Archive Category: Movies & SciFi
Destino: A Cartoon Short by Disney and Dali
In 1946, famed surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Walt Disney became unlikely collaborators, and set to work on a short film called Destino.
The project was ultimately abandoned with less than 20 seconds of film shot, but six decades later modern Disney artists completed the film using Dali’s original storyboards. The result is easily the strangest thing to come out of the Disney studios since… well, probably ever.
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Felted Jabba The Hut
Never before has Jabba looked so sensitive with his deep brown eyes and sweet little stuffed bunny. He’s part of the Star Wars Exhibit previously mentioned on Neatorama.
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The Dark Side of Disney
Disney isn’t always the Happiest Place on Earth. The parks sometimes harbor deep, dark secrets – and we’re not talking the Haunted Mansion or the Tower of Terror. Below are a few sinister secrets Mickey doesn’t want you to know about.
Deaths
We’ve all heard the rumors that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But it’s not true. There are several incidents where the victims were reported to have died at the scene.
In June of both 1973 and 1983, 18-year-old boys drowned in the Rivers of America. Both had stayed in the area when they weren’t supposed to - the incident in ‘73 occurred when a boy and his brother decided to stay in the park after closing and the ‘83 incident happened when a boy capsized a rubber emergency raft he had stolen from a cast-only section of the park.
In 1984, Dollie Young was riding the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland when her seatbelt became unbuckled. To this day, it’s not known how Dollie fell out of her car, but she did. She fell to the track and was hit by another car, then caught under its wheels and dragged for a bit before the ride came to a stop. She was pronounced dead at the scene due to massive head and chest injuries.
And, of course, there was the infamous “America Sings” death of 1974. An employee named Debbi Stone was working as the hostess to the show one evening when her fellow cast members were alerted to the fact that she was missing. Some reports say they noticed at some point during the evening; other reports say a guest heard Debbi’s screams and immediately told cast members. Either way, by the time she was found, Debbi had been crushed to death between a rotating theater wall and a permanent theater wall; she definitely didn’t make it to a hospital first. Photo from Yesterland.
Ashes
In 2007, a guest alerted cast members at the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that she had seen another woman sprinkling some sort of a powdery substance into the water, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the ride was shut down the same year when a group of people managed to leave a pile of ashes in the Captain’s Quarters section of the ride.
Hidden Messages
I’ve done it, and I bet a lot of you have done it as well: pausing and rewinding and going frame-by-frame to catch hidden messages or images in certain Disney films. Some of them are really there and some of them are just products of our active imaginations. Here’s the lowdown:
Aladdin does not tell children to take off their clothes in Aladdin. It’s a scene where “Prince Ali” is trying to get up to Princess Jasmine’s room to talk to her when he comes across her tiger, Rajah. The tiger growls at him menacingly, and Aladdin says, “C’mon… good kitty. Take off and go!” while shooing the feline away with his turban. The captioning supports this argument. However, the line is whispered and not enunciated well, and in addition, it seems to be edited poorly. Snopes http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/aladdin.asp says that the same bit of dialogue seems to have been inserted twice, so the whispered line is doubly garbled. Because it was so close on the heels of The Little Mermaid controversy, people heard what they wanted to.
Speaking of which, The Little Mermaid did not contain any sexual images on purpose. There were two issues that concerned the public: first, that artwork for the movie contained a phallic images as part of a castle in the background, and second, that the priest officiating over the wedding scene near the end of the movie seems to get an erection right in the middle of the ceremony. Neither is true, according to Snopes. The phallic image was unintentional and was not drawn in by a disgruntled employee who had recently gotten laid off (the artist didn’t even work for Disney) and the “erection” is actually the priest’s knees.
So what is true? Well, there’s definitely an image of a topless woman in the 1977 movie The Rescuers. And Disney fully admits it. In fact, the image – which is a photograph, not an animated bit, and was clearly intentionally placed in the movie – was basically pointed out to the public by Disney themselves. The image occurs so fast in two single, non-consecutive frames, that a viewer would have to know exactly where to pause the movie in order to even see it. The movie was recalled in 1999 after Disney discovered the image was there; they claimed it must have been inserted in post-production. Photo from Snopes.
One that’s maybe true: Jessica Rabbit going commando in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There’s a scene in the movie where Jessica and Eddie Valiant are thrown from a car, causing her dress to flip up very briefly. It goes fast, but people who have slowed the movie to frame-by-frame say that the way the coloring was done suggests that mischievous animators may have drawn Jessica without any undergarments. However, the coloring, which is darker than the rest of Jessica’s skin, may also suggest underwear.
There are definitely more dark Disney tales – in fact, we could probably turn this into a series! What weird and/or disturbing rumors have you heard about the House of Mouse? Share in the comments, and maybe we’ll investigate for future posts.
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Movie Trivia: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Did you guys hear that Indiana Jones 5 is apparently in the works? Are you all as horrified as I am? If you’re like me and hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a passion, then you prefer to dwell on the classics - Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and yes, even Temple of Doom. Here’s some trivia to remind you of the good times.
The movie was filmed during the summer of 1980.
You’ve probably heard the rumors, and yes, they’re true – Indiana Jones was named after George Lucas’ dog, Indiana. He was the prototype for Chewbacca as well, so his old malamute had a pretty big impact on Lucas’ two biggest series.
“Indiana Smith?” Yep, almost, until Steven Spielberg told Lucas it just didn’t sound right. The equally-generic “Jones” was suggested and flowed much better.
According to George Lucas, almost every studio in town turned down the movie, feeling that it would cost too much money to make.
Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck both tested for Indiana Jones; Karen Allen actually screentested with Tim Matheson. Tom Selleck did very well and was the frontrunner, but had to bow out due to Magnum P.I. Harrison Ford was brought up early in the casting discussion, but George Lucas wanted to avoid casting him since he had already become so closely associated with Star Wars.
The role of Sallah was offered to Danny DeVito - he was Spielberg’s first choice - but was unable to do it because of Taxi. The job went to John Rhys-Davies instead. Picture from BlogCDN.
