Nebuchadrezzar

The Terminal

Some have noted that the story for the film appears to be inspired by the story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, nicknamed "Sir, Alfred", an Iranian refugee who had lived in Terminal One of the Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris from 1988 until 2006, when his refugee papers were stolen. However, no public materials or the film's DVD/website mention Nasseri's plight as an inspiration for the film.

Jiminy Cricket

He is also a comical and wise partner who accompanies Pinocchio on his adventures. In the 1960s and 1970s, Jiminy Cricket appeared in numerous safety films aimed at grade-school-aged audiences. He advised children how to steer clear of dangerous traffic, sharp objects, strangers, exposed electrical lines, and so forth.

The man who knew too much

The remake is in colour and stars Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Hitchcock considered his remake to be superior, saying that the 1934 version was the work of a talented amateur, while the 1956 version was the work of a professional.

Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mocking Bird) and Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs)

The Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai is usually regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and is one of a select few Japanese films to become widely known in the West for an extended period of time. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai warriors to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

The Endless Summer

When the movie was first shown, it encouraged many surfers to go abroad, giving birth to the "surf-and-travel" culture, which prizes finding "uncrowded surf", meeting new people, and finding the perfect wave. It also introduced the sport, which had become popular outside of Hawaii and the Polynesian Islands in places like California and Australia, to a broader audience.

The Shining (1980)

Ellen Ripley; Nostromo

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Gene Roddenberry

Star Trek originated as a television series in 1966, starring William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk (originally James R. Kirk), and told the tale of the crew of the starship Enterprise and that crew's five-year mission 'to boldly go where no man has gone before.'

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

It became a sleeper hit and grew steadily from its limited release. An independent film with a meager $5 million budget, it ultimately grossed over $368 million worldwide.

21 Grams

MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have had little if any scientific merit, and although MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The length of its run in cinemas (weekly for over 30 years) combined with its considerable total box office gross is unparalleled by any other film. The Museum Lichtspiele in Munich, Germany has been screening the movie without interruption since September 19th, 1975, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has the longest running United States engagement, having shown the movie since January, 1978.

Carl Sagan

According to an unsourced anecdote in 'The Independent', Sagan "responded by saying that he wanted editorial control and a percentage of the film's takings, which was rejected."

North by Northwest

At the time, the United Nations prohibited film crews from shooting around its New York City headquarters. In an example of guerrilla filmmaking, Hitchcock used a movie camera hidden in a parked van to film Cary Grant and Adam Williams exiting their taxis and entering the building.

As 'Mini-Me' in Austin Powers' movies.

It is most commonly believed that Mini-Me was inspired by Nick Nack, the little henchman of the film version of Francisco Scaramanga, the eponymous villain of the James Bond novel 'The Man with the Golden Gun'.

Spirited Away (2001-Japanese release)

It is also the first anime film to win an Academy Award, and the only winner of that award to win among five nominees (in every other year there were three nominees).

The release of the film 'The Blair Witch Project', which supposedly takes place there.

It attracted fans of the cult film, and provided a spike to local commerce. Contrary to popular belief, however, the majority of the film was not filmed in Burkittsville, and the events depicted in the film and the legend of the Blair Witch itself were entirely fabricated by the producers themselves. The majority of the film was shot in the state of Virginia, with parts filmed in Maryland.

Bonnie and Clyde

The film was directed by Arthur Penn, and starred Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker.

Studio Ghibli

Its name derives from the nickname the Italians used for their Saharan scouting planes in the Second World War, which derived from the Libyan word for hot wind blowing through the Sahara Desert (also known as sirocco). The company's logo features the character Totoro from the film 'My Neighbor Totoro'.

Hattie McDaniel

She played 'Mammy' on 'Gone with the Wind'. As a partially-seen character in the cartoons, she was famous for never showing her head (although it is briefly visible in Saturday Evening Puss and Mouse Cleaning). Mammy's appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated as a slim white woman in later television showings, since her character is a mammy archetype now generally regarded as racist.

The Sound of Music

The soundtrack album of the film was also included in the stockpile of records held in 20 underground radio stations of Great Britain's Wartime Broadcasting Service, designed to provide public information and morale-boosting broadcasts for 100 days after a nuclear attack.

