The poster above for Vin Diesel’s The Last Witch Hunteris the best thing I’ve seen promoting the movie. I like the poster. I still have big doubts about the movie though.
6. COPPOLA LITERALLY PUT EVERYTHING HE HAD INTO THE MOVIE.
The director invested $30 million of his own money into the project to get the budget to the amount required to execute his vision. That total included the valuations of his house and his winery, which he signed over to Chase Bank as collateral on the amount. The interest rate for the amount began at seven percent, but when production ended it was up to 29 percent. If the movie tanked, Coppola faced financial ruin, which understandably made the filming process fairly stressful. Coppola suffered an epileptic seizure while shooting, had a nervous breakdown, and allegedly threatened to commit suicide at least three times.
8. HARRISON FORD APPEARS IN A (TECHNICALLY) PRE-STAR WARS ROLE. Coppola hired a young actor named Harrison Ford to appear as Colonel Lucas (a nod to George), one of the military officers who gives Willard his orders to assassinate Kurtz. Ford had previously appeared in Lucas’ American Graffiti and Coppola’s The Conversation, but was still relatively unknown when the filming of Apocalypse Now began in 1976. He would later become a megastar after appearing as Han Solo in Star Wars when it was released in 1977.Apocalypse Now, which was shot before Star Wars, was released afterwards. Ford was apparently so nervous when shooting his scenes that Coppola added a story beat for his character to drop his dossier about Kurtz as a way to incorporate the then young actor’s anxiety into the scene.
5. HARVEY KEITEL WAS FIRST HIRED TO PLAY WILLARD.
Coppola held exhaustive audition sessions for his primary cast, but the part of Willard proved to be a problematic one for Coppola. He first offered the part to actor Steve McQueen, who turned down the role because he didn’t want to shoot in the jungle on location. Al Pacino, James Caan, and Jack Nicholson all turned down successive offers from Coppola until he gave the role to Harvey Keitel. Coppola fired Keitel six weeks into production because he thought the actor’s performance wasn’t as introspective as he needed for the character. So he called Martin Sheen, who had previously auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather and passed on Apocalypse Now because he was shooting The Cassandra Crossing in Rome.
1. PSYCHO (1960)
After Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) checks into the Bates Motel, she overhears the motel’s owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), get into an argument with his mother, who is emotionally abusive toward him. Nevertheless, Norman defends her when Marion suggests that their relationship might be toxic. Norman explains that his mother is “as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.” The line foreshadows the film’s twist when it is revealed that Norman killed and taxidermied his mother.
4. TOTAL RECALL (1990) Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 science fiction film Total Recall is full of clever clues that keep audiences guessing as to whether Doug Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) adventure as a secret agent on Mars was real or merely a memory implanted into his brain. One of the biggest hints comes at the beginning of the film, when Quaid visits Rekall and one of the engineers tells him that he will experience “blue skies on Mars.” At the end of Total Recall, the Red Planet is terraformed and there is now a blue sky on Mars.
5. RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs follows a small group of criminals brought together to pull off a diamond heist. But when the police show up in the midst of the job, it’s clear that one of the men is an informant. The criminals are unknown to each other and are only referred to by colorful aliases (i.e. Mr. White). However, if you pay close attention to the opening scene, you can figure out that Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) is the police informant who set up the rest of the gang.
During the breakfast scene, when Joe (Lawrence Tierney) leaves the table to pay the bill, everyone contributes a dollar for the waitress’ tip—everyone except for Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), who refuses to tip based on principle. When Joe comes back to the table, he notices that the tip is short and asks who didn’t contribute. Without hesitation, Mr. Orange rats out Mr. Pink.
Additionally, when Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) rushes to the hideout after the heist-gone-wrong, there’s an orange balloon following his car, which is a nod to the fact that Mr. Orange is after him.
Francis Manapul recently shared the art above for Broken Hollow, his first creator-owned comic. I’m intrigued enough to want to see more and will post updates here when they come.
If you’d like to see the art above, bigger, click here.
Lookinglass has been through a couple of name changes. It was originally called The Frankenstein Code.
I like The Frankenstein Code title but understand why it was changed — it sounds like a horror movie. Of course since the series was inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the title wasn’t too much of a stretch.
At any rate, a rose monster by any other name and all that, the trailer for Lookinglass is below and looks interesting enough to be added to my list of shows to watch.
3. Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, and even Robert Redford were considered for the part of Red, who is a middle-aged Irishman in the original story… Darabont had Freeman in mind all along because of his presence, demeanor, and, of course, that voice.
16. When the cut-out hiding space for his digging tool was discovered in Andy’s Bible, it’s clear the book is open to Exodus.
Columbia Pictures
The word literally means “to escape or depart.”
5. The mugshot of Red attached to his parole papers looks just like a young Morgan Freeman for a reason: it’s Freeman’s son, Alfonso in the photos.
Columbia Pictures
Alfonso Freeman also appears in the film as a convict yelling, “Free fish! Free fish today!”
Every so often I hear a song that I immediately like and can’t get out of my head.Dancing in the Skyby Dani and Lizzi [twin sisters] is now the song taking up residence in my dome.
Sly Stallone will appear in Robert Rodriguez’s The Director’s Chair premiering on November 15th on the El Rey Network.Check your local listing for the channel and time!
