UK Box Office Top Ten - weekend commencing 15/01/10

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 15th - Sunday 17th January 2010.

James Cameron's Golden Globe winner Avatar continues to dominate the UK chart with a whopping £5.5m (up £750k from last week) to hold on to top spot on its fifth weekend. The sci-fi epic currently stands at 15 in the all-time UK box office (headed by Mamma Mia! on £69m), but with global takings of $1.62 billion it now looks like a good bet to smash Titanic's long-standing record of $1.8b as the biggest earner of all time.

While not quite reaching the heights of Avatar, both Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks continue to enjoy success with a small jump in takings helping them to ensure an unchanged top three for the second week running. Not to be outdone, Meryl Streep rom-com It's Complicated also exceeds its opening weekend and jumps one place to fourth, although Daybreakers and The Road were less fortunate and drop to seventh and eighth respectively.

The week's two major releases - post-apocalyptic Denzel thriller The Book of Eli and George Clooney comedy Up in the Air - both suffered from the stiff competition and were left to settle with mid-table finishes of fifth and sixth, with Sandra Bullock comedy All About Steve and Brit thriller 44 Inch Chest failing to crack the top ten. Instead, audiences opted for comedies Did You Hear About the Morgans? and St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, while musical Nine and biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll both slip out of contention.

Pos.	Film	Weekend Gross	Week	Total UK Gross
1	Avatar	£5,527,039	5	£49,374,516
2	Sherlock Holmes	£2,028,282	4	£18,829,133
3	Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel	£1,542,970	4	£16,862,702
4	It's Complicated	£1,300,580	2	£3,291,257
5	Up in the Air	£1,298,023	1	£1,298,023
6	The Book of Eli	£1,232,001	1	£1,232,001
7	Daybreakers	£804,762	2	£2,737,375
8	The Road	£470,652	2	£1,509,975
9	Did You Hear About The Morgans?	£396,106	3	£3,296,621
10	St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold	£282,047	5	£6,545,874

Incoming...

A few new releases will be hoping to make their mark this coming Friday including war drama Brothers (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and ex-Spider-Man Tobey Maguire), along with martial-arts actioner Ninja Assassin, crime thriller Armored and Clive Owen drama The Boys Are Back.

Meanwhile Pixar classic Toy Story 2 gets a special limited 3D re-release, although it's likely to struggle for screens against the might of Avatar and may prove difficult to catch.

U.K. Box Office Archive

Avatar and The Hangover enjoy Golden Globes success

A rundown of the winners at the 67th Golden Globes...

James Cameron's box-office juggernaut Avatar enjoyed a successful night at the 2010 Golden Globes ceremony, picking up the gong for Best Motion Picture (Drama) along with Best Director, while Todd Phillips' The Hangover was named Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy). The awards showed - hosted by British comedian Ricky Gervais - also saw legendary director Martin Scorsese receive the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.

A full list of the winners...

Cecil B. DeMille Award - Martin Scorsese

Best Motion Picture Drama - Avatar
Musical or Comedy - The Hangover

Best Performance in a Motion Picture (Drama)
Actor - Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Actress - Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)

Best Performance in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy)
Actor - Robert Downey, Jr. (Sherlock Holmes)
Actress - Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Best Supporting Performance in a Motion Picture
Actor - Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Actress - Mo'Nique (Precious)

Best Director - James Cameron (Avatar)
Best Screenplay - Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air)
Best Original Score - Michael Giaccino (Up)
Best Original Song - The Weary Kind (Crazy Heart)
Best Animated Feature Film - Up
Best Foreign Language Film - The White Ribbon (Germany)

In the television section Mad Men was named Best Television Series - Drama for the third consecutive year, while Glee was successful in the Musical or Comedy category.

Acting gongs were also awarded to Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), Alec Baldwin (30 Rock), Toni Collette (United States of Tara), Kevin Bacon (Taking Chance), Drew Barrymore (Grey Gardens), John Lithgow (Dexter) and Chloe Sevigny (Big Love), while Grey Gardens was named Best mini-series or TV film.