Indy’s leather jacket looks old and beat up, but in reality, it was brand new - and there were 10 of them. The costume director “aged” each jacket with a metal brush and Harrison Ford’s own pocket knife.
The famous hat is from Savile Row in London, a place called Herbert Johnson. The hat had a very wide brim and the crown was quite high, apparently the fashion Down Under since it was their Australian model. After a couple of fittings, it was declared the Indiana Jones fedora. When the customized hat arrived at the studio, the costume designer rolled it up and crushed it, then various members of the cast (including Harrison) took turns sitting on it to make it look like a very worn-in, well-loved hat.
Someone was actually sent out to find a mountain that specifically looked like the Paramount Studios logo mountain so they could create the opening shot of the movie. I suppose these days Lucas would have just made a CGI mountain…
There was a complication during the scene where Alfred Molina is covered in spiders – they didn’t want to move. They just sat stagnant on him, making the excitement of the scene rather… well, not exciting. They discovered that all of the spiders were male, so a female spider was put on Molina’s chest. It did the trick – the male spiders were immediately more active and started to crawl in the direction of the female.
The golden idol was based on an Incan fertility statue. Photo from FanPop.
The movie was filmed in Tunisia because it was a lot cheaper to shoot there than Egypt, and since the script never called for shots of the Sphinx or the pyramids, so they were able to get away with it. In fact, one of the scenes was shot in the exact same canyon where R2-D2 was stolen by Jawas in Star Wars.
The part where Indy watches a swordsman go through a very elaborate routine with his scimitar only to shoot him at the end of it happened because Harrison Ford really had to go to the bathroom. Indy was supposed to have a huge fight scene using his whip, but a bout of dysentery had left him weak and desperately needing the john. Because of this, someone - reports vary on whose idea it was - suggested that Indy just dispatch the dude like anyone who had a gun in his arsenal would.
Harrison wasn’t the only one who got sick – a majority of the cast and crew found themselves incapacitated at some point during filming in Tunisia. Steven Spielberg didn’t get sick because he ate only canned food from the U.K. Everyone else who ate food in the restaurants or at the hotel got horribly sick at least once during filming.
During the scene where Indy fights while the plane is rolling around, Harrison Ford actually sustained an injury when the wheels of the plane got too close and rolled right up onto his leg. It tore his ACL, but rather than submit to Tunisian hospitals, Ford wrapped it in ice and continued to shoot. He also bruised his ribs during the scene where he is dragged behind the truck.
Unlike his character counterpart, Harrison Ford isn’t afraid of snakes and had no problem working with them during the Well of Souls scene. Precautions were taken anyway - if you look closely, a reflection gives away the fact that a sheet of glass was placed between Ford and the cobra. It was a good thing, too – at one point the cobra actually sprayed venom onto the glass.
Some of the sound effects weren’t fancy at all: the sound of snakes slithering was really just the sound designer squishing his fingers through a cheese casserole, the sound of people getting punched was really a pile of leather coats being hit with a baseball bat, and the lid sliding off of the Ark was a toilet lid being slid off the back of a toilet. The sound designer was having trouble coming up with just the right sound for the rolling boulder at the beginning of the movie and ended up using the sound of a Honda Civic coasting down a gravel hill.
Marion was the writer’s grandmother-in-law’s name, and he had been mulling over a surname for a while when he came across a streetname called “Ravenwood” and loved the way the two names fit together. Photo from TheShadyCat.
The boat was actually the submarine model from Das Boot.
Although most shots were done in four takes or less because Lucas and Spielberg wanted a “quick and dirty” feel to the movie – nothing too perfect – there was one shot that took more than 50 takes. It was the scene where the monkey salutes with a “Heil Hitler” gesture. A grape was attached to fishing line and held just out of reach of the camera shot to achieve the salute, but it took a while to get it just right. It ended up being one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite moments in the movie.
Those of us who like little movie secrets know that George Lucas likes to include a reference to “1138” in all of his movies in homage to his first movie, THX 1138. You’ll find it in Raiders during the Nazi harbor scene if you listen to the numbers being read over the loudspeaker. It’s subtle, though, because the numbers are read in German – “Ein, ein, drei, acht.”
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Machu Picchu Post
Machu Picchu Post from Machu Picchu Post Team on Vimeo.
A gorgeous 3D film by Clement Crocq, Margaux Durand-Rival and Nicolas Novali for the “Supinfocom Arles” in 2008. It depicts the antics of a young Peruvian boy, his Llama and a Pilot who goes through a psychedelic experience filled with Peruvian iconography and mysticism. Also check out the making of the film on CGSociety as it details the fascinating steps into creating a 3D short film.
TGIF! 
Machu Picchu Post Website - Link
The Making of the film on CGSociety - Link
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Life Imitates Unbreakable: Boy Survived Being Hit by a Car Unscathed
Four-year-old Turkish boy Muhammet Dirlik is one lucky boy: he was hit by a car, which sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs. But what seems like a surely fatal accident left Muhammet unscathed.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube], and quick, someone stop M. Night Shyamalan before Signs or The Happening happens or we’re doomed!
Previously: Life Imitates Final Destination: Woman Who Missed Air France Flight 447 Died in a Car Crash 2 Weeks Later
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Caption Monkey 61: You Shall Not Pass!
Photo: pyza* [Flickr]
This week’s Neatorama and Hobotopia’s Caption Monkey photo of a hamster named Piórko came to us via the always awesome Cute Overload. I think there’s more to this hamster than meets the eye.
As usual, the funniest caption will win a free black and white custom Monkey drawing from Adam "Ape Lad" Koford. Game rules are simple: place your caption in the comment. One caption per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you’d like.
And "You shall not pass" is taken, mmkay? Oh, by the way, that phrase is a variation of a World War I propaganda slogan "They shall not pass" made famous in the Battle of Verdun on the Western Front. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, was himself a soldier who fought during World War I.
Be sure to check out Adam’s blog for inspiration. Good luck!
