My Geeky Trivia

By Geeky Gem

Movie Pick by Caelrona

This week on out festive trivia we have Caelrona’s pick of movie and she went with a movie that I like the cartoon version of so here it is.

Anthony Hopkins recorded all the narration for the movie in one day.

The scene where The Grinch is directing his dog, Max, before stealing Christmas, is Jim Carrey doing a parody of director Ron Howard.

Everything in the film revolves around a swirl, the same as in the original drawings of the book. This includes the clouds. If you look closely at in several scenes, several times the initials “C.H.”, “J.C.,” and “R.H.” briefly form as the clouds move. This stands for actor Clint Howard (Whobris), actor Jim Carrey (The Grinch), and director Ron Howard.

The sound stage for the Whoville set measured around 30,000 square feet.

The prosthetic make-up Jim Carrey wore took 3 hours to apply. Carrey felt so horribly confined and uncomfortable in the latex skin he needed counseling from a Navy SEAL who taught him torture-resistance techniques.

The photo of The Grinch in the Whoville newspaper has The Grinch in the same pose as an infamous alleged photo taken of the “Yeti” or “Sasquatch.”

Jim Carrey’s yellow contact lenses proved to be so uncomfortable that he was unable to wear them at times during filming. This required that some shots of his eyes be colored in post-production.

The Navy cap the Grinch wears when pretending to be a director with Max reads “WSS Whoville WVN-70.”

Jim Carrey said that when he first saw Ron Howard in full Grinch outfit, he was angered, mistaking the director for a stunt double who looked nothing like him.

Eddie Murphy and Jack Nicholson were considered to play The Grinch.

There we go with Caelrona’s pick, join me next week for my pick.

12 Movies of Christmas: How The Grinch Stole Christmas

By: Caelrona

 

Hiya all! Another week gone by, and here I am again. Today I thought I would pick up with Number 2 of my 4 Favorite Christmas Movies. You may have noticed that HMS, Gems and I are sort of doing a running thing with this. What can I say, we all love this time of year (Ba Humbug to you Scrooges out there =P ) and especially the awesome movies that feature it, and what better way to share our Christmas spirit that with movies? Anyway, my second pick is Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas – the Jim Carrey version, not the cartoon one; although it is fairly entertaining as well. =)

 

Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas, promotionally (and more commonly) known simply as The Grinch, was produced in 2000 by Imagine Entertainment, and released by Universal Pictures. It is a holiday fantasy-comedy film based on the 1953 book of the same name and the 1966 television cartoon special of the same name, written by the famous Dr. Seuss. It was the first Dr. Seuss book the be adapted into a full-length feature film (to be followed by The Cat In The Hat from 2003, Horton Hears a Who from 2008 and The Lorax from 2012) Since the movie is based on a children’s picture book, many additions were made to the storyline to bring it up the feature length, including quite a bit of the back story about the Grinch. Most of the rhymes from the book were used in the film, though some were changed a tad bit, plus some new rhymes penned especially for the movie. This movie has a runtime of a mere 104 minutes.

This movie manages to be both hilarious and heartwarming all at once. Jim Carrey is a comedic genius, and that amazing skill translates well even through a giant green furred creature. Certainly it seems as though the role of the Grinch was hand tailored to suit him by the amazing Dr. Seuss himself. This movie is hilarious. It has me in stitches every single time I watch it. The rhymes are just fantastic, and the pace of the movie flows really well. I’m not usually a comedy sort of girl, but this movie definitely makes the list.

The Grinch follows a cantankerous, grumpy green creature known as the Grinch. The Grinch lives atop a perilous mountain near the festive city of Whoville, where it happens to be Christmastime. All the Whos of Whoville love Christmas, while the Grinch despises it. Down in Whoville an 8 year old girl named Cindy Lou Who has begun to think that people have lost sight of what is important on Christmas. After learning about the existence of the Grinch, she begins to take an interest in his lonely state of affairs and learns his sad history. Determined to show the Grinch the true meaning of Christmas, she invites him to participate in the city celebration known as the Whobilation. When it goes awry, the Grinch goes on a rampage. While satisfied with his path of destruction at first, he quickly realizes he has not crushed the spirit of the holiday and goes back to his mountain in a pique. In a mad attempt to cease the celebration of the detested holiday he hatches a sinister plan: to steal Christmas from all of Whoville!

