FILM 1912: COCO

FILM 1912: COCO

TRIVIA: The orange flower seen throughout the film is the Aztec marigold (known also as the Mexican marigold or the Cempasúchil). The flower is used in the tradition of Dia de Muertos in México to guide the deceased to the living.

The film contains certain themes and content which would ordinarily be banned in China. Reportedly, the Chinese censor board members were so touched by the film that they made an exception and allowed it.

This film opened in Mexico three and a half weeks before it opened in the U.S., where it surpassed Avengers Assemble (2012) as the country's highest grossing film. 

In the movie the spirit of Frida Kahlo identifies Dante as a Xolo (Xoloitzcuintli dog), which is a nice tribute to the real Frida. During the mid-20th century the Xolo breed began to decline in popularity. Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera, helped to save the breed by including the Xolo dog as part of their art. Thanks to Frida and Diego, the breed became known again to the world.

Spent more days #1 at the box office than any other animated film in the 21st century.

The Land of the Dead is shown to use a lot of antiquated technology -- for example, an 80s MacIntosh computer and walkie-talkie radios. This is fitting, as that technology is obsolete and so in a sense dead.

John Ratzenberger, long considered Pixar's good-luck charm, continues his streak of appearing in every one of the studio's feature films. In Coco (2017), he plays a ghost called Juan Ortodoncia. He is the skeleton who is allowed to cross over to the land of the living because his dentist remembers him.

The orchestra conductor for Ernesto de la Cruz's musical show "Sunrise Spectacular" is a caricature of the film's composer Michael Giacchino.

STUDIO TRADEMARK: The Pizza Planet truck, which has appeared in every Pixar movie, can be seen driving past the Rivera Shoe Shop while Elena (Miguel's grandmother) explains the "No Music" rule to Miguel.

When originally released, the film featured the short film Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017) before the film, which runs 22 minutes long. Many moviegoers thought they had wandered into the wrong film. Beginning December 7, 2017, Olaf's Frozen Adventure(2017) was withdrawn from theatrical release, and no short film was substituted in its place.

On December 5, 2017, it got enough votes to take the number 45 spot in IMDb's Top 250, surpassing WALL-E (2008) as the highest rated computer animated movie.

Ninth Pixar film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and third Pixar film to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

BOOK 192: ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE: GAIL HONEYMAN

BOOK 192: ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE: GAIL HONEYMAN

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart. 

MY VERDIT: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It was refreshing to read such an original voice but a little scary at the similarities between the narrator and myself. I think that’s what pulled me into the story at first, luckily as he story progressed I saw that we weren’t the same but some of her habits and thoughts were familiar to me. It’s a heartwarming book that kept me interested from the first page and didn’t disappoint at the end, which was a great relief. I would recommend you read this book soon before the film comes out as I suspect this will also be excellent.

FILM 1716: THE WRONG MAN

TRIVIA: The scene where Henry ("Manny") Fonda is taken to prison was filmed in a real prison. As he is led to his cell , you can hear one of the inmates yell out "What'd they get ya for, Henry??", and a bunch of other prisoners laughing.

Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of his usual cameos, standing in a restaurant as Manny sits, but decided on using a narrated prologue instead.

Although based on a true story, Alfred Hitchcock deliberately left out some of the information that pointed to Manny's innocence to heighten the tension.

This marked the only time Henry Fonda worked with director Alfred Hitchcock. Fonda's close friend James Stewart worked with Hitchcock 4 times.

In the opening scene, it shows Manny (Henry Fonda) playing his bass viol. Seated at the piano, next to him is the pianist/conductor who tags the final note played. This is in reality Betnard Herrmann, the composer and conductor for many Hitchcock movies and many other Hollywood films of that era.

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

GIRLS (2012–2017)

The character of Shoshanna wasn't supposed to be recurring, but creator Lena Dunham liked Zosia Mamet's performance so much that kept her on the show as a regular, because they saw potential for exploring the character thanks to Mamet's talent.

Adam Driver had to repeatedly fly back and forth between New York and London between seasons 3 and 4 to film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Jemima Kirke had to be convinced by Lena Dunham to take the role of Jessa, because Kirke didn't (and doesn't) have a long-term interest in acting, compared to her focus on her thriving career as a painter and artist.

All four main actress Lena Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and Allison Williams have famous parents in some regard. Lena Dunham's parents are photographer Laurie Simmons and painter Carroll Dunham. Jemima Kirke's parents are fashion designer Lorraine Kirke and rock musician Simon Kirke. Zosia Mamet's father is writer David Mamet and mother is actress Lindsay Crouse. Allison Williams's father is NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

Allison Williams has a clause in her contract for this show stipulating that she will not do any full nudity.

The four titular characters - Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna - only appear together in twelve scenes over the entire series.