Update 6/23/09 - Adam has picked the winner! Congratulations to JB who won with this caption: I don’t mind the baths, but do you have to BLOW DRY?!?
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Movie Trivia: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
I have a feeling I’m going to get mixed responses to this movie trivia post – either you love the stupidity (genius?) of Bill and Ted or you hate it. Me… I love it. I had a massive crush on Keanu Reeves back in his Ted days (which I then revived during his Speed days). Anyway, enjoy the trivia. San Dimas High School Football Rules!
Bill and Ted were originally “Bill, Ted and Bob.” The writers of the movie, UCLA students Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, used to do improv comedy and one of their bits was about a trio of stoners who talked about current events even though they really had no idea what was going on. The third comedian who played Bob lost interest in the whole thing, and thus Wyld Stallyns were born.
In one of the early scripts, Rufus was a 28-year-old sophomore in high school whose van traveled through time. The van idea was thought to be too similar to the DeLorean in Back to the Future, so the phone booth concept was used instead.
The phone booth was given away in a Nintendo Power magazine contest. A kid in Mississippi became the proud owner. Photo from ErrorMacro.com.
Before the actors were chosen, Bill and Ted were supposed to be kind of unpopular guys who got made fun of in school. But the director loved Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves and knew they were perfect for the parts, so the roles were adjusted a little bit to make them regular guys who were pretty likable.
At first, the idea was for Keanu Reeves to play Bill and Alex Winter to play Ted. Neither one of them had a problem with switching roles. The writers didn’t meet the actors who were going to play the title characters until the first day of filming. Right before filming started, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon went to eat at a McDonald’s near location and saw a couple of guys eating there and remarked to each other that those guys should have played Bill and Ted. When they showed up to the set later, they discovered that “those guys” were playing Bill and Ted - it had been Winter and Reeves at McDonald’s.
Originally, the characters Bill and Ted went back and “borrowed” were a little bit different: they included Charlemagne (”Charlie Mangay) and Babe Ruth. Apparently some scenes were actually filmed of Bill and Ted going to prehistoric San Dimas and meeting some cavemen.
The director wanted ZZ Top to play The Three Most Important People in the World, but ultimately decided that rock stars were too hard to work with.
At one point, Bill reads the history assignment to Ted, explaining that the point was to figure out how historical figures would feel about San Dimas, 1988. Do a little lip-reading in this part: Alex WInter actually says “1987,” because that’s when it was filmed. But by the time the film was released (there was a bit of a delay when the film’s first distributor went bankrupt), it was 1989. The line had to be redubbed.
If you’ve ever wondered what’s on Bill’s t-shirt under that vest, here you go: it’s the cover for Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love” single.
Photo from AlexWinterFansite.com.
Joan of Arc was played by Jane Wiedlin, the rhythm guitarist for the Go-Go’s.
Most of the movie was filmed in Arizona, including the exteriors of the high school, the Circle K scene and the scene were Napoleon goes down the waterslides at Waterloo. The mall scenes were filled overnight at the Metrocenter in Phoenix.
Maybe Ted isn’t as dumb as he appears to be - at the end, after Napoleon finishes up his talk about how much he supposedly loved the waterslides at Waterloo, Ted says, “I don’t think it’s gonna work.” If you check out the maps Napoleon was gesturing to, you’ll see that Napoleon was mapping the Russian invasion, which ended terrible for the little guy.
Photo from BacktotheEighties.Net.
In the movie, Bill and Ted say that Eddie Van Halen would compete Wyld Stallyns. After it was released, Eddie said he would have gladly joined if asked.
A scene was cut near the end where the guys attend prom with the princesses. That’s how the film was supposed to end, but it was decided that the garage ending would keep the focus on Bill and Ted’s music and Wyld Stallyns instead of on the prom.
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License to Chill: Daniel Craig-Shaped Popsicle
OK, we’re way behind on this news but I think its sheer strangeness will help overcome our tardiness: food company Del Monte asked 1,000 British women which celebrity is the coolest and James Bond star Daniel Craig won the vote. So, true to their words, Del Monte made a Daniel Craig-shaped popsicle!
Del Monte Superfruit Smoothies, who produced the limited edition replica lollies, said artists ‘worked tirelessly’ to recreate a sculpture of 41-year-old Craig in the scene where he emerges from the sea in Casino Royale.
‘Daniel Craig topped our poll of Britain’s coolest celebrities and thanks to our Del Monte lolly replica he is officially immortalised as super smooth and licensed to chill,’ said spokesman Matt O’Connor.
Silly women, I’d have picked Ricky Gervais. More popsicle that way.
Link - via Dom’s Weird News
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5 Most Worthless Droids in Sci-Fi
If real life is any indication, for every android hero, there has got to be a hundred or so worthless robots floating around in science fiction. Neatoramanaut Johnny Cat has compiled his very own list of 5 worthless droids that ever graced the silver screen.
This one to the left is V.I.N.CENT, from the 1979 sci-fi movie The Black Hole:
4. V.I.N.CENT and B.O.B.
Okay, I’ll admit it. When The Black Hole came out in 1979, I was all over it. I even had the board game. This was mostly due to the effect Star Wars had on my embracing any & all space travel movies to the fullest. But as anyone who’s seen it will probably tell you, this movie SUCKED. These two whirligigs didn’t even impress my young sci-fi starved mind at the time, with their precious laser guns taking out countless other worthless sentry droids. They look like they were designed by a six-year-old with a serious head trauma. Also: Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens do the voices. Waste.
See if you can add anything to the list: Link
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Pixar Grants Last Wish
10-year-old Colby Curtin of Huntington Beach, California had been anxiously looking forward to the movie Up since she saw the first previews. Colby battled vascular cancer for three years, and when the movie was released, she was too sick to go to the theater.
After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.
The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.
The animated movie begins with scenes showing the evolution of a relationship between a husband and wife. After losing his wife in old age, the now grumpy man deals with his loss by attaching thousands of balloons to his house, flying into the sky, and going on an adventure with a little boy.
Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.
