President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981. This picture was taken shortly before the incident.

The man in the white raincoat is Secret Service agent Jerry Parr; after the shooting, it was Parr who pushed Reagan into a limousine, noticed he was bleeding, and directed the driver to take them to a hospital, probably saving Reagan’s life.

Parr had been inspired to pursue his career by the 1939 film The Code of the Secret Service, in which dashing agent “Brass” Bancroft survives a shooting in Mexico. Bancroft was played by a 28-year-old Ronald Reagan.

You have to wonder what Jerry Parr thought of the coincidence. According to the book Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan, Parr believed afterward that saving the president’s life was God’s plan for him. When he retired from the Secret Service, he became a minister. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Neatorama presents

Almost everyone loves the movies, and along with viewing our personal favorites and other movies, most of us enjoy discussing the subjects and contents of films. Opinions and tastes, of course, vary. But almost everyone I know loves, or at least likes, Bill Murray’s best film, Groundhog Day.

In the film, Murray plays Phil Connors, an obnoxious, self-centered TV weatherman. Phil wakes up one day and realizes it’s actually the same day as it was yesterday -and this occurs over and over and over… Finally, Phil “evolves” and finds his true love (his colleague Rita, played by Andie MacDowell) and his true identity and a “new day” is finally allowed to dawn. The film is actually a great movie version of The Twilight Zone.

The great thing about Groundhog Day (or any other great movie) is that it is endlessly rewatchable (a bit of irony there). Last Groundhog Day, February 2nd, one cable channel played Groundhog Day over and over, for the entire day. Nice gag.

Groundhog Day also makes for great discussions, and numerous theories about the movie and its meaning have been put forth. Is it karma? What goes around comes around? Is it a commentary on man’s true nature? His true goodness -reflected by kindness, understanding, and warmth? Some Buddhists have adopted the film as a modern symbol of their religion. One keeps “coming back” until they finally evolve into a “perfect state,” at which time the endless “coming back” ceases. All valid and very metaphysical theories.

But why was poor Phil stuck in the “endless” time loop in the first place? This is one thing that the film leaves nebulous and unclear. In one sense, it is “hell,” i.e. a world of endless repetition, with no randomness, no unpredictability. But in another sense, this is the situation we all want and need: endless chances to fix and correct our mistakes, and then to understand why they were wrong. In the film, when Phil finally straightens out what he’s done wrong, the “endless” loop stops.

But again, why the punishment? After all, Phil is undeniably a jerk, but hey, he never murdered anyone. He’s not a rapist. He didn’t torture any small animals. Why Phil?

Okay, here’s the answer. The second draft of Groundhog Day says, actually, it was caused by Phil’s scorned ex-girlfriend Stephanie. The second draft of Groundhog Day is pretty close to what we all see in the film. There is a bit more of Phil in the studio at the beginning, but nothing major. But also in the second draft, Stephanie, Phil’s ex-girlfriend, puts a curse on him. Literally, she opens a book of magic spells and does a little ritual that causes him to get stuck in time.

Near the beginning of this script, we meet Phil’s girlfriend, Stephanie, who Phil coldly and unceremoniously dumps. Later, as Phil is going to bed in Punxsutawney, we see Stephanie in her room, using Phil’s business cards and broken watch (conveniently set at 5:59) to perform a magic spell from a book titled 101 Curses, Spells, and Enchantments You Can Do At Home. This sets the theme of Groundhog Day in motion. There is no “higher purpose” given, just an angry, embittered ex-girlfriend with a little book.

Excerpt from the second Groundhog Day script:

Stephanie: Are you saying that our relationship was a waste of time?

Phil: Our relationship? We went out a total of four times, and only once did anything happen. It was fun, but I don’t see that as a big commitment.

Stephanie (closing in again): I had our charts done. My astrologer says we’re extremely compatible. There may even be some past lives involved here.

For whatever reason, the director, the writer, or whoever, made the decision to completely excise any mention of Stephanie and her vindictive curse. I guess they just felt it was unnecessary to the movie or that it “slowed down the action” or that it made Phil too sympathetic, or some such Hollywood reason. Well, maybe they were right.

Groundhog Day is Bill Murray’s (who is a great actor with a great body of film work to his credit) finest and most memorable film. By the way, I never liked Andie MacDowell as an actress. She seems like a very nice lady, but  just never liked her on screen. But in Groundhog Day she puts in a very likeable performance.

Oh, and that’s not the only mystery that’s solved here. The screenplay also specifies that Phil will spend the next 10,000 years (Holy cow!) trapped in the time loop. It also has a more definite answer as to why he comes out of it. It was apparently the kiss with Rita at the end of the film that broke the spell, much like a fairy tale. Even in the final filmed version, you can hear a tinkly magic sound as Phil and Rita lock lips.

Oh yes, one last note on Groundhog Day. My friend Kenny had a bit part in the film. I asked him what Bill Murray was like to work with.

“Oh, he wasn’t that friendly, but he got nicer as the film went along.”

“Just like in the film, ” I said.

“Yeah,” he said (as if it had just dawned on him),

“Just like the film.”

How do you make the 2012 Best Picture Nominees even better? Recast them
with dogs!

That’s exactly what Next Movie did, and we’re not the least bit disappointed:
Link
- Thanks Andie!

Forbidden Planet Jigsaw Puzzle | $16.95

Putting together this 1,000 piece Forbidden Planet Jigsaw Puzzle from the NeatoShop brings the reward of seeing the movie poster from the 1956 science fiction classic -and the reward of having a good time with your family and friends! The final size is 20″x27″. It makes a great gift, too! Check it out, as well as the other neat jigsaw puzzles available at the NeatoShop.

Link

(YouTube Link)

A furry Alfred, Bane purring away as he stalks his prey, man there is something adorably hilarious about replacing the cast of the Dark Knight Rises with kittehs! And we all know that kittehs have taken the interwebs by storm, so why should Hollywood be any different?

–via ComicsAlliance

Neatorama presents

It’s a Wonderful Life is on the American Film Institute’s list of “100 Greatest Movies Ever made” (coming in at #11) and was voted the #1 spot on the list of “Most Inspiring Movies of All-Time.” To all of us now, the film seems as much a part of the Christmas season as Santa Claus, egg nog, gift giving, and kissing under the mistletoe. But much like The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane, the most beloved Christmas movie of all time was a disappointing box office flop when it was first released. In fact, It’s a Wonderful Life may just have sailed away, out of our collective consciousnesses, but for television and the magic of reruns.

It wasn’t actually until the 1970s, almost 30 years after its theater debut, that It’s a Wonderful Life became the cultural icon it now is. The film’s copyright protection ended and it fell into the public domain in 1974, so stations could air it for free. Repeated airings at Christmas time in the ’70s caused millions and millions of movie fans to fall in love with this now-considered “timeless classic.”

Republic Pictures restored its copyright claim to the film in 1993, with exclusive video rights included. At present, it can only be shown on the NBC-TV network.

