DID YOU KNOW?

Scarlett Johansson has a twin brother named Hunter. They were born on November 22, 1984 but she is still technically the older sister after being born three minutes earlier than him.

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FILM 1655: THE JUNGLE BOOK

TRIVIA: Amid the treasures in King Louie's temple, one of them happens to be Genie's lamp from Aladdin (1992).

In The Jungle Book (1967), King Louie was an orangutan. In this film, he's a gigantopithecus, an ancestor of the orangutan whose range is believed to have included parts of India. This change in species was made to make the film more fantastic, seeing as it would be a good way to represent him as King of the Monkeys, and since orangutans are not native to India. Despite this, the film does still feature some animals not native to India, like Peccaries and Red-Eyed Tree Frogs.

Actor Neel Sethi said that since he never actually worked with real animals onset during filming, director Jon Favreau would on occasion stand in for where the animals would be present, one most notably as Shere Khan lunging out from the tall grass.

All the locations in the film are computer-generated VFX. The story may have been set primarily in India, but the film was completely shot at the LA Center Studio in Los Angeles, California.

The CG character Baloo is so large and furry, he took almost five hours of rendering time per frame.

This is the first time that Kaa the snake is portrayed as a female, rather than a male. Jon Favreau said the change was a deliberate one, as he felt there were too many male characters in The Jungle Book (1967).

Lyricist Richard M. Sherman, who wrote songs for The Jungle Book (1967), composed a new verse for "Wanna Be Like You" for Christopher Walken.

Ben Kingsley described Bagheera as a military character: "He's probably a colonel, he is instantly recognizable by the way he talks, how he acts and what his ethical code is."

The animal characters were both motion-captured and performed live on set by puppeteers from the Jim Henson Company. For the on-set performances, Jim Henson's Creature Shop built elaborate life-sized puppets to act alongside Mowgli and serve as eye-lines.

The 3D of the film and the original 1990s Walt Disney Pictures opening logo were a tribute to the multi-plane camera system. Director Jon Favreau said that one his is "rules" for making The Jungle Book (2016) was "let's treat the 3D like multi-plane. Let's be as gimmicky as Walt Disney would have been-but not more." The multi-plane camera is a special camera used to create a sense of dimensional space-of a camera moving through a set, instead of one just taking photos of a series of still images. Disney had a special version of the system developed, which was used first in the Silly Symphony animated short film The Old Mill (1937) and later in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Favreau went on: "There are tremendous shots in Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942) where the multi-plane was a new technology and they were using it to show off, and that was the 3D of its day. And so we were studying that very closely and became very fascinated with the multi-plane and what went into it and the artistry and ingenuity." This aesthetic philosophy extended to the movie's treatment of the main castle logo. "I got the idea, 'Let's do the opening logo, and instead of doing a super high-tech one, let's have a hand-painted, cel-animated multi-plane logo,'" Favreau said. "And not only that but 'Let's make the kingdom behind the castle have elements from what the live action version would have been,' so it was almost like a little taste of what's back there."

Right before he meets King Louie, Mowgli finds a cowbell in the monkey palace and proceeds to pick it up and shake it, causing Louie to appear. King Louie is played by Christopher Walken, who once famously stated on a sketch on Saturday Night Live in 2000, "I have a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

The animal characters were created entirely in key frame computer animation, with the assistance of footage of real animal movement, the actors recording their lines, and performance capture for reference. The production team underwent a thorough process to realistically convey the animals' speaking, while still making them perceptually believable to the audience. Favreau researched earlier films featuring anthropomorphic animals - including Walt Disney's animated features, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Bambi (1942), as well as modern films such as Babe (1995) - and adopted certain techniques from those films into The Jungle Book (2016). Nearly 70 separate species of native animals are featured in the film, with several species being portrayed as "150% larger" than their actual counterparts. Jim Henson's Creature Shop was brought in to provide animal puppet figures for Sethi to act against, although none appear in the finished film. Director Jon Favreau expressed a desire to avoid overusing motion capture in order to prevent an uncanny valley effect. Moving Picture Company (MPC) and Weta Digital created the film's visual effects. MPC developed a new software for animating muscular structure in the animals. Around 1,000 remote jungle locations in India were photographed and used as reference in post-production.

This is Idris Elba's second of three starring roles in Disney films of 2016, following Zootopia (2016) and Finding Dory (2016). All of the three films feature Elba in prominent animated voice-over performances.

Over 2,000 children auditioned for the part of Mowgli, in his first audition, acting newcomer Neel Sethi won the part.

The first time King Louie appears on the screen, he is sitting in a chair, his face obscured by shadows and talking in a sinister, slightly muffled voice about offering Mowgli protection before finally revealing his face. This is an obvious homage to the classic film Apocalypse Now (1979) in which Marlon Brando's character, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, first appears on screen similarly composed.

The end credits feature "The Jungle Book" in book form that has the same cover design as the book seen in the opening credits of The Jungle Book (1967). It is in fact the original book prop, taken from Disney's archives, as mentioned in the making of featurette.