Be warned, reading the entire story will make you cry. Pixar declined to make a statement about Colby or the employee who visited her. Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Carole Lynch)
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50 Films to Watch When You’re Dead
Kottke lists 50 of his least favorite films of all times. In the “50 Films You Can Wait to See After You’re Dead” post you will find movies such as Gigli, Crossroads and Jaws 3-D.
Any film you would like to add - or maybe remove?
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College Dorm Light Show
[YouTube - Link]
Students at Politechnika Wroc?awska or the Wroclawska University of Technology in Poland had themselves a grand ol’ time rigging their dorm with a light show that played the theme from Knight Rider.
After this clip, check out their website P.I.W.O.3 (Google Translate) for many more video clips.
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Life-Size Mobile Suit Gundam
To celebrate the anime Mobile Suit Gundam’s 30th anniversary, Japan is building a life-size RX-78-2 Gundam in Odaiba, Tokyo. From Anime News Network:
The statue will be free for viewing, but it will only stay up for two months. It will be built with fiberglass-reinforced plastic over a steel frame so it can be disassembled later. The head unit will move and the body will have 50 points that will emit light. Mist can shoot forth from 14 locations on the body. The park is just four trains stops from Tokyo Big Sight, the home of the Comic Market dojinshi convention and the Gundam Big Expo convention that will be held from August 21 to August 23. Bandai NAMCO Group is still determining what to do with the statue after its allotted two months in the park are over.
As you can see, the mecha is almost done. Just in time to deal with the shenanigans over at North Korea, too! Moé passion blog has more pics: Link
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8 Starship Enterprise Facts Every Trekker Should Know
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), the starship in the original Star Trek TV series
To boldly go where no man has gone before, you'd need a really good starship - and to launch Star Trek, the pop culture phenomenon that entertained and inspired millions, you'd need a pretty darned good one! And that is exactly what the United Space Starship Enterprise delivered. Here are 8 Starship Enterprise facts every Trekker should know:
1. Meet the REAL Enterprise (Several of Them, Actually)
(L) The tenth HMS Enterprise, an Arctic survey sloop (1848), painting
by WH Browne from the National
Maritime Museum online collection;
(R) USS Enterprise at Valcour Island, Lake Champlain, New York (1776)
from Dictionary
of American Naval Fighting Ships
Before Star Trek, there have been many actual ships named Enterprise. The very first one of note was a French frigate L'Enterprise, which was captured by the British Royal Navy in 1705 and renamed as HMS Enterprise. It served as a British gun ship until it was wrecked just two years later. After this ship, there were 14 other HMS also named Enterprise (sometimes spelled Enterprize).
The United States have 8 battleships named Enterprise, including the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the world. The very first one (before the US became a country, so technically it was a ship of the Continental Navy) was an armed sloop on Lake Champlain in 1775 named the United States Ship (USS) Enterprise.
During the American Civil War, aeronaut and scientist Thaddeus S.C. Lowe built a balloon named Enterprise, to be used by the Union Army to perform aerial recon on Confederate troops.
(L) Enterprise, a gas inflated aerostat (1858); (M) Space Shuttle Enterprise; (R) Artist rendering of VSS Enterprise
And who can forget the Space Shuttle Enterprise? It was the very first Space Shuttle orbiter, built for NASA in 1976. The Shuttle was supposed to be named Constitution, but a write-in campaign successfully persuaded NASA to name it after the Star Trek starship. (Interestingly, the fictional Starship Enterprise was a Constitution-class vessel - coincidence? Hm....)
The last actual Enterprise hasn't been built yet but it already has a name: Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise and yes, it's an homage to Star Trek. It's a suborbital spaceplane being built by Sir Richard Branson of Virgin for the purposes of space tourism.
Ironically, when Sir Richard offered the first flight to William Shatner, the actor declined and revealed that he's actually afraid of space travel, "I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me." Shatner added that he's not entirely against the idea - he just needed some reassurance. "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back." (Source)
2. No Rockets, Jets or Firestreams
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who pitched the TV show as "Wagon Train to the Stars," didn't tell art director Matt Jefferies what Starship Enterprise should look like, instead he told the bewildered art director what he did not want to see. Starship Concept Art has reprint of a nifty article in Star Trek: The Magazine by Jefferies about the design process:
"In my approach to Star Trek I wanted to be as practical as possible," Jefferies says. "I could tell Gene was serious enough, but I really didn't know where to start. I knew the Enterprise was going to be on the cutting edge of the future, but essentially he gave me the job of finding a shape, and I didn't know what the shape looked like." Although Roddenberry knew a lot about his ship, he had never visualized it, and consequently made the situation more complicated since he couldn't give Jefferies a detailed sense of direction. According to Jefferies, Roddenberry was absolutely clear to avoid any resemblance to a 1960's rocket ship. "Gene described the 100-150 man crew, outer space, fantastic, unheard-of speed, and that we didn't have to worry about gravity. He had emphasized that there were to be no fins, no wings, no smoke trails, no flames, no rocket.
After hundreds of drawings, Jefferies came up with this:
Image via Starship
Concept Art
In his honor, the crawl spaces on all of the Starfleet starships on Star Trek are called Jefferies tubes.
3. The Original Name of USS Enterprise
That's
right - the iconic starship wasn't always named USS Enterprise ... in
the original draft, Roddenberry named it USS Yorktown after a World War
II aircraft carrier. The starship was commanded by Captain Robert April,
then Christopher Pike, before Roddenberry settled on James Tiberius Kirk.
By the way, William Shatner was the third choice for Kirk. The role was offered to Lloyd Bridges and Jack Lord, both of whom declined it.
4. The Origin of NCC-1701
How did the famous USS Enterprise get its registration number NCC-1701 is the stuff of legend. There are conflicting stories, including one where 1701 is a tribute to Roddenberry's childhood neighbor's house number or that Jefferies got it from the registration number of his airplane.
Here's Matt Jefferies' explanation when he was asked during a BBC Interview:
NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.
The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don’t think anyone’ll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird.
