FILM 1924: THE OTHER GUYS

FILM 1924: THE OTHER GUYS

TRIVIA: The idea of teaming up of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg had been gestating since The 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007), where Will had been viciously insulting other actors as part of a bit, but became extremely polite to Mark.

DIRECTOR CAMEO: Adam McKay: Dirty Mike.

FILM 1854: OUT OF SIGHT

FILM 1854: OUT OF SIGHT

TRIVIA: Sandra Bullock almost got the part of Karen Sisco, but Director Steven Soderbergh was against it. He said: "I spent some time with Clooney and Bullock, and they actually did have a great chemistry. But it was for the wrong movie. I'm sure they could do a movie together. But not an Elmore Leonard movie." Clooney and Bullock appeared in Gravity(2013).

The mug shot of Jack Foley (George Clooney) (of which Karen (Jennifer Lopez) says "He doesn't even look like that.") is the mug shot of Clooney's character Seth Gecko from From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).

Michael Keaton reprised his role as Ray Nicolette in a small cameo. He originally played him in another Elmore Leonard novel-adapted film, Jackie Brown (1997).

This is one of George Clooney's favorite films on his resumé. He said "It was the first time where I had a say, and it was the first good screenplay I'd read where I just went 'That's it'. Even though it didn't do very well box-office wise, we sort of tanked again, it was a really good film."

Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton did their cameos free of charge.

When Jack (George Clooney) sees the photo of Karen's (Jennifer Lopez's) father, he remarks that he has a "cop's face". In real-life, Dennis Farina (Marshall Sisco) was a former Chicago Police Officer. As an actor, the late Farina had several roles as a cop.

Lopez's Karen Sisco and Clooney's Jack Foley ranked #4 on Moviefone's "The Top 25 Sexiest Movie Couples" in May 2008.

The first of many George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh collaborations.

DIRECTOR TRADEMARK 

Steven Soderbergh: company named "Perennial"

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.

FILM 1725: BATMAN RETURNS

TRIVIA: Michael Keaton was alleged to have earned eleven million dollars for reprising his role as the Caped Crusader. The Warner Brothers executives were very uneasy with this. However, Director Tim Burton stated that he personally believed Keaton deserved it.

Michelle Pfeiffer went through sixty catsuits during the six month shoot, at a cost of one thousand dollars a piece.

The first film made in Dolby Digital.

The production wanted to use King Penguins, but the only tame ones in captivity were at a bird sanctuary in the Cotswolds, deep in the English countryside. So the birds were flown over to the States in the refrigerated hold of a plane, they were given their own refrigerated trailer, their own swimming pool, with half a ton of fresh ice every day, and had fresh fish delivered daily straight from the docks. Even though the temperature outside frequently topped one hundred degrees, the entire set was refrigerated down to thirty-five degrees. The birds also had an around-the-clock bodyguard. Clearly the birds enjoyed the experience as, following their stint in Hollywood, most of them had mated and produced eggs, the sure sign of a contented penguin.

Burgess Meredith, who played The Penguin on Batman (1966), and in Batman: The Movie (1966), was asked to play the Penguin's father in the opening of the film, but illness prevented him from it.

Warner Brothers had to constantly submit new Catwoman posters for various cities, as many of the bus stop ads were being stolen. It got so bad, that police officers had to patrol bus stops in order to catch perpetrators before they could break the Plexiglas containers. Today, the large scale Catwoman bus ads are worth a great deal of money.

When asked during a 2007 talk show appearance if she ever felt nostalgic and put on the cat suit to amuse her husband, Michelle Pfeiffer stated that once filming was over, she never wanted to see the costume again for as long as she lived.

Annette Bening was cast as Catwoman, but was replaced by Michelle Pfeiffer when she became pregnant. Pfeiffer's three million dollar salary was two million dollars more than was offered to Bening.

The final Christmas ball scene is quite symbolic: since it is a masquerade party all the guests are in disguise. The only two guests there who actually aren't wearing masks are Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. This implies that their real personalities are Batman and Catwoman respectively, and that their public appearance without a costume is just a disguise for society.

DIRECTOR TRADEMARK: (Tim Burton): [music]: Music by Danny Elfman.

When Bruce Wayne meets Selina Kyle for the first time at Schreck's office, he says that they've met. When Selina asks how they met, he says "I'm sorry. I mistook me for someone else", in which she corrects him by saying "You mean you mistook me". Despite Selina's correction, Bruce is actually referring to the night he saved her from the clown with the stun gun as Batman, and was referring to his superhero ego. That's why he told her that they've already met, but mistook himself for somebody else (Batman) instead of her.

