Category: Humor

45 Things We Learned from Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg’s ‘This Is the End’ Commentary.

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects recently posted 45 Things We Learned from Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg’s ‘This Is the End’ Commentary.   Here are three of my favorites…

8. The front of James Franco‘s house is mostly CG. The interior was built in a coffee bean warehouse. There were so many movies filming in New Orleans at the time that there were no proper sound stages available.

41. Franco fought them on his character dying as he didn’t think it should happen. Once he realized it was a losing argument he suggested the false rapture bit instead. “That joke’s literally from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”

43. The movie originally ended with Seth and Jay rising up into heaven as the final shot, but early audiences demanded to see heaven.

11 FORGOTTEN FACTS ABOUT ABBOTT AND COSTELLO

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Me-TV recently posted 11 FORGOTTEN FACTS ABOUT ABBOTT AND COSTELLO.  Here are three of my favorites…

COSTELLO HAD TO CHANGE HIS VOICE.
After several appearances on radio programs, including The Kate Smith Hour, Abbott and Costello were told by producers one of them had to change their voice. Apparently, they sounded too similar and listeners couldn’t distinguish between the two men. That’s when Costello adopted the higher pitch, for which he became known in his later years.

THEY WERE INSTANT HITS IN HOLLYWOOD.
The duo was first featured in the film One Night in the Tropics. Originally a bit part in the film, the duo provided so much good material that the lines of others actors had to be cut in order to meet the 90-minute requirement. Although the film was a flop, Abbott and Costello were a hit with audiences in their supporting roles.

COSTELLO MADE MORE MONEY THAN ABBOTT.
Once the duo arrived in Hollywood, Abbot and Costello earned a 50/50 split of the profits. However, Costello, being the comedian, felt he should earn more than Abbot, the straight man. Eventually, tension reached a peak when Costello threatened to break up the act if Abbott wouldn’t settle for a 60/40 split.

11 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT REALIZE ANDY GRIFFITH DID BEYOND ‘THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW’!

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MeTV  presents 11 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT REALIZE ANDY GRIFFITH DID BEYOND ‘THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW’!  Here are three of my favorites…

HE TAUGHT HIGH SCHOOL.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Griffith hopped from Chapel Hill to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he taught drama at Goldsboro High School for a few years. Go Mighty Cougars!

HE PLAYED SHERIFF ANDY TAYLOR ON FOUR DIFFERENT TV SERIES.
Okay, we are going to spend a little time talking about Andy Taylor. The Sheriff pulled off the rare feat of appearing on four different shows — The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry R.F.D. and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

HE WAS NOMINATED FOR TWO TONY AWARDS FOR HIS WORK ON BROADWAY.
Griffith took to Broadway in 1955, starring in Ira Levin’s comedic drama No Time for Sergeants. Roddy McDowell, seen here hanging from his leg, played Griffith’s buddy. The Tony Awards honored Griffith with a nomination for Distinguished Supporting or Featured Dramatic Actor at the 1956 ceremony. He lost to Ed Begley. Four years later, he earned a nomination for Distinguished Musical Actor for his lead role in Destry Rides Again.

 

Kill Me Three Times (2014)

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Kill Me Three Times (2014)

Director: Kriv Stenders

Screenplay: James McFarland

Stars: Simon Pegg, Teresa Palmer, Alice Braga,  Luke Hemsworth and Bryan Brown

The Pitch: “Hey, let’s do a crime comedy!”

Tagline: Once is never enough

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When hitman Charlie Wolf (Pegg) fails to kill his target, he finds himself drawn into three interwoven cases of infidelity, revenge, blackmail and murders!

Rating:

Adam West – R.I.P.

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Adam West passed away last night after short battle with leukemia surrounded by his family.

West, known as tv’s Batman, is (along with Leonard Nimoy as Spock) perhaps the best example of the danger of typecasting.  Chosen to play the Caped Crusader for television, West shot to such fame that he had trouble finding new leading roles when Batman ended.  Yet he persevered and in later years did very well on the convention circuit meeting fans who couldn’t wait to get an autograph and photo with Batman.

I was seven years old when Batman premiered.  Adam West instantly became one of my childhood heroes.  My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, friends and fans.

10 Invasive Facts About “Mars Attacks”

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Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Invasive Facts About Mars Attacks.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. BURTON WANTED HIS MARTIANS TO BE ANIMATED VIA STOP-MOTION.
The concept of a Mars Attacks! movie first surfaced in 1985, but development wouldn’t begin in earnest until 1994, when screenwriter John Gems and director Tim Burton got involved with the project. To bring the aliens to life, Burton intended to utilize stop-motion animation, something he’s “always [loved] and always will.”

Early in pre-production, a set of 12-inch articulated Martian models were built for testing purposes. At first, Burton’s plan was to have these animated in front of a blue screen. They would then be inserted digitally onto miniature sets by the artists at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Ultimately, though, Burton decided to abandon the stop-motion approach when ILM presented him with some impressive screen tests featuring computer-animated aliens.

Despite this, Mars Attacks! still pays tribute to the older effects technique. At Burton’s instruction, ILM animated the digital extraterrestrials as if they were stop motion puppets. This is why the Martians move a bit more rigidly than did most contemporary CG characters, such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993).

4. WHY DID SO MANY CELEBRITIES JOIN THE CAST? THANK JACK NICHOLSON.
Let’s do a quick head count. Glenn Close, Martin Short, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox, and Sarah Jessica Parker are just a few of the big names on this movie’s mile-long list of stars. And yet, when the casting process began, Mars Attacks! struggled to attract any players with serious marquee value. Gems blames this on the fact that most of its characters either die in some cartoonish manner or end up disfigured.

“Agents didn’t want to see their star clients playing loser roles, and a lot of big acts passed on the project,” he says. “At one point, we thought we were going to have to cancel the film. The guy who saved our butt was Jack Nicholson.” According to Burton, the Academy Award-winner was enthusiastic about joining Mars Attacks! from the very start. After sending Nicholson the script, Burton gave him a call while location-scouting. “Which part would you like to do?” asked the director. “How about all of them?” Nicholson replied.

In the end, he was double-cast as President Dale and a sleazy Vegas businessman. Once word got around that Nicholson would be involved, other celebs lined up to join the ensemble. “We started getting requests from more stars than there were parts for,” Gems notes. “It was like a tidal wave when Jack came on.”

9. INDEPENDENCE DAY OWES ITS TITLE—AND PART OF ITS PREMISE—TO MARS ATTACKS!
While Burton toiled away on Mars Attacks!, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich were writing an alien invasion movie of their own, but theirs was to have a more serious tone. The duo knew that both pictures would be released at some point in the summer of 1996.

“I said to Dean, we can’t do our film after a parody comes out. We had to beat [Burton] to it,” Emmerich recently said in an interview with The Guardian. “If it came out on the 4 July weekend, we would beat Mars Attacks!, which was coming out in August. So we wrote the concept around the release date. Dean said: ‘Let’s just call it Independence Day; we can come up with something better later.” The rest is history.