5. Land the Ship? Too Expensive, Let's Teleport Everybody Instead!
Photo: Rex Features
Originally, Roddenberry envisioned the USS Enterprise to land on various planets, but it turned out to be too expensive as it would require them to build expensive sets. The next idea was to use shuttles - but when filming began, the full-sized shooting model wasn't ready. So, they came up with the idea of "beaming down" the crew via a teleportation device and thus the transporter was born! (Source)
In 1994, TIME Magazine interviewed Star Trek technical expert Michael Okuda about the intricacies of the transporter:
"It should be possible if we decompile the pattern buffer."
Transporters can send people instantly from one location to another by converting their molecules into energy, then reassembling them. Every living being has a distinct pattern of molecules; the pattern buffer fixes the configuration by adjusting for the Doppler effect -- the apparent change in the frequency of the energy waves caused by motion.
"I'll verify the Heisenberg compensators."
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know a subatomic particle's exact position and its exact direction and velocity at the same time. To transport people you have to know all those things, so the Heisenberg compensator was devised to overcome that problem. It's an attempt by the Trek writers to signal that they are at least aware of the issue. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work? "It works very well, thank you," says Okuda.
6. The Next Gen Enterprise: Hilton in Space
Jefferies
designed the bridge in the original USS Enterprise in the style of a Navy
battleship, with specialized workstations for its crew. When set designer
Richard James updated the bridge for Star Trek: The Next Generation
(restriction: no
purple!), Jefferies was asked about the new look. To which he replied:
Gene asked me how I liked the show, and I said that he had taken the bridge of my ship and turned it into the lobby of the Hilton. And I have just never watched any of them since. I’m lost.
Ironically, Star Trek and Hilton actually did come together to create a theme attraction. Star Trek: The Experience opened in 1998 at the Las Vegas Hilton. It closed in 2008 due to low attendance (though it is due to re-open in a different location in 2010).
7. The Original Star Trek Enterprise Prop
Photo: Carolyn Russo / Smithsonian
If you visit the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, definitely check out the actual model of the Starship Enterprise used in the filming of the original Star Trek TV show.
The hull and one nacelle of the original Star Trek Starship Enterprise
model as it was received by the National Air and Space Museum from Paramount
Studios on March 1, 1974. Image WEB11192-2009. Photo: Smithsonian
(with permission)
The model of the Enterprise was sent to the museum in crates, donated by Paramount Studios five years after the series ended.
Enterprise during its first Smithsonian restoration. SI Neg #74-3977.
Photo: Smithsonian
(with permission)
The Smithsonian performed extensive restoration to put the starship model back together, and for the first time ever, the photos of the restoration process are available to the public at the museum's blog.
The Museum Registrar Gregory K.H. Bryant has more on this behind the scenes look at the icon science fiction model: Link - Thanks Llori!
8. The Hot-Rod Starship Enterprise
For his movie Star Trek, director J.J. Abrams decided that the USS Enterprise could use a face-lift and worked with artists at Industrial Light & Magic to update the starship - like Roddenberry, he gave a simple directive:
"He wanted a hot-rod type of vehicle, but they also wanted to preserve the Enterprise kind of look," model maker John Goodson said in a presentation at ILM's San Francisco headquarters earlier this month.
"J.J. Abrams kept saying, 'Make it a bigger movie. Make it a bigger shot,'" creative director David Nakabayashi added. "I think that's one thing you see in this film, at least: The stuff I've seen is just everything is big."
SCI FI Wire has the interview with model maker John Goodson and visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett about the new Enterprise: Link
The official website for JJ Abram's Star Trek movie has a nifty 360° panorama of the bridge of the new starship:
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Star Trek Cakes
Following up on our 8 Starship Enterprise Facts Every Trekker Should Know post, here are some of the neatest Star Trek cakes ever made. Enjoy (Resistance is futile!)
Star Trek Cake by Ace of Cakes - via TrekMovie
(note the angry nerd comments)
CakeCentral user Spense uploaded these photos of the Captain
Kirk Cake made for the 2009
Star Trek Cake Contest (many, many more cool Star Trek cakes there)
Another one for the CakeCentral Star Trek Cake contest, this one is simple yet very chic: the Star Trek Uniform groom cake by CakeCentral user tenmeows.
USS Reliant Birthday
Cake complete with blue LED, by Victoria Sgro-Konopka of SunShine's
Cake Creations
Star
Trek Communicator Cake by Rick Reichart of Cakelava
This one is quite beautiful: Jonathan Lane's groom cake, over at USS
Angeles.
The four sides of the cakes include messages from the Klingons ("Where
do you keep the chocolate" - chocolate is an aphrodisiac for Klingons),
Ferengis ("You humans still owe us for this cake"), Romulans
("The Praetor says hello"), Cardassian ("Hey, why weren't
we invited to the wedding"), Bajoran ("May the Prophets guide
you both in your lives together") and Vulcans ("Live long and
prosper") - in their native languages.
The Star Trek Enterprise Cake by Edward and Antoni Frys of
European Cake Gallery
(ironically, in Texas) - via Cake
Wrecks
A Star
Trek Birthday Cake by Alix Lewer of Alixs
Cakes - a wonderful fondant work!
Star Trek
Cupcakes by Clares Cupcakes
Borg Wedding Cake
(look at the lil' Enterprise getting phasered!)
And last but not least, the Picard Cake to celebrate Captain Picard Day tomorrow (June 16):
Captain Picard Cake at POWET.TV
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The 15 Most Disturbing Movies Ever Made
I’m sure everyone has watched a movie at some point that made them pretty uncomfortable, but there seems to be a full blown niche of disturbing movies out there, as shown by this list by Movie Crunch blog.
Not all are hack and slash gore fests, take Threads (1984), for instance:
Threads actually wasn’t a feature film. It was a BBC mini-series that aired in 1984 that detailed in excruciating detail the after effects of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia that escalated to include the UK. The movie follows two families as they all basically die for various reasons (medical, economic, etc.) in the months and years following the attack, culminating in the devastating conclusion that showed a UK with a completely broken civilization where kids can’t even read just thirteen years after the bombs dropped.
