You only get one chance to make a first impression. So how much of an impact did the opening shots of Disney movies have on you? It's time to put your childhood to the test.
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Can You Guess the Disney Movie From Its Opening Shot?
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Who Is Your 'Game of Thrones' Husband?
Moving to Westeros? Then you're going to need a sturdy hunk of man to help you fight ne'er-do-wells by day and keep your direwolf fur-lined bed warm at night. But which "Game of Thrones" hottie is the right husband for you? This simple quiz should help you out.
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Jai Courtney Facts: 10 Things You Need to Know About the 'Terminator Genisys' Actor
By Gena Oppenheim, Wonderwall
Aside from the obvious fact that Jai Courtney is easy on the eyes and has muscles for days, we bet there's a lot about the "Insurgent" actor that you didn't know. Since his latest movie "The Water Diviner" is set to come out on April 24, 2015, here are 10 fun tidbits about the young star.
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Which 'Steel Magnolias' Character Are You?
Is pink your signature color? Are you of the very strong opinion that natural beauty does NOT exist? Have you been in a very bad mood for the past 40 years? Do you have a questionable, indiscernible southern accent that comes and goes like a warm Louisiana breeze? Well, it's time you took this "Steel Magnolias" quiz and finally answered life's most important question: Which "Steel Magnolias" character are you?
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Michiel Huisman Facts: 11 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the 'Game of Thrones' Star
From the Netherlands to the U.S. to Meereen, Michiel Huisman is capturing audiences one continent at a time.
While Huisman is best known as Daario Naharis on "Game of Thrones," the Dutch actor began his career in local TV and film before traveling stateside and becoming a mainstay in HBO's "Treme." Today, Huisman continues to win hearts in "Game of Thrones," and now he's starring opposite Blake Lively in the fantasy romance "The Age of Adaline."
From his early roles to his naughty proposition, here are 11 things you probably don't know about Michiel Huisman.
[Sources: IMDb, Wikipedia]
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7 Super Facts About the 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Cast
It's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" mania at the box office! But how much do you really know about the actors who make up Marvel's Avengers? Probably not as much as you think. So here are a bunch of super-duper, interest-piquing facts about the cast of Marvel's superstar cast to enlighten you.↧
Robert Downey Jr. Facts: 11 Crazy Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the Superstar
From rising star to Hollywood poison to international superstar -- all in the span of two decades -- Robert Downey Jr. has had a roller coaster career and one hell of a life.
The son of an underground filmmaker, Downey Jr. bounced from city to city growing up, instilling a movement in the future star. By the time he was 17, he had dropped out of high school and moved to New York to become an actor. And today, more than 30 years later, Downey Jr. has ridden one wave after another -- some nearly catastrophic -- that have made him Hollywood's highest paid actor and one of its most beloved stars.
From his upbringing by his father to his unbelievable "Avengers" paycheck, here are 11 crazy things you probably don't know about Robert Downey Jr.
[Sources: IMDb, Celebuzz!]
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Batman Facts: 25 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the Dark Knight
Happy Batman Day, everyone! Around the world, May 1st may mark a spring holiday, but here, it marks the first appearance of the Dark Knight, in Detective Comics No. 27, in 1939.For the past 76 years, the Caped Crusader has been fighting Gotham City evildoers in comic books, movies, TV shows, and pretty much anywhere else you can shine a Bat-signal. Throughout the years, Bruce Wayne's alter ego has gone through many incarnations, not just in actors (from Adam West to Michael Keaton to Christian Bale to Ben Affleck, among the many), but also in character, from haunted avenger to squeaky-clean do-gooder to campy clown to kinky prowler to world-weary fighter. He's due for yet another change this week, with the releases of DC's Batman No. 40 -- in which Bruce Wayne and the Joker finally kill each other (or do they?) and a special issue of DC's Divergence, where an undisclosed character takes up Bruce Wayne's mantle and becomes a new Batman in a heavily armored, RoboCop-like getup.
As familiar as we've all become with Batman over the years, there's still plenty you may not know about the character. (Indeed, DC and Warner Bros. are banking on it, hoping the mystery will draw you to see Affleck in next year's "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.") Here, then, are 25 things you didn't know about your favorite masked vigilante.
1. Bruce Wayne is named after Scottish hero Robert the Bruce and American Revolutionary hero Mad Anthony Wayne (who turns out to be an ancestor of Batman's, according to the comics).
2. The initial Batman stories were especially violent. Batman had no compunction about carrying a gun or killing his foes. Only later did Batman develop a code in which he refused to do either of those things, lest he sink to the level of the man who killed his parents.
