FILM 1956: A SIMPLE FAVOUR

FILM 1956: A SIMPLE FAVOUR

TRIVIA: The gin used in the martinis shared by Anna and Blake's charaters is Aviation (American) Gin, a company owned by Blake Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds.

One of the reasons that Blake Lively wanted Emily to wear suits was because she wanted to differentiate Emily from the character she played on "Gossip Girl." Both characters are women in fashion from the Upper East Side. "I wanted it to be a very different look and vibe," she says.

Blake Lively wanted to create an iconic look for her character. She drew inspiration from Paul Feig's style in real life - "the buttoned up, three piece suit, bow tie, pocket square, cuff link wearing version."

The most prominent part of the soundtrack consists of French songs from the '60s.

In an interview, Anna Kendrick recalled the scene where Stephanie goes to Emily's house as being particularly fun to film. She says, "we found a way to kind of flirt with each other that was really fun, even though the things we're saying don't necessarily have that element."

Director of photography John Schwartzman was inspired by the "brightly lit, poppy colors" of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet." He says, "The idea was to not try to hide things in the shadows on this movie. Let's put it all out there in plain sight and let the audience figure out all the information."

The theme that screenwriter Jessica Sharzer was most interested in exploring was how society often forces women to choose one role to play in life, then penalizes them for breaking out of that role. "I like that this story looks at how different women decide between career and children."

Costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus researched real mommy vloggers on Instagram for inspiration in creating Stephanie's look. The sweater that she wears with the pom poms was inspired by one vlog that was very "This is how you DIY kitty cats on your collar," as Kalfus puts it. (Stephanie actually does wear cats on her collar earlier in the film when she gets in touch with Sean in London.)

In order to help the audience feel as though they were really following Stephanie's vlogs, director of photography John Schwartzman chose to re-film the vlog scenes as they played back on a very high-resolution monitor. The technique allowed him to incorporate the detailed texture of the pixels on screen.

Director Paul Feig worked with Linda Cardellini, who plays Diana Hyland, on "Freaks and Geeks". He was thrilled to get another chance to work with her after 17 years.

The director of photography, John Schwartzman, previously worked on major motion pictures like "The Rock," "Jurassic World," and "Pearl Harbor." Schwartzman went to film school with Feig, but this is the first time they have worked on a film together.

FILM 1576: THE SHALLOWS

TRIVIA: The movie was shot in part off the Gold Coast of Australia. Other filming commenced in a giant swimming pool.

Jaume Collet-Serra teamed up with the art department for the design of the shark, "I came to the conclusion that the shark had to be female", says the director, "Females are slightly bigger and have great scars from mating, visually they're scarier as they are more protective."

The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2014 Blacklist, a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.

Nancy's nickname for the seagull is Steven Seagull, which is, of course, a pun on actor Steven Seagal.

For the seagull character of Steven Seagull, the usage of both cgi and using a puppet was considered based on the belief that it would be inordinately hard to train such a bird to act, this "horrified" both producer's Matti Leshem and Lynn Harris who wanted to use an actual seagull while scouting for location in Australia, Blake Lively was able to feed a group of seagulls at which point it was realized that using such a bird would be possible.

Film 831: The Town

Trivia: Jeremy Renner decided to surround himself with actual convicted bank robbers in Charlestown for research reasons and to help him nail the accent.

Originally set to be directed by Adrian Lyne, but he had a falling out with Warner Bros., so they asked Ben Affleck to step in.

Slaine (Gloansy) was a concession seller at Fenway Park as a teenager. He described going back there to shoot the film as "surreal."

Director/star Ben Affleck was most concerned that the actors not have phony sounding Boston accents. When Blake Lively read for the part of Krista, she sounded so authentic that he asked her what part of Boston she grew up in. She was born and raised in California.

In the novel, Krista was supposedly to be in her early 30s, but Ben Affleck cast Blake Lively mainly because he was bowled over by her performance in her previous film, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.