There we go; my second favorite Christmas movie. While it might not be everyone’s cup of tea I certainly love this movie. It has entertained me since I was a child, and continues to entertain me to this day. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Now I am going to be off to enjoy watching it.

Until next time, Happy Holidays;

Caelrona – signing off! ❤

 

My Geeky Trivia

By Geeky Gem

Movie Pick by Hmsbeefnuts

This month’s trvia will be a little different from past months, seen as its December I have asked each member of the All Geek team to pick their favourite Christmas movie and I will do trivia about that movie. This week we start with Hmsbeefnuts’ pick.

When this screenplay first emerged in 1993, Jim Carrey was attached to star in the lead.

Terry Zwigoff was offered a chance to direct the film, but turned it down.

Near the end, when Santa is showing Michael his nice list, all of the people on Santa’s list worked on the movie

The scene where the fake Santa is chasing Buddy had to be done in one take because it was too hard to rebuild everything.

The elf Ming Ming, who appears briefly in the beginning of the film, is played by Peter Billingsley, who starred as Ralphie Parker in the classic holiday film A Christmas Story.

Buddy’s 12-second belch was supplied by voice actor Maurice LaMarche, best-known for his cartoon character, “The Brain”, from Pinky and the Brain, and who also did the operatic belching in Animaniacs as “The Great Wakarotti”. LaMarche also worked with Will Ferrell on the animated series, The Oblongs.

When Buddy goes to Gimbels to ask Jovie out on a date the song we hear playing over the loudspeaker is “Christmas Island” sung by Leon Redbone. Redbone also provided the voice of Leon the snowman at the North Pole.

The brief TV news clip showing Buddy walking in Central Park (just before Buddy’s dad and brother find him), and the still picture of Buddy in the news clip, closely mimic the famous 1967 film of an alleged Bigfoot (“Patty”) taken by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin.

The sound effect used by the jack-in-the-box is the same sound effect used by the laughing hyenas at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Orlando, Fl.

Will Ferrell caused several minor traffic accidents when walking through the Lincoln Tunnel in his costume because people were so surprised to see him wearing an elf outfit.

There we have it for Hmsbeefnuts pick, join me next week for another Christmas related trivia.

Summer Knights: Bat-A-Thon Part 1

By Geeky Gem

As part of Avenging April some of you may recall Hmsbeefnuts watched all The Avengers related movies in the run up to The Avengers hitting the big screen. Now as this is Summer Knights and we are focusing all our attention on The Dark Knight it has fallen to me to watch all six Batman movies in order to fully enjoy The Dark Knight Rises ; that and Hmsbeefnuts didn’t want to have to sit and watch Batman and Robin. That’s right brave Knight’s I am stepping once more into Gotham City to watch the Batman strike fear into the hearts of criminals.

Batman – 1989

Back in 1989 Tim Burton brought us Batman in his own dark gothic way, as I watched this movie there where elements of Burton all the way through it from the twisted origin of The Joker to gothic feel of Gotham. The opening credits rolled, I knew I was in for some fun as to me this movie never gets old Danny Elfman’s soundtrack haunts the opening credits.

The things I like about this movie is there is some awesome dialogue one such line is as Batman holds a mugger off the edge of the roof “What are you?” the mugger squeaks and Batman simply says “I am Batman”.  Another fantastic line comes a lot later in the movie as the Joker says “Have you danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” simply fantastic. Not only are there some great lines there is also a brilliant cast. Michael Keaton was Batman and a good replacement for Adam West, Jack Nicolson took the role of the Joker and then there is good old Michael Gough as Alfred. Always watching and advising his young master on right and wrong and frankly build some amazing gadgets. Not to mention healing battle wounds.