3. Robin didn't show up until issue No 38. The young sidekick was the alter ego of Dick Grayson, part of a family of circus acrobats whose parents died in a high-wire accident. (It turned out that they'd been killed by mobsters who were shaking down the circus owner for protection money.) Naturally, Bruce Wayne identified with Dick's plight and adopted him as his ward.
4. There have been several Robins since, including Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne (Bruce Wayne's son by Talia al Ghul).
5. Batman's first screen appearance was in a 1943 serial called "The Batman." It starred Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin. Made at the height of World War II, the shorts featured as their villain a Japanese spy named Dr. Daka, played in yellowface by J. Carroll Naish. The series wasn't very good, though it did introduce the concept of the Batcave. It also introduced a thin version of Alfred the Butler, who was then drawn skinnier in the comics.
6. Another serial a few years later, 1949's "Batman and Robin," starring Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan, was better. It had the Dynamic Duo facing off against a black-hooded mastermind called The Wizard.
7. Were Batman and Robin gay? That was the insinuation of Dr. Fredric Wertham, whose 1954 book "Seduction of the innocent" became a best-seller with its claim that comic books were contributing to a nationwide epidemic of juvenile delinquency. He denounced comics for their grim tone and sensationalist violence, and he singled out Batman comics in particular for centering on a rich playboy who wore tights and went out swinging at night with his teenage ward. The book led to Congressional hearings, which in turn led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, the industry's self-censorship operation. To earn the CCA seal and be sold in stores, comic books had to tone down the violence and sexuality, and heroes became more overtly positive role models. DC characters like Superman and Batman became virtual boy scouts. With more sordid underworld and occult tales off-limits, Batman and Robin soon found themselves entangling with space aliens and other bizarre, sci-fi monsters.
8. The 1966-68 "Batman" TV series starring Adam West as Bruce Wayne and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson brought some of the kink back, but strictly as camp, so arch that it went over the heads of the children who were the show's target audience.(Watch the reruns now, as a grown-up -- IFC has been running them every weekend -- and you'll guffaw at how much they got away with.) Hardcore Bat-fans hated the campy silliness, but the show did revive the DC comic's flagging sales.
9. In one series of Batman comics, Bruce Wayne married Catwoman. Their daughter Helena Wayne grew up to be the Huntress.
10. Frank Miller is generally credited with restoring Batman to his old gritty self with "The Dark Knight Returns," a four-issue series published in1986, where an aged Batman comes out of retirement, joined by a new Robin, to clean up the streets of a Gotham run amok.
11. Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman" became the first modern comic book blockbuster, cited for its dark tone borrowed from Miller. Before the film's release, fans were skeptical that Michael Keaton, the comic actor from Burton's "Beetlejuice," would make a credible Batman, but he proved more than capable of playing a Bruce Wayne still tormented by childhood trauma.
12. Among those actors Warner Bros. considered for the lead role were Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Tom Selleck, Charlie Sheen, and Pierce Brosnan, who turned down the role because he couldn't take seriously the idea of playing a hero in tights.
13. Jack Nicholson played the Joker in that film, but he received top billing over Keaton's Caped Crusader. He also was smart enough to demand a percentage of the merchandising, resulting in a payday for the film that was worth between $60 and $90 million.
14. Bob Kane, the artist who (with writer Bill Finger) created Batman in 1939, was supposed to have a cameo 50 years later in Burton's film, but while he served as a consultant on that film (and the next three), he was too ill to appear in the film. But the fanciful sketch of the winged vigilante that reporter Knox (Robert Wuhl) is shown comes from Kane's pen and bears his signature.
15. Burton and Keaton reteamed for a successful sequel, 1992's "Batman Returns," but after that, Burton begged off the series, claiming he'd had a nervous breakdown making the second film, Keaton was game to return, but Warner Bros. deemed his demands unreasonable and replaced him with Val Kilmer for 1995's "Batman Forever."
16. Robin didn't appear in either of the Burton-Keaton movies, but the character appeared in early scripts for both movies. Kiefer Sutherland was considered for the first film, and Marlon Wayans was up for the part in the second.
17. After Joel Schumacher directed "Batman Forever," he broke Hollywood protocol and openly blasted Kilmer for being difficult on the set. "What's the worst that could happen to me?" Schumacher said of his undiplomatic candor. "That I'll never work with Val Kilmer again?"