FILM 1613: LA LA LAND

TRIVIA: According to composer Justin Hurwitz, all the piano performance featured in the film was first recorded by pianist Randy Kerber during pre-production. Ryan Gosling then spent two hours a day, six days a week in piano lessons learning the music by heart. By the time filming had begun, Gosling was able to play all the piano sequences seen in the film without the use of a hand double or CGI.

Emma Watson turned down the role of Mia due to scheduling conflicts with Beauty and the Beast (2017), while Ryan Gosling turned down the role of the Beast in that film to appear in this one. Coincidentally, both are musicals.

The audition scene, where the casting director interrupts Mia's emotional performance to take a phone call, was actually inspired by one of Ryan Gosling's auditions in real life.

Won seven Golden Globes, more than any other movie ever.

John Legend, singer and pianist, had to learn how to play the guitar for his role.

The express lane freeway ramp used for the opening number, Another Day Of Sun, is the same stretch of freeway as used for the iconic "bus jump" sequence from Speed (1994), where a 50-foot section of the ramp was digitally removed using CGI to create the gap the bus must jump over.

The line in the film said by Sebastian (Ryan Gosling): "That's LA. They worship everything and they value nothing.", was actually added in by Ryan himself, when he heard his real life girlfriend, Eva Mendes, mention it as a "joke".

Films that were inspirations/influences and screened for the cast/crew include: Singin' in the Rain (1952), Top Hat (1935), An American in Paris (1951), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Swing Time (1936), The Band Wagon (1953), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and even 8 1/2 (1963) for the film's opening traffic number.

Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz came out with the idea of the film during their senior year at Harvard University in 2010 with Hurwitz writing the musical tracks and Chazelle on dialogue. Initially they found two financial backers and a producer for a budget of $1 million. However the demand for a lot of script changes made them to drop the project off. After Whiplash found critical success, the project was resurrected with the studio increasing the budget to $30 million; this allowed the filmmakers to rent the Griffith Observatory for filming (a full day rental there costs $10 thousand).

The crew had a limited time window of 30 minutes within two days to film the dusky purple twilight Hollywood Hills dance sequence. According to Damien Chazelle, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling managed five takes per day, where after each take, they would go back to the starting point with the assistants wiping their sweat before starting the dance routine again.

The phrase "pisi-kaka" that Ryan Gosling says twice is Hungarian for pee and feces. Meaning that it is not important. Ryan Gosling spent 5 months living in Budapest, Hungary whilst filming the sequel to the 1982 Sci-fi film Blade Runner.

FILM 1503: ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

TRIVIA: There was some action in the film at first. But when Jim Jarmusch was asked to add more he instead removed all of it.

According to the script, Eve is 2000 years old and was the druid matriarch of a Celtic tribe. Adam is 500 to 600 years old. Jim Jarmusch decided that Adam and Eve would be aware of each other's true age so he argued they have no reason to state it in the film, but simply informed the actors of the age of the characters. In an extended version of the nude scene, shown in the DVD special features, Adam & Eve do talk about her druidic connections.

The white dwarf Eve mentions to Adam while driving across the city is the star called BPM 37093, also known as Lucy (named after The Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds). Its nucleus is in a cooling down process, which makes the star core pulsate like a giant gong.

Eve books a flight for herself and Adam under the names "Daisy Buchanan" and "Stephen Dedalus," main characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," respectively. Stephen Dedalus also appears as the sidekick in Joyce's "Ulysses." In Joyce's final novel "Finnegans Wake," there is a famous recurring poem with the line "riverrun past eve and adam."

Some of the many pictures on Adam's wall include portraits of Richard Wagner, Jean Michel Basquiat, Max Ernst & Dorothea Tanning, Marcel Duchamp, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Christopher Marlowe (who is also represented by the John Hurt character in the film), William Blake, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, William S. Burroughs, Oscar Wilde, Mary Wollstonecraft, Naomi Klein, Susan Sontag, Samuel Beckett, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Arthur Rimbaud, John Keats, Charles Baudelaire, Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, Sitting Bull, Black Elk, Geronimo, Joe Strummer, Bo Diddley, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Henry Purcell, Nicholas Ray, Claire Denis, Aki Kaurismäki, Luis Buñuel, Robby Müller, Fritz Lang, Bruce Lee, Buster Keaton, Rodney Dangerfield, Harpo Marx and Hedy Lamarr as well as numerous musicians whom Jim Jarmusch has worked with on various films including Tom Waits, Neil Young, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Iggy Pop, and RZA.

One of the books that Eve packs for her trip to Detroit is a catalog of Jean Michel Basquiat's work. Jeffrey Wright (Dr. Watson) played the title character of the movie Basquiat (1996).

All the actors playing vampires wore wigs that were a mix of human, yak and goat hair in order to make them look more wild.

Among the books Eve packs for her trip to Detroit are the play "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett, "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, and "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace.