Rain Gryphon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rain_gryphon) wrote2004-07-09 05:52 am
rain_gryphon) wrote2004-07-09 05:52 am
Entry tags:
Magnesium Magnets
So, I turned on the TV this morning, and lo and behold they were showing some ancient movie about the Indianapolis 500. It turned out to be the very end of the 'The Crowd Roars', which I've never yet managed to see :P In general I'm not a great fan of automobile racing movies, because they invariably get the details wrong, but this one I'd like to see, just because it was made in 1932. For whatever reason, I've long been in love with two-seat Depression racers, and this film's full of 'em.
One of the reasons I love old movies is the ability to see the past as it appeared to the people living it. This was made when 120mph was impressive, and the two-seat reworks from 1930 and '31 looked sleek and racy. That somehow comes across in the camerwork and direction - a 'period piece' movie about the 1930s never looks like a 'modern' movie from the 1930s.
It was pretty obviously shot on location at the Speedway. The release date is 1932, but I'm guessing it was made in the autumn of 1930. The trees are bare, and Billy Arnold is driving (I'm pretty sure) a car that he destroyed during the 1931 race, still carrying his 1930 number. The backstretch is all brick, and you can see plainly how uneven it is. The cars actually bounce around on it - it's one thing to read about it, and another to watch it happening. They slide in the turns, like sprint cars. You get to see the old backstretch footbridge, the old pits, and how open the front straight looked back then, before they turned it into the 'canyon'. You get to see the manual lap counters on the pagoda in operation. This was Ye Olde Dayes :)
Most of the race sequences are staged, but impressively so, with eight or ten cars dicing it out at what look like actual racing speeds, which really shouldn't have been a problem considering all the drivers that they had in the film. They intersperse occasional scenes from the 1930 and 1931 Five Hundreds, but the only real continuity problems these cause is the trees - they're leafy in those scenes, and bare in others. They've been careful (with one brief exception) to use only footage from the Depression rules races, which had radically different cars than what had been in use during the 1920s. This pleases me - one of my chief gripes is when, e.g., the stock footage rocket in an SF movie changes to about four different types during the course of the launch. None of that here.
The IMDB promises an incredible bounty of 1930s race drivers, but I got in too late, and saw only Billy Arnold, driving the car that he won the 1930 500 in. I covet this movie, but it's not out on DVD or tape :( I need to watch my TV schedules more zealously, I suppose.
*****
The weather has turned cool. It's a nice change. It was getting to the point where I was going to give in and turn on the air conditioner if the weather didn't break soon. Flaster was quite playful today, storming around the place like a maniac.
*****
Nabisco Cheese Nips are now indistinguishable from Sunshine Cheez-Its. They've abandoned their former cigar shape, and become flat squares. That depresses me, for some reason. They used to be two distinct products. When I was a child, it was derigeur to refer to Cheese Nips as Cheese Japs, the result of too many old B&W war movies.
*****
It seems that OSU has the 11th largest stadium in the world, capable of holding 103,801 drunken rioters. Joy.
One of the reasons I love old movies is the ability to see the past as it appeared to the people living it. This was made when 120mph was impressive, and the two-seat reworks from 1930 and '31 looked sleek and racy. That somehow comes across in the camerwork and direction - a 'period piece' movie about the 1930s never looks like a 'modern' movie from the 1930s.
It was pretty obviously shot on location at the Speedway. The release date is 1932, but I'm guessing it was made in the autumn of 1930. The trees are bare, and Billy Arnold is driving (I'm pretty sure) a car that he destroyed during the 1931 race, still carrying his 1930 number. The backstretch is all brick, and you can see plainly how uneven it is. The cars actually bounce around on it - it's one thing to read about it, and another to watch it happening. They slide in the turns, like sprint cars. You get to see the old backstretch footbridge, the old pits, and how open the front straight looked back then, before they turned it into the 'canyon'. You get to see the manual lap counters on the pagoda in operation. This was Ye Olde Dayes :)
Most of the race sequences are staged, but impressively so, with eight or ten cars dicing it out at what look like actual racing speeds, which really shouldn't have been a problem considering all the drivers that they had in the film. They intersperse occasional scenes from the 1930 and 1931 Five Hundreds, but the only real continuity problems these cause is the trees - they're leafy in those scenes, and bare in others. They've been careful (with one brief exception) to use only footage from the Depression rules races, which had radically different cars than what had been in use during the 1920s. This pleases me - one of my chief gripes is when, e.g., the stock footage rocket in an SF movie changes to about four different types during the course of the launch. None of that here.
The IMDB promises an incredible bounty of 1930s race drivers, but I got in too late, and saw only Billy Arnold, driving the car that he won the 1930 500 in. I covet this movie, but it's not out on DVD or tape :( I need to watch my TV schedules more zealously, I suppose.
*****
The weather has turned cool. It's a nice change. It was getting to the point where I was going to give in and turn on the air conditioner if the weather didn't break soon. Flaster was quite playful today, storming around the place like a maniac.
*****
Nabisco Cheese Nips are now indistinguishable from Sunshine Cheez-Its. They've abandoned their former cigar shape, and become flat squares. That depresses me, for some reason. They used to be two distinct products. When I was a child, it was derigeur to refer to Cheese Nips as Cheese Japs, the result of too many old B&W war movies.
*****
It seems that OSU has the 11th largest stadium in the world, capable of holding 103,801 drunken rioters. Joy.