18. Indeed, Schumacher's next Bat-film was "Batman and Robin," starring George Clooney as Bruce Wayne. The film was widely derided by Bat-fans for its campiness (that rubber-nippled Bat-suit!), killed off the film franchise for nearly a decade, and was named the worst film of all time by readers of Britain's Empire magazine. Schumacher said the studio pressured him to make the movie frothier than the previous installments. "Adults think kids are too scared of Batman, so we had to make it more kid-friendly, make it funnier, make it lighter," he said in a 2003 interview with The A.V. Club. Still, he accepted the blame for the final product. "I take full responsibility. It's all me. I know I disappointed some people, but it's a Batman movie. We're at war. Let's get over it."
19. Before Warners finally hired Christopher Nolan to direct what became the "Dark Knight" trilogy with Christian Bale, several other Batman movie projects died in development. Darren Aronofsky was to direct a "Batman: Year One" adaptation, based on the late-'80s DC title that covered Bruce Wayne's earliest days as a crimefighter. But he dropped out to make "The Fountain." And Wolfgang Petersen was going to do "Batman vs. Superman," but he dropped out to make "Troy." And then Warners decided to shelve the superhero duel in favor of a lighter Superman story -- which also went through several iterations before becoming the 2006 movie "Superman Returns," with Brandon Routh.
20. The Tim Drake character, one of the later Robins in the comics, was the apparent inspiration for John Blake, the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "The Dark Knight Rises."
21. In the comics, Batman has an online alias. It's JonDoe297.
22. He also has a favorite food: Mulligatawny soup.
23. The actor who has logged more time as Batman than anyone else is Kevin Conroy, who has voiced the character since the debut of the acclaimed "Batman: The Animated Series" in 1992. Over the past 23 years, he's been Batman in eight TV series, one animated feature film, two TV movies, 10 home video movies, and 10 video games.
24. Batman plays a central role in no fewer than seven current DC titles.
25. In recent years, the owners of the original Bat-copter from the Adam West series have been taking the half-century-old chopper around to state fairs and such, selling rides.
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10 Reasons We Love Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson
By Megan Riedlinger, Wonderwall
It's impossible not to love Dwayne Johnson. After rising to fame while dominating the wrestling world, The Rock switched it up and made a name for himself as an actor, quickly becoming a bona fide movie star. Click through to celebrate all the reasons we adore him, just in time for his 43rd birthday on May 2, 2015!
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7 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About Marvel's 'Avengers'
From Hulk Smash to Hawkeye's eyes, there's tons of behind-the scenes trivia we're guessing you probably didn't know about the first "Avengers" movie.↧
7 Things You (Aca-Probably) Didn't Know About 'Pitch Perfect'
Who's pumped for "Pitch Perfect 2"?! Well, whether you're familiar with the gloriousness of the original a cappella musical comedy or not, we're going to convert -- er, get you ready for -- the upcoming sequel with 7 facts you probably didn't know about "Pitch Perfect."
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7 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About 'Mean Girls'
Can you believe it's been more than a decade since "Mean Girls" came out? In honor of this milestone, let's take another look at what we're pretty sure is the most accurate presentation of the High School emotional landscape, ever. Ever!↧
Sofia Vergara Facts: 11 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the 'Hot Pursuit' Star
From the beaches of Colombia to the hills of Hollywood, Sofia Vergara has gone from swimsuit model to one of the biggest stars on TV. This summer, she continues her hot streak, starring with Reese Witherspoon -- on the big screen this time -- in the action-comedy "Hot Pursuit."
From her Colombia origins to her stunning son, here are 11 things you probably don't know about Sofia Vergara.
[Sources: IMDb, Wikipedia]
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'X-Men' Cast: Where Are They Now?
It's been 15 years since the X-Men first joined forces on the big screen, and a lot has happened since then. While comic book movies reign supreme at the box office today, back when "X-Men" was released, everyone in Hollywood was questioning whether or not a superhero ensemble movie could even make money. Well, it not only succeeded, it ushered in a decade+ era of mega comic book blockbusters that's still going gangbusters today (see: "Avengers: Age of Ultron"). But what's happened to the "X-Men" cast since 2000? Plenty. So catch up with the cast, many of whom are still donning the skin-tight getups they wore back in the day.↧
9 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About 'Home Alone'
AAAAHHH! Time to re-watch a nostalgic favorite in the Christmas Movie genre: "Home Alone." You may know every cheek-clutching scream, but do you know these behind-the-scenes facts?↧
9 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About 'The Lion King'
Can you feel the love tonight? We can, for "The Lion King," because it's amazing. So say hakuna matata, heed your inner Zazu, and prepare yourself for these nine little-known facts about Disney's animated classic.↧
Can You Guess These Celebrity Age Gaps?
