FILM 2013: MOVIE 43

FILM 2013: MOVIE 43

TRIVIA: The movie was filmed over a span of four years. Production took so long because filming had to be done around the actors' busy schedules. The segment with Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman was the first to be filmed, and producer Charles B. Wessler used it to secure the financing for the rest of the movie. He called in a lot of favors to get as many high-profile actors as possible for the other short films, most of them willing to work for a few days on something unconventional. However, almost none of the actors knew completely what the other segments were about, or how the full movie would be. When it came out, none of the major actors wanted to promote it.

Anton Yelchin originally played a necrophiliac, in a segment called The Apprentice (2014), directed by Steve Baker and Damon Escott. The segment was removed, due to the highly offensive subject matter.

Not screened in advance for critics, because Rouge Pictures was afraid of bad reviews making audiences miss the film. The film was ultimately considered as one of the worst films ever made.

Colin Farrell was originally cast as The Leprechaun.

Sam Rockwell was originally attached to reprise his role as Batman in the superhero segment (which was intended to be a sequel to the short film Robin's Big Date (2005)) but pulled out to do Seven Psychopaths (2012) instead.

Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts play a married couple in this movie. At the time, they were married in real life.

FILM 1869: TITANIC

FILM 1869: TITANIC

TRIVIA: The elderly couple seen hugging on the bed while water floods their room were the owners of Macy's department store in New York, Ida and Isidor Straus, both of whom died on the Titanic. Ida was offered a seat on a lifeboat but refused so that she could stay with her husband, saying, "As we have lived together, so we shall die together." There was a scene filmed that depicted this moment but was cut from the final version. It was Mrs Straus' who originally said "Where you go, I go" that inspired Rose's same line in the film.

After finding out that she had to be naked in front of Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winsletdecided to break the ice, and when they first met, she flashed him.

James Cameron went on the dives to the real Titanic himself, and found it an overwhelming emotional experience to actually see it. He ended up spending more time with the ship than its living passengers did.

Due to the long theatrical run of the movie, Paramount had to send out replacement reels to theaters that had literally worn out their copies. 

The first film to be released on video (DVD/VHS) while it was still being shown in theaters.

At $200 million, the movie cost more than the Titanic itself. The cost to construct the ship in 1910-1912 was £1.5 million, equivalent to $7.5 million at the time and about $120 to $150 million in 1997 dollars.

With her nomination for Best Supporting Actress at age 87, Gloria Stuart became the oldest person to ever be nominated for an Oscar.

Was #1 at the U.S. box office for a record fifteen consecutive weeks, from 19 December 1997 to 2 April 1998.

A recent investigation showed that if Titanic had hit the iceberg head-on, she would have survived. Though damaged she would not have sunk and would have reached New York -- maybe a day or two late.

This was the first film to be nominated twice for an Academy Award, for the portrayal of the same character: Kate Winslet received a Best Actress nomination for her role as Rose and Gloria Stuart received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of the older Rose. The next time this happened was with the movie Iris (2001), which also starred Winslet.

The first Best Picture Academy Award winner to be produced, directed, written, and edited by the same person (James Cameron).

James Cameron was adamant about not including any song in the film, even over the closing credits. Composer James Horner secretly arranged with lyricist Will Jennings and singer Céline Dion to write "My Heart Will Go On" and record a demo tape which he then presented to Cameron, who responded very favorably and included the song over the closing credits. The song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. 

In the scene in the beginning where the captain orders full-speed ahead and the shot moves down into the boiler room, the set was really just about three boilers but the film makers had huge mirrors installed to visualize a great big long room. (In this scene you can see workers shoving in coal, and about 20 feet down the room you can see the mirror image of the workers).

One of three films to win a total of 11 Academy Awards, the others being Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

Was the highest grossing film in box office history with a worldwide gross of US$1.8 billion until it was surpassed by Avatar (2009). Both films were directed by James Cameron.

Real Beluga caviar was used in the first class dining room sequence. After sampling it, Jonathan Hyde said he "made an acting decision on the spot that Ismay was a big eater."

The first movie to gross a billion dollars.

In a recently-completed investigation by Tim Maltin, he reveals that the reason the iceberg was not seen was due to a "cold water mirage." This is the opposite of a desert mirage. The multiple layers of cold and warm air cloaked the iceberg. Normally the iceberg could have been seen as far as 12 miles, giving Titanic 30 minutes to avoid. This is revealed in his e-book "Titanic: A Deceiving Night" and his Smithsonian documentary "Titanic's Final Mystery." This also explains why the Californian failed to receive the distress message "Come at once; we are sinking" that crew on Titanic signaled with Morse lamps.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #83 Greatest Movie of All Time. This was one of the newest entries on the list (from films which were released between 1997 and 2005).

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

DIRECTOR TRADEMARK: James Cameron: [perfect cut] Several dissolves between the Titanic on the seabed to the Titanic of the past, and the dissolve from the young to the old Rose.

FILM 1666: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

TRIVIA: Whilst working on the script, Emma Thompson's computer developed a problem and she was unable to locate the file. She took the computer to Stephen Fry, an expert in Apple computers, who, after seven hours, finally managed to retrieve the script. This is why Stephen is thanked in the credits by the producers.

During filming, the Jane Austen Society telephoned co-producer James Schamus to complain about the casting of Hugh Grant claiming that he was too good-looking to play Edward Ferrars.

Emma Thompson has recounted how during the scene where Colonel Brandon, on horseback, approaches Elinor and Marianne in the out-of-doors, many takes were ruined by the horse surrendering to a bout of flatulence. Eventually, they were forced to shoot the scene with the farting horse as the flatulence would not abate, and the rather loud reports later were edited out of the soundtrack.

