I was going to post a short video that was relevant to Lawrence’s interests, but I can’t get it to display properly here. The first five or so seconds are cut off, and since it is only a 14 second long video, that just doesn’t work.
I was going to post a short note on a movie we recently watched, but there are no good videos of the bridge bombing from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” on YouTube. At least, none that I can find, and I wanted to use that to illustrate my point. (I found one of the fuel dump scene, but that really doesn’t do a good job of showing what I wanted to talk about.)
Edited to add: Okay, I found one that gives a good illustration of what I’m talking about.
This is clips of aircraft footage from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”. I’ve set it to start with the bridge attack at 8:41.
“Bridges” won an Academy Award for special effects in 1955. Interestingly, the other nominees were “The Rains of Ranchipur“…
…and “The Dam Busters“. We’ve seen “Dam Busters”, but not “Rains”. I may try to sell that to the Saturday Movie Group. On the one hand, it seems like one of those typical potboiler romantic melodramas, with a natural disaster thrown in. On the other hand, that cast: Lana Turner, Richard Burton, Fred MacMurray, and Michael Rennie (among others). On the gripping hand, the blu-ray is pricy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Olo49ATSMg&t=33s maybe?
URL cued to time.
That’s an excellent video, Joe, and one I intend to watch in full when I have more time.
The “Toko-Ri” clip is pretty short, and doesn’t really make the point I want to make, which is: the miniature and model work in the movie is simply amazing. I don’t think you could do it today in CGI and have it look anywhere near as good as it does using practical effects on film in the 1950s.