Published on 12, July, 2020
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I travelled around the States and Canada a few years ago. Loved it. If you enjoy reading, you might like 'Blue Highways', by William Least-Heat Moon. In the mid-80s, following his divorce, he left his university teaching post and travelled around the US in a rickety old Ford van that he'd converted by installing a camp bed and a bucket for a loo! He travelled only on the 'blue routes' on the map - the minor roads. It's a fascinating insight into small-town life in the US, but is also about one thinking man's personal journey towards some kind of inner peace and acceptance. I must read it again sometime.
That’s great and I too also have a fascination with small town America. I’m currently following a woman on YouTube who’s travelling around America and I love it when she goes through small towns, but looking them up on google earth is even more exciting! WoW, I’ve got loads of options now! Minder was ok. I only watched tv if I couldn’t get out of it so I wouldn’t say I was ever into any of the programs but some I could tolerate more than others. I am interested in looking the places up though and I love google earth. Cheers. This is way more exciting than being out ‘socialising’ with a bunch of nt’s! :-)
I'm always on either Google Maps or Google Earth, looking for places I read about or see in a film. I have a fascination with small-town America, and love just picking an interesting-sounding place at random and going down to street level to see the shops and bars, and the lie of the landscape. iMdb gives locations for all films and TV shows listed on there. If you liked Minder, too, there's a dedicated website where Minder nerds post pictures of locations as they are now alongside stills from the episodes. Someone, too, has posted on YouTube the route of the car chase in the Steve McQueen movie 'Bullitt' filmed with his dashcam, juxtaposed with the footage from the movie. That's fascinating to watch! Check it out...
Bullitt Filming Locations
Oh WoW, that’s such an exciting thing to do. I’ve been on google maps today, as I’m researching my neighbours Home land in Africa. I’m going to see if I can get her Home up on google maps to show her. I love what you do though, I’m going to try that myself. Sweeney was one of the programs I could watch as a kid. Most of tv I didn’t like but I did like something about that program, even though I would have been happier without a tv altogether. That’s amazing that the house is still there and how it’s social status has changed so dramatically. It’s like the human race has been evolving and evolving and we’re at a time now where it’s going round in circles and not really achieving anything much of anything. It’s time for a new level of awareness to step in. That’s us ;)
Actually, I’ve just realised I do a similar thing myself with books that I read. I love reading books by Irish authors, with the story based in Ireland and I look up the places mentioned, but I’ve never got them up on google maps before. I didn’t think of that. I can now re-read all the books by one of my favourite authors, and this time, look up all the places on google maps. How exciting! She’s one of only a few authors that I read and she’s dead now, so no more books, and I’ve missed reading them. I somehow got it into my head that I wouldn’t enjoy reading them again (even though as a kid I read the same book over and again) but now I know I will. I’m super excited. Thanks Tom :-)
I look up the locations where these programmes were filmed, then freeze the episodes at certain points and go to Google Maps to check how they look now. I was really surprised last night, watching an episode from Series 1 of The Sweeney - filmed in 1974. Regan drove into a small close in Putney, near where I was born, and entered a house there. I looked at the location on Google Maps - and it hasn't changed one bit in 44 years! Doors, windows, fences, street signs, colours - everything as it was. The only thing that has changed in that time is the social status of the area. In those days, it was still a working-class neighbourhood. Now, it's Millionaires-ville.
Hehe I love that ‘...I am a will be’ :-) I think Lauren Bacall is my new favourite person! :-D
Kathy Come Home is a great film, in fact, I think that might be my afternoon matinee today (or my morning treat ~ I haven’t got out of bed yet).
Oh yes, I love that era, I love how they talked, how they dressed, their social etiquette’s etc and the films make you feel good.
Like you I love the 30s/40s stuff..
“I am not a has-been. I am a will be.” - Lauren Bacall
I still need to see Kathy Come Home!
I’ll check some of those out although my favourite era is the 1930’s, early 40’s. I’ve seen bedazzled and lild you, I like the social history side of the films, probably more than the films themselves.
That sounds fab Tom, I love programmes from that era which showed the streets etc as they were then. I love walking around streets and looking at old buildings etc and imagining what the people were like who walked the streets years before me.
Yeah, all great films. The pre-code films have great female characters. I watched it’s a wonderful life again this year.
I like watching old British films mainly from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970's. There are a lot of these type of films on the Talking Pictures TV channel.
talkingpicturestv.co.uk/.../
Even if the film is not brilliant, the viewer can see social history (how people lived etc) in these past times:
Some of my favourites include:
Bedazzled (1967)
www.youtube.com/watch
The Bargee
The System (1964)
The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965)
Great films all!
Me too, BlueRay. Haven't had a TV since 2003. I've found a channel where I can watch re-runs of old TV series from the '70s and '80s. I've myself been having a feast of The Sweeney and Minder just recently - all filmed in the London streets I grew up in, and in a London long gone now...
I also like a good black and white film, and like you BlueRay some great female characters.
Mr Smith goes to Washington
Harvey
The loneliness of the lone distance runner
Billy Liar
Kes
To Kill a mocking bird
12 Angry men
The Quiet Man
Its a Wonderful Life
lost in translation
I only really watch old black and white movies and there’s loads of them on YouTube. I don’t have a television so I watch them on my phone or laptop. I’ve been having a feast of them over the last couple of weeks. I hardly ever know who anybody is (they all look the same, to me ;)) and I can never guess what their facial expressions etc are saying, but I love them. They always tell such wonderful stories, they’re not too long, the plot lines aren’t complicated, they always have a happy ending and they always show real caring and compassionate natures. They always teach you something about love and kindness, honesty and integrity. And the social rules are much easier to follow back then. The films that are pre code are interesting. They had more strong female characters.
I also find it difficult to name one film.
But Sleuth with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine is very satisfying and holds the attention. It is one of only two films where the full cast were nominated for best actor oscar - it only had two people in it. Of more modern films I enjoyed 'Hugo'. An older film I like is 'The day the earth caught fire', the conversation in that film is like in no other, a black and white British film of the early sixties it knocks other disaster movies for six. 'Paths of Glory' an early Stanley Kubrick film is thought provoking and another Kubrick film 'Barry Lyndon' has some of the most beautiful photography in a film ever.
Hi Alopchen,
Films are my passion. I must watch around 400 a year - many of them repeat watches. The narrative length of between, say 90 minutes and 130 or 140 minutes is perfect for me. It can sustain my attention. And it enables me to completely relax. When I'm watching a film, my anxiety is always suspended - even if it's a tense thriller or drama!
It's very hard to pick favourites. There are so, so many. I like blockbusters and action movies, comedies and tragedies, sci-fi, some horror (I prefer to read horror), and also small-scale indie films - such as those by one of my favourite film-makers, Jim Jarmusch.
If I gave a list of 50, I'd have to keep extending it and extending it. But I'll chuck a few in.
Perhaps my all-time favourite - seen more than most - is The Big Lebowski. After this would probably come Withnail and I.
Others, in no special order:
The Godfather movies, Goodfellas, Alien, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Shooter, The Game (a favourite), The Last Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Where Eagles Dare, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Wolf of Wall Street, practically anything starring Denzel Washington, Into the Wild, Mystic River, A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, Once Upon A Time In The West, Unforgiven, Fury, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Zulu, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Ghost Dog, Mystery Train, Paterson.... and several hundred others. But that'll do for now!