The reason I like this Batman so much, as it was the first time on screen that he seemed less funny and more dark and edgy. Burton gripped the gothic feel he wanted and ran with it, it later transfers over to the animated series and that’s why it worked so well. There is some fine acting in this movie, if Michael Keaton could have moved his neck more in his bat suit it would have made for better fights I feel. The movie is just everything I wanted Batman to be when i was younger but little did I know it would get worse before it got better.

　

Batman Returns – 1992

Well that’s Batman covered how about we move onto movie number two in our epic marathon of Batness. I bring you Batman Returns, at the start of this piece I said Hmsbeefnuts couldn’t face the thought of sitting through Batman and Robin this is true but Batman Returns was another of the reasons he didn’t want too. Plus I don’t really mind, so back to Bat Cave we go.

So its 1992 and Batman Returns hit the screens, Tim Burton again directs this one and it sticks to the Burton-esqie feel as well as staying very dark and gothic. A style that he never strays to far from really, not that there is anything wrong with that. It works for him, anyway when I sit and watch this movie, I think about the time when I saw it first, as I have got older and read a few more Batman comics I have come to notice that this movie is very far from what it should be.

Let me be clear, the Penguin is not a sewer monster, he was and is a crime lord of Gotham, specializing in guns and weapons he just happens to be a gentleman and wear a suit. That is very different from this movies origin for him, and knowing that means I was less than impressed this time round. This means I hold a different veiw of this movie now, plus I don’t like the circus, so the whole circus gang bit puts me right off.

However let’s move on to the things I did like, the Catwomen birth always brings a smile to my face as Selina goes from pink and fluffy to dark and sexy. That and the fact she trashes her flat. I like Christopher Walken and Danny DeVito in other films but in this one I don’t know something just doesn’t feel right about either of them.  The story for this one is also a bit dull I feel, sorry if you like but it’s just how I feel. However in saying that, the part where Penguin has control of the Batmobile cracks me up. That alone is a plus but not enough for me to change my mind about it.

Batman Forever – 1995

As we near the end of our first part of the Bat-A-Thon it falls down to Batman Forever now I will not lie  to you, I am not a huge fan of this Batman movie but as part of the Bat-A-Thon I have to watch it. For the sake of Hmsbeefnuts and the many fans of All Geek To Me I do this for you. I will go one last time for now in to the streets of Gotham.

Right here we go on to the last movie in this part of epic quest to round up all six movies before we see The Dark Knight Rises. We are treated to a new director on this movie Joel Schumacher, who claims that Val Kilmer is the best Batman but we’ll leave that open for debate shall we. In fact I am not even going to get into it.

Oh where do I start, there are more things I dislike about this movie than I like. This may be harder than I thought, however I will try. Ok, so we have a new Batman as I mentioned in Val Kilmer, who although I do not like a whole heap as Batman, I do think he gets Bruce Wayne right. He truly is a slightly more haunted Bruce than Keaton. That alone makes him watchable, bur I am sorry but what were Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones up to? I get that at the time this was made Carrey was hitting it big with his new comedy style but my goodness it is so over used in this movie that it’s not funny at all. With that being said Jones can’t really do Ha ha funny can he?  Two-Face was never meant to be a funny character he was meant to be dark and scary.

The addition of Robin to these movies I feel is a breath of fresh air, however I am glad he was played the way he was. The death of his family in the circus at the hands of Two-Face is one of my favourtie scenes in this movie. Purely because you can see Bruce struggle for the first time to stand up for himself, something he can do really easy as Batman. You see Dick lose his family in one go much like Bruce did so you can see why he takes him in as his ward. Plus I do like it when Dick finds the cave and takes the Batmobile for a joy ride. These scene’s alone make this movie watchable but other than that I always think this one and Batman and Robin are a hard watch, but they are enjoyable fare and not a bad way to spend a few hours.

 

This brings to the end of the first three movies in this journey, well that was a bit epic wasn’t it? However, it’s going to get a little worse before it gets a whole lot better. Next time we visit Batman and Robin, We see Batman Begin and the Dark Knight run. Until then I am off to the Geek cave to relax after all this epicness.