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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 9, 2017 13:04:30 GMT -5
Howard Hughes' 1930 classic Hell's Angels has an extended sequence in a German airship. It's one of the most memorable scenes in a memorable movie.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 9, 2017 13:37:33 GMT -5
I became fascinated about airships when I first saw Zeppelin, on network tv, after it had been in theaters. I have a nice coffee tale book about the Hindenburg, which covers airship history from the Montgofliers to ferdinand Von Zeppelin, to the crash of the Hindenburg, as well as the Navy blimp service, during WW2. I later got my hands on a book about Navy airship history, which covered the dirigibles (Uss Shenandoah, Los Angeles, Akron, Macon) and the various classes of blimps that were used during WW2, for convoy escort. They ranged from 3-man crew models to one that had a crew of 25 and even one with an aluminum outer skin (the ZMC-2). You don't get them in movies much. There is one, This Man's Navy, with Wallace Beery, that centers around a blimp pilot, with extensive footage of the blimps. Cagney has at least one with a brief shot of the Macon launching aircraft. Master of the World and Island at the Top of the World dabble in Jules Verne-inspired airships. The Hyperion, in Island at the Top of the World, is based on an actual early semi-rigid airship. Master of the World takes a lot of liberties with Verne's Clipper of the Clouds (aka Robur the Conqueror) and its sequel, Master of the World. In the first book, the ship is a heavier-than-air craft, with a whole series of propellers providing lift. In the sequel, Robur uses the Albatross, a machine that can travel in air, on land, or at sea. The film has a sort of airship, with propellers, with a skin made out of compressed paper. It's a nice design. There is an old movie, Madame Satan, that takes place at a party, aboard an airship. There is big song and dance number as the party-goers board the airship. It features a lot of cool art deco designs and wild costumes. Thing about the Hindenburg; for all of the talk about the disaster, the majority of the passengers and crew survived. The British R101 airship was not so lucky. It crashed after going through a storm in France and bursting into flame. 48 of 54 passengers ad crew perished, vs 36 of the 97 aboard the Hindenburg. The USS Akron lost 73 of 76 lives, when it crashed. The difference was that the Hindenburg crash was caught on film, by newsreel companies there covering the landing. The R101 was during transit and the Akron was at sea. There's a film from about 1970 called The Assassination Bureau that has a rousing conclusion aboard an airship, circa 1910. The movie also features Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas! The airship doesn't have any glass in the windows! So the crew are all exposed to the open air. I found out this is accurate for early blimps. The designers thought the glass would distort the view of military personnel. The airship in that one, as I recall, was fairly closely modelled on Zeppelin's earliest ships. The movie serials had a few in there. King of the Texas Rangers has the hero, "slingin' Sammy Baugh, launching an attack on the villain's zeppelin. Dick Tracy features one in a couple of chapters (as well as the Spider's flying wing craft). Don Winslow of the Navy features a blimp or a zeppelin and Buck Rogers opens with Buster CRabbe in an airship. Lost Zeppelin features a race to rescue an airship on an Antarctic exploration. Dirigible features the actual USS Los Angeles, in a story about an attempt to fly to the South Pole. The Red Tent features the story of the attempts to rescue Umberto Nobile's Italia airship, on its ill-fated Arctic trip. The Rocketeer and Sky Captain use airships well. Black Sunday features a terror attack at the Super Bowl, using the Goodyear Blimp, while A View to Kill used the Fuji blimp for Zorin's blimp.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2017 21:25:01 GMT -5
I just watched The Big Sleep starring Bogart and Bacall and it's a great film noir of blackmail, murder, love, and a whole lot more that has twists and turns for Private Eye Phillip Marlowe to crack at. It's really a great movie and the chemistry of Bogart and Bacall has never better. I haven't seen this movie in eons and I've enjoyed it from the start and to the end. It was intense, lots of unexpected turns, and most of it makes Marlowe job difficult and protecting the woman that he loves ... Vivian Rutledge being played by Lauren Bacall.
