because of the doppler effect, the sound of bombs falling in movies (and cartoons) is the opposite of how they actually sound.

adjusted for inflation, gone with the wind is the highest grossing movie of all time (us$1.8 billion).

during his lifetime, walt disney won 26 academy awards, and was nominated for 59.

 film makers moved to california to get away from thomas edison's film monopoly on the east coast.

 actor, writer, and director danny devito is also an experienced hairdresser.

 in the early days of russian cinema, every film for the home market had a tragic ending.

mary pickford was the world's first movie star. before her, actors in silent films were uncredited.

disney's animated film, fantasia, was the first film with stereo sound.

the character of yoda from the star wars films was partly modeled after albert einstein.

actor al pacino was originally offered the part of han solo in the first 'star wars' film, but turned it down.

if you spend us$100,000 to join the bel air circuit - plus us$4,000 a month - you can see new movies on their release date in your own home theater (you have one, right?). currently, the bel air circuit has about 400 members.

michael 'the king of pop' jackson once paid a witch doctor us$150,000 to put a curse on director steven spielberg for not casting jackson as peter pan in the movie 'hook'. (frankly, spielberg did jackson a favor.)

the first film ever shown in the white house was 'birth of a nation', a silent film that advocated white supremacy, and was later used by the klu klux klan as a recruiting tool.

the movie that induces the strongest sad reaction, according to more than 4,000 studies, is 'the champ', starring jon voight.

in 2001, more than 53,000 new zealanders listed their religion as 'jedi'.

a 35-year test found that the kids who were the most popular in high school - not the ones with the best grades, etc. - made the most money in later life, despite what decades of movies would have us believe.

tom selleck was the actor originally cast to play indiana jones, but gave up the part due to a scheduling conflict.

every time that he played james bond, actor sean connery wore a toupee.

(just like burt reynolds, who recently said that he should have gone out for that role.)

in the film version of 'the wizard of oz', 3 different dogs played toto. the first 2 ran away.

in movie childbirth scenes, infant actors are smeared with red jam and cream cheese to simulate amniotic fluid and whatnot.