FILM 1509: AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON 

TRIVIA: Scarlett Johansson was pregnant during filming of this movie so many of her scenes were scheduled early in filming before she began to show. To help hide her pregnancy later in filming, three stunt doubles were hired. This caused a lot of confusion among the other actors since, according to them, all of the stunt women looked very similar to Johansson. Chris Evans stated that it got to the point where he would say hello and start a conversation with one of them, only to realize midway that the person he was talking to wasn't Johansson. Ultimately, some scenes used CGI to hide Johansson's belly.

Because Ultron was 8-9 feet (2.4 - 2.7 meters) tall, the 5-foot 10-inch (1.77 meter) James Spader had to wear an antennae-like contraption made out of a thick piece of wire with two red balls attached to the top that went up his entire back and 3 feet above his head. This was done so that the actors that shared scenes with him would have a reference point for where his eyes would be; the two red balls represented the placement of Ultron's eyes. Elizabeth Olsen stated that this was actually distracting because Spader would be giving an intense performance and out of instinct she would look at him rather than the balls representing his eyes. Much to everyone's amusement, whenever this happened, Aaron Taylor-Johnson would yell, "Red balls! Look at his balls, Lizzie!" at her in order to get her to look in the right direction.

James Spader was Joss Whedon's first and only choice for the role of Ultron, because of his "hypnotic voice that can be eerily calm and compelling while also being very human and humorous".

Aaron Taylor-Johnson was asked to lose weight (muscle mass in particular) because he looked too strong to portray a runner, who is usually trim.

The trailer was viewed 34 million times on YouTube in the first 24 hours after it was released. This broke the record that was previously held by Iron Man 3 (2013).

The addition of Quicksilver to the cast sparked wide discussion over the direction of the character who is also slated to appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Quicksilver had been discussed previously as a potential character in both X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and The Avengers (2012), but legal complexities over the license to the character resulted in his omission from both films. However, in May 2013 both Marvel and Fox Studios announced a resolution to the previous legal issues, and that Quicksilver would appear in this film as well as an X-Men sequel, though under certain parameters: no allusion to his relations to the X-Men or Magneto (the character's father) can be made in an "Avengers" film, and no reference to Quicksilver's membership in the Avengers can be made in an "X-Men" film; the rights agreement between Fox and Marvel even goes so far as to stipulate the character cannot be referred to as a "mutant" in any Marvel film. Additionally, the day after Fox announced Evan Peters as Quicksilver, Marvel and Fox entered into a legal standoff over provisions of the rights agreement for the character, including the issue of whether Peters would be allowed to portray Quicksilver in any other film outside the "X-Men" franchise, necessitating a second actor to play Quicksilver in any Marvel film, resulting in two different versions of the same character appearing in two competing film series.

"Marvel Ultimates" comic is famous for featuring a controversial incestuous story-line between Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. According to Elizabeth Olsen, while this particular aspect would not be overtly present in the film, she and Aaron Taylor-Johnson "played around" with certain parts of it: "Every time you see an image of them, they're always holding each other's hand and looking over each other's shoulder. They're always so close, it's almost uncomfortable. Aaron and I have been playing a little bit with those kinds of images just for ourselves."

Cameo [Stan Lee]: A veteran at the Avengers' party, who takes a drink of Thor's ale. Lee has said this is his favorite cameo to date.

Lou Ferrigno contributed to the voice of the Hulk in this film. He has played the Hulk in almost every live-action version since 1978: he played the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk (1978) and its subsequent three TV specials, and he voiced the Hulk in the big-screen The Incredible Hulk (2008) in which he also played "security guard" - he also played a security guard in Hulk (2003). He also has voiced the Hulk in various animated productions.

Paul Bettany (the Vision) is good friends with co-star Stellan Skarsgård (Dr Selvig). In fact, Bettany and his wife Jennifer Connelly named their firstborn child Stellan, after Skarsgård.

When Tony Stark tries to lift Thor's Hammer he jokes saying "I'm re-instituting prima noctis". Primae Noctis was, allegedly, a law in Late Medieval Europe by which a feudal lord could claim the "first night" (implying the night subsequent to her wedding) with any bride in his dominion, in order to have sexual relations with her. This practice was depicted in Braveheart (1995).

FILM 1097: HER

TRIVIA: Samantha Morton was originally the voice of Samantha. She was present on the set with Joaquin Phoenix every day. After the filming wrapped and Spike Jonze started editing the movie, he felt like something was not right. With Morton's blessing, he decided to recast the role and Scarlett Johansson was brought and replaced Morton, re-recording all the dialogue.

Amy Adams said writer/director Spike Jonze would essentially lock her and Joaquin Phoenix in a room together for an hour or two every other day, and make them talk to each other. Jonze did this so that the actors could get to know each other better. Adams credits this for her and Phoenix's close friendship.

Most of the city backgrounds, especially the ones featuring skyscrapers, are actually filmed in Shanghai. You can see many very identifiable skyscrapers such as the Shanghai World Financial Center. There are even Chinese signs if you look carefully. Apparently, Shanghai now is what Los Angeles will look like in the future.

This is the only movie Spike Jonze has written as well as directed, completely from his own original script.

During some of the more emotional scenes, Amy Adams would sing songs from famous musicals like "Annie" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in order to cheer herself up. Eventually, Joaquin Phoenix would join in and they would sing together. However, they stopped after they saw Spike Jonze filming them.

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