Hollywood loves pairing older actors with -- in come cases -- decades-younger actresses, and we're supposed to pretend it's not creepy. (But it kind of is sometimes.) While it's no surprise that ageism is alive and well at the movies, learning just how many years these leading men and women have between them may take you aback. So take a crack at Buzzfeed's age-gap test and try not to be infuriated by the lack of older actresses sharing the screen with middle-aged (yes, you're OLD!) actors.Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.
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George Lucas: 25 Things You Didn't Know About the 'Star Wars' Guru
George Lucas didn't just create the "Star Wars" universe. The filmmaker, who turns 71 on May 14, pretty much created the cinematic universe we live in now, the ones whose cornerstones include the THX sound system at your multiplex, the Pixar movies that have dominated animation for the past 20 years, and the Industrial Light & Magic special-effects house, whose aesthetic has ruled the Hollywood blockbuster for nearly four decades. He's the pioneer of the effects-driven action spectacle and the conversion from celluloid to digital, the two trends that, for better and worse, have defined Hollywood's output for nearly 20 years.As ubiquitous as Lucas and his creations loom in our cinematic dreamscapes, there's still a lot that most people don't know about him, from how he got his start to the famous folks who mentored him or were mentored by him, from the size of his fortune to what he plans to do now that he's all but out of the "Star Wars" business.
Here are 25 pieces of little-known Lucas lore, Enjoy, and May the 14th be with you.
1. George Lucas's full name is George Walton Lucas Jr.
2. Like Luke Skywalker, Lucas was a speed demon as a youth. In fact, he dreamed of being a race car driver until, as a teen, he was involved in a near-fatal crash. Nonetheless, his interest in racing persisted, but only as a subject for films, from some of his student shorts to the drag race at the climax of "American Graffiti" to the pod race in "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace."
3. Lucas transferred from Modesto Junior College in his California hometown to the University of Southern California's film school. His roommate there was future "Grease" director Randal Kleiser. His classmates included future "Apocalypse Now" and "Red Dawn" screenwriter John Milius and future editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who would one day be best known for his work on "Apocalypse Now," and who also would co-wrote Lucas's first studio feature, dystopian sci-fi drama "THX 1138," as well as creating its innovative soundscape.
4. After graduation, Lucas, again like Luke Skywalker, sought to become a pilot. He tried to join the Air Force, but he was turned down because of all his speeding tickets. The Army drafted him to fight in Vietnam, but then it rejected him because he was found to be diabetic. So he re-enrolled at USC as a graduate student.
5. Lucas's biggest mentor and collaborator in his early years was none other than Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas's first Hollywood job was as a student intern on one of the first major features Coppola directed, the 1968 musical "Finian's Rainbow." In 1969, the year Lucas served as a jack-of-all-trades on the shoot of Coppola's drama "The Rain People," the two men founded American Zoetrope, a San Francisco-based independent studio meant to make avant-garde features. One of the company's first films was Lucas's "THX 1138," which flopped in 1971 but proved an influence on later futuristic sci-fi films and TV shows. After Coppola's success with "The Godfather," he urged Lucas to write and direct something more commercial. The result was the smash nostalgia piece "American Graffiti," which Coppola produced and made a fortune from as an investor. Despite all but imploding after the cost overruns from Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and "One From the Heart" (1982), the studio survives today and is run by Francis' filmmaker children, Sofia and Roman Coppola.
6. Another early professional filmmaking job for Lucas: camera operator on the Maysles brothers' legendary Rolling Stones documentary "Gimme Shelter," which chronicled the free 1969 concert at Altamont Speedway in California where the Hell's Angels the Stones had hired to do security stabbed a concertgoer to death.
7. Lucas nearly directed "Apocalypse Now," according to early Zoetrope principal Murch. He said Milius wrote the script for the nightmarish Vietnam War drama back in 1969, at the height of the war, when no studio would have dared release it. Instead, Murch has said said, Lucas took the script's central plot element -- guerrilla rebels fighting a lumbering empire -- and turned it into "Star Wars."
8. As prolific as Lucas has been as a producer (26 features over the last 45 years), he's received script credit as a writer on just 16 and has directed only six.
9. The most notorious piece of "Star Wars" lore is the 1978 CBS "Star Wars Holiday Special," a hilariously bad piece of variety TV that includes song-and-dance numbers (including Carrie Fisher singing lyrics to John Williams famous "Star Wars" theme music), long stretches of Wookiee grunt-and-groan conversations that go untranslated into any human language, and a ten-minute cartoon that marks the first appearance of Boba Fett. Lucas has long since disavowed any involvement with the show, which aired only once but has circulated in homemade VHS recordings and on file-sharing sites ever since. Lucas has said he refuses to release the show on home video, though the Boba Fett sequence does show up as an Easter egg on the 2011 "Star Wars: The Complete Saga" Blu-ray set.
