FILM 1798: DUNKIRK

FILM 1798: DUNKIRK

TRIVIA: According to actor-director Kenneth Branagh, roughly 30 Dunkirk survivors, who were in their mid-90s, attended the premiere in London. When asked about the film, they felt that it accurately captured the event but that the soundtrack was louder than the actual bombardment, a comment that greatly amused director Christopher Nolan.

Christopher Nolan, along with his wife Emma Thomas and a friend, made the crossing from England to Dunkirk on a boat, the way the civilians would have done during the original evacuation. Nolan said it took 19 hours because of sea conditions.

After first-hand accounts of the Dunkirk evacuation revealed to Christopher Nolan how young and inexperienced the soldiers were, he decided to cast young and unknown actors for the beach setting.

Director Christopher Nolan rode in the Spitfire shown in the movie in order to get a sense of the aerial feel of the fighter plane, and to help him shoot and provide a realistic experience of the dogfights.

Told from three points of view: on the beach with the infantry (including Fionn Whiteheadand Harry Styles), the evacuation by the navy (featuring Cillian Murphy and Mark Rylance, showing how civilians came to the rescue) and then in the air (with Tom Hardyengaging in plane combat). Speaking about the narrative structure in "Premiere" magazine, Christopher Nolan stated: "For the soldiers who embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities. On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a maximum day; and if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British Spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure; even if the story is very simple. Do not repeat it to the studio: it will be my most experimental film."

The ticking sounds that serve as a crucial theme on the film's score were recorded by composer Hans Zimmer from one of director Christopher Nolan's own pocket watches. He then put the sounds into synthesizers and altered them in different ways for the soundtrack.

Charles Lightoller, the most senior surviving officer of the RMS Titanic, participated in the Dunkirk evacuation with his private motor yacht, "The Sundowner". The craft has been preserved by the Ramsgate Maritime Museum in England.

Dunkirk (2017) is the seventh film between Christopher Nolan and Michael Caine after Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Interstellar (2014). Caine appears in an uncredited voice cameo (he's the voice on the radio talking to a Royal Air Force officer early in the film) . Caine previously portrayed a Royal Air Force officer in the movie Battle of Britain.

The scene in which Tom Hardy's character's Spitfire lands on Dunkirk beach was real; done on location with an actual Spitfire in flight, and was the first time a plane landed on that beach since 1940. After the scene was completed, however, the Spitfire became stuck in the sand. There was subsequently a frantic rush to get the valuable Spitfire out off the beach before the incoming tides could damage it.

The film was shot on the actual beach at Dunkirk where the evacuation took place. When scouting for the film, director Christopher Nolan found a button from an English soldier's uniform in the sand.

FILM 1590: BRIDGE OF SPIES 

TRIVIA: According to Tom Hanks in a press release for the movie, when his lawyer character of James B. Donovan makes arguments to the Supreme Court about Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, the actual words used in the dialogue for this movie were the same as the arguments presented to the US Supreme Court.

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel's seemingly incongruous accent, as voiced and acted by actor Mark Rylance, was actually accurate. Abel was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Russian parents and spent some of his school age years in Scotland. He returned to Moscow in his late teens but never lost his accent when speaking English.

As seen in the film, Soviet agent Rudolf Ivanovich Abel received coded messages from his KGB handlers that were hidden inside a hollow U.S. nickel. The FBI first became aware of Abel's activities in 1953, when a Soviet agent mistakenly used one of the hollow nickels to buy a newspaper. The Brooklyn newsboy who had received the nickel thought it felt too light. He dropped the nickel on the sidewalk, and it popped open, revealing a piece of microfilm with a coded message inside. But FBI cryptologists were unable to crack the code until 1957, when a KGB defector, Reino Häyhänen, gave them the key to deciphering the code, and also gave up Rudolph Abel. The "Hollow Nickel Case" was also dramatized in The FBI Story (1959), starring James Stewart.

According to Steven Spielberg in a press release for the movie, Gregory Peck came after the story in 1965. Alec Guinness agreed to play Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, Peck would play James B. Donovan, and Stirling Silliphant would write the script. MGM declined to make the movie at the time. It was 1965, Cold War tensions were high, and MGM was reluctant to get into the politics of the story.

For the scene outside the courtroom, the photographers were initially instructed to put their used flashbulbs, which are extremely hot to the touch, in their pockets. One of the background actors on set happened to be the historian of the New York Press Photographers Association. He told executive producer and 1st assistant director Adam Somner that, at the time, photographers would have ejected the bulbs onto the floor. After several takes, noticing the bulbs strewn across the floor, director Steven Spielberg decided to shoot the low-angle view of the principals walking through them.

