I’ve always loved the cumbersome nature of old film and recording technology. At the same time, though, I’ve never been able to truly grasp it. Nowhere is this more true than with the above fascinating reel showing the method by which sound and film are recorded in the early 1930s
Apropos of yesterday’s semi-deep-dive into food on airplanes of the past, here’s a silent reel of 1970s footage depicting a few meals served in a first class cabin of a United Airlines Boeing 747. The steak actually looks rather good though there are too many carrots and no steak fries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKaeIhGT368https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PF_bkJhoIE It’s easy to make fun of airplane food but frankly I’ve always (mostly) liked it. As a kid traveling on PanAm I looked forward to the Chicken Kiev, a scrumptious dish I never saw offered in a restaurant. If I’m traveling on Jet Blue Mint, I’m treated to a
Yesterday we looked at two examples of the ‘upper berth as comedic set-piece’ genre. As far as I know, the first extended example of this routine is in Laurel & Hardy’s ‘Berth Marks’ (1929), their second sound film. To be honest, that statement is based on no research whatsoever on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-cHtE5AYQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJoiBRIxpwM The actor Robert Taylor was an avid flyer starting in the 1930s. He often flew himself and his co-stars to location, terrifying the studio executives who saw their valuable ‘properties’ vulnerable to sudden wreckage and instant death. (Planes then didn’t have built-in parachutes to guide them to the ground
Here’s a short, rather astounding clip from 1974 wherein legendary sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke calmly and confidently explains to a father and his young son various not-yet-invented things that will dominate our future including, but not limited to, the home computer, the internet, remote workplaces, Tickets.Com, online banking and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24XNg4DQTr8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98TETzMWjTg It’s hard to pick a favorite Howard Hawks films given the diverse amount of genres he worked in and always at such a high level. “To Have and Have Not’, ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Rio Bravo’, ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘Red River’–Jesus, what an absurd list of genres to have conquered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2itmdeH0nQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEn3tjbYO8M Howard Hawks was what used to be known as a ‘man’s man’. He was a sportsman (another defunct term) who raced cars and motorcycles, flew planes, hunted, fished, rode horses, the whole shmeer. His love of flying was well documented in several movies–‘The Dawn Patrol’, ‘Air Force’ and the
I mentioned on Monday that we flew in a Biplane this past weekend and experienced one of life’s must-do activities. (Cheap is wasn’t. But I’m happier paying for that than I am for a theater ticket to a Broadway musical I’m sorry that I wound up buying a ticket for).
This past weekend we attended the Rhinebeck Aerodrome, an amazing outdoor (and indoor) display of vintage aircraft, which not only serves as a museum of flight but which also offers an air show consisting of stunt flying of vintage planes by some very very very brave, well trained pilots. As