Summer of '42

It tells the story of a boy in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation where he embarked on an ill-fated, one-sided romance with a woman whose husband had gone off to fight in World War II.

Cabaret

In 2006 this film ranked #5 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.

Pauline Kael

She approached movies emotionally, with a strongly colloquial writing style. She was often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day and made a lasting impression on other major critics.

Lakota

Dances with Wolves is a 1990 epic film which tells the story of a United States cavalry officer in the 1860s who befriends a band of Sioux, sacrificing his career and ties to his own people.

Gorillas in the mist

Dian Fossey (1932 – 1985) was an American Zoologist who completed an extended study of several gorilla groups. She observed them daily for years in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by famous paleontologist Louis Leakey. Her work is somewhat similar to Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees. Fossey was found murdered in the bedroom of her cabin in 1985.

The Interpreter

There are strong parallels between the movie and the real country of Zimbabwe. Among others, the name of the fictional country of Matobo is an apparent reference to the name of the Matobo National Park in Zimbabwe.

Biltmore Estate near Asheville, North Carolina

This location was chosen by Ridley Scott to signify the huge personal wealth of the character Mason Verger. It built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1888 and 1895 and occupies 175,000 square feet. Still owned by Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age.

The Last Emperor was being shot there and the production was given priority over the queen by the Chinese authorities.

Qantas

While the airline's safety record is respected around the world, the safety fact is that the company has never lost a jet airliner and not any kind of plane. Between 1927 and 1951, Qantas had eight fatal accidents with the loss of 62 people. Half of these accidents occurred during World War II, when the Qantas aircraft were operating on behalf of the Royal Australian Air Force.

The Devil Wears Prada (the character of Miranda Priestly was played by Meryl Streep)

Although the movie is set in the fashion world, most designers and other fashion notables avoided appearing as themselves for fear of arousing the wrath of the powerful Anna Wintour. Wintour later overcame her initial skepticism, saying she liked the film and Streep in particular.

Orca

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan

They have have written and directed numerous successful films, such as the comedies 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?', 'Raising Arizona' and 'The Big Lebowski', and have also become notorious for blurring the line between drama and comedy with movies like 'Fargo', 'The Man Who Wasn't There', and 'Barton Fink'. The pair are frequently credited on their own films as editor under the name "Roderick Jaynes".

Skull island

In King Kong, Skull Island is a long island, located at approximately 90 degrees East and 2 degrees South - somewhere off the coast of Sumatra. There is a distinctive rocky knoll in the center of the island which is shaped like a human skull, hence its foreboding name.

Mr. Bean

The character of Mr. Bean was first developed when Rowan Atkinson was studying for his PhD at Oxford University, with a sketch featuring the character first being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in the early 1980s.

Audrey Hepburn in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'

Wisp-thin Hepburn as Holly, carrying a cigarette holder, is considered one of the iconic images of 20th century American cinema.

MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction

It is a doctrine of military strategy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by one of two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the very same weapons. The strategy is effectively a form of Nash Equilibrium, in which both sides are attempting to avoid their worst possible outcome — nuclear annihilation.

Psycho-biddy

The genre has also been variously nicknamed by the press as "hagsploitation," "hag horror" and "Grande Dame Guignol". The genre began in 1962 with 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?' directed by Robert Aldrich; however, the 1950 Billy Wilder classic 'Sunset Boulevard', which shares many thematical and plot similarities with the former, can also be seen as a precursor to the genre.

The Godfather

He outed his high-school drama coach and his former classmate with "two of the finest gay Americans, two wonderful men that I had the good fortune to be associated with."

An Emerald

Even if you haven't see the film, just the fact that it is set in Columbia should give you a hint that it is an Emerald.

Mike Judge

The Volunteers

The French Connection in 1971.

Breach

The Insider

Petra

It is an archaeological site, lying in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Wadi Araba, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is famous for having many stone structures carved into the rock. The long-hidden site was revealed to the Western world by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.

It is designed to protect a child actor's earnings, by depositing some of the minor's earnings in court-administered trust funds that the child receives when he/she reaches the age of majority.