Directed by the wonderful Frank Capra, It’s a Wonderful Life had its official debut on December 20, 1946, and going into limited release just five days before Christmas. It didn’t go into general release until July of 1947. One has to wonder at the logic of the distributors of the film. Why put an obvious “Christmassy” film into general release after the holiday? Nowadays, that would be rather like releasing one of the Halloween films in November or the film Valentine’s Day in March. What the heck were these guys thinking?

It’s a Wonderful Life also faced an even-bigger obstacle regarding its release. It was almost completely overshadowed by another film called The Best Years of Our Lives. An indisputably beautiful, touching film, The Best Years of Our Lives was a salute to returning World War II veterans. The film showed how each one dealt with life after war. The United States, of course, still had war on its mind, and this mindset probably caused the discerning movie-goer of 1946-47 to opt for The Best Years of Our Lives and neglect It’s a Wonderful Life.

Critics, too, pretty much dismissed the film upon its release; reviews were decidedly mixed. It’s a Wonderful Life did garner five Oscar nominations, but it was shut out at the awards ceremony.

Jimmy Stewart was not the first choice to play the film’s lead, perennial All-American George Bailey. (Stewart has called George Bailey his all-time favorite role.) The studio very much wanted Cary Grant, but fate, as is its want, intervened, and Stewart, a true screen legend, was given his quintessential role. Henry Fonda was also in the running for the lead role (he would have made a perfect George Bailey, too).

Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers also was offered the female lead as Mary Bailey, George’s devoted wife (director Capra’s perennial favorite leading lady, Jean Arthur, was unavailable). But Ginger was set to do a Broadway play and gave the offer a thumbs down. She considered the story “too bland.” Ginger never quite forgave herself for this monumental error in judgement, and Donna Reed got the part.

For Mr. Potter, the film’s resident villain, the studio wanted Vincent Price. But like Cary and Ginger, Vincent Price too passed on the deal. Lionel Barrymore snagged the role and chewed up the scenery with relish as “Old Man Potter,” the film’s miserly heavy. Barrymore was very famous at the time for his portrayals of Ebenezer Scrooge in radio presentations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and this made him seem tailor-made to play the penny-pinching Potter.

Sheldon Leonard, who plays George’s pa; the bartender in the movie, did accept the offer to play his role in the film. He later said the only reason he took on the role was that he wanted the money to buy Dodger tickets.

Jimmy the Raven (Uncle Billy’s pet) had already appeared in You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and was to make an appearance in every subsequent Frank Capra film. Besides Jimmy. for months before filming began, vast menageries of various animals were rounded up to give “Bedford Falls” a homey, intimate look and feel.

H.B. Warner, who plays druggist Mr. Gower in the film, had actually studied medicine in real life. There was also a very popular drugstore located on Gower Street in Hollywood which many studio employees frequented.

If you see Jimmy Stewart sweating in the scene on the bridge where he thinks of committing suicide, it is not so much his great acting. This snowy scene was actually filmed in 90-degree weather; it was real swat dripping from Jimmy’s brow.

The intense “love scene” over the telephone between George and Mary is considered one of the steamiest, most viscerally passionate love scenes ever filmed. But parts of it were edited out because it was considered a bit too racy for censors at the time.

The film beautifully and dramatically ends with the cast getting together and singing “Auld Lang Syne.” But the original plan was for the film to end to the musical strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (the song that is played at the closing credits of 1988′s Die Hard). Fortunately, this plan, like so many original ideas from the film, was nixed.

(YouTube link)

Originally, It’s a Wonderful Life needed to make $6.3 million (twice its production cost) at the box office to break even. A colossal flop, it barely eked out $3.1 million. After the film’s failure, Frank Capra’s production company went bankrupt. The film’s initial failure is theorized to this day and may possibly have been based on its dark nature. Incredibly, some executives at the studio tried to put the blame on Donna Reed and her performance. Director Capra theorized that Stewart looked “too old” in much of the film and this had a negative effect. After It’s a Wonderful Life flopped, Jimmy Stewart himself had doubts abut his post-military acting career (he had been a decorated veteran of World War II) and wondered if he could still be effective as a film actor.

But like the ugly duckling who grows into a beautiful swan, It’s a Wonderful Life has blossomed into a revered cinematic accomplishment. The film has delighted countless millions of movie fans all over the world during the holidays. We all, every one of us, has his or her own particular favorite movies, just as we all have our own favorite foods or songs or books. But like a small handful of movies, It’s a Wonderful Life is on that rare “must see” list for anyone who loves the movies or anyone who has ever felt the spirit of Christmas.

(YouTube Link)

Leave it to Sasha Baron Cohen, the guy behind Borat and Ali G, to make light of an uncomfortable situation with broad humor which will allow those being lampooned to laugh at themselves, although ruthless dictators are some of the toughest nuts to crack. Watch this trailer for The Dictator and bask in the glory of global unrest-themed ridiculousness.

–via Ology

Is this the future of watching movies? Check out these video clips, which claim to be taken in one shot with no post production processing, about immersive movies using the PlayStation 3:

In the past, projection mapping worked only from a single, static view point, and thus was very limited. By attaching the PlayStation Move to the camera, we can track projections to screens in real time, enhancing the effect of spatial deformation and false perspective on the projections and allowing viewers to look round (virtual) corners, bend walls, create a hole in the wall, or remove the walls altogether to reveal vast expanses of virtual worlds.

Real? Fake? What do you think? YouTube Clip 1, Clip 2, and Clip 3

(YouTube Link)

The strangeness of the Kung Fu film known as “Demon of the Lute” goes well beyond language barriers and cultural idioms. This movie is downright nutty, even the YouTube description sounds crazy:

Bear witness to Yuan Fei’s heroic struggle against the soulless ginger, Red Haired Evil, and his logic-defying pal, Eagle Man. Shazam!

Isn’t it nice to get a little craziness mixed in with our martial arts action once in a while? I, for one, love the Red Haired Evil’s magnetic personality, and to say he’s having a bad hair day is an understatement.

–via GeeksAreSexy

Why are Nic Cage, Holly Hunter and the baby from the 1987 movie Raising Arizona on the cover of this Serbian biology textbook? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d be willing to bet this image wasn’t used with the studio’s permission!

Link

(YouTube Link)

Peter Jackson is such a visionary film director that he’s even changing the way movies are advertised to the public by releasing a video blog series which shows the making of his new J.R.R. Tolkien movie adaptation “The Hobbit”.

He shows things that directors generally keep to themselves, like the process of filming 3d footage with a stereoscopic camera, all the while remaining in charge of the production like a total badass. This video is number 4 in the series, so check out the other 3 if you want to see more behind-the-scenes footage from “The Hobbit”.

–via Ology

Neatorama presents

Some Like It Hot, besides being the most famous film made by legendary sex symbol Marilyn Monroe (her signature performance) is a comedy classic in its own right. In 2000, it was voted by the American Film Institute as #1 on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies (interestingly, the #2 choice was Tootsie, making both the #1 and #2 choices cross-dressing films).

Besides the great Marilyn (and Billy Wilder’s awesome direction), the brilliant gender-bending performances by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon make it, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining comedies ever filmed. Let’s take a look at a few facts you may not know about a truly hilarious movie: Some Like It Hot.

