Did You Know? Facts & Figures on Film4 Summer Screen

Elizabeth MacLeod is a freelance writer, recent King's College London MA graduate and Park Circus Ambassador living it up in London and constantly expanding her cinematic horizons. 

INCEPTION
FRI 10 AUG

The first Friday night film, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, was one of the first to sell out and it's no wonder - it's a feature that demands to be seen on the big screen. Yet, the majority of the mind-bending and boggling effects sequences, such as the rotating hallway, mountain avalanche and zero-gravity sequences were created through practical methods rather than CGI. In fact, Inception only has around five hundred visual effects shots, while most visual effect heavy films have upwards to 2000 visual effect shots. If you take the first letters of the main characters' names - Dom, Robert, Eames, Arthur, Mal and Saito - they spell "Dreams", the theme that runs throughout this year's programme.

REBECCA
SUN 12 AUG

On our opening weekend there's a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's second film based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel, the lavish gothic melodrama Rebecca.  Over twenty actresses were considered for the role, including Olivia De Havilland, Margaret Sullivan, Loretta Young, Anita Louise, Anne Baxter and Vivien Leigh (whom Laurence Olivier heavily lobbied for, as they were a romantic couple at the time).  Newcomer Joan Fontaine (who was also De Havilland’s sister) eventually landed the role. Just as in the original novel, Mrs. de Winter has no first name and as per Alfred Hitchcock's instructions, Judith Anderson rarely blinks her eyes while playing the unforgettable Mrs. Danvers.

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
MON 13 AUG

Being John Malkovich’s director Charlie Kaufman had no backup actors for the title role if John Malkovich couldn’t appear in the film.  Every time a there was an offer to produce the film on the condition of a different actor being cast, Kaufman refused - even when Malkovich himself made the offer.  John Cusack read the script after he had asked his agent to present him with the, "craziest, most unproduceable script you can find."

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
SAT 18 AUG
(Part of a double bill with Total Recall)

Johnny Depp's film debut, A Nightmare on Elm Street, was shot in just 30 days and over five hundred gallons of fake blood were used during filming. The film showing on Nancy's television as she drifts off to sleep in her bedroom is director Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, made just three years before.

SLEEPING BEAUTY
SUN 19 AUG

When Sleeping Beauty was released by Walt Disney Studios in 1959, it was at first overlooked by the public. It has since been vindicated by history through its theatrical re-releases and critical praise and is one of the top grossing US domestic films, with box office figures adjusted for inflation, at $635,926,900. The last fairy tale produced by the studio until The Little Mermaid (1989), thirty years later, this was the last Disney feature to have cels inked by hand.