Date: Saturday, July 4th, 2009, 9:00 am
Breakfast: Freedom Toast (which is the same thing as french toast, but we call it Freedom Toast), breakfast sausages, coffee, and breakfast potatoes. New rule! Bring your own damn catsup! (Yes, Yakker. I will not attempt a full cavity body search for little packets. You can put catsup on your potatoes. I’ll try not to cringe.) I’ll provide the orange juice and the first two bottles of champagne for mimosas. If ya’ll bring another beverage of choice to share, that’d be appreciated!
Movies: Two Fourth of July Classics: “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Independence Day”
More Info: I’m starting a little earlier this year for two reasons.
The film received eight Academy Award nominations and was awarded with three wins: Best Actor (James Cagney), Best Sound Recording (Nathan Levinson), and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld). The other five nominations included Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Walter Huston), Best Director, Best Original Story (Robert Buckner), and Best Film Editing (George Amy). For his own favorite performance in a film, Cagney became the first actor to receive an Academy Award for a musical performance.
Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.
Only one Academy Award for this one (Best Effects, Visual Effects), but here are some (potentially) interesting trivia and goofs:
Trivia:
- The film initially was green-lit with a budget of 69 million dollars from the studio
- Before being launched out of Area 51, the alien attacker floats in front of a circular indentation in the wall behind it. Together they form the shape of Darth Vader’s helmet from Star Wars.
- Holds the record for most miniature modelwork to appear in one film. It is said more miniatures were used for this film than in any other two films combined. Due to the advances in digital technology since this film’s release, most experts believe this record may stand forever.
- The President’s speech was filmed on 6 August 1995 in front of an old airplane hangar. The hangar once housed the Enola Gay, which is infamous for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima exactly 50 years earlier on 6 August 1945.
Goofs: The commemorative plaques left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts were attached to the front leg of the Lunar Module’s Descent Stage; neither was placed on a pile of moon rocks.
- The Commanding Officer of the Black Night Squadron is shown wearing Lieutenant Colonel Oak Leaf Clusters during the initial brief, later during the attack of the base he is wearing Captain’s Bars.
- The scientist’s mouth never opens when he orders to “open the launch tunnel”.
- When Levinson is kicking stuff around in Area 51, one of the trash cans is marked “ART DEPT” on the bottom. Area 51 would not seem to have an art dept. Suggestions that ART is a military acronym or abbreviation are amusing, but don’t stand as mitigation.
- The same blond man runs from exploding buildings in New York and Los Angeles.