FILM 1879: JUPITER ASCENDING

FILM 1879: JUPITER ASCENDING

TRIVIA: The crew created a rig of six cameras, called the Panocam, which was mounted on a helicopter and covered nearly 180 degrees of the action. During post production, the directors could combine the overlapped filmed footage, essentially creating a camera that could swing around the action independently of the helicopter's actual flying path.

The chase sequence in Chicago was codenamed "Fifty-Two Part" by the film's crew. It was the longest sequence in the script and involving some of the film's most difficult stunts. To complete it, Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum had to film every day for six months.

When arriving at the planet Ores, the Station V from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) can be seen in the distance amongst the space ships.

The beautiful interior of the Natural History Museum designed by Alfred Waterhouse in London was used in the filming of "intergalactic space palace" scenes, housing film and stunt crew numbering over 400 and 150 cast and extras

Natalie Portman was originally cast as Jupiter Jones, but dropped out. Rooney Mara was considered to replace her, before Mila Kunis was finally cast.

FILM 1354: PITCH BLACK

TRIVIA: The contact lenses Vin Diesel wore in the movie, while a prototype during production, were briefly available to the public from Lens Quest following the release of the film. They were called Shine Job, like in the movie.

The contacts that Vin Diesel wore to play Riddick were a prototype. After the first day of filming, when they tried to remove the contact lenses, they couldn't. Due to where they were filming, they had to have an optometrist flown in from the nearest town, three hours away. Diesel called the contacts hubcaps.

In one of the shots showing cargo pods being jettisoned from the ship before the crash, one of the pods is numbered '2E', a jokey reference to the director's name ('Dave Twohy') from the effects crew.

Although Riddick narrates the beginning of the story, his first dialogue with another character (Carolyn) does not occur until almost thirty minutes into the movie.

FILM 1232: OBLIVION

TRIVIA: A full-sized bubble ship was created with doors that opened on their own and the cockpit controls were built with input from Tom Cruise, who is a licensed pilot.

Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda didn't like the extensive use of blue screen mattes in TRON: Legacy (2010) to such an extent, that for this film, they wanted to use real glass, mirrors and shiny surfaces for the glass tower set. The sky footage was projected on a 500 by 45 feet screen consisting of 21 monitors taken from three weeks of footage of a volcano in Hawaii. The monitors took 10 technician weeks to install and fine tuning with floor-level rig support. In the end it had the actors complimenting the production team for that set design that as such Tom Cruise declared that the glass tower was one of his favorite film sets.

Jack Harper sitting on a precipice watering a small plant, was filmed on Earl's Peak in Iceland, 2000 feet high. The crew had to use helicopters to get people and equipment to the filming location.

The painting on the wall showing a woman in a wheat field is titled "Christina's World" and was painted by the American artist Andrew Wyeth in 1948. The woman is based upon a real person who had been partially paralyzed due to polio. Wyeth was inspired to create this art when he saw her crawling across the field.

At Jack's house by the lake, he flips through a vinyl record collection and displays the following albums in order: Next in Line by Conway Twitty (1968), Rio by Duran Duran (1982), Some Enchanted Evening by Blue Öyster Cult (1978), Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones (1972), The Wall by Pink Floyd (1979), and Asia by Asia (1982).

In his review of Oblivion for the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," David Edelstein admitted he had such a hard time following the plot of this movie, he had to resort to reading the summary on the movie's Wikipedia entry, and checking the IMDb Message Boards for the answers to some of his questions: "Confused? Everything will be made clear. Not in the movie itself, which is the most incoherent piece of storytelling in years, and had me crying what, what over the din of the explosions. It was Wikipedia's "Oblivion" entry that spelled out what was going on in the final flashback. And a few, but not all my complaints, were answered on an IMDB board in which posters argued over whether the problem was our lack of attention spans or atrocious screenwriting."