* The “almost cast” list is almost as great as the final choices. Director Billy Wilder originally wanted Bob Hope and Danny Kaye to play the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon roles. Frank Sinatra was another early choice the play the Jack Lemmon “Daphne” role. Perhaps the strangest actor to audition for Lemmon’s role was a young Anthony Perkins (rejected. He was to star in Alred Hitchcock’s Psycho the next year).

* Jerry Lewis was also offered the role of the zany “Daphne.” Lewis turned down the role because he “didn’t think drag was funny.” Lemmon, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance, sent Lewis chocolates annually in gratitude. According to Jerry, every time he ran into Billy Wilder, Billy greeted him with, “Hello, Schmuck!” Jerry later admitted he regretted his rejection of the role.

* Actress Mitzi Gaynor was the original choice for the female lead “Sugar Kane” role, but as soon as Wilder found out Marilyn Monroe was available, he offered her the role.

* The film’s original working title was Not Tonight, Josephine.

* Marilyn wanted the film to be in color (her contract actually stipulated that all her movies be filmed in color), but after looking at Curtis and Lemmon in the color film tests, they were deemed to be too grotesque-looking (they photographed with a green tinge).

* Tony’s feminine “Josephine” voice was dubbed in by voice over artist Paul Frees. According to Curtis, it was a combination of Frees and his own voice. The reason? It was because Tony found it impossible to maintain a high-pitched womanly voice for an entire take.

* To test the waters in their female drag outfits, Curtis and Lemmon strutted around Goldwyn Studios lot to see if they could pass as women. But the supreme test was when the two went into the ladies’ room on the Goldwyn lot and fixed their makeup in front of the mirror, imitating how typical females would do it. When no women complained or even seemed to notice their presence, they knew they looked convincing.

* Marilyn was actually pregnant during the filming, accounting for her slightly bigger-than-usual appearance. As a result, most of her stills were posed by her stand-ins Evelyn Moriarty and Sandra Warner (who was given an uncredited role in the film as one of the girl band members). Monroe’s head was later superimposed on the photos.

* Marilyn, as most movie fans know, was pretty messed up by this point in her career. It reportedly took her 47 takes to correctly deliver her line “It’s me, Sugar,” in one scene. Exasperated, director Wilder finally had the line written on a blackboard for the actress to read. In another, it took 59 takes to say the line “Where’s the bourbon?” A fed-up Wilder had the line written on a slip of paper and placed in the drawer Marilyn was searching through. If you watch the final climactic scene where Tony Curtis has to say goodbye to Marilyn over the phone, it is easy to see Marilyn’s eyes going back and forth, back and forth. This is because she is reading her dialogue directly off a blackboard.

* Tony Curtis had to film take after take of his kissing scene with Marilyn, because she kept forgetting or flubbing her lines. The kissing, of course, was not so unpleasant (being every man’s fantasy), but before they kissed, poor Tony had to take a bite of a chicken leg. Curtis grew so sick of chicken, he couldn’t eat it again for years. Curtis’ famous reply when asked by reporters what it was like to kiss Marilyn Monroe: “It was like kissing Hitler.”

* According to Billy Wilder (referring to Marilyn Monroe): “We were mid-flight and we had a nut on board. Marilyn’s erratic behavior was so upsetting to so many people, she was not invited to the film’s wrap party.

* The film’s final, classic line “Well, nobody’s perfect,” delivered by Joe E. Brown after his “girlfriend” Jack Lemmon reveals he is really a man, was actually just a throwaway line. It was used in the original take, but it was going to be changed later when they found a better line. Interestingly, no one will claim credit for the immortal closing line. Billy Wilder claims it was written by the film’s writer I.A.I. Diamond, and Diamond claims it was Wilder’s line.

* Upon its original release, Some Like It Hot was banned in the state of Kansas. Cross-dressing was considered “too disturbing for Kansas.”

Remember the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China? Kurt Russell spent the entire movie without a clue. He is just plain confused. They obviously didn’t let him read the script. -via The Daily What

How do you make costumes designed around a 20-year-old movie work? You get all of your friends involved! The gang at Intense Individuals did just that last year, and dressed as almost the entire cast of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. See more pictures at their site. Link -via Buzzfeed

The Wizard

The trek to California is accomplished primarily by gambling — a series of double-your-money hustles instigated by the queerly parentless Haley. We actually get to see Haley’s trailer home at one point, though her father (a trucker) is on the road. In addition to video game-related hustles, the trio end up at one point in an actual casino, wherein Haley’s skill at craps allows an adult (“Spankey,” a mentally challenged “trucker friend” of her father’s, played by Frank McRae) to win hundreds. It’s later revealed that Haley’s deceased mother had a gambling problem, which apparently led to Haley’s hustling skills. Corey’s mother is also dead. And Jimmy’s sister/Corey’s half-sister? She’s dead, too. What?! Never mind that now. We have to get to California.

The climax involves a video game tournament, so you can guess the ending. It doesn’t make any sense, either. Read more about how a favorite movie from a writer’s childhood becomes completely nonsensical when he watches it again as an adult. Link

A few years ago one of our BRI writers saw the classic 1931 horror film Dracula for the first time …and thought it was terrible. He never knew there was a story behind why the film had so many problems -or even that other people agreed with him that this Hollywood classic was flawed- until he came across this story in a book called Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal, a leading authority on the history of monster movies.

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

One of the nice things about silent films is that everyone can understand them, regardless of what language they speak. Of course, they needed title cards to help explain the plot, but it was easy -and cheap- to write new cards for each foreign market.

As a result American films found their way into countries all over the world, and silent films became a truly universal art form: American studios made half of their revenues from foreign film sales; silent screen stars like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan became the most recognized human beings on the face of the earth.

SILENT TREATMENT

But the advent of talking pictures changed everything -and not just for silent-screen stars whose thick accents quickly consigned them to the Hollywood scrap heap. Suddenly, American films became incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t speak English. American film studios faced the prospect of losing up to half of their business overnight.

Bela Lugosi

Foreign countries that had become used to a steady stream of Hollywood films found themselves left out in the cold; some threatened to retaliate by slapping tariffs on films with dialogue in English, or by boycotting American films entirely.

Making matters worse, sound recording and synchronization technology was still very primitive, and dubbing foreign-language dialogue onto English-language films was all but impossible. Besides, one of the things that attracted audiences to the first “talkies” was the thrill of hearing their favorite actors speak for the very first time. Even if dubbing had been practical, it might not have been very popular. There was no easy solution to the problem, and as a result many foreign language markets were left out of the early years of the talkie era -except for the Spanish-language market. Spanish was too popular, and Mexico, Central, and South America were too close for Hollywood to ignore.

THE DOPPELGÄNGER ERA

No film crew works 24 hours a day. At some point everyone goes home, leaving the soundstage and the expensive sets unused until morning. So, reasoned Hollywood studios, why not bring in a second cast and crew at night to film foreign-language versions of the same films that were being made in English during the day?

Because the sets had already been constructed and second-string actors and crews could be hired for much less money than Hollywood stars, a film like Dracula that had cost nearly $450,000 to film in English during the day could be remade in Spanish at night for as little as $40,000. By 1930, nearly all of the major studios had begun filming Spanish “doppelgänger” films at night.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

Lupita Tovar

Universal Pictures was one of the last major studios to adopt the idea, when it filmed Spanish and English versions of the film The Cat Creeps in 1930. Dracula was slated to be only the studios second Spanish-language film.