Movies... For Free! Detour (1945)

"Movies... For Free!", showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain (with streaming video!)...


Detour, 1945.

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer.
Starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage.

Detour is narrated by Al (Neal), a piano player hitchhiking to California who receives a lift from the wealthy Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald). Stopping in a rainstorm, Al discovers that Haskell has died and quickly steal his car along with his money, clothes and identification. Al later picks up another hitchhiker - femme-fatale Vera (Savage) - and when the pair discover that Haskell was in line to collect a large inheritance, Vera encourages Al to assume his identity and collect on the payout.

The third of three film noirs made by director Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat, 1934) on behalf of 'poverty row' studio Producers Releasing Corporation - the others being Bluebeard (1944) and Strange Illusion (1945) - and shot in just six days, Detour has managed to overcome its technical shortcomings and rise from b-movie status to cult classic, having been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1992, while it also appears on Time Magazine's list of All Time 100 Movies.



Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

Related:

The Stranger (1946, dir. Orson Welles)
D.O.A. (1950, dir. Rudolph Maté)
Suddenly (1954, dir. Lewis Allen)
Five Minutes to Live (1961, dir. Bill Karn)

Click here to view all entries in our Movies... For Free! collection.

Director Profile: Lynne Ramsay (Part 1)

Amy Flinders profiles Scottish director Lynne Ramsay in the first of a two-part feature...

Despite only having two features and a handful of short films to her name, Lynne Ramsay has managed to captivate audiences and critics alike and is well respected as a prolific and innovative director. It is perhaps the inspired combination of her vigilant, sensuous style with her often raw subject matter that allows her to create a powerful and enigmatic atmosphere in her films, whilst also concentrating on the small, finer details of life that her audiences can recognise from their own homes, families and childhood. After an eight-year break from feature filmmaking, Ramsay is soon to direct an adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin. In anticipation of her long-awaited return to the silver screen, this profile will offer a retrospective of her work and the techniques that have caused many to be enchanted and moved by her films.

Ramsay began her career with photography, which she studied at Napier College in Edinburgh. She has said that going to the cinema should be about the ‘cinematic experience,’ and she certainly practices as she preaches when it comes to using sound and image to tell her stories in vivid and engaging ways. After working as a director of photography, Ramsay felt that she needed to write authentic stories which she would illustrate using her unique and perceptive style:

‘I did photography before and I felt I should be there trying to experiment with the form. So I was really disillusioned by some of the scripts so I thought I'd write something a bit closer to home. So I started writing some short stories which I showed to an editor I'd worked with as a director of photography and she said that I should make them.’

She trained in cinematography and direction at the National Film and Television School and her graduation film, Small Deaths, won the 1996 Cannes Prix de Jury. This film was the first to illustrate Ramsay’s interest in telling stories about children and young people, which she developed later in a later short, Gasman (1997), and in her first feature, Ratcatcher (1999).

Small Deaths portrays three events at different stages in a young girl’s life. On the surface these occasions don’t appear to be particularly momentous, this perhaps being the first time that Ramsay exercised her talent in capturing ‘isolated, crystallised moments.’

Childhood and adolescent experiences are often perplexing and difficult, and it seems as though the girl, Anne-Marie, suffers a loss of innocence at the end of each segment. Ramsay has said that where she came from, children often grew up in ‘a tough environment but there was a lot of beauty too, in a sense.’ This statement is clearly dramatised through Small Deaths, where the visual imagery alone represents a striking juxtaposition between beauty and hardship. For example, in the second section Anne-Marie and her sister tumble around in a cornfield, the camera energetically swooping through grass and then high above the girls as they play. The tone shifts dramatically as they discover a dying cow that has been attacked by a group of young boys. The camera is suddenly very still as it shows the cow’s bleeding wounds in close-up, intercut with the girl’s sorrowful faces. The aggressive sounds of the boys’ attack on the cow are heard and then die away as the scene ends in silence.

