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Do you love movies?

Average: 3.4 (14 votes)

Movie Buff: A person who knows a lot about movies.

Are you a movie buff? Do you know any interesting facts about movies?

I've been surfing the web, finding out some fascinating film trivia and facts about the (sometimes) glamorous world of movies!

Read through the facts and then try and put the vocabulary in the correct gaps. Break a leg!

Key Words

Light up -become tunred on. Used for lights that require energy.
Footage - a piece of film especially one showing an event.
Despite - without taking any notice of or being influenced by.
Choc-a-bloc - very crowded.
Valued - the amount of money which can be received for something.
Climactic -the most important or exciting point in a story or situation, which usually happens near the end.
Shades - particular types of color that are lighter, darker, etc., than other types.
Premiered -the first public performance of a play or any other type of entertainment.
Looked after - took care of.

Hollywood

The iconic Hollywood sign, made up of 50-foot-high letters perched near the tip of Beachwood Canyon's Mount Lee, is on the highest peak in Los Angeles. Built in 1923 by property developers to advertise their new sites, it originally read "Hollywoodland" and used to _1_ at night. A caretaker _2_ the sign and lived in a cabin situated just behind one of the Ls.

How To Make Fake Blood

There are various ways of making stage/screen blood, and different lighting and actors' complexions can require different _3_. The best way is to experiment and find what works best. (For the shower scene in 1960's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock found that red didn't look red on black-and-white film, so he used Bosco chocolate syrup instead.)

Movie Mistakes

The Shining - At a _4_ moment, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) hits Jack (Jack Nicholson) with a baseball bat. But perhaps it's not the best weapon. Close observers will note that the bat bends.

The Shawshank Redemption - Andy wears a suit belonging to the warden. And _5_ the fact that the inmate (Tim Robbins) is much taller than Warden Norton (Bob Gunton), the clothes fit.

The Empire Strikes Back - This well-loved movie is _6_ with mistakes. Two examples: when Luke (Mark Hamill) has his hand cut off, you can see the knuckles of the "absent" hand holding the "stump" under his shirt.

The World's Most Expensive Piece of Film

The most expensive reel of film ever is the famous _7_, shot by Abraham Zapruder, of President Kennedy's assassination on November 22 1963. Zapruder, who was a bystander to the killing, happened to capture the shooting on his camera. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, an arbitration panel ordered the US government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for 26 seconds, is _8_ at $16m.

Cinematic Overkill

The longest film ever made is The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World, a British underground movie produced by Anthony Scott in association with the Swiss Film Centre, London. Directed by Vincent Patouillard and _9_ at the Cinématheque de Paris in October 1970, it lasts exactly 48 hours.

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