performed, Duplass stated, "The way this worked, there (was) about a 50-page document that was the entire movie - the scene beats, everything, locations - except for the actual dialogue in the film. And most of the dialogue you see in the film is improvised. Although in certain scenes, where we have effects and things like that, Justin our writer [Justin Lader] would write out a version of that scene the night before, to give us a good guide, so we could have something to stick to." About the script and the way it was performed, Duplass stated, "The way this worked, there (was) about a 50-page document that was the entire movie - the scene beats, everything, locations - except for the actual dialogue in the film. And most of the dialogue you see in the film is improvised. Although in certain scenes, where we have effects and things like that, Justin our writer [Justin Lader] would write out a version of that scene the night before, to give us a good guide, so we could have something to stick to."

The filming location is Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen's home. Photos of the guest house can be found in a Houzz article titled "Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen's Guesthouse Brims With Charm."

The director Charlie McDowell's girlfriend, Rooney Mara was the costume designer. She goes by a pseudonym on the movie because they didn't want to credit Rooney Mara, costume designer. She's Bree Daniel on the credits.

Ted Danson, playing the therapist, is director Charlie McDowell's stepfather. McDowell's mother Mary Steenburgen is also featured doing voice work.

When Ethan is browsing the computer late in the film, he discovers a number of folders, each bearing the names of a couple who have visited the retreat. One of them is "Ted & Mary," a reference to husband & wife (and relatives of the director) Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.



Wednesday, 20 January 2016



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.



Saturday, 19 September 2015




FILM 1380: THE FALL

TRIVIA: The film was shot in 28 countries for four years. According to the director no stages were ever used, only existing locations.

According to his Facebook profile, Peter Jackson decided to cast Lee Pace as King Thranduil in the 'Hobbit' trilogy, after seeing his performance in this movie.

Darwin's monkey "Wallace" is a reference to the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who independently developed the idea of natural selection. Darwin and Wallace presented the theory together, but due to the publication of "On the Origin of Species" Darwin usually gets sole credit for the theory. The scene on Butterfly Island when Darwin closes Wallace in the sack and says " we.... I have an idea" alludes to him taking sole credit for ideas that were not completely his own.

The cinematic poster for this movie is based on the Salvador Dali painting, "1935_03_Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment", circa 1935.

One of the significant plot developments - Alexandria's misinterpreting the letter E as the number 3 in a note written by Roy - was derived from an accidental misreading by the 6 year old actress during filming, which the director then realized he could adapt into a clever twist in the story.

The magic word "Googly" that Alexandria repeats in the movie is also the name of the production company.