Paul Kohner, Universal’s head of foreign production, hired director George Melford, who’d worked with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, and cinematographer George Robinson. A 38-year-old Spanish actor named Carlos Villarias was cast as Dracula, and a multilingual actor named Barry Norton was hired to play “Juan Harker.” A 17-year-old Mexican actress named Lupita Tovar was hired to play Harker’s fiance Eva, who was known as Mina in the English version.

“The American crew left at 6:00 PM and we were ready,” Tovar recalled. “We started shooting at eight. At midnight, they would call for dinner… They didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t complain. We were happy to have some money -most actors were starving.”

FIRST RATE

Since they were using a second-rate cast and crew after Hollywood’s finest had gone home for the day, the assumption was that the film made at night would be inferior to the original. That may have been true in most cases …but not in the case of Dracula.

For all of its popularity and accomplishments as Hollywood’s first vampire film, on a technical level, the English-language Dracula is considered a very poorly made film. A lot of the blame for this goes to director Tod Browning, a hard-drinking recluse with a reputation as a troublemaker. Browning had been fired from at least one studio for his drinking, and was blacklisted from the entire industry for two years in the early 1920s. Making matters worse, Browning had directed nine films starring horror superstar Lon Chaney, Sr. when both men worked for MGM, and he was still reeling from Chaney’s recent death from throat cancer.

Browning’s myriad personal problems found their way into the finished film. “In scene after scene,” Skal writes, “the script demonstrates just how much Browning cut, trimmed, ignored, and generally sabotaged the screenplay’s visual potentials, insisting on static camera setups, eliminating reaction shots and special effects, and generally taking the lazy way out at every opportunity.” In one scene, a piece of cardboard the crew used to reduce the glare of a lamp takes up nearly a quarter of the entire screen, and in the film’s climax, Dracula’s death isn’t even shown on film; moviegoers had to settle for the sound of Lugosi groaning offscreen.

ON PURPOSE

Legend has it that cinematographer Karl Freund got so exasperated with Browning’s slipshod style that he just turned the camera on and let it run unattended, Skal writes:

Indeed, there is one endless take in the finished film featuring Manners (who played Jonathon Harker), Chandler (Mina Murray), and Van Sloan (Dr. Van Helsing) that runs 251 feet, nearly three minutes without a cut that was clearly meant to be broken up with close-ups and reaction shots. At one point Chandler tells Manners, “Oh, no -don’t look at me like that,” in an apparent reference to a dramatic change in his expression. The two-shot, however, shows Manners as motionless as a wax dummy -as if oblivious that the camera is even catching his face.

As if that isn’t sloppy enough, in the final credits, Universal President Carl Laemmle’s title is misspelled as “Presient.”

¡EL VAMPIRO!

The film crew on the Spanish Dracula was another story.

Kohner, who had produced the Spanish version of The Cat Creeps, was headstrong and ambitious -and not above second-guessing the English-language unit, trying to improve upon their work. On The Cat Creeps, he watched the daily footage produced by Robert Julian, the director of the English version, and found the scenes to be poorly lit and uninspiring. So when filming the same scenes for the Spanish film, Kohner relit every set and filled them with atmosphere-creating candles, cobwebs, and shadows that had been missing in the English version. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle, Jr. was so impressed with Kohner’s work that he ordered Julian to refilm his own footage, this time using Kohner as his artistic advisor.

Kohner did the same thing during the making of the Spanish version of Dracula. Using a moviola machine that was kept on the set, they watched the daily footage, or “dailies” that had been shot for the English-language version, made notes of the sloppiness and mistakes, and then made sure that their own scenes were better.

One thing they didn’t try to improve on was Bela Lugosi’s masterful performance as Count Dracula. Instead, Kohner insisted that Carlos Villarias imitate Lugosi as closely as possible, and he alone among the actors was allowed to watch the English-language dailies to make sure he got it right. They even let him wear Lugosi’s hairpiece, although it’s unclear whether Lugosi ever knew about it.

Carlos Villarias as Count Dracula

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

Perhaps the most notable difference between the two films is their use -or lack thereof- of special effects. In scenes showing Dracula climbing out of his coffin, for example, the Spanish version uses a double exposure to show a cloud of mist rising out ofthe coffin and turning into Dracula.

In the English version, the coffin lid starts to tremble, the camera turns away from the coffin and points at a wall …and by the time it returns, Bela Lugosi is already out of the coffin.

NUMERO UNO

When completed, the Spanish version of Dracula cost just over $66,000 to make and only took 22 nights to film, compared to the seven weeks and $450,000 it took to film the English version. In fact, the Spanish crew shot the film so fast that they ended up shooting some of their scenes on sets that weren’t completely finished. Rather than wait for them to be finished, the filmmakers compensated for the empty sets with clever lighting.

The first preview was held in early 1931, before the original Dracula was even finished, and the reviewers who saw the Spanish version were impressed. “If the English version of Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, is as good as the Spanish version,” Hollywood Filmograph magazine wrote, “why, the big U (Universal) hasn’t a thing in the world to worry about.”

Villarias and Tovar

The only problem, of course, was that the English version wasn’t as good, as Filmograph reported a few weeks later. The first few minutes of the film were enthralling, the magazine wrote, but quickly deteriorated after that. “Tod Browning directed, although we cannot believe that the same man was responsible for both the first and later parts of the picture. Had the rest of the picture lived up to the first sequence in the ruined castle Transylvania, Dracula would have been a horror and thrill classic long remembered.”

INTO THIN AIR

Dracula was one of the last foreign-language films produced in Hollywood. By 1931 the Great Depressions was in full swing, and American film studios, desperate to cut costs whenever possible, abandoned Spanish-language markets almost entirely. Universal never even bothered to register the copyright on the film and never had preservation copies made so that new prints could be made when the originals wore out.

The Spanish Dracula made the rounds of Spanish-language countries into the 1950s, then gradually disappeared.

Life After Death

It was thought to be lost entirely until the late 1970s, when an incomplete negative was found in a warehouse in New Jersey. Then, in 1989, a complete version of the film was found in the Cuban Film Archives in Havana. In the late 1990s, Universal and the UCLA Film Archives restored the film and released it to cable and video markets, where it is developing a new following and has finally received the recognition it deserves.

Here is the complete movie for your enjoyment.

(YouTube link)

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504 pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

(YouTube Link)

Mario’s brother Luigi once had his day in the sun, thanks to a Nintendo Gamecube game called Luigi’s Mansion, in which Luigi wins a haunted mansion and must rescue Mario from his ghostly captors using a vacuum pack to bust the spooks. Sounds like the perfect game to turn into a live action movie, right? Well, watch this spoof trailer made by YouTube user SAXjewell and see what you think.