FILM 1676: SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

TRIVIA: The scene in which Peter, through sheer force of will, lifts the machinery pinning him down after The Vulture forces the structure to collapse on him, is a nod to a scene in The Amazing Spider-Man #33, in which he does the same thing. The panels in the comic are considered by many to be some of the most iconic in Spider-Man's history.

Jennifer Connelly voices the Spider-Man computer Karen. Her husband Paul Bettany had voiced the Iron Man computer J.A.R.V.I.S. She was also cast, because of her appearance in the John Hughes produced Career Opportunities (1991). "Homecoming" pays homage to Hughes' high school films, and casting Connelly was done as a tribute to his career. Connelly was also previously cast as Elizabeth "Betty" Ross in Hulk (2003).

In an interview from 2013, while promoting his upcoming film, How I Live Now (2013), Tom Holland was asked by a reporter what kind of role he might want to try next. When Holland replied, saying a project with action and humor would be of interest to him, the reporter asked if he would ever like to play a superhero. "Maybe Spider-Man, in ten years time," answered Holland. "The reboot of the reboot, if they do that."

Tom Holland is the youngest actor (at nineteen) to be cast as Peter Parker. His predecessors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, were twenty-five and twenty-six, respectively, when they were cast.

The filmmakers have stated that this movie takes inspiration on John Hughes' comedies from the 1980s about teens and high school. One of John Hughes' films, Weird Science (1985), features a young Robert Downey, Jr. who plays Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Michelle's (Zendaya's) literary tastes contain subtle allusions to either the plot or spiders. At one point, she is seen reading "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham. In that novel, the protagonist is an orphan living with his aunt and uncle. Later, she is reading "Invitation To A Beheading" by Vladimir Nabokov. In that novel, a condemned man awaits his execution, accompanied only by a spider in his cell. Finally, during the Washington Monument scene, she is wearing a Sylvia Plath t-shirt. Plath wrote a poem called "Spider", and used spiders as images in other poems.

In The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Andrew Garfield can be seen wearing a Ramones shirt. In this movie, "Blitzkreig Bop" by the Ramones is featured. The Ramones famously covered the original Spider-Man theme song, as a hidden bonus track on their "¡Adios Amigos!" album. "Adios" was their final album, and their hidden bonus track "Spider-Man" was the last song on their last original album.

When the science team arrives at the hotel in Washington, D.C., one of the members comments on the size of it. Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori), comments that he has seen bigger. He may have been referring to his time spent as Zero at The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

John Francis Daley, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Martin Starr, who played Mr. Harrington, were in the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999). Daley also appeared as F.B.I. Special Agent Sweets, on Bones (2005).

FILM 1645: THE FOUNDER

TRIVIA: The original McDonalds, as depicted in the film, is actually located at 1398 North E St., San Bernardino, CA 92405. The owner of Juan Pollo Chicken purchased the site and has restored it to a McDonalds museum. The oldest remaining Golden Arches-styled McDonalds (1953) is still in operation at 10207 Lakewood Blvd., Downey, California 90241.

The company Kroc worked for prior to founding McDonalds, Prince Castle, still exists and supplies McDonalds with much of its equipment

While most productions shoot a minimum of 12+ hours per day, The Founder frequently shot for between 8-10 hours. This was due to the fact that John Lee Hancock came very well prepared and didn't overshoot anything he liked from the first take. Adding to the fact that the whole film was shot in only 22 days, this makes for an incredibly rare shoot.

Tom Hanks turned down the role of Ray Kroc and Michael Keaton took the part. The opposite happened in Philadelphia (1993) when Keaton turned down the role of Andrew Beckett and Hanks took the part, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

The McDonald's back office set was built on the same stage as Ray Kroc's office. in order to create genuine reactions to the phone conversations, the props and sound departments rigged the phones with speakers so that both sets of phone conversations could be filmed simultaneously.

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen liked the script very much and wanted to direct the film, but they had to turn it down because of schedule conflicts with Hail, Caesar! (2016).

The on-screen flies that were attracted to the smell at McDonald's were actually Cocoa Krispies. They were poured in front of a powerful fan in order to make it look like swarms of flies.

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

Ray Kroc's "discovery" of McDonalds in 1952 was not his first attempt at franchising (taking over) a Southern California restaurant. According to the book, In N Out Burger, by Stacy Perman, Kroc approach L.A.'s Apple Pan restaurant in 1949, and Carl Karcher of Carl's Jr., prior to convincing the McDonald brothers.

The film's release date was intentionally pushed back to December so it would have a better chance with the Academy Awards. Ironically, it was not nominated for a single Academy Award.

When Keaton's character follows Route 66 across the map to San Bernadino, it's obviously not a map that is historically accurate for the 1950's as it shows Irvine, CA which did not yet exist as a city back then.