Question: Years and years ago I saw a movie about an aristocratic family who get stranded on a desert island with their servants and at some point the blue bloods have to acknowledge that the butler and other servants are more inventive, ingenious, resourceful and street-smart than they are. So the servants take charge, until — if my memory serves me correctly — they're rescued, brought back to England and everybody goes back to his or her original position in the pecking order. I saw it as a kid — I'm 43 now — and think it was an older movie already. But every time I think about this adventure/psychological drama, it seems to me that it would be a nice story to remake. Answer: The story is definitely The Admirable Crichton, which started life as a play by James M. Barrie — yes, the man who wrote Peter Pan. It's been filmed three times already, first by Cecil B. DeMille
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Question: Do you know the name of the first-ever made-for-TV movie?
Answer: Like all "first" questions, this one is thorny. Generally speaking, the first two made-for-TV movies are considered to have been The Killers and The Hanged Man, both of which date from 1964 and were made by MCA-Universal under the aegis of superagent-turned-media-mogul Lew Wasserman. Wasserman, who shepherded Universal into the world of television production and distribution, saw an opportunity to leverage one of the company's assets — a huge library of old movies — by remaking them for TV. The Killers was a remake of a 1946 film starring Burt Lancaster and based on Ernest Hemingway's short story
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Question: I know sequels and remakes don't usually get nominated for Oscars, but has anyone other than Al Pacino ever been nominated for playing the same character in different movies? He was nominated for his portrayal of Michael Corleone in both The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), which was a big exception to the sequel stigma. My friends and I were talking about it and we're all stumped.
Answer: Three other actors have also been honored twice for the same role: Bing Crosby was nominated for playing Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1944) and its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). Peter O'Toole was nominated for playing King Hen
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The Office"Happy birthday, Jesus — sorry your party's so lame." How's this for mind-blowing irony? The folks at Dunder Mifflin had their Christmas shindig at the exact same time as this year's TV Guide soiree. Which means a bare minimum of two things: A) my life is so closely mirroring television that I can no longer function independently of it (see also, me and Veronica Mars both being called up for jury duty this month), and 2) I subscribe heartily to Michael Scott's second of four reasons Christmas is awesome: "You can get drunk and no one can say anything." OK, fine, so maybe lots of people said things, but that doesn't mean I remember them now. Happy holidays! Among my many yuletide blessings this year, my cup runneth over in the supporting-cast-making-me-want-to-pee-my-pants cate
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Question: My wife and I were having dinner recently at an Italian restaurant and the background music was Dean Martin singing songs from Guys and Dolls. We agreed that Martin would have been much better than Marlon Brando in the movie — was Martin too new on the Hollywood scene to be considered, or was the studio pushing Brando?
Answer: Producer Sam Goldman wanted Gene Kelly to play Sky Masterson in the movie version of the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls (1955), but Kelly couldn't get released from his MGM contract. (Though MGM stands for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sam Goldwyn was only part of the studio, which was formed by merging three existing companies, for a couple of years; in 1923, he formed his own Samuel Goldwyn Productions. MGM kept the
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