–via Ology

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/18/luigis-mansion-movie-trailer/feed/ 0 http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/05/alice-in-wonderland-test-footage/ http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/05/alice-in-wonderland-test-footage/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:36:41 +0000 Miss Cellania http://www.neatorama.com/?p=53976
(YouTube link)

Here is a Disney Studios reference test film synched with the finished scene from the 1951 film Alice in Wonderland. You also see the animators at work, capturing the mood and the movements of the actors. -via The Daily What

All I know about the 2004 time travel film Primer is that it’s very confusing. That was made clear in an xkcd plot graph that we linked (Primer is at the bottom right). Although the movie covers only five days, there are nine timelines, according to this graph at Unreality magazine (which you can enlarge at the link). Does this clear things up? Link

You may have seen all the movies of the ’90s, but that’s been a few years now. Test your memory with today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You’ll be given 12 different movie quotes, and for each one, decide whether it’s from Reality Bites, Empire Records, or Singles. I scored 42%, which is honestly not bad for someone who hasn’t seen any of the movies. Link

(YouTube Link)

I’m sure you’re thinking “Gee, just what we need, another deleted scene…”, but this one’s a little different than the rest. In this scene from The Empire Strikes Back, featuring Han and Leia bickering and oozing all kinds of sexual tension, you get to see Harrison Ford’s acting sound forced and a bit hackneyed, which may result in feelings of disillusionment and sadness. Not all deleted scenes hit the cutting room floor due to time constraints, some were removed to avoid fan heartbreak!

-via Ology

Photo Credit: WETA Workshops

Chances are if you are a regular reader of Neatorama, you’ve already got your geek on and have seen this promotional still from the set of The Hobbit. Still–just in case. (And at least one of them are hot! Go figure.  Why did this well-armed group need Bilbo again?) The first photograph is a composite and the second is–don’t ask me why–a “final full-body rendering” for all the dwarves and conveniently includes their names–Lord knows I can’t tell them apart. Check out all things dwarf and Hobbit related at The One Ring.net, which is working as Peter Jackson’s ersatz PR team.

Link

The movie Cowboys & Aliens opens nationwide today, marking Harrison Ford’s 40th credited movie role. In honor of the occasion, the National Post created 40 icons of Ford in his roles (although strangely all appearing to be the same age). Each is linked to an explanation of the role depicted. Link -via Buzzfeed

Novels, movies, cartoons, tattoos… everything is better on the second draft.

1. THE CATCH IN CATCH 22: The Edit that became an idiom

In 1961, author Joseph Heller finally submitted his manuscript for Catch-18 to his editor, Robert Gottlieb. Although Heller had spent seven years perfecting the story, Gottlieb saw room for improvement. The editor taped the pages to his office wall and restructured the novel, giving more emphasis to the now-famous Major Major character and instructing Heller to delete entire 60-page sections. But most importantly, Gottlieb wanted to change the title. Earlier that year, writer Leon Uris had released Mila 18, and Gottlieb didn’t want any confusion between the two books. What followed was an exchange of frantic letters in which Heller and Gottlieb considered and rejected various numbers for the title. They decided 11 didn’t work because of Ocean’s 11; 14 was an “unfunny number;” and 26 just didn’t feel right. “I’ve got it!” Gottlieb blurted out one night in a eureka moment. “It’s Catch-22! It’s funnier than 18.” The edit stuck, and a major, major idiom was born.

2. AN AFFAIR TO FORGET: The Edit that Changed Hemingway’s Life

Hadley and Ernest Hemingway in 1922

The turmoil of Ernest Hemingway’s personal life continued long after his death thanks to the publication of his autobiography, A Moveable Feast. Released in 1964, three years after his suicide, the book was uncharacteristically poignant and sentimental. It even included a tender apology to his first wife, Hadley, whom Hemingway had cheated on with his second wife, Pauline. Yet, for decades, few people knew the apology existed. That’s because it was edited out of the text by Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary.

As the author’s literary executor, Mary prepared the work for publication, and she removed the apology out of spite. Mary had always resented Hadley for being the literary giant’s favorite spouse, and Hemingway confirmed that belief in A Moveable Feast when he wrote, “I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”

Decades later, in 2009, Hemingway’s grandson Sean reinserted the apology into a new edition of the book. But that wasn’t the only serious edit he made. Sean also scrapped passages about his grandmother, Pauline, whom Hemingway blamed for ruining his first marriage. Of course, literary historians were quick to criticize Sean’s selective whitewashing. They claim that while Hemingway may have wanted to cut Pauline out of his life, he never intended to cut her out of his life story.

3. HALL MARKS: The Edit that Resulted in Two Masterpieces

Today, Woody Allen’s 1977 masterpiece Annie Hall is considered the quintessential romantic comedy. Clocking in at just 93 minutes, it’s also one of the shortest movies to ever win Best Picture a the Academy Awards. But the film wasn’t always so romantic… or so short. Annie Hall was initially shot as a murder mystery that ran two and a half hours long. Then the movie’s producers decided they wanted to go in a different direction. In addition to slicing out all the crime scenes, they requested a title change. It’s a good thing, too. Originally, the picture was called Anhedonia, a psychological term that refers to the inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasing experiences. But when Anhedonia tested horribly with focus groups, the team tried out other titles -including Me and My Goy and It Had to Be Jew- before landing on the classic Annie Hall.

Were the producers right to worry about Anhedonia’s crime-comedy plot? Perhaps not. Sixteen years later, Allen recycled the story (and even rehired many of the same actors, including Diane Keaton) for his well-received 1993 film Manhattan Murder Mystery. Without the producer’s extreme edits to Annie Hall, it’s likely that only one of those classics would have been made.

4. WYNONA FOREVER: The Painful Breakup Edit

In 1989, Hollywood heartthrob Johnny Depp spotted fellow Hollywood heartthrob Winona Ryder at a movie premiere in New York, and an angsty romance sparked. Their whirlwind love story continued through the filming of Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands the following year, and Depp and Ryder were soon engaged. Hoping for something more permanent than a ring, Depp had “Winona Forever” tattooed on his right bicep. But three years later, their love had faded. The tattoo had not. In the most physically painful edit on this list, Depp had the ink on his bicep amended to “Wino Forever,” reflecting another of his passions.

5. GUESS WHO’S GOING OFF SCRIPT? The Greatest Ad-Lib Edit on Film

At the end of his legendary acting career, Spencer Tracy decided it was time to start writing his own lines. In 1967, the ailing, 67-year-old Tracy was filming Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which an older white couple (played by Tracy and his longtime off-screen lover, Katherine Hepburn) meets their daughter’s black fiance. During the final scene, Tracy argues on behalf of the couple’s taboo relationship and then ad-libs a goodbye to Hepburn. Originally, the script read, “The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel for each other,” to which Tracy added, “If it’s half of what we felt, that’s everything.” With this heartfelt edit, Tracy allowed his true emotion to pour out, and Hepburn teared up. After the scene was shot, the crew gave Tracy a standing ovation. The scene ended up being Tracy’s last great performance; just weeks later, the actor died of a heart attack.