Her second short, Kill the Day (1996), won her the French Grand Prix at the Brest European Short Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The film tells the story of a young man, James, who spends time in prison for theft. Ramsay poignantly portrays James's current entrapment by contrasting it with idyllic memories of his youth. He remembers playing by a river (again, in a cornfield) with two friends, and the scene almost reminds one of watching a home movie. The slight sepia glow of the image gives it a very soft, warm feel, as does the gentle rustle of crickets which is the only sound in the scene. This chorus of crickets then turns into the buzzing of a solitary fly as we cut to the next scene: James lies in his bed in his small, grey room, a far cry from the freedom expressed in his childhood memories.

Ramsay is known for using very little dialogue in her films, a lack of speech being particularly evident in Kill the Day, as there is only about a minute’s worth of dialogue during the 17-minute short. As someone so concerned and so accurate with her utilization of sound, she is especially selective when it comes to the inclusion of dialogue:

‘Sound is the other picture. When you show people a rough cut without the sound mix they are often really surprised. Sound creates a completely new world. With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite...I love great dialogue... but I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.’

In her third short, Gasman, Ramsay shows just how effective a small amount of speech can be in a film that is free from excessive dialogue. A young girl, Lynne (played by Ramsay’s niece, Lynne Ramsay Jnr, who also features in Small Deaths and later in Ratcatcher) and her brother, Steven, are taken to a Christmas party by their father. On the way, their father meets a strange woman on the railway tracks who drops off two children: another boy and girl of a similar age to Lynne and Steven. Later, the party, which is aurally constructed of a mixture of energetic Christmas music, the laughter and cries of children and the occasional low mumbling of the adults talking in the background, is penetrated by Lynne’s distressed whine as she accuses the girl of ‘sitting on her daddy’s knee.’ Both the actress and director accurately portray the heartbreaking circumstance of a young child slowly realizing, but not yet fully understanding, something about her father that she’d rather not know. Gasman won Ramsay the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and Best Short Film at the Scottish BAFTAs, the Atlantic Film Festival and the Locarno International Film festival.

Part two.

Amy Flinders

British Cinema: Nowhere Boy (2009)

Nowhere Boy, 2009.

Directed by Sam Taylor Wood.
Starring Aaron Johnson, Kristen Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff.


SYNOPSIS:

This is the story of teenage John Lennon and his three loves - his music, his Mum, and his Aunt.


The sign of a really good film is when you walk out of the cinema and into a bookshop to find out more, and that several hours later, your are still immersed in the subject. Nowhere Boy has caused me to rekindle my Beatles/Lennon interest, and I am already considering a second viewing. This is a period of John's life I knew little of and not the era of his music that I like. But I allowed the film to tell its story without concerning myself with my musical tastes or the biographical truth.

I love that both women - Aunt Mimi and Julia his Mum - have moments of warmth and sympathy, and there is no judgment of either. It's too simplistic to say that Mimi is uptight and posh and trad, whilst Julia is the crazy freespirited one. How can Mimi be so respectably conventional when she is a chain smoker with an illicit affair? The family relationships hinted at are somewhat unconventional if not shocking. I wondered what was meant by John's relationship with his Uncle - the way they collapsed on the stairs and at his funeral, John says that George was 'more than an uncle'…? Julia behaves as if her son is also her toyboy, kissing him repeatedly and flirting in front of him.

At the end he particularly shows a trait that he candidly owned and lamented later in his life: violence. But he is also a very loving person, someone who does awful things but somehow you like him and want him to like you. Aaron Johnson's portrayal of John has so much character, making everything he says and does distinct and charismatic, and a natural leader. As Julia, Anne-Marie Duff is amazing yet again, handling another fascinating complex multifaceted character; as is Kristen Scott Thomas as the contrasting aunt - credit to her for ensuring she is not just a dichotomy. There was another member of the cast that I enjoyed watching and would like to see again - the great city of Liverpool.