Re-reading the above paragraph I realize my words really aren’t doing justice to how incredibly bleak Threads is, you really need to watch the movie to get the full effect. Luckily, (or not depending on how you want to look at it) the full film is on Google Video.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
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The Stories Behind 10 T.V. Theme Songs
You know them and love them (or maybe you hate them) - those T.V. theme songs that are so catchy they get in your head for days and refuse to leave. But how did they come to be in the first place? Here are the stories behind 10 of the most famous T.V. theme songs of all time. I could do 10 more pretty easily - if I missed your favorite, leave it in the comments and I’ll try to include it next time.
1. "Suicide is Painless" - M*A*S*H*
The
song was written by Robert Altman's son, Mike Altman, when he was only 14
years old. The tune was written by Johnny Mandel, a musician who worked
with Count Basie, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (among others). Mandel sings
the song as well. When Altman wrote the lyrics, he told producer Ingo Preminger
that he just wanted a guitar in return, but Preminger insisted that he be
paid the regular way and set up a contract that would give Altman royalties.
He ended up making more than a million dollars, at least according to his
dad, who directed the movie. Incidentally, Robert only received $75,000
for directing it.
2. "Those Were The Days" - All in the Family
According
to series producer Norman Lear, the reason Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton
sang the theme song themselves was simply to save costs. Although it was
the same thing at the beginning of every episode, there were a few different
versions. In one, Archie hugs Edith at the end. In another, Edith smiles
at Archie and he returns the look with one of irritation. And we shouldn't
be surprised that the lyrics and music were so memorable: songwriting
duo Charles Strouse and Lee Adams were very good at their jobs, having
already won a couple of Tony Awards (Bye Bye Birdie and Applause).
Another interesting tidbit: after the theme song aired for the first few
times, viewers wrote in and complained that they couldn't understand what
the actors were supposed to be saying, especially the line "Gee our old
LaSalle ran great." If you've ever wondered why that line is so clearly
enunciated in the theme song, that's why - Jean Stapleton recorded her
part again and made sure to speak ridiculously clearly during those words.
3. "The Addams Family Theme" - The Addams Family
Composer
Vic Mizzy wrote the theme song, which is pretty well known, but what isn't
as commonly known is that he wrote the theme song for another very popular
sitcom from the same era. "The Munsters?" you might be wondering.
Nope - the other theme song is a true testament to Mizzy's versatility
- it was Green Acres. Mizzy also contributed parts to the Mr.
Ed and Petticoat Junction theme songs. He still receives
royalties every time The Addams Family theme is played, even
when it's on an organ at a baseball game. (Photo from VicMizzy.com)
4. "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" - The Beverly Hillbillies
This
tune joins the elite group of T.V. theme songs that were so popular they
actually ended up on the mainstream music charts. The song was written
and composed by Paul Henning, who was also the series' creator. The man
who sang the song, Jerry Scoggins, was a stockbroker trying to break into
the music business when he landed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." This luck
break paired him with the legendary Foggy Mountain Boys, who played the
music that backed him. The Foggy Mountain Boys, Lester Flatt and Earl
Scruggs, were already well established in the country and bluegrass world
and had been members of the Grand Ole Opry for years... which probably
helped the theme song reach #44 on the charts in 1962.
5. "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" - Gilligan's Island
What
ended up being one of the most recognizable theme songs of all time started
out as a very amateur recording done in a noisy house. Sherwood Schwartz,
the show's creator, couldn't afford to rent a recording studio to get
the theme down, so he called in a favor from a friend with the necessary
equipment. The only day they could all do it in time for the pilot was
a day that his friends were preparing for a big charity event at their
house, so the song had to be recorded when waiters weren't clattering
silverware and plates and serving trays around. It took forever to adjust
the levels just right; they finally got a usable take just as guests were
arriving for the event. It's not exactly the one we know today - Sherwood
had injected a sort of calypso solo that didn't make the cut - but it's
the general theme. And for the first season, the portion of the lyrics
that served as a roll call completely neglected poor Mary Ann and the
professor, saying, "The movie star and the rest, here on Gilligan's Isle!"
Schwartz said he never had an inkling that the professor and Mary Ann
would become such popular characters and therefore didn't think to name
them in the theme song. Although this changed by the second season, Dawn
Wells and Russell Johnson liked to send each other birthday cards and
presents with the signature "The Rest" as a nod to the first theme song.
6. "Happy Days" - Happy Days
For the first two seasons of the show, the theme song was simply an oldie
but goodie - Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." And it
served the purpose just fine - it was so popular, in fact, that the song
recharted after nearly 20 years. After season two, though, they decided
to use an original song instead of Bill Haley's, and fans were already
familiar with it since it was being used as the closing theme music. "Happy
Days" got bumped up from the end of the show to the front, and the song
has been stuck in our heads ever since. It was written by Charles Fox
and Norman Gimbel, who gave us the lyrics and music to a ton of other
memorable theme songs: Laverne and Shirley, Lifestyles of the Rich
and Famous, Wonder Woman and the score for H.R. Pufnstuf.
"Happy Days" was performed by a roster of studio musicians, including
some of the same guys who sang The Partridge Family theme song.
As popular as the Happy Days theme song was, they decided to
record a new version of it for the show's final season. It didn't go over
as well, and I can see why... check it out for yourself:
7. "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" - Cheers
The
famous theme song was nearly just a recycled song from a Broadway musical
called Preppies. The producers of Cheers heard it and
thought it would be perfect for their new show if the lyrics were just changed
up a little. Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, the songwriters, were understandably
thrilled - but the producers of Preppies weren't. They refused
to give up rights to the song. Portnoy and Angelo were devastated, but the
producers of Cheers told them not to worry - they should just take
a shot at writing something totally new. The first version, a pretty blatant
rip-off of their first song, was quickly rejected. After reading a script,
the duo took a third shot, which was closer - the producers loved some of
the lyrics - but still no cigar. Version #3 was rejected. Portnoy and Hart
were getting a little dejected and concerned that they were going to get
fired any second, and to make matters worse, Gary and his girlfriend had
just broken up. This set the mood for version #4, a melancholy little tune
about the Red Sox losing, being too poor to pay the electric bill and needy
girlfriends who wanted to get married. They almost decided it was too depressing
for a sitcom, when they came up with the line "Sometimes you wanna go where
everybody knows your name," and the whole song turned from depressing to
hopeful. The folks at Cheers loved it, but changed the opening
lines from "Singing the blues when the Red Sox lose, it's a crisis in your
life," to the now-famous, "Making your way in the world today takes everything
you've got." The rest is history.