(YouTube link)

6. VIRGIL’S LAST WISH: The No-Edit Edit

Since the earliest days of literature, writers have been dissatisfied with their work, and the Roman poet Virgil was no exception. Virgil believed his epic poem, The Aeneid, was so flawed that he wanted it to suffer the ultimate edit: He asked that it be burned upon his death. (In particular he hated the love scene between Venus and Vulcan, because he thought it was too racy.) However, several of Virgil’s friends, with support from Emperor Augustus, convinced the poet to alter his will and spare the work. But legend has it that before Virgil died in 19 BCE, he changed his will again, this time forbidding anyone from ever revising the poem. If he couldn’t perfect The Aeneid, he didn’t want anyone else to do it, either.

7. COKE ZERO-ED: The Product Placement Edit

It’s not unusual for songs to be edited for radio play. For example, the Black-Eyed Peas’ song “Let’s Get Retarded” was changed to “Let’s Get It Started” to avoid offending the mentally challenged. But when the British Broadcasting Company refused to play The Kinks’ 1970 anthem “Lola,” it was for a much stranger reason. While the BBC had no problem with the song’s lyrics, which included lines about sex and drag queens, it did balk at the song’s mention of “Coca-Cola.” Apparently, the government-subsidized network had a strict policy about in-song advertisements, and it considered the reference to be a product placement. (Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” was held up in 1973 for similar reasons.)

Ray Davies, lead singer of The Kinks, learned of the problem while he was on tour with the band in America . To get the song on the air, Davies rushed back to London and re-recorded the line, changing the lyric to the now-famous, “you drink Champagne, and it tastes just just like cherry cola.” Minor? Perhaps. But the quick fix allowed the song to be played on British radio, where it climbed to No. 2 on the UK charts.

8. POISONING THE WELLES The Edit that Ruined a Career

Following the critical success of Orson Welles’ 1941 film Citizen Kane, RKO Pictures agreed to produce the director’s next project, The Magnificent Ambersons. But when Welles’ gloomy picture tested poorly with audiences, RKO president George Schaefer asked Welles to re-cut the entire film.

Welles happened to be in Rio de Janeiro at the time working on another project, so editor Robert Wise was handed the assignment. At the studio’s insistence, Wise chopped 50 minutes from the mournful tale. When Welles heard about this, he was horrified. He sent Wise urgent directorial notes, followed by a telegram that read, “REALLY DESPERATE.” The studios ignored his suggestions.

The film was released in 1942, and it was a box-office flop. Schaefer was fired, and Welles lost his contract with RKO. “They destroyed Ambersons, and it destroyed me,” Welles said of the hasty edits. Yet, this sorrowful tale about a sorrowful tale has a surprisingly happy ending. Even in its badly truncated form, The Magnificent Ambersons is now considered a classic.

9. SPLITTING HARES: The Edit That Created a Screen Legend

In 1938, Warner Brothers writer Ben Hardaway directed a short film featuring a very sneaky rabbit. The cartoon was called Porky’s Hare Hunt, but the bunny that starred in it didn’t have a name. So, the best creative minds in the business got together and dubbed the up-and-coming star “Happy Rabbit.”

Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was Bugs, also directed he next short starring Happy Rabbit. As the animators drew up early image for the film, one of them labeled a sketch of the rabbit “Bugs’ Bunny,” to make it clear that the drawing was part of Hardaway’s project. The label was mistaken for the name of the character, and soon enough, all the animators were calling Happy Rabbit “Bugs Bunny.” The tiny error created an icon, and, as they say at Warner Bros., that’s all, folks.

10. ANARCHY IN THE W.K.: The Edited World of Wikipedia

Right now in Wikipedia, a battle is raging. It’s known as the Edit Wars. Users of the reference site constantly change the contents of certain pages, fighting each other over the details. In fact, if you want to measure how controversial a subject is, just look up how many times its page has been edited. What topics are in the lead? At the end of 2010, George W. Bush had the mostly hotly-contested page, with 44,169 edits (10,000 more than any other entry). Meanwhile, Catholicism is the most disputed religion, with 20, 548 edits, beating Islam’s 16,813. The most controversial pop star? Michael Jackson, with 25, 391 edits, although he’s trailed closely by Britney Spears. Of course, she’s still young, so there’s time for her to usurp the King of Pop’s reign.

_______________________

The article above, written by David Wanczyk, is reprinted with permission from the May-June 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

In 1995, Gross and Levenson published the results of their test screenings. They came up with a list of 16 short film clips able to elicit a single emotion, such as anger, fear or surprise. Their recommendation for inducing disgust was a short film showing an amputation. Their top-rated film clip for amusement was the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally. And then there’s the two-minute, 51-second clip of Schroder weeping over his father’s dead body in The Champ, which Levenson and Gross found produced more sadness in laboratory subjects than the death of Bambi’s mom.

“I still feel sad when I see that boy crying his heart out,” Gross says.

Cue the argument for Old Yeller. Excuse me, I think I need a handkerchief. Link -via Metafilter

Link to the specific scene from The Champ.

This in part may stem from my undiagnosed ADD, but watching Part I of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows left me abused and confused.  To me it seemed like lots of random stuff that looked expensive was happening but a coherent plot wasn’t one of them. How could I enjoy the new HP flick without remembering all the details of the first six films?  That’s when I discovered The Fine Brothers seven minute recap of the Harry Potter franchise that will bring diehard fans and newbies (like me) up to speed.

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2 comes to theaters this week, so we present a recap of the 7 Harry Potter films, so you can be fully caught up to watch and enjoy the final film with your friends, and make them think you actually know the series when in reality you just spent 7 minutes watching this video.

Link

Carl and Ellie’s dream house from the movie Up! comes to life in Herriman, Utah, with Disney’s blessing. At Lovely Listing, you can also see a bit of the inside, too. Link

The Retroist reprinted some letters from the 1983 book Letters to E.T. Most of the letters are from children to the alien character, but this one is to Steven Spielberg himself. Link -via @LettersOfNote

Charlie took his sister Ginny to the movies. What Charlie knew, but Ginny didn’t, was that Ginny’s boyfriend Matt had bought a slot during the previews. And we have her reaction on video during the whole thing. -via reddit

This poster for the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou was created by artist Chris DeLorenzo for the Silver Screen Society collection, where you can see it moving. Link -via Laughing Squid

We don’t yet know a lot about the movie Night of the Little Dead, except that it stars Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) and Adam Savage (of Mythbusters), but that is enough to make me want to see it! Link

The White House prepared a movie trailer for president Barack Obama’s routine last night at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. It’s a sequel to The King’s Speech.

The car that was built for the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is up for auction at eBay.

Built on a custom ladder frame chassis, many old world forms of car building were employed, and modern technology stepped in to create a vehicle which was both accurate enough to fool veteran and classic car experts, when held under the scrutiny of 70mm cinema cameras, and durable enough to withstand everything from driving in sand, cobbled streets and down staircases. The bonnet is crafted of polished aluminum; the boat deck is hand-crafted of red and white cedar built by boat builders in Buckinghamshire, and the array of brass fittings were obtained from Edwardian cars. Even the alloy dashboard plate is from a British World War I fighter plane! The car weighs approximately 2 tons and measures 17 1/2 feet in length and is powered by a Ford 3 litre V-6 engine mated to an automatic transmission.