Elspeth Rushbrook
www.myspace.com/elspethr

Nowhere Boy trailer:

Ten Essential... Star Wars Bit Parts

Gary Collinson selects his Ten Essential Star Wars Bit Parts...

George Lucas’ space fantasy Star Wars is renowned for producing a host of classic characters and pop culture icons – Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, droids R2-D2 and C-3PO and of course the ultimate villain, Darth Vader. But the beauty of Star Wars is in the detail, so here we take a look at the bit part players whose fifteen seconds of fame will live on forever in a galaxy far, far away…

Captain Raymus Antilles (a.k.a. the guy who gets strangled at the start)

Skipper of the Rebel Blockade Runner, Captain Antilles (no relation to Wedge) leads the Tantive IV in its daring mission to steal the plans for the dreaded Death Star. First introduced six inches from the floor (with Vader so aggrieved that he’s actually using has hand as a strangling device), Captain Antilles quickly comes to a sticky end after foolishly shitting up the Sith Lord with tales of diplomatic missions. “If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?” Didn’t quite think that one out, did you Antilles?





Captain Bolvan (a.k.a. the guy who detects no lifeforms)

Perhaps the most inept Imperial officer in Star Wars history, Captain Bolvan’s idiotic decision to hold fire on Artoo and Threepio’s escape pod ultimately leads to the destruction of the Death Star, the fall of the Galactic Empire and the death of its dictator, Emperor Palpatine. Given the briefest of screen times, the fact this guy has a name (not to mention a backstory) is almost unbelievable and if ever there was a case for gross misconduct, Bolvan surely seals it.





Biggs Darklighter (a.k.a. the guy with the moustache who can’t shake ‘em)

Rebel pilot and childhood friend of Luke Skywalker (albeit, on the cutting room floor), Biggs Darklighter reunites with his Tatooine pal on the Yavin base as the Rebels prepare to launch their attack on the Death Star. “It’ll be like old times, Luke,” says Biggs, shortly before departing in a ball of fire. I bet that never happened when they were shooting womp rats down in Beggar’s Canyon back home. Be sure to check out the deleted scenes from A New Hope featuring Luke and Biggs, embedded below. And just for the record, Biggs is the man.




General Jan Dodonna (a.k.a the guy who refuses to pronounce Leia like everyone else)

Bearded Rebel General Jan Dodonna is the mastermind behind the successful attack on the Death Star. Sending out a handful of fighters to face a heavily shielded battle station carrying firepower greater than half the star fleet, General Dodonna remains behind to coordinate the battle from the comfort of his giant craps table. Coming within mere seconds of oblivion, the Rebel high command obviously felt that Dodonna’s tactics were too risky and the General finds himself replaced by a woman and a fish for round two.





Garven Dreis (a.k.a. the guy with the sweaty top lip)

The second pilot to make the list, Garven Dreis leads Red Squadron at the Battle of Yavin and gets to dish out a number of orders like “lock s-foils in attack position”, “cut the chatter” and “accelerate to attack speed” to stamp his authority. Red Leader also has the first shot at becoming a hero before prematurely shooting his load, blowing his starboard engine, running foul of Vader’s TIE Fighter and crashing into the surface of the Death Star like a man possessed. Almost there (but not quite).





Dr. Cornelius Evazan (a.k.a the guy with the death sentence on twelve systems)

Even in a galaxy far, far away it’s difficult to enjoy a quiet pint without some drunken yob itching for a fight. Unfortunately for Dr. Evazan – who looks like he’s had his face rearranged on more than one occasion – and his associate Ponda Baba, picking on the ward of a distinguished Jedi Knight is probably not the wisest decision they’ve ever made. Evazan just doesn’t know when to quit either, refusing a drink and continuing to antagonise until he finds himself on the wrong end of a lightsaber.