8. "Jeannie" - I Dream of Jeannie
There were three theme
songs composed for the show about a blonde genie and her Master - the first
season featured an instrumental waltz over the opening credits. And no less
than Carole King wrote a theme song for the series, but Sidney Sheldon rejected
it. The winning song that we know as the I Dream of Jeannie theme
song today was composed by Hugo Montenegro. And, believe it or not, there
were lyrics to the song. Written by Buddy Kaye, this gem was never used
for the show:
Jeannie, fresh as a daisy. Just love how she obeys me, Does things that just amaze me so. She smiles, Presto the rain goes. She blinks, up come the rainbows. Cars stop, even the train goes slow. When she goes by, she paints sunshine on every rafter, sprinkles the air with laughter, we're close as a quarter after three. There's no one like Jeannie. I'll introduce her to you, but it's no use sir, cause my Jeannie's in love with me.
9. "Thank You For Being a Friend" - Golden Girls
Unbeknownst
to me, this song wasn't original to our four happening grannies. It was
first recorded in 1978 by Andrew Gold, who hit #25 on the Billboard charts
the same year. Cynthia Fee sang it for the show, though.
The song was later reworked a third time for the opening credits to The Golden Palace. I hate it. But check it out! Don Cheadle!
10. "The Facts of Life" - The Facts of Life
If you didn't already know this, prepared to be floored: Alan Thicke, better known as Jason Seaver to legions of kids who grew up in the late '80s and early '90s, co-wrote "The Facts of Life." He also co-wrote and sang the theme song to Diff'rent Strokes. At the time, Thicke was married to his co-writer Gloria Loring, who sang the "Facts" song you probably remember. There was also an earlier version that featured the cast of the show singing the wise lyrics, but it was only used for the first season.
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Star Trek Meets Monty Python
What could possibly be more awesome than Star Trek and Monty Python? Why, the two of them mashed together, of course!
Here’s a mashup of the original Star Trek series with the Knights of the Round Table (Camelot) song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Link [embedded YouTube clip]
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Expialidocious: Mary Poppins Turned Into Electronica
[YouTube - Link]
What does it take to create an electronica music? If you look at Nick Bertke’s (YouTube user Pogo) creation, the answer is simple: sine wave bass, custom drum sequences, and bits of sounds from Disney movie "Mary Poppins."
This one’s titled Expialidocious. (You can find many more examples at his YouTube and MySpace pages).
Previously on Neatorama: Nick’s more famous song: Alice
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
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Han Solo, P.I.
(YouTube link)
Harrison Ford has it all over Tom Selleck, if you ask me. If you are too young to remember Magnum, P.I. then you may not realize how closely this mashup follows the original opening sequence. So watch this side-by-side comparison.
(YouTube link)
-via YesButNoButYes
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Jedi Kirby Cross Stitch
What’s more awesome than Star Wars? How about a cross stitch of lightsaber duelin’ jedi Kirby by Flickr user gamerghoul13? Link - via Geekadelphia
Talkin’ bout Jedi Kirby, here’s an animated gif by deviantArt user Yoshio1pal. Marvel at the awesomeness (or similarity to Star Wars Kid [wiki]) and weep:
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Movie Trivia: Mary Poppins
I’m kind of a Disney freak, so it’s hard for me to pick one favorite Disney movie. But Mary Poppins is definitely in my top five - it’s such a classic. And there’s no shortage of trivia about it, so I had to pick some of my favorites. If you want more, I suggest buying the 45th anniversary DVD - it’s packed full of behind-the-scenes information, deleted bits, commentary and pop up facts. But in the meantime, this should tide you over!
After being rejected by P.L. Travers for more than 20 years, Walt finally paid a visit to P.L. in person to convince her to let him make her books into a movie. It was the personal visit that convinced her - she described Walt as the friendly old uncle type who hypnotized you with his gold pocket watch. Not exactly a compliment, but she gave him the rights nonetheless.
Mary Martin, Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury were considered for the role of Mary Poppins. Casting directors saw Julie Andrews singing Camelot’s “What do the Simple Folk Do” on the Ed Sullivan Show and immediately knew that they had to have her for Mary Poppins. They told Walt, who flew out to New York to see Julie sing her part on Broadway, and that was that. Andrews still had to pass muster with P.L. Travers, though, but it didn’t end up being a problem - Travers adored her.
Travers wrote to Walt Disney to suggest Karen Dotrice for the role of Jane Banks, but Walt had already cast exactly that actress in the part. At least they agreed on one thing!
Julie Andrews almost didn’t take the role - she was actually holding out for the Eliza Doolittle part in My Fair Lady that eventually went to Audrey Hepburn. Andrews had played the part on Broadway and loved it. Audrey may have played Eliza, but Julie Andrews was so brilliant in Poppins that she beat Audrey for both the Best Actress Golden Globe and Academy Award.
The actors who played Jane and Michael had already starred in a movie together - The Three Lives of Thomasina - and went on to do another one together post-Poppins: The Gnome-Mobile.
Matthew Garber was afraid of heights, so the crew paid him an extra dime every time he had to go up on the wires for the scenes where the kids are floating in the air. But they weren’t always on wires - Disney didn’t want people to look at the scene and go, “Oh, they clearly used wires for that,” so sometimes wires were used, sometimes teeter totters were used, and sometimes they flipped the set on its side or upside down and filmed that way.