10. Lucas was a big fan of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa; indeed, many critics have found similarities between "Star Wars" and Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress." When Kurosawa was in a career slump, Lucas and Coppola helped get him funding to make "Kagemusha," earning a producer credit for themselves. The 1980 classic resulted in a comeback for the 70-year-old director, who went on to follow it up with "Ran," one of his greatest successes.
11. Lucas helped protege Lawrence Kasdan, a screenwriter on "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," get his start as a director. He served as an uncredited producer on "Body Heat," the steamy 1981 thriller that launched the "Big Chill" filmmaker's directing career and made an instant star out of Kathleen Turner.
12. Lucas has blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos in six movies, two of his own ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith") and four by others ("Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird," pal Steven Spielberg's "Hook," "Beverly Hills Cop III," and "Men in Black"). He's also appeared as himself on the TV shows "Just Shoot Me" and "The O.C."
13. Lucas has been married twice: to editor Marcia Griffin (who won an Oscar for "Star Wars") from 1969 to 1983 and to DreamWorks Animation board chair Mellody Hobson since 2013. He has four children.
14. In the mid 1980s, singer Linda Ronstadt stopped dating then-unknown comic Jim Carrey (who, at 22, was 16 years her junior) and briefly dated Lucas, then 39, who had recently separated from his first wife.
15. During his split from Griffin, Lucas sold off the computer graphics research division of Industrial Light & Magic in order to pay the divorce settlement. The division, which had done the pioneering computer-generated animation for the Genesis planet sequence in 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," was sold to Steve Jobs, who renamed the company Pixar. Within a few years, Pixar was releasing award-winning animated shorts, and eventually, the first full-length computer-animated feature, 1995's "Toy Story." And the rest is animation history.
16. After President Ronald Reagan began referring to the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative as "Star Wars," Lucas filed suit to prevent lobbyists from using his creation's name for the proposed weapons system, but he was unsuccessful.
17. Lucas sold Lucasfilm, the owner of the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises, and the parent company of Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts (Lucas's video game division), to Disney in 2012. The deal was worth $4 billion, making Lucas the biggest shareholder in Disney aside from the estate of Steve Jobs.
18. According to Forbes, Lucas's current net worth is $5.2 billion.
19. For more than 30 years, Lucas has been brewing story ideas for "Star Wars: Episode VII," but he has said that the makers of the forthcoming film, due in December, chose not to use them.
20. Lucas has signed the Giving Pledge (along with other billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett), promising to give away half of his fortune to charity.
21. One of his philanthropic endeavors is the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, scheduled to open in Chicago in 2018.
22. His other charitable donations include $1 million toward building the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2005 and $175 million to his alma mater, the USC film school, in 2006.
23. According to Skywalker Ranch lore, the Marin County, California compound was a monastery 150 years ago. Today, of course, it's the site of Lucas's archives and Skywalker Sound recording studio. There's also a man-made pond there called Lake Ewok.
24. Lucas has never won a competitive Oscar, but in 1991, the Academy gave him an honorary one, the Irving Thalberg award.
25. Lucas has long said that he sought commercial success only to enable him to make the kind of small-scale, experimental, cutting-edge movies he made in film school. The sale of Lucasfilm was supposed to get him out of the blockbuster business so that he could work on these less commercial projects. So far, they have yet to materialize.
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Charlize Theron Facts: 12 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the 'Mad Max' Star
If you look up glam in the dictionary, there's probably a picture of Charlize Theron waiting for you there. When you think about, it's hard to believe that little Charlize went from growing up on a small farm in South Africa to starring huge Hollywood movies like "Mad Max."
From her ballet dancing days to her first language, here are 12 things you probably don't know about Charlize Theron.
[Source: IMDb, People]
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Britt Robertson Facts: 15 Things You (Probably) Don't Know About the 'Tomorrowland' Star
Britt Robertson is taking over the world one role at a time. She started out on CW shows like "The Secret Circle" and "Life Unexpected," and then quickly made her way to the big screen. In a character she's no stranger to playing, Robertson brings troubled (but cute and intelligent!) Casey Newton to life while starring opposite George Clooney in "Tomorrowland."
From her hidden talent to why she wanted to start a housekeeping business, here are the 15 things you probably don't know about Britt Robertson.
[Source: IMDB, People, BuzzFeed, Interview, Yahoo, Hollywood Reporter]
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