Davish Krail (a.k.a. the guy who lost Tiree, lost Dutch)

Another Rebel pilot - this time part of the Y-Wing Gold Squadron - Davish Krail is responsible for counting the guns on the Death Star (twenty guns – he’s either blind, or the Imperials really are overconfident) and telling Gold Leader to stay on target until his superior gets blown away. Krail must have broken a few mirrors in his time because within a matter of seconds he’s lost another couple of his comrades and quickly joins them in the afterlife when they… come… from… be… hind.





Admiral Conan Antonio Motti (a.k.a. the guy with balls the size of Death Stars)

Head of Naval operations for the Galactic Empire, Admiral Motti really knows how to make friends and influence people. In just one short meeting he manages to belittle the capabilities of the Imperial Fleet, wave away the threat of the Rebellion and give Vader shit for his sad devotion to an ancient religion (since when is a couple of decades ancient, anyway?). Fortunately for Motti, Grand Moff Tarkin doesn’t fancy training up a replacement at such short notice and persuades Vader to release his force choke in the nick of time.





Jek Porkins (a.k.a. the guy with the most appropriate name in the galaxy)

Shoehorned into his cockpit, Rebel pilot Jek Porkins really puts the X-Wing suspension to the test as he bounces through the Death Star’s magnetic field and barely has time to report in before discovering that he’s got a problem. Ignoring Biggs’ plea to eject (not that ejecting into the vacuum of space is likely to save him), Porkins just about manages to state he’s all right before discovering that actually he isn’t all right in the slightest. The mess hall just won't be the same again.





Colonel Wullf Yularen (a.k.a the guy with a different uniform to the rest)

Either Wulff Yularen is that important he gets to wear a white uniform, his suit has been in the wash so many times that it's faded badly, or he just likes to colour coordinate with his moustache. Regardless, Colonel Sanders manages to make it on the list despite a lack of screen time, dialogue, expression and movement. In fact, if you've only seen the full-screen version it's possible you've never even noticed him. He does crop up in The Clone Wars though, and in a normal suit.





Biggs Darklighter deleted scenes:


Agree? Disagree? We'd love to hear your comments on the list...

Kudos to Wookieepedia for proving me with the names of some of the more obscure characters.

Gary Collinson

Essentials Archive

Rendering Reality: A Robert Zemeckis Profile (Part 2)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of visionary director Robert Zemeckis in the second of a three part feature... read part one here.

When Bob Gale wondered what it would have been like to have been a high school classmate of his father, Robert Zemeckis decided to develop the concept with him. The main character was a video pirate who used a kitchen appliance as his transporter; the idea was aborted when the moviemaker became “concerned that kids would accidentally lock themselves in refrigerators.” The modern design of the DeLorean automobile, which could have been realistically mistaken as a spaceship in the 1950s, became the transportation of choice. The first draft of the script, entitled Back to the Future, was completed in February of 1981. Getting the project produced became a four year odyssey of rejection. According to Gale, Columbia Pictures “thought it was a really nice, cute, warm film, but not sexual enough.” Disney passed, as the story was not deemed to be family entertainment. The idea of approaching Zemeckis’s influential mentor was aborted, revealed Bob Gale. “We were afraid that we would get the reputation that we were two guys who could only get a job because we were pals with Steven Spielberg.”

Frustration gave way to approval when Romancing the Stone made Robert Zemeckis a bankable director. With a reputation established on his own merits, the moviemaker approached Spielberg who then arranged for Universal Pictures to fund the project. Unable to break from his commitment to the television series Family Ties (NBC, 1982 to 1989), Michael J. Fox passed on the part of Marty McFly. Taking his place was Eric Stoltz (Mask), but the casting decision was reversed a month into principal photography. Stoltz’s portrayal was too dramatic; a more humorous touch was required. Even though changing the male lead would add another $3 million to the $14 million budget, Zemeckis decided to approach his first choice again. A deal was subsequently struck between the director and the producers of the hit TV show, which enabled Fox to accept the role. Remarking on his signature film performance, the Canadian actor said he could relate to McFly on a personal level. “All I did in high school was skateboard, chase girls and play in bands. I even dreamed of becoming a rock star.”