Next time you watch the movie, check out the queue of nannies lined up to interview for the nanny position - a bunch of them are actually men.
When the kids look surprised at all of the stuff Mary Poppins pulls out of her carpet bag, that was genuine shock. They couldn’t see what was being fed to the bag from under the table, so when she pulled hat stands and huge potted plants out of that regular-sized bag, the kids were completely stunned.
Dick Van Dyke freely admits that his cockney accent was awful and in fact kind of gets a kick out of it.
Lots of the actors played multiple roles: Dick Van Dyke played Bert, of course, and also played Old Mr. Dawes the banker. Other than the title role, Julie Andrews also provided her own whistling accompaniment when Mary Poppins sings with the robin during “Spoonful of Sugar” and was also one of the Pearly ladies in “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” David Tomlinson, AKA Mr. Banks, was also the voice of Mary’s umbrella when it talked and one of the jockeys in the animated horse race scene. In addition, he dubbed the voice for Admiral Boom’s first mate.
A bunch of songs were deleted from the movie. A few include “The Chimpanzoo,” which you can now hear on the 2004 special anniversary edition DVD; “Practically Perfect,” which ended up being the music for “Sister Suffragette”; “Admiral Boom” which was to be Admiral Boom’s theme song; and “Measure Up,” which Mary Poppins was going to sing while measuring the kids with her magical tape measure. One song was actually repurposed for Bedknobs and Broomsticks and was called “The Beautiful Briny” in it.
Elsa Lanchester, who played the childrens’ former nanny Katie Nanna, was previously best-known for her role as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Mary Poppins’ sets often ended up being used for other Disney productions. One episode of The Wonderful World of Color featured a haunted house, which was actually the Banks house covered with cobwebs and dust.
The Bird Woman is played by Jane Darwell, whom Walt Disney cast after remembering her amazing performance as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. He made sure she was given the full-out star treatment and was brought to the set in a limo and treated with great respect. It was to be her last film performance.
The “Chim-Chim Cheree” and”Step in Time” sequences are my favorites, I think. The background of the London rooftops is actually matte paintings done on glass. The “smoke” staircase was actually made out of sponge because it was assumed that if you were walking on smoke, it would have a bouncy feeling to it. The “Step in Time” dance had to be filmed twice because the film the first version was on got scratched. And I guess I’m not alone in loving the “Step in Time” scene - Walt enjoyed it so much he would come to watch the daily dance rehearsals and told the choreographers to go nuts and have fun with the steps.
Every member of the crew - not the cast, mind you, the crew - asked for a copy of the soundtrack.
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Nerdiest Oven Mitt Ever: Bake It So!
Crafster user Bethany Joyce came up with what has got to be the geekiest oven mitt ever, combining Star Trek and a love for baking. Behold, the Bake It So oven mitt.
Link | More Star Trek Crafts at this Crafster post
Similarly, over at Neatorama’s Online Store: Pac-Man HotHead Ove Mitt
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Star Wars Alphabet
Set your kids on the path to Star Wars fandom early by teaching them the ABCs using Star Wars characters! This Flickr set by illustrator Michael Fleming made me smile. Link -Thanks, Bairman!
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The Jewish Origin of the Vulcan Salute
Here’s a trivia for all you Trekkers to talk about during the previews of the new Star Trek movie. Did you know that the Vulcan salute - you know, the "live long and prosper" hand signal invented by Leonard Nimoy:
Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow. Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T’Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn’t care for this. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched "Amok Time" thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy’s childhood synagogue.
The Vulcan greeting is based upon a blessing gesture used by the kohanim (koe-hah-NEEM) during the worship service. The kohanim are the genealogical descendants of the Jewish priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Modern Jews no longer have priests leading services as in ancient times, nor do we have animal sacrifices anymore. (Yes, people really do ask about that!) The sacrificial system ended with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. C.E. However, a remnant of the Temple service lives on in the "kohane blessing" ritual (duchenen in Yiddish) that is performed on certain holy days.
Link - via grow-a-brain
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Quiz of the Living Dead
Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss tests your knowledge of zombie movies, specifically those that end with …of the Dead or …of the Living Dead. You’ll see two movie titles; you decide which one was a real movie. I scored about as well as you’d expect by random guesses, because I have no clue. Link
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The First Draft of Star Wars
The first draft of Star Wars was pretty awful. Mystery Man on Film takes a closer look at the 1974 version in which the young hero is Annikin Starkiller, Luke Skywalker is an elderly general, and Darth Vader is a minor character.
LEIA
Will we make it? Is there any hope? Stay with me… I love you.Starkiller is slightly shocked at this outburst. The princess starts to cry and clings to him for support.
STARKILLER
No-one is going to die…so stop acting like a child, and start behaving like a queen. What is this silly talk of love? You belong to the people of Aquilae, and my job is to return you to them, nothing more. Now straighten up and get into a lifepod.She’s deeply hurt by his callousness. She breaks away from him and runs down a hallway into a lifepod. He is tired, and angry at the whole incident.
It makes you wonder what difference it would have made if George Lucas had rewritten the prequels a couple more times. Link -via Metafilter
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Mamma Mia! Girl in Coma Woke Up Singing ABBA Song
I’ve always liked ABBA, and now I like ‘em even more because apparently their music can miraculously awaken someone from a coma!
Here’s the story of how 3-year-old Layla Towsey woke up from a meningitis coma, singing Mamma Mia:
Ms Towsey [...] , said: "Before they put her in the ambulance we were told to give her a kiss goodbye - it was an awful moment."
Layla was also diagnosed with meningococcal septicaemia and the family prepared themselves for the worst as she lay in intensive care.
Ms Towsey said: "But on the Sunday morning I could hear her singing Mamma Mia quietly. I couldn’t believe it.
"I knew immediately she was going to be OK."
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South Pacific
The musical South Pacific was a Broadway hit and then a blockbuster movie. Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental floss will show how much you know about this classic. I was surprised to score 82%, because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. Link
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