The Russian phrase "stoikiy muzhik" literally translates to "persistent peasant" - "stoikiy" being a term meaning persistent, rigid, or uncompromising, and "muzhik" being a slang term for a Russian peasant. Abel's translation of the phrase as "standing man" is therefore appropriate on a metaphorical level.

In an interview with the International Spy Museum, the son of Francis Gary Powers, Francis Gary Powers Jr., indicated that his father was not told to commit suicide if shot down, unlike the depiction in the movie. Instead, it was given as an option in case physical torture had been involved, allowing the pilots to use a poison pin if the pilots chose to commit suicide. He also indicated that the Soviets found the pin on a third strip search but Powers warned them not to touch it; the Soviets tried the pin on a dog and the dog died a few moments later.

Steven Spielberg cast Mark Rylance in the movie after watching his Tony Award-winning performance in Twelfth Night which was Rylance's third Tony Award.

Fourth theatrical feature film collaboration of actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg with the two performing those duties. They pair previously worked together on [in chronological order]: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and The Terminal (2004).

At the beginning of the film, Rudolf Ivanovich Abel is painting a self-portrait, the scene is based on Norman Rockwell's "Triple Self-portrait". Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are both big collectors of Rockwell's work.

The subway car that Donovan is riding on his way home is the only remaining N.Y.C. Transit R11 subway car that was part of an order of 10 built in 1949. It was called the "million dollar train" as each of the 10 cars cost over $100,000. The interior seen in the film is from a 1964/65 rebuild of the car , not the one it had when the story took place in 1961.

When London-based playwright and television writer Matt Charman stumbled upon a footnote in a biography on John F. Kennedy that referenced an American lawyer whom the President had sent to Cuba to negotiate the release of 1113 prisoners, his curiosity was piqued. Some quick research yielded a name he did not recognize, that of James Donovan, a successful insurance claims lawyer from Brooklyn. But it was the story of what took place several years earlier which he found most interesting. Donovan had defended a Soviet agent accused of espionage during the Cold War, and while he specialized in insurance law and had not practiced criminal law for some time, was then asked to negotiate one of the most high-profile prisoner exchanges in history. Charman had little knowledge of the inner-workings of the film industry. Nevertheless, he flew to Hollywood in hopes of convincing a studio to green-light a film based on Donovan's remarkable true story. While Donovan's role was not well known in the annals of Cold War history, Charman pitched DreamWorks Pictures a gripping tale of an idealistic man navigating the world of national security and subterfuge. The executives at DreamWorks were immediately intrigued. "When I heard the story, it knocked my socks off," says producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, who was a co-producer on Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) and is based at DreamWorks. Krieger said: "Not many people know the story of James Donovan and what he accomplished during this period of U.S. history, but it sounded like something that was right up Steven's alley."

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, whose real name was Vilyam Fisher, passed away in 1971, and was rarely photographed or interviewed while alive. According to actor Mark Rylance who portrays Abel in the film: "We don't really know all that much about him, other than the fact that he received and passed on messages at various drop sites throughout New York using a hollow coin. He was, what you call, a sleeper spy. Abel had been in the United States for several years before he began these clandestine activities, and he wasn't the chief organizer of the spy-ring, he just carried out the mission. But when he was caught, the U.S. government made him out to be a little more important than he actually was."

Actress Amy Ryan and actor Domenick Lombardozzi both appeared in HBO's The Wire (2002).

  

FILM 1588: THE BFG

TRIVIA: This theatrical feature film has been in development for almost twenty-five years.

Steven Spielberg tried to convince Gene Wilder to make an appearance in the film, but Wilder declined. Wilder played the titular character in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), also based on a Roald Dahl book.

This marks the reunion of director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Melissa Mathison, following their celebrated collaboration on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

The Queen makes a call to Nancy asking for Ronnie only to find that he was asleep. This could be a reference to Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan, the latter of whom known for taking naps regularly while in office. This would also set the movie sometime between 1981 and 1989, when Reagan was in office, and perhaps also when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was made and first released sometime between 1981 (filmed) and 1982 (debuted in cinemas).

The movie's source Roald Dahl novel "The BFG" (1982) was ranked at the No. # 88 spot of all-time Top 100 Children's Novels by the monthly American 'School Library Journal' in 2012. "The BFG" (1982) is the fourth Dahl novel to be included in their hundred list, more than any other author.

Actor Mark Rylance was immediately inspired by Melissa Mathison's screenplay, and said: "Melissa added some twists and turns and made [source novelist Roald] Dahl's original story much more dramatic, in a way that gives you more of a chance to see the friendship develop. He is just misunderstood. The BFG and Sophie are both isolated beings, and they find a friend who understands them, maybe better than they do, and those are the best kind of friends. That's part of the great love and friendship they have for each other."

Before her breakout role in Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown auditioned and was on the shortlist for the role of Sophie.