Other vehicles were built for the film to be used for special effects, but this particular car was the only one that actually worked. And it only has 44 miles on it. However, bidding has started at a million dollars. Link -via the Presurfer

There are bad movies…and then there are BAD movies. Years ago the Medved brothers reintroduced stinkers like Plan 9 From Outer Space to the public in their groundbreaking books, The 50 Worst Films of All Time and The Golden Turkey Awards. The “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ gave us a chance to watch the best of the worst on TV. Today there are millions of bad movie buffs… and Uncle John is one of them. Here’s one of his favorite stinkers.

ROBOT MONSTER (1953)
Starring George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong, George Barrows.

Background: Director Phil Tucker made this opus for less than $20,000. He couldn’t afford to rent a real robot costume, but (fortunately for bad movie lovers) he knew a guy named George Barrows, who owned his own gorilla suit. “When [moviemakers] needed a gorilla in a picture,” Tucker explained to the Medveds in The Golden Turkey Awards, “they called George. [He] got like forty bucks a day… [but] I thought, ‘George will work for me for nothing. I’ll get a diving helmet, put it on him, and it’ll work!’”

It did work. Years later, Tucker’s robot even won an award. Okay, it was a Golden Turkey Award for “The Most Ridiculous Monster in Screen History.” But it was well-deserved. “Unlike many other cinematic robots,” Ken Beggs writes in Jabootu’s Bad Movie Universe, “[this one] has the appearance of a morbidly obese man in a shaggy gorilla costume, adorned with a deep sea diving helmet over his nylon-stocking bedecked noggin” -and the helmet was topped with a rabbit-ears TV antenna. You have to see it to believe it.

(YouTube link)

Note: Strange anomaly for such a seat-of-the-pants production: Robot Monster was filmed in 3D, and the music recorded in stereo. Even more surprising: the score was written by Elmer Bernstein, later one of Hollywood’s most accomplished composers (he wrote the music, for example, for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape).

The Plot: Ro-Man, from the planet Ro-Man, arrives on Earth. His mission: wipe out all human life with his deadly Calcinator Ray. He unleashes a barrage of cheesy-looking death rays, then reports to his master -the “Great One”- via a bubble machine, that the entire human population is dead.

Wrong. Ro-Man’s boss -who looks suspiciously like Ro-Man (with a different diving helmet)- informs him that there are still eight people left alive …and six happen to be hiding behind a force field right near Ro-Man’s cave. Who are they? The Professor, Mary Ann, Ginger… oops, wrong castaways. A German professor, his hunky helper (Roy), a mom (Mom), her two little kids (Johnny and Carla), and her grown daughter (Alice).

Ro-Man’s job is to wander around the desert and find them, then figure out why they’re not dead -and then kill them. But the shaggy robot runs into a little problem: he falls for Alice. The Great One is pretty ticked off about that.

Meanwhile, Alice and Roy are inspired by the apocalypse, and fall in love. (Lucky for Alice, since “he’s the only man alive not related to her.”) They kiss, Roy takes his shirt off, then they get married. The Great One gets a bit upset at Ro-Man and vaporizes him …along with the Earth.

The end? Not exactly -turns out Johnny has hit his head and dreamed the whole thing. Ha-ha! Now The End.

Watch For…

* Ro-Man (Barrows) walking…and walking…and walking in the desert. It must have been 120° in that suit -it’s amazing Barrows survived. You gotta feel for they guy -and he was doing it for nothing!

* The Cave. Why is Ro-Man, who has wiped out everyone Earth and can take his pick of locations, hanging out in a cave with a bubble machine?

* George Nader gratuitously taking his shirt off. Nader was apparently on his way to becoming a star in the late 1940s when he got caught doing something he …umm… wasn’t supposed to be doing. He was relegated to tripe like this, but he still had the bod.

* Ro-Man kills the little girl. This was actually pretty strange and out of place. At least one reviewer speculates it was unplanned -the girl who played her was just so annoying that the rest of the crew insisted on getting her off the set any way they could.

* Ro-Man’s moment of indecision. “I need guidance, Great One, for the first time in my life, I am not sure.” What’s confusing him? He’s hot for Alice, and it doesn’t compute.

* The “surprise” ending.

Memorable Dialogue:

Ro-Man: (informing his master that he has wiped out the human race) “All are gone now. The way is clear for our people.”
Great One: “I want facts, not words!”
Ro-Man: “Fact A! My pulse has been reduced to plus zero zero.”
Great One: “Reject! Error! Error!”
Ro-Man: “Error? But Great Guidance, I have proved it! My energizer has scan-checked by square feet! No life above lepidopteron level exists!”
Great One: “My calculator is more accurate! In the twenty-second category there is an error of sixteen billionths!”
Ro-Man: “The Great One is never wrong. Then there are perhaps eight people left on Earth.”
Great One: “Not perhaps! Precisely! Find and destroy them!”

Roy: (arguing with Alice, who accuses him of being bossy) “I’m bossy? You’re so bossy you should be milked before you come home at night.”

Ro-Man: “Calculate your chances! Negative, negative, negative… is there a choice between a painless surrender death and the horror of resistance death? Show yourselves!”

(Uncle John’s favorite)
Johnny: “I think you’re just a big bully, picking on people smaller than you are!”
Ro-Man: “Now I will kill you.”

(YouTube link)

_____________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of the International Space Station, we have created a new film of what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.

By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.

Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary.

You can watch the entire movie (99 minutes) at the website. Link

Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren team up for a sequel to the megahit romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. Contains some NSFW language. -via The Daily What

This picture and others from the same sequence are everywhere on the internet today, but rarely is there any source or context attached. These are stills from the movie Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest.

(YouTube link)

Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest {wiki} is a 1908 film by D.W.Griffith. It featured cutting-edge special effects that were frightening to audiences. -via Dangerous Minds

Artist Clint Wilson interpreted the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? in the style of an ancient Grecian vase. I love it! Link -via Nag on the Lake

David Balboa of Exophrine put together a really neat video clip of 150 of the most famous movie one-liners and catch phrases. Can you identify them all?

Susana Polo of the newly launched The Mary Sue blog (part of Dan Abram’s media empire, which includes our pal Geekosystem) has the video clip. After you’re done watching that – definitely browse The Mary Sue (and read the reason behind its cheeky name) – it’s full of really neat stuff!

Link [embedded YouTube Clip] | The Mary Sue – Thanks Robert!

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if they plan on re-releasing the picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without their permission. What about Warner Brothers — do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. When Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, we were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers and even before us, there had been other brothers — the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazoff; Dan Brouthers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, can you spare a dime?” This was originally “Brothers, can you spare a dime” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other brother and whittled it down to “Brother, can you spare a dime?”