Back to the Future features the teenaged Marty McFly inadvertently traveling back to the moment when his parents meet, only to find himself becoming the object of his mother’s affections. To temper any negative audience reaction to the Oedipal relationship, the line, “It’s like kissing my brother.” was inserted into the dialogue. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale had nothing to fear. The movie spent eleven weeks as the number one box office draw; earning $381 million worldwide, it was the top grossing picture of 1985.

At the Academy Awards, the film won for Best Sound Editing and was nominated for Best Original Song, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound Design while the BAFTAS lauded it with nominations for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design, and Best Editing. In 2007, a year after being voted by the readers of Empire Magazine as the twenty-third greatest movie ever made, Back to the Future was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Collaborating with Christopher Lloyd (The Addams Family), who played the eccentric inventor Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown in Back to the Future, Zemeckis directed an episode of the television fantasy series Amazing Stories (NBC, 1985 to 1987). Called Go to the Head of the Class (1986), the darkly comical hour-long tale has Lloyd trading in his mad scientist garb for that of a professor.

Taking inspiration from Tex Avery and Bob Clampett cartoons as well as the crime noir classic Chinatown (1974), screenwriters Jeffrey Price (Shrek the Third) and Peter S. Seaman (Wild Wild West) began adapting the Gary K. Wolf novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?. Robert Zemeckis was place in charge of the live-action scenes, after Terry Gilliam (Brazil) having passed on the technically challenging project; Richard Williams (The Princess and the Cobbler) oversaw the animated sequences.

Renamed Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the story takes place in an alternative reality where cartoon personalities such as Mickey Mouse, Tweety Bird, and Foghorn Leghorn mingle with humans in Los Angeles of 1947. A studio head hires private investigator Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to find out if the wife of distracted animated star Roger Rabbit is having an affair.

Recruited to voice the title character was comedian Charles Fleischer (Zodiac). “Roger was an unusual voice role because my work was recorded live everyday on set, while the other actors did their performances. Most traditional animated voiceovers are done in a studio into a microphone.” On deciding how the zany animal would speak, the performer remarked, “The size and shape of the character determine the pitch and tone of the voice, and the material written determines the personality and attitude.” As much as the story was meticulously mapped out, some improvising was required. “There was a time when Bob Hoskins [Mona Lisa] had the wrong eye-line,” stated Fleischer. “He wasn’t looking where Roger was suppose to be, so the animators stretched Roger up so he was in the same place Hoskins was looking.”

Approved with a $30 million budget, production costs soared to $70 million; there were also other concerns. The studio executives of Walt Disney Pictures were worried about the sexual innuendos; to resolve the issue they decided to release the picture under the Touchstone Pictures banner. The remarkable blending of live-action with animation resulted in the film grossing $330 million globally and winning Oscars for Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. Also at the prestigious Hollywood event, Richard Williams received a Special Achievement Award “for animation direction and creation of the cartoon characters.”

With three consecutive box office successes, Robert Zemeckis was able to executive produce the TV horror anthology Tales of the Crypt (HBO, 1989 to 1996) and to expand the time-traveling tale into a three-part movie franchise.

Capitalizing on the youthful looks of the aging Michael J. Fox, the sequels Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) were shot back-to-back and released six months apart.

In Part II, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) returns from the future and informs Marty McFly (Fox) and his girlfriend Jennifer Parker (Elizabeth Shue) that the lives of their children are threatened. The complicated storyline was overshadowed by two major casting changes. Crispin Glover (Willard) who had played Marty’s father was replaced was replaced as was Claudia Wells (Still Waters Burn) who had played Parker. Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis claimed Glover wanted too much money to reprise the part, whereas the actor later stated he was passed over due to creative differences. Officially, Wells declined the role because of her mother being seriously ill, while others believe that the producers of the film wanted a higher profile actress.

