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You probably know the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”: Slim Pickens, playing the pilot of the B-52 that has been ordered to attack Russia by his bonkers commander, General Ripper, is reviewing the contents of the crew’s survival kit. It contains among other essential items $100 in gold, nylon stockings and “one issue of prophylactics.” At the end of the list he remarks, “Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”

If you look closely at Pickens’s lips, they seem to be framing something other than the word “Vegas.” Indeed they are: “Dallas.” The first critics’ screening of the new film had been scheduled for Nov. 22, 1963. Unfortunate timing, as it turned out. Kubrick re-dubbed the line, substituting the name of another city where gold, nylon stockings and prophylactics always come in handy. It is said that the original city remains intact in the French-subtitled version. Figurez-vous.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/a-bad-day-to-die.html?ref=todayspaper

SNL Short: An all-new thriller from the mind of Wes Anderson, “The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders” starring Edward Norton as Owen Wilson.

“Bill Murray worked on Anderson’s second feature film, starring Jason Schwartzman, for scale. “He got a piece of the profits, but his day rate was Screen Actors Guild minimum,” Seitz writes. “By Anderson’s estimate, Murray made about $9,000 from acting in Rushmore.” Even more charmingly, the actor volunteered to kick in his own funds “[w]hen Disney didn’t want to pay for a helicopter shot for Rushmore’s ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ montage.” The actor wrote a check for $25,000 to cover the helicopter rental, which Anderson never cashed and has held on to as an apparent memento. In total, Murray was willing to spend approximately $16,000 to be in Rushmore.”

– http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/10/bill-murray-rushmore

“In other words, the new Wes Anderson film is—to borrow The Atlantic Wire’s usefully tautological adjective—“Wes Anderson-y.” But to say that the new Anderson film seems like a parody of an Anderson film is misleading: It implies that there are Wes Anderson things that aren’t self-parodies. With the arguable exception of Bottle Rocket, his very first film, which was made on a shoestring budget, every feature in his filmography is self-consciously twee, precious, exquisite—so idiosyncratically his that the only way to succinctly describe what distinguishes any part of his canon is via reference to the rest of his canon.”

– http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115231/grand-budapest-hotel-trailer-world-needs-more-wes-andersons