Billy Zane's Sinking Ship Tetralogy: Part Two (1997) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Sometimes known as Titanic.

Part 1 is usually called Dead Calm, Part 3 is normally called Cleopatra, and Part 4 is called Three, which would undoubtedly please Abbott and Costello iff'n they were still with us. Amazingly, Zane managed to survive all four actual sinkings, although he always seems to manage to die later in the movie. (I suppose he must have been dead by the end of Titanic as well, since it took place 80 years after the disaster.)

Oscar loved the film. Contemporary critics loved the film as well. Women loved it. Young women adored it. It is the Monet of movies. By that I mean that Monet is the favorite painter of just about every 13 year old girl, except those who rank him second behind Degas. Titanic has similar appeal. Girls under 18 rate it an astronomical 8.6 at IMDb.

Subsequent criticism has turned sour:

• Although Titanic dominated 1997 at the box office and the awards shows, and is the highest grossing film of all-time, it is now rated well out of the top 250 at IMDb, and well below the top-rated films of 1997! I just (October 25, 2005) searched the IMDb database for the top films of 1997 with 1000 or more votes, and Titanic finishes in a tie for 61st.
• It scores only 48/100 from Apollo users, a level usually reserved for straight-to-vids.
• It was voted the most overrated film in our 1999 poll ...
• ... then again in our 2005 poll.
• The hard-core movie audience (men 18-29) rates it only 6.6.

Well, so damn what? I don't remember reading anywhere that guys 18-29 possess all possible wisdom and good taste. I like French Impressionism, and I like Titanic. I don't like every single thing about it, but I like it enough to have watched it again when the new special edition DVD came out.

But then again, I am well known to be a big-time wuss.

Here is some trivia you may not know:

• There are plot details that Rose didn't witness, yet they are included in the movie, which is supposed to be a pictorialization of her account.
• The movie cost more than the actual Titanic. The budget was $200 million. The Titanic cost less than $150 million of today's dollars.
• The film includes substantial footage of the real Titanic sitting on the ocean floor, filmed with a free-floating camera specially built to withstand the atmospheric pressure of 400x surface pressure. They filmed it in twelve separate dives.
• Some of the undersea footage consisted of a pseudo-wreck, built especially for the occasion, aged, and submerged.
• Several genuine art treasures appear in the film. (Picasso's "The Guitar Player", e.g.)
• The interiors were reconstructed from the original plans of the Titanic. The Hockley staterooms were actual staterooms built to accommodate J.P. Morgan, who backed out at the last minute, and were actually occupied by a man named Bruce Ismay (the Jonathan Hyde character in the movie).
• The first-class suites on the Titanic cost $4350. (Nearly $100,000 in today's money)
• The pictures in Jack's sketchbook, including the nude of Rose wearing the necklace, were actually drawn by director James Cameron.
• The Statue of Liberty was not greenish in 1912. It was untarnished copper.