One of the best film noirs and always be.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 10, 2017 2:04:35 GMT -5
I just watched The Big Sleep starring Bogart and Bacall and it's a great film noir of blackmail, murder, love, and a whole lot more that has twists and turns for Private Eye Phillip Marlowe to crack at. It's really a great movie and the chemistry of Bogart and Bacall has never better. I haven't seen this movie in eons and I've enjoyed it from the start and to the end. It was intense, lots of unexpected turns, and most of it makes Marlowe job difficult and protecting the woman that he loves ... Vivian Rutledge being played by Lauren Bacall. One of the best film noirs and always be. I've seen The Big Sleep a bunch of times. One of my favorites. You gotta love Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone. And I love the actress that plays Agnes! "She's too big for ya!" I've read the book a few times as well.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 10, 2017 2:05:09 GMT -5
I just watched The Big Sleep starring Bogart and Bacall and it's a great film noir of blackmail, murder, love, and a whole lot more that has twists and turns for Private Eye Phillip Marlowe to crack at. It's really a great movie and the chemistry of Bogart and Bacall has never better. I haven't seen this movie in eons and I've enjoyed it from the start and to the end. It was intense, lots of unexpected turns, and most of it makes Marlowe job difficult and protecting the woman that he loves ... Vivian Rutledge being played by Lauren Bacall. One of the best film noirs and always be. I've seen The Big Sleep a bunch of times. One of my favorites. You gotta love Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone. And I love the actress that plays Agnes! "She's too big for ya!" I've read the book a few times as well. P.S. The chauffer committed suicide!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2017 2:10:02 GMT -5
I just watched The Big Sleep starring Bogart and Bacall and it's a great film noir of blackmail, murder, love, and a whole lot more that has twists and turns for Private Eye Phillip Marlowe to crack at. It's really a great movie and the chemistry of Bogart and Bacall has never better. I haven't seen this movie in eons and I've enjoyed it from the start and to the end. It was intense, lots of unexpected turns, and most of it makes Marlowe job difficult and protecting the woman that he loves ... Vivian Rutledge being played by Lauren Bacall. One of the best film noirs and always be. I've seen The Big Sleep a bunch of times. One of my favorites. You gotta love Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone. And I love the actress that plays Agnes! "She's too big for ya!" I've read the book a few times as well. Check out my avatar ... Martha Vickers in the Big Sleep and Dorothy Malone really shines too. I agree what you said here and I've haven't seen it for a long time and I gotta see it early evening before dinner. Man, this is a fabulous film and every second of it was superb and never a dull moment.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2017 2:11:59 GMT -5
P.S. The chauffeur committed suicide! ... that's was totally unexpected and shocked to see that Hoosier X!
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 10, 2017 11:04:49 GMT -5
P.S. The chauffeur committed suicide! ... that's was totally unexpected and shocked to see that Hoosier X ! I started to write a short story about the chauffer - Owen Taylor - where the premise was his family came to L.A. and hired a private investigator to find out what had happened to him. I researched the movie and the book and took extensive notes and I think it's pretty clear (especially from the book) that Owen killed himself. As a matter of fact, it's so obvious that I lost all interest in writing the story because there really wasn't a mystery.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2017 13:21:05 GMT -5
P.S. The chauffeur committed suicide! ... that's was totally unexpected and shocked to see that Hoosier X ! I started to write a short story about the chauffer - Owen Taylor - where the premise was his family came to L.A. and hired a private investigator to find out what had happened to him. I researched the movie and the book and took extensive notes and I think it's pretty clear (especially from the book) that Owen killed himself. As a matter of fact, it's so obvious that I lost all interest in writing the story because there really wasn't a mystery. Interesting, thanks for telling me this and I did not know this.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 10, 2017 15:30:07 GMT -5
I started to write a short story about the chauffer - Owen Taylor - where the premise was his family came to L.A. and hired a private investigator to find out what had happened to him. I researched the movie and the book and took extensive notes and I think it's pretty clear (especially from the book) that Owen killed himself. As a matter of fact, it's so obvious that I lost all interest in writing the story because there really wasn't a mystery. Interesting, thanks for telling me this and I did not know this. It occurs to me there might be some film fans who don't know anything about Owen Taylor, a character in The Big Sleep, and the controversy about the particulars of his demise.
