The comedy whodunnit Clue (USA, 1985) was based on the boardgame Cluedo. It starred Tim Curry (UK) as the butler, Wadsworth, aiming to finger the killer of his employer, Mr Boddy. The six suspects are all characters from the game: Mrs Peacock (Eileen Brennan, USA), Mrs White (Madeline Kahn, USA), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd, USA), Mr Green (Michael McKean, USA), Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull, USA) and Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren, USA). Three different endings were filmed, and a different one shown at different theatres.
The Venus of Hohle Fels is the name given to a female figurine carved from a mammoth tusk and dated to ca 33,000 BC. It was discovered in the Hohle Fels (“Hollow Rock”) cave near Ulm in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in September 2008 by Nicolas Conard and a team from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and is thought to be some form of fertility amulet. The carving is 6 cm (2.3 in) tall and is presumed to have been made by modern humans (Homo sapiens). Earlier
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The first fully 3D fighting game was SEGA’s Virtua Fighter, released in Japanese arcades in November 1993. The game employed polygon graphics to create its characters, as opposed to the animated sprites of 2D fighters. The game was also notable for its incorporation of a three-button layout (punch, kick and guard), when practically every other fighting game had four or six-button configurations. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamer”s Edition 2010
At a cost of $130 million (including marketing costs) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the most expensive video game-inspired movie ever made. Released in 2001 by Columbia Pictures, it recouped just $32 million at the US box office, meaning it was also one of the least successful video game-inspired movies ever made. Lastly, the film was the first computer-generated animated movie with photorealistic characters. GWR Video Gamer’s Edition 2008, title: first computer-generated animated movie with photorealistic characters.
The character Ernest P. Worrell, played by actor Jim Varney (USA), was originally created by US advertising agency Carden and Cherry in 1980. He proved extremely popular and a spin-off television series, Hey Vern, It’s Ernest!, was subsequently produced. Ernest’s first movie, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, was released in 1986, and he went on to star in a further nine productions.
The first film given a public release where the background footage was wholly created using computer generated imagery (CGI) was Able Edwards (USA 2004), produced by Graham Robertson and first shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival, Austin, Texas, USA on 15 March 2004. The film combined real actors shot against a green screen. Immortel (ad vitam) (France, Italy, UK 2004), released two days earlier on 13 March 2004 at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Films combined CGI sets with physical ones.
This is credited to the thriller Dragnet (1954) starring Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday, the role he had created in the NBC TV series, which had then been running for three years and was to continue until 1959. In 1969 the movie of the TV show was remade as a TV movie.
The first film to have a budget of US$100 million (the £64.1 million) was True Lies (US 1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Thomas Edison’s ‘Black Maria’, a frame building covered in black roofing-paper, was built at the Edison Laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, USA and completed at a cost of $637.67 (then £132.15) on 1 Feb 1893. Here Edison made short vaudeville-act films for use in his Kinetoscope, a peep-show machine designed for amusement arcades. The building was constructed so that it could be revolved to face the direction of the sun.
Experiments and shorts aside, the first colour 3-D movie was Bwana Devil (USA, 1952), which used the red-green “anaglyph” process first demonstrated as early as 1856.