Movie Questions I Want Answered
Submitted by lukeprog on Fri, 08/20/2004 - 08:12
Tags:
- From which silent film is the 'parading devil' clip that Conan O'Brien loves so much and plays on his show on occasion?
- How can you tell if a film is in the public domain? Is it just everything before Mickey Mouse (1928)?
- What film was host to the first 'curse' word used in a 'major' movie?
- Why didn't the Starship Troopers just nuke the bug planet, or conduct high-altitude bombing raids?
- Which shots in The Phantom Menace were shot with digital video?
- How was the shot in Fight Club where the camera pans over a frozen moment of sexual ecstacy for Marla done? It looks an awful lot like 'bullet-time' to me.
- Answered:
- Where is the ship built for Titanic (1997) and how is it being used? * answered by 0dysseus!
- Who is the most prolific movie actor/actress, not counting shorts? * possibly answered by 1922
- How did they shoot the 'defying gravity' dance scene from Royal Wedding (1951)? * answered by 0dysseus!
- What are Quentin Tarantino's 10 favorite films (not his own)? * answered by AJDaGreat!
- What song plays at the end of Startup.com (2001) ("So if I turn this up you have to pay royalties?")? * answered by ME: duh, it's "Remember" by Air - I HAVE that song!! :-)
- What full-length silent comedy does this describe: "A nerd who hates sports tries everything to impress a girl when he goes to college" - it's the only silent my friend has seen but he doesn't know the title. Which film might that be? * answered by AJDaSuperGreat!
- What the hell is so remarkable about the cinematography of Alexander Nevsky (1938)? * answered by ash_campbell
Author Comments:
By the way, feel free to ask your own questions here, too - if there's something you've always wanted to know about a movie or film in general but never figured out. If I can't answer it, I'll probably add it to the list and see if someone else can.
by "curse" are we thinking a nice "Darn it!" "Hell" or "dammit" or abit more like the F Word?
to me, I'm thinking any version of:
damn
shit
fuck
bitch
cunt
except for 'damnation' or something. I dunno, it's so subjective...
I heard once that the first time the F-bomb was dropped in an English-language film was by Marianne Faithfull in I'll Never Forget What's'isName. According to the IMDb trivia section for that movie, however, another movie that is sometimes thought to contain the first usage of the word is Ulysses. According to the release dates for each film, the latter was released first, so as long as it actually contains the word, I guess it's the winner.
very interesting!
The 9/10 version of the Titanic has been "demolished."
9/10 version?
Perhaps I should have said ".9:1" but I might think it was a Bible verse. The Titanic "model" was nine-tenths the size of the real Titanic.
Even Cameron's models are super-sized....
Oh, right, as in 9/10ths.
I don't know if he's the most prolific actor in cinema history, but take a look at Udo Kier's credits. He'll get there eventually.
hehe. I wish IMDB denoted short films in their listings the way they do video games, TV shows, TV movies, and TV miniseries, so that we could tell right away if a film listed in search results or a person's credits or anywhere is full-length or not.
Christopher Lee is quite probably the most prolific actor ever. He is entered in the Guinness book as the busiest actor of all time and has therefore also got a World Award in Vienna in 2002. I don't think he has played many shorts.
cool!
here i found Super Babies2
lol, no, I meant 'Why?'
lol, then...i dont know.. :)
It's okay, NOBODY knows.
I'll tell you why: the almighty dollar. The original Baby Geniuses grossed over twice its budget in American theaters alone.
I'll just continue to attribute it to Satan.
And lol, sorry, I deleted the 'question' labout a second before you answered it :-)
The question should be: "If Lionel Ritchie does it, is it still cool?" Royal Wedding uses a simple trick (it doesn't even rise to the level of "special effect") that's similar to a rotating funhouse tunnel.
Brilliant!
hehe, thanks!
Re: QT's favorite films
I do know the ten films he voted for on the BFI 2002 Sight and Sound poll. That's probably pretty close to his top 10.
Oooh, so that site actually published the 1,000 'top ten' lists it used to compile THE BIG LIST? Or, just some of them?
Anyway, thanks!
"That'll do, pig. That'll do."
According to the site (click here to see the links, I don't feel like setting up all those URLS):
"This list of the 1,000 Greatest Films of all-time has been compiled by using individual critics' and filmmakers' top-tens from film polls conducted by Sight & Sound (1992 & 2002) [AJ's note: on the director pages, they have posted the top 10 films each director has voted for if that information is available], John Kobal (1988), Positif (1991), Time Out (1995), Village Voice (1999), Facets (2003) and selected top tens listed by Senses of Cinema, Combustible Celluloid, Your Movie Database's (YMDB) Critics Corner and various other sources. Commencing with John Kobal's 1988 poll, a total of 1,000 top-tens have so far been used to calculate (via some rather tricky formulas) the 1,000 Greatest Films."
ok, thx.
Good and interesting list, Luke!
Your Alexander Nevsky question; I haven't seen the film myself, but multiple sources (including first paragraph under "Film Elements" or the last paragraph here) seem to indicate that the revolutionary aspect is the camera being in the midst of the big battle sequence. A historical first, that has been copied many times since (I guess).
Oh wow, it surprises me that a camera was not 'amidst a battle' before 1937!!! Sounds like something I definitely need to search for now :-)
Even thinking of The Big Parade, though - the camera was technically amidst the battle, but not where there were so many people crowded - they were in foxholes, meters apart, etc.
I'd still be really surprised to find that was the first time it was done like that, so I'll be on the lookout to debunk that claim :-)
I'll keep that question on the list for now to see if anyone else has additional insights. Thanks for the links!
The film you're talking about is a Buster Keaton movie called "College."
YES! Thanks!
Do I get a special speed award?
Yeah, if you noticed, I said it was "answered by AJDaSuperGreat" :-)
How about: who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Lol, not quite what I was thinking of.
as for the fight club shot... i don't know specifically, but i'm pretty sure that the only way to pan frozen frame is with a bunch of cameras filming the same thing, then you can integrate them or simply take a bunch of still shots, nearly simultaneously with a line of cameras... all i really know for sure is it's done with multiple(many) cameras capturing the same image simultaneously from many different angles
Yeah, that would be 'bullet time'. I remember reading somewhere that the sex scene was mostly CGI, and the shots are brief, but I dunno. Maybe it is CGI, but then it's much better CGI than something much simpler like the Starbucks coffee cup or the stovetop.
even with CGI i'm pretty sure they would have to do it the same way... with lots of cameras... in that case the panning effect would be cgi... i guess i'm with you then, there is no way i could imagine it being completely cgi, "bullet time" with cgi help maybe.