One of the tragedies of the racing blogosphere is that Patrick's "Motorsport Ramblings" only features one post per week. He's a talented writer and clearly would rather dish up one excellent post than numerous mediocre ones, an honourable approach. This week he's hit on a fabulous topic: movies about racing. I strongly encourage you to go read it. As I mentioned in the comments of his post, my favourite racing movie is the "Dust to Glory" Baja 1000 documentary, produced by Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown (the man behind "The Endless Summer" and "On Any Sunday").
[tangent alert] Although I despise being in water, I love surfing movies, and "The Endless Summer" is one of the best (incidentally, another great one is one of Dana Brown's other movies, "Step Into Liquid"). Two more worth a look are "Riding Giants" and the PBS special "Mavericks", both of which feature a surf mecca round the corner from me, Mavericks, in Half Moon Bay, CA. [end of tangent]
Anyway, go read Patrick's post, then with the winter closing, go rent the following great auto-, moto- or racing-related movies:
- "Dust to Glory" - Cinematic perfection: wonderful storytelling, beautiful photography
- "Faster" - Mark Neale's MotoGP documentary
- "The Doctor, the Tornado and the Kentucky Kid" - the sequel to "Faster"
- "Le Mans" - the best fictional racing movie ever
- "In the Lap of the Gods" - Behind the scenes of Martin Short's 2006 Le Mans effort
- "Long Way Round" - 7-part documentary in which two guys ride around the world on motorbikes. One happens to be a movie star.
- "TT - A Film Documentary" - The best film to capture the spirit of the Isle of Man TT.
- "Ronin" - Starring Bob DeNiro, directed by Frankenheimer (who directed the 60s classic "Grand Prix"), has one of the best car chases of all time.
- "Bullitt" - Another great car chase movie, starring car nut Steve McQueen and set in my fair city, San Francisco, and featuring one shot just around the corner from my house.
2 comments:
Interesting point about how there have been great racing films, but they've all been documentaries. Motor racing is ideally suited to the documentary format, although I've never really seen a feature-length documentary.
Probably the best one that I can recall (actually a TV programme) was a fantastic 1hr Equinox piece on the disaster that was the development of the Ford Turbo F1 engine in the 1980s.
You mention it, but Grand Prix is another racing fans must see. It gives us a glimpse of F1 back in the 60s, and has some cool lap footage including the sounds of rpms while shifting gears. Some cameoes including Bruce McClaren, Jack Brabham, and Jim Clark.
As far as documentaries go, I would add Super Speedway, narrated by Mario Andretti. Filmed in IMAX, has some great open wheel visual footage.
Post a Comment