As a child star (famous in 'The Kid' with Chaplin), Coogan earned as much as $4 million, but the money was taken by his mother Lilian and step-father Arthur Bernstein for cocaine and heroin. He sued them in 1935, but only received $126,000. The legal battle did, however, bring attention to child actors and resulted in the state of California enacting the California Child Actor's Bill, sometimes known as the Coogan Bill or the Coogan Act. This requires that the child's employer set aside 15% of the child's earnings in a trust, and codifies such issues as schooling, work hours and time-off.

'The Battleship Potemkin' by Sergei Eisenstein

Toward the end of the sequence, the soldiers shoot a mother who is pushing a baby carriage. She falls to the ground, and as she dies she accidentally kicks the carriage away; it rolls down the steps alongside the frightened crowd. This scene has been endlessly referenced in many motion pictures, with famous homages occurring in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Brian De Palma's version of The Untouchables, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (except the troopers marched up the stairs).

Cantinflas

Born Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes on August 12, 1911, he was a comedian of the Mexican theatre and film industry. His interpretation of Cantinflas, a character originating in the pelado, the impoverished campesino slum-dweller that came to represent the national identity of Mexico, earned him popularity with the common people that he was able to parlay into a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood.

Mel Blanc (1908 - 1989)

Blanc's will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS", considered by some to be one of the most famous epitaphs in the world.

Ishtar

The movie ran significantly over budget in production, due largely to unanticipated problems with desert filming, and was a financial flop, generating under $13 million in revenue. Its high-profile disastrous performance at the box office is part of the film's enduring bad reputation. Ishtar was nominated for Worst Picture in the 1987 Golden Raspberry Awards.

Baywatch

Baywatch is very popular and still airs in many countries today.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Tribes including the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone have had cultural and geographical ties to the monolith long before European and early American immigrants reached Wyoming.

Tunisia

George Lucas notably uses the name for his fictional planet Tatooine.

Luise Raimer (1910 - )

For 'The Great Ziegfeld' (1936) and 'The Good Earth' (1937).(Many thanks to Appalling Gael for pointing out that it is not Jodie Foster (who became the second person to do it).)

The Godfather

Stillwater

The extras went on strike, demanding higher wages!

The film centers on the life of John Reed, the Communist, journalist, and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book 'Ten Days that Shook the World'.

A plot device that motivates the characters and/or advances the story, but has no other relevance.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hitchcock explained the term in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is most always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Gone with the Wind

Se7en (1995)

Raquel Welch

Andy Dufresne first starts digging the tunnel when he has the poster of Rita Hayworth on his cell wall.

'Nanook of the North' by Robert J. Flaherty

Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuit Nanook and his family in the Canadian arctic. But Flaherty has been criticised for deceptively portraying staged events as reality. Much of the action was staged and gives an inaccurate view of real Inuit life during the early 20th century.

From Here to Eternity

The famous beach scene was lampooned in the movie 'Airplane!', where Robert Hays' and Julie Hagerty's characters become covered in seaweed.

Anthony Quinn (1915-2001)

He is perhaps best known in the US for his roles in two Hollywood films, the title role in Zorba the Greek and his Oscar-winning performance in Viva Zapata!, while in the rest of the world he is associated with his role of the brutish circus strongman Zampanò in Federico Fellini's La Strada.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

Held in Toronto, Canada, it is widely considered to be one of the top film festivals in the world. It is the premiere film festival in North America from which the Oscars race begins. Quoted by the National Post in 1999, Roger Ebert claimed "...although Cannes is still larger, Toronto is more useful and more important...."

Rose from 'Titanic' (1997)

Played by Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart, both of whom were nominated for Oscars.

Quartermaster

Rosemary's baby

Outside shots of the movie's Bramford apartment building were in fact The Dakota, the future home of the main lead Mia Farrow's friend John Lennon, and his wife and son, Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. Director Roman Polanski filmed the exteriors for Rosemary's Baby at the Dakota; however, the interiors were created in a Hollywood soundstage. The building does not allow filming inside.

This is Spinal Tap

It became a common insult for a pretentious band to be told they were funnier than Spinal Tap.

Lawrence of Arabia

It is unique in being the only film to win the Best Film award without containing a single female speaking role.