Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, 1957...





When filming began, Robert Mitchum worried that Deborah Kerr would be like the prim characters she frequently played. However, after she swore at director John Huston during one take, Mitchum, who was in the water, almost drowned laughing. The two stars went on to have an enduring friendship which lasted until Mitchum's death in 1997.

Robert Mitchum is shown throughout the movie wearing a metal expansion bracelet for his wristwatch. Such bracelets were introduced by Speidel in the 1950s afaik. lol

actually that bracelet might just have been ok need to see it again tho. if it was a scissors one then its ok..

[struth]

Father Goose, 1964. starring Cary Grant, Leslie Caron and Trevor Howard.





The scene in the dinghy where the small boat gets passed by two large ships was filmed on the Universal Studios back-lot in a large tank on a sound set. One of the child stars, Stephanie Berrington [now Stephanie Berrington McNutt] who played Elizabeth, in an interview said, "It was a large tank like a swimming pool. We had wave-making machines which were logs attached to steel arms that kept slapping the water to make waves. The larger ships were actually projected onto screens above the water. At first, the dinghy was just floating free and was not attached to anything. In one of the first few takes, it took on so much water that it sank (it wasn't supposed to) and most of the children were thrilled. It was like going for a swim. There was one child, however, who did not know how to swim so the directors and producers all jumped into the water in their good clothes and expensive watches to "save" us. Needless to say, most of us didn't want to be saved at all! Photos were taken and I believe they were published in the Los Angeles Times."

[Pigmy Pony]

The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Wow. Doing the City of Birmingham proud.

[struth]

The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959...






The Baskerville Hall set is a redress of that used for Castle Dracula in Dracula (1958), in which Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing also starred.

To this day, the movie is still released in a censored version for the British market. The scene where Sir Hugo Baskerville pushes a servant into a burning fireplace, remains trimmed of a few seconds. When the local peasant girl is caught and murdered by Sir Hugo, there were more camera shots of the character using his dagger. This scene also remains censored.

[struth]

The First Great Train Robbery, 1978...








Sir Sean Connery spent several days running on top of a moving train. The train was supposed to be travelling at thirty-five miles per hour; Connery argued it was going faster. The train driver was counting telegraph poles to measure the speed. A helicopter pilot confirmed Connery's suspicion. The train was travelling at over fifty-five miles per hour.

The character of Clean Willy was played by one of Britain's premiere ballet dancers, Wayne Sleep, from The Royal Ballet Company. He did his own stunts, including scaling the Newgate prison walls, at the tremendous risk of falling and hurting himself.

[struth]

Diamond Geezer series 1, 2005...

[struth]

All Of Me, 1984...

[struth]

Saboteur, 1942...






The set used as the ranch house of Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger) was used as the home of the Brenners for another Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds (1963). It originally was a leftover set from a Deanna Durbin movie shot on the Universal backlot.

The special effects crew took stills of the Statue of Liberty's upraised hand, her torch, and the ledge beneath it. These were re-created to scale on a Universal Pictures soundstage.

[Barry]

The First Great Train Robbery, 1978...








Sir Sean Connery spent several days running on top of a moving train. The train was supposed to be travelling at thirty-five miles per hour; Connery argued it was going faster. The train driver was counting telegraph poles to measure the speed. A helicopter pilot confirmed Connery's suspicion. The train was travelling at over fifty-five miles per hour.

The character of Clean Willy was played by one of Britain's premiere ballet dancers, Wayne Sleep, from The Royal Ballet Company. He did his own stunts, including scaling the Newgate prison walls, at the tremendous risk of falling and hurting himself.

Not a bad little film.

[struth]

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968...




an error was... Bowman inhales deeply before attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod. Arthur C Clarke in an interview later noted that this is incorrect. Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.

According to Douglas Trumbull(special effects), the total footage shot was some 200 times the final length of the film.

At the premiere screening, 241 people walked out of the theater, including Rock Hudson, who said, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?" Sir Arthur C Clarke once said, "If you understand '2001' completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." Clarke later expressed some concern that the film was too hard to follow, and explained things more fully in the novelization and subsequent sequels.

Stanley Kubrick calculated that it would take one person 13 years to hand draw and paint all the mattes needed to insert the assorted spacecraft into the starry backgrounds. Kubrick hired 12 other people, and did the job in one year.