Emma Thompson's first draft of the screenplay consisted of 350 hand-written pages. The final draft was a culmination of that and 13 other drafts which were written over four and a half years.

Ang Lee originally was considering Kate Winslet only for the smaller part of Lucy Steele even though she really wanted to play Marianne. When Winslet arrived at her audition she pretended that her agent had sent her to read for Marianne, and her reading won her the role.

There is an ironic twist surrounding the casting of Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson and Greg Wise. Although they portray love interests on screen, Kate Winslet and Greg Wise only dated briefly in reality before Greg took to Winslet's on-screen sister Emma Thompson. Thompson and Wise were together for 8 years before getting married. Together they have one adopted son and one biological daughter. Interestingly, Richard Lumsden who portrays Thompson's on-screen brother-in-law Robert Ferrars, is her brother-in-law in real life. Lumsden is married to Emma's younger sister, Sophie Thompson, who was also featured in two movie adaptations of Jane Austen's books, Screen Two: Persuasion (1995).and Emma (1996). Sophie Thompson portrayed in Screen Two: Persuasion (1995). the younger sister of the story's main character Anne Elliot, who was portrayed by Amanda Root, who ironically enough was sought for the role of Marianne in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Root, however, could not appear due to her obligations to film Persuasion. In a nutshell, Amanda Root landed a role in a Jane Austen adaptation and was coincidentally asked to star in another one. When she could not appear, another actress who dated the future husband of her on-screen sister's sister was given the role, and her on-screen sister's real life husband portrayed the on-screen brother-in-law of his real life sister-in-law in the same film that she could not star in.

Emma Thompson, Gemma Jones, Robert Hardy, Elizabeth Spriggs, Alan Rickman, and Imelda Staunton all appear in the Harry Potter series.

In her book "The Sense and Sensibility (1995) Screenplay & Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film", Emma Thompson writes that after a particularly difficult day filming a sequence that involved a flock of sheep, Ang Lee swore that he would never again use the animals on a movie set. Ten years later, however, Ang Lee went on to direct (and win a directing Oscar for) Brokeback Mountain (2005), which is about two men who meet while sheep herding.

Director Ang Lee had not read Jane Austen's novel when Columbia first sent him Emma Thompson's script.

With her Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award win, Emma Thompson became the first person to receive Oscars for acting and writing.

The sheer dotted muslin gown Kate Winslet, (Marianne Dashwood), wears during the lawn bowling scene at Barton Park is the same costume Charity Wakefield (Marianne Dashwood) wears at Norland Park in Sense & Sensibility (2008). The costume is also worn by Amelia Warner (Fanny Price, age 17) in Mansfield Park (1999) and by Jennifer Higham (Louisa Musgrove) at Uppercross in Persuasion (2007).

The film's release and popularity saw the original novel returning to the New York Times' Bestseller List.

The scene where Willoughby rescues Marianne in driving rain took about 50 takes. This resulted in Kate Winslet contracting hypothermia.

FILM 1568: STEVE JOBS

TRIVIA: The three sequences in the film were filmed on 16mm, 35mm, and digital to illustrate the advancement in Apple's technology across the 16 years depicted of Jobs' life.

Michael Fassbender said in an interview that Christian Bale who exited the project in November 2014 would have been "perfect" to play Steve Jobs. "I thought to myself: Christian Bale is perfect, why isn't he doing it?" The actor told The Hollywood Reporter while promoting the film in London. "I actually called him up and told him that myself."

Seth Rogen met with Steve Wozniak extensively to understand him. Rogen also researched Wozniak's keynotes and speeches online. Rogen cited watching an old eighties video on repeat, featuring Wozniak giving a tour of the Apple museum at their headquarters as part of his research. Rogen later admitted that he had no idea who Steve Wozniak was prior to working on this movie.

Kate Winslet found out about the movie from her makeup artist while working on The Dressmaker (2015). The makeup artist just got hired for this movie and told Winslet. Winslet said that she was intrigued by a movie written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Michael Fassbender that she asked for more details about the female part. She later sent a picture of herself with a black wig and then she got the script and met with Boyle which resulted in winning the part.

During the montage depicting the failure of Apple's Newton PDA, one of the clips shown is from the animated TV series The Simpsons. This is a more multileveled reference to the life of Steve Jobs than it might appear at first: Jobs, who was adopted as an infant, discovered well into his adulthood that he had a full biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson (author of novels including Anywhere but Here, Off Keck Road, and A Regular Guy--which is about a Jobs-like billionaire technology mogul). Mona Simpson was married for many years to Richard Appel, who was a writer for The Simpsons during the mid-1990s. One of Appel's lasting contributions to that show was that he was the writer who named the character of Homer Simpson's mother; since Appel was married to a woman whose last name was, coincidentally, Simpson, he named Homer's mother "Mona Simpson."

Leonardo DiCaprio was originally set to play the lead role but dropped out to do The Revenant (2015). Michael Fassbender was cast when Christian Bale also passed on the project. All three actors were nominated at the 2016 Academy Awards: DiCaprio for Best Actor in 'The Revenant', Fassbender for Best Actor in 'Steve Jobs', and Bale for Best Supporting Actor in The Big Short (2015). DiCaprio ended up winning an award.

During the first act of the film, when Jobs and Woz are arguing in the courtyard about the 2 vs 8 ports on their way to the launch of the Mac, writer Aaron Sorkin makes a cameo as the taller of the two gentlemen walking by in the background.

During the 1984 sequence of the film, Jobs (Fassbender) and Sculley (Daniels) are watching the Macintosh Super Bowl commercial from backstage. The commercial was directed by Ridley Scott, who went on to direct Michael Fassbender in Prometheus (2012), as well as Jeff Daniels in The Martian (2015).