Found on Wikipedia, no. 7
Interesting note about Casablanca:
“…there has been anecdotal evidence that Casablanca may have made a deeper impression among film-lovers than within the professional movie-making establishment. In the November/December 1982 issue of American Film, Chuck Ross claimed that he retyped the screenplay to Casablanca, only changing the title back to Everybody Comes to Rick’s and the name of the piano player to Dooley Wilson, and submitted it to 217 agencies. Eighty-five of them read it; of those, thirty-eight rejected it outright, thirty-three generally recognized it (but only eight specifically as Casablanca), three declared it commercially viable, and one suggested turning it into a novel.”
We watched The Pixar Story a couple nights ago. It’s a well-made documentary following the inception of Pixar and it’s growth and development into an animation studio on the backs of people like John Lasseter, Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and Alvy Ray Smith.
Lasseter was the main creative drive in getting the company so heavily invested in computer animation. Some of the things he created in the lead up to his first feature, Toy Story, are amazing to see, considering the time in which they were made.
Alex Proyas, director of such films as The Crow and Dark City, is guest blogging on Slashfilm for the next week or so.
In this post, he runs down some of his greatest influences, from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist to science fiction authors like Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury.
Also see his revisitation of Dark City.
I just watched the Blu-ray of Dark City a couple days ago, so I’m glad my first experience with the film was what the director actually wanted.