You can find out a little bit about it here:
Who Killed Owen Taylor?I like this link because of the comment. I agree that there's no big mystery. Owen Taylor killed himself.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2017 15:43:31 GMT -5
Interesting, thanks for telling me this and I did not know this. It occurs to me there might be some film fans who don't know anything about Owen Taylor, a character in The Big Sleep, and the controversy about the particulars of his demise.
You can find out a little bit about it here:
Who Killed Owen Taylor?I like this link because of the comment. I agree that there's no big mystery. Owen Taylor killed himself. Makes a lot of sense here and I find that very interesting and I agree that the movie is about focusing on the characters than the movie itself and that's makes Marlowe job isn't easy - and rather a difficult one indeed. Thanks for that link.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 11, 2017 0:38:01 GMT -5
The movie also features a screenplay from William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman. That's a hell of a literary legacy, there. Funny enough, when George Lucas contacted Leigh Brackett about writing the Empire Strikes Back screenplay, he did so because of her "planetary romance" works, like her Eric John Stark stories. He asked her if she had ever written a screenplay. She replied, nonchalantly, "The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye." Lucas replied, stunned, "You're that Leigh Brackett?" He had never made the connection. Given the ambiguity of the name, and the John Wayne pictures Brackett scripted, most thought that Leigh was a guy.
I still remember the first time I saw The Big Lebowski and was thoroughly confused by the whole thing. A lot of it didn't make sense (even for the Cohens). By that point, I hadn't seen The Big Sleep. I then saw it again, on dvd, with the Cohens interviewed, where they said the story was a Phillip Marlowe-style story, with a stoner. Now all of a sudden, it made sense (and I still hadn't seen the Big Sleep): the repeated bashing the Dude over the head, everyone with their own agenda, lies and double-crosses, hidden secrets. It all fell into place. Then, I watched the Big Sleep and became amused when I recognized each scene the Cohens swiped for their film. Prior to all of that, I just thought it was trying for weird, like Barton Fink (that one is a bit all over the place, though with some nice satire of Depression-era Hollywood, and John Mahoney as William Faulkner).
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Post by Jesse on Oct 11, 2017 14:13:38 GMT -5
Time Bandits (1981) Watched this for the first time on TCM On Demand and thought it was quite good. I'm kind of jealous of anyone who saw it for the first time as a kid. The story is interesting and fun, the casting is great and it was directed by Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2017 15:46:09 GMT -5
Time Bandits (1981) Watched this for the first time on TCM On Demand and thought it was quite good. I'm kind of jealous of anyone who saw it for the first time as a kid. The story is interesting and fun, the casting is great and it was directed by Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam. Loved this film and it's a great fun movie to watch ... I watch it on a rainy day and I do that for kicks and enjoyment!
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 11, 2017 17:28:44 GMT -5
Time Bandits (1981) Watched this for the first time on TCM On Demand and thought it was quite good. I'm kind of jealous of anyone who saw it for the first time as a kid. The story is interesting and fun, the casting is great and it was directed by Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam. Went to see it on my 15 th birthday. We didn't have much planned and my dad asked if I wanted to see a film and I said "Time Bandits," based on the trailer. Loved it from start to finish. My dad wasn't a Python person; but, he enjoyed the comedy and the fairy tale-style adventure. It wasn't offensive, nor was it exactly a kid's movie. It had some pretty broad appeal and was extremely well acted. Love John Cleese as a Duke of Kent-style Robin Hood. Connery's part was awesome. If you ever get the chance, watch the Criterion dvd, with commentary from Gilliam and child star Craig Warnock, who was now an adult. Lot of great memories and insight. Gilliam talks about how for Agamemnon, the script said the "warrior removes his helmet, revealing Sean Connery, or an actor of equal but cheaper stature." David Rappaport was so damn good. Shame what happened to him (Jack Purvis, too, for that matter).
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