FILM 1261: STAR WARS: EPISODE VI - RETURN OF THE JEDI

TRIVIA: Carrie Fisher complained about her costumes in the previous two movies. She said they were so long, you could not tell "she was a woman". Those complaints led to the skimpy outfit she wore as Jabba's prisoner. The costume became something of a running joke among the crew, because the metal framework that held the top together meant that the costume didn't move well with her. Since Fisher didn't like the industry standard solution of using double-sided tape, it became necessary before each take to have a wardrobe person check to ensure that her breasts were still snug inside the costume top (and several scenes had to be re-shot when "wardrobe malfunctions" occurred).

In the DVD 2004 release, George Lucas explained the reason behind why Yoda told Luke that Darth Vader was his father. Lucas had consulted with a child psychologist during the making of the film. The psychologist said that unless it was unequivocally stated that Vader was Luke's father, moviegoers age 12 and under would dismiss Vader's claim to be Luke's father as a lie.

John Williams son Joseph Williams, the lead singer of the pop/rock band Toto, collaborated on part of the score, and wrote lyrics for the Ewoks songs.

The word Ewok is never spoken in the movie, nor are the individuals (Wicket, Paploo, etc.) referred to by name.

The point-of-view shots for the speeder bike sequence were achieved by having a camera operator walk through the forest at normal speed with a camera filming at one frame per second. When the footage was played back at twenty four frames per second, it gave the appearance of flying through the forest at high speeds.

The slithery noises made when Jabba the Hutt moves were created by sound-man Ben Burtt running his hands through a cheese casserole.

FILM 1244: METROPOLIS

TRIVIA: Much to Fritz Lang's dismay, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were big fans of the film. Goebbels met with Lang and told him that he could be made an honorary Aryan despite his Jewish background. Goebbels told him "Mr Lang, we decide who is Jewish and who is not". Lang left for Paris that very night.

Was so influential on Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster that they named their character's city after it.

Adjusting for inflation, the budget for Metropolis (5m Reichsmarks) ran around $200 million (June, 2007).

Unemployment and inflation were so bad in Germany at the time that the producers had no trouble finding 500 malnourished children to film the flooding sequences.

The robot of this film inspired the look for C-3PO in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).

The multiple-exposed sequences were not created in a lab but right during the filming on the set. The film was rewound in the camera and then exposed again right away. This was done up to 30 times.

The film takes place in 2026.

The mechanical right hand of one of the characters was later imitated in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

FILM 1234: EVENT HORIZON

TRIVIA: The rotational shot of the space station over earth took nearly a third of the film's budget.

Paul W.S. Anderson's initial cut of the film ran to 130 minutes and was quite graphically violent, so much so that both test audiences and the studio baulked at the finished product. Paramount ordered him to cut the film by 30 minutes and tone down some of the violence, a decision he now regrets.

The script originally described the Gateway machine as a smooth and featureless black orb suspended in midair between large, rotating mechanical arms. It also was said to contain a stable black hole within it at all times (which the ship used as a power source), as opposed to briefly creating a temporary one. Paul Anderson decided to redesign it to involve interlocking circles as a homage to the puzzle box in Hellraiser (1987), which served as an inspiration.

For his final scenes, Sam Neill would come to the studio at 3am so that he could spend 7-8 hours in make-up.

Everyone's space suit has a flag showing future political changes on Earth. Characters portrayed by American actors wear a flag of the United States with 55 stars. Characters portrayed by British actors wear a European Union flag with 22 stars, replacing the former Union Jack. Sam Neill's character wears a modified Australian flag, with the Union Jack removed from the top left-hand corner, and the Aboriginal flag in place of the Union Jack.

This movie was produced entirely within the UK, even the special effects.

When Doctor Weir opens the blinds in his room during the opening sequence of the film, a whooshing sound effect can be heard. This sound effect is taken from the video game Doom, heard when the player opens a door.

Paul W.S. Anderson was offered the movie on the strength of the box office success of his previous film, Mortal Kombat (1995). It meant he had to turn down the opportunity to direct X-Men (2000), The X Files (1998) and Alien: Resurrection (1997).

Writer Philip Eisner visited the set while the space suit sequences were being filmed. The suits were so heavy that the actors risked back injuries, prompting Laurence Fishburne to stop between takes, point at Eisner, and shout mock-angrily: "You! You Eisner! You did this to me!".