Joking while being interviewed on television, Robert Zemeckis stated that the flying skateboards featured in the picture were real, but had not been released to the public due to safety concerns. However, the general public inundated toy stores with requests for the nonexistent product. Another popular item from the movie was the automatic shoelace Nike tennis shoes worn by Fox, which led to the sports clothing manufacturer to produce a similar runner nicknamed Air McFly. Created specifically for the film was a computer-controlled camera system which allowed the director to incorporate camera motion while an actor plays multiple characters in the same scene. The film is best remembered for correctly predicting that a major league baseball team from Miami would appear in the World Series.

With a production budget of $40 million, Back to the Future Part II grossed $332 million worldwide and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Heading backwards in time to the Old West, was the final installment of the trilogy Back to the Future Part III. Discovering a tombstone with Doc Brown’s (Christopher Lloyd) name on it, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back to 1885 to prevent the ancestor of his archenemy Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) from killing his friend.

Inserting the outlaw setting into the science fiction tale resulted from Fox telling Robert Zemeckis that he would like to visit the era of the cowboys. The actor was not the only cast member who had a fondness for that time period. “I loved the first, because that’s the first discovery of the whole story. But the third one, it’s a Western,” enthused Christopher Lloyd, “so you get to ride the horses. There are the scenes on the steam engine where I’m actually hanging off the sides of it, and it’s actually going along and propelling itself. There’s a risk involved, and I wasn’t strapped to it, so I had to hold on to it. And then I had a romance! So it was such a departure from the others.”

Obtaining permission from a Hollywood star who gained his fame playing “The Man With No Name”, the Marty McFly character was allowed to adopt the alias Clint Eastwood much to pleasure of the legendary performer and director. Costing the same amount to produce as Part II, Back to the Future Part III earned $244 million worldwide and won Saturn Awards for Best Music and Best Supporting Actor (Thomas F. Wilson).

After the release of the gay cowboy picture Brokeback Mountain (2005), a tribute to the time-traveling trilogy was created by combining the footage of all three movies with the theme music from the Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) directed film. Entitled Brokeback to the Future, the mock trailer cleverly changes the relationship between Marty McFly and Doc Brown from friendship to lovers [embed below].

Thinking that Death Becomes Her (1992) was a “documentary about the Los Angeles fixation with aging”, two-time Oscar-winning actress Meryl Steep (Sophie’s Choice) found herself gravely mistaken. “My first, my last, my only [experience with high-tech special effects]. I think it’s tedious. Whatever concentration you can apply to that kind of comedy is just shredded. You stand there like a piece of machinery – they should get machinery to do it. I loved how it turned out. But it’s not fun to act to a lamp stand. ‘Pretend this is Goldie [Hawn], right there. Uh, no, I’m sorry, Bob [Zemeckis], she went off the mark by five centimeters, and now her head won’t match her neck!’ It was like being at the dentist.”

When the glamorous actress Madeline Ashton (Streep) marries the plastic surgeon of her rival Helen Sharp (Hawn), the latter spends years plotting her revenge. The picture co-written by Martin Donovan (Apartment Zero) and David Koepp (Mission: Impossible) stars Bruce Willis (Die Hard) as the drunken Dr. Ernest Menville, Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet) as the mysterious creator of a magical potion that reverses the aging process, and an uncredited Sydney Pollack (Tootsie) who appears as an emergency room doctor.

Featuring elaborate special effects such as Madeline’s head spinning around backwards, which she subsequently straightens, Death Becomes Her won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Returning to another time-traveling tale, Robert Zemeckis directed a movie which would become a crowning achievement for both him and his leading man Tom Hanks (Big).

Continue to part 3.

Read the screenplay for Back to the Future.

Brokeback to the Future:


Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.