Read all three pages at the post. Link

For Bollywood fans, Indian fare like samosas (potato-stuffed pastries), chaat (fried dough with potato, bread or chickpeas and tangy spices with yogurt garnish) and vada (a spiced potato sandwich) are the movie snacks of choice. Psst: You can also get them at cinemas in the U.S., like Columbia Park Stadium 12 in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Read about ten types of international treats at Woman’s Day. Link -via the Presurfer

A sequence from the Bollywood sci-fi movie Robot. Just when you think it can’t get any more bizarre, it does just that. Overdubbed in Russian (I think), but knowing the language won’t help. -via Laughing Squid

What if Disney had produced the movie Up! in 1965? YouTube member whoiseyevan, who gave us Ghost Busters 1954 and Raiders of the Lost Ark 1951 produced a trailer for a 1960s live-action version. See a list of clips sources at the YouTube link.  -via reddit

If your movie pitch got rejected, perhaps you weren’t using the right buzzwords. Mike Jacobsen of See Mike Draw explains the secret of pitching a blockbuster to Hollywood: Link

See also Mike Jacobsen’s T-Shirt designs at the NeatoShop

Rubber is a French comedy/thriller that revolves around a murderous tire.

RUBBER is the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life. As Robert roams the bleak landscape, he discovers that he possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the ability to destroy anything he wishes without having to move. At first content to prey on small desert creatures and various discarded objects, his attention soon turns to humans, especially a beautiful and mysterious woman who crosses his path. Leaving a swath of destruction across the desert landscape, Robert becomes a chaotic force to be reckoned with, and truly a movie villain for the ages.

Despite an April 1 release date, this is a real feature film that made the rounds of film festivals last year. Link -via Buzzfeed

Instead of reprinting the studio posters, film distributors in some eastern European countries commission new posters for movies, and many are works of art. Monster Brains has a collection of Polish and Czech posters for Japanese monster movies, including this awesome Czech illustration for the film Monster from a Prehistoric Planet (Daikyoü Gappa). Oh yes, there are lots of variations on Godzilla, too! Link -via Pink Tentacle

Jeremy Woods created a modern title sequence for the 1931 film Frankenstein. I think it works quite well! -Thanks, Jeremy!

Rocky Balboa vs. the Soviet giant Ivan Drago. The fate of the Cold War rests in his hands. That was 25 years ago already? I guess so! Rocky IV is the subject of today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I guess it was a long time ago -I only got 3 out of 10 correct! Surely you will do better. Link

If you’re a fan of cheesy films like Manos: The Hand of Fate, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Troll 2, you’ll love this one. Uncle John saw it last when our local Bad Film Society screened it, and as he was watching, it occurred to him that it actually gave new meaning to the word “bad.” (But somehow he couldn’t stop talking about how great it was.)

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN

On June 2003, a film called The Room premiered in a handful of Los Angeles theaters. It’s the story of a love triangle between Johnny, a banker; Lisa, his girlfriend; and Johnny’s best friend Mark. The film was the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, the actor who plays Johnny. Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the film. He financed The Room, too, shelling out $6 million of his own money to make it, plus thousands more on print and TV ads and a single giant billboard overlooking busy Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.

The Room was Wiseau’s first feature film. He hoped to use it to launch a Hollywood career… but all he succeeded in doing was blowing $6 million in record time. The Room played to nearly empty theaters for just two weeks before it was yanked from the screen; in that time it had grossed only $1,900, not enough to cover even one month’s rent on the Highland Avenue billboard. Put another way, for every million Wiseau spent, The Room earned less than $320, making it one of the worst box-office flops in history.

(YouTube link)

CITIZEN PAIN

Is there anything about The Room that isn’t bad? The acting is stunningly incompetent- none of the actors had ever had a major film role before, and Wiseau was incapable of providing decent direction. And the love scene between Johnny and Lisa is creepy (picture a Troll doll having its way with a seat cushion, except that Lisa is the cushion). Wiseau recycles the footage in a second love scene 20 minutes after the first, so you get to watch it twice.

As a screenwriter, Wiseau was even worse. New characters appear out of nowhere and aren’t properly identified, so it’s never clear who they are. A number of subplots -such as drug abuse, unrequited love, and bad real estate deals- are introduced, then quickly abandoned. (“I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer,” Lisa’s mother tells her, and the subject never comes up again.) And though the thickly-accented Wiseau refuses to this day to say where he comes from, English is clearly not his first language. The Room is full of clunky, confusing, and unintentionally funny dialog: When a (never-identified) character catches Lisa and Mark kissing at Johnny’s birthday party, and confronts them, Mark yells, “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!”

(YouTube link)

PATRON ZERO

The movie likely would have died a quick and unmourned death had an aspiring young screenwriter named Michael Rousselet not happened to see the film near the end of its two-week theatrical run. As Rousselet sat alone in the empty theater, he was stunned by what he saw- bad lighting, out-of-focus scenes, dubbed dialog out of sync with the lip movements onscreen, poorly designed sets (it’s never clear which room is the room, or why the room is so important), one wooden, sophomoric acting performance after another, and much, much more. Whenever Rousselet thought that The Room had given all that it had to give, it would cough up some wonderful new chunk of mediocrity and incompetence for him to savor. It was unlike any film he’d ever seen. Sure that such a flop would never make it onto DVD, Rousselet sat in an empty theater (while the movie was still running) and called everyone he could think of on his cell phone, telling them they had to see The Room for themselves before it vanished forever.

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MISERY LOVES COMPANY

That theater didn’t stay empty for long. Though The Room died at every other venue where it was shown, Rousselet’s promotional work paid off at this one. A small crowd of friends joined him at the next showing, and as these people phoned their friends, the numbers grew steadily at each remaining screening. “We saw it four times in three days, and on the last day had over 100 people there,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2008.

By the time The Room ended its theatrical run, a small but dedicated fan base had already begun emailing Wiseau to thank him for his efforts and ask him to screen the film again. Wiseau received dozens more emails in the months that followed, and in June 2004 he booked a small theater in West Hollywood for a single midnight screening. That event was a hit -so many people turned out to see the film that Wiseau booked another midnight showing a month later, then another, then another.

As the crowds continued to grow like lookie-loos at a traffic accident, he expanded to two screens at the multiplex, then three, then four, and then five. Strong word of mouth among a steadily growing fan base of “Roomies,” as they call themselves, led Wiseau to schedule screenings in cities up and down the West Coast, then in other parts of the United States and Canada, and eventually in Great Britain. And with foreign-language editions reportedly in the works, The Room may soon have fans all over the world.

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SPOONING

Have you ever been to a showing of the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show? As was the case with that cult film, The Room‘s fans have created audience participation rituals all their own. Roomies attend screenings dressed as their favorite characters, shout out their favorite bad lines at the appropriate moments, yell “FOCUS!” during blurry scenes, march out “in protest” during the troll doll/seat cushion love scenes, and throw plastic spoons whenever the spoon photograph in Johnny’s apartment appears. There’s no question that the Roomies are there to laugh at Wiseau and his masterpiece, but he says he doesn’t mind. “As long as they laugh or enjoy themselves, I enjoy with them,” he says.

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NO ROOM AT THE ROOM

If you’re ever in L.A. on the last Saturday of the month, go see The Room. Buy your tickets early- even when the film is being shown on five screens, The Room sells out quickly, especially when Wiseau or other stars appear in person. Wiseau’s fabulous flop has been reborn as the hottest cult phenomenon in decades, and at an estimated gross of more than $1,000 per screening, The Room is on track to break even sometime in the year 2504, maybe sooner if you consider profits from The Room t-shirts, CDs, DVDs, movie posters, and talking Johnny bobblehead dolls.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!