0Anthony @ LGMotorsports

Didn't know if you guys have seen this yet or not.

Could rank up there with Grand Prix and Senna as one of the best car movies, if he does it right.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/01/17/r...lming-at-ring/

John Shiels

Hopefully think it will be good. Codeblack bought Senna and it arrived in Italian and for EU VCR I told him to fly to Italy and get a translator!

63Corvette

I'm lookin forward to seein it

johninar

I really enjoyed Senna, look forward to this one.

Rob31

Ron Howard has made some really great flicks . Cant wait for this one .

CodeBlack

va fa cullo. Translate that.

RX-Ben

Well, I am hoping they keep dialogue to a minimum.
The sport/feel/experience is visceral & truly awesome (as in LeMans) until you start screwing it up with words.

Zoxxo

There will be some real challenges to making this a compelling movie for racing fans in general and especially for those of us who lived that era. Steve McQueen had the actual Le Man race and the actual Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s to work with. It was all filmed with the same cameras at the same time so it blended well in the editing booth. Opie can't be crashing 1976 F1 cars (not least Ferrari 312Ts and Tyrell P34 6-wheelers!) So, how does he blend that footage in and make it look current?

Then there's the problem that racing fans are like little kids and don't want to see all that icky kissing and "cootie stuff." The very thing that real racing fans love about "Le Mans" is that all the non-racing stuff is forgettable (I saw Le Mans "first day, first showing.")

"Grand Prix" is fun to watch for all the racing footage but again, it was current stuff (insane - watch the footage of Spa's old long course with phone poles and hay bales in the rain!) so it blended into the film fairly well. We won't discuss the F3 cars "rebodied" as F1 cars issue

From all I've been reading Mr. Howard has been doing his research well. We'll see. Good racing movies are very few and very far between. If Opie's in doubt he should release the movie while insisting that it be shown as a doube feature with Stallone's "Driven" as the second feature for comparison purposes.

By the way, the (non-formula) camera car for "Grand Prix" was a Ford GT40 driven by Phil Hill.

Z//

jcosta79

As long as it's not anything like that horrific nightmare called DRIVEN, we should be in for a treat.

0Anthony @ LGMotorsports

There was a lot of things going on for Grand Prix, while not every car was 100% an F1 car, it is probably some of the best footage and access into that life during the 1960's especially with Enzo giving him full access to Ferrari during the time.

Grand Prix and LeMans are going to be very hard to beat.....Senna, well that is in a league all of it's own. Even my wife who doesn't really like racing was in tears during that one.

Zoxxo

The only real F1 cars in the movie were those filmed in the real racing scenes and those in the pits, etc. None of the ones being used by the production company were actual F1 cars. I realize that no one not a real F1 fan would be likely to know this (or care) but for those of us who are...

Oh, absolutely! It's always a treat to watch that stuff. I was watching a bit of the Monaco race footage last night and it's really something to see how much the track surroundings have changed - in particular the length of the tunnel which was *much* shorter in those days. No catch fencing, of course - spectators took their chances, too.

Actually, I don't count "Senna" as a racing movie in the sense we're discussing. It's a biography about a racER that has some great racing ("newsreel") footage in it. But it's not really a film you go see for the racing drama. It was very good, though.

Z//

ps. I actually saw Grand Prix in first run release in the theater - at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Took my girlfriend on a date

Feffman

Please no more quarters on the track to pick up. I like Stallone, but talk about hokey.

Feff

0Anthony @ LGMotorsports

I had heard that they showed that movie in a 'wider' screen that was almost a panoramic screen....would love to see it re-shown on the big screen.

jcosta79

I'm not sure what the norm was for Hollywood releases at that time, but the Blu-Ray version of Grand Prix is displayed at 2.2:1.

This is wider than your standard HD format of 1.78:1 but most films these days are shot in 2.35:1 and some are even wider.

Ben Hur was shot using 70mm film giving it an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 which, I believe, is at the upper extreme for Hollywood movies.

Zoxxo

Yes. The film format was "Cinerama." It was a wide screen system that required a special size screen (kind of like our 16:9 TVs of today) and used three projectors - each to cover 1/3 of the screen. Very high-tech for the time (1966.) Remember, this was before the digital age so all the projectors had to be *mechanically* synchronized. The theater I mentioned was one specially designed and built to display that format movie.

"2001 A Space Oddysey" was also originally a Cinerama film. (I also so that in theatrical release - several times, in fact -ahem ). That was shown at the original Hollywood Cinerama theater on Hollywood Blvd.

Z//

jcosta79

Actually, Grand Prix (from what I could find) was shot in "Super Panavision 70" which has an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. That is the same format displayed on the Blu-Ray version of the film.

Cinemascope screens (your "other" option when purchasing a screen for your home theater) have a ratio of 2.35:1 which is what the majority of Hollywood movies today are filmed in.

Zoxxo

Correct. I was mixing my eras there.

The original Cinerama film format never caught on (for what seem to be obvious reasons - cost, cost, and cost.) So "Grand Prix" (and "2001") were shot in one of the three forms of 70mm available at the time and then displayed in the true Cinerama theaters (wrap-around screens) using a "rectified" print. Single projector display, though, not the original Cinerama thing (1952.)

My grandmother was a real movie freak and whenever she'd visit us in So Cal (she was from Illinois) she'd always take me with her to see movies. One of those movies was the original "This Is Cinerama" with the famous roller coaster scene. I still remember it vividly.

Z//

CorvetteZ51Racer

There was also that little issue in Driven about the orange flames and smoke coming from the car that burns Methanol. I guess a clear flame and no smoke wouldn't be that exhilarating.

But the man hole cover thing was cool and accurate. When I worked the Houston Gran Prix back in 2000 before it went around Reliant, we spent the first hour of the weekend inspecting all of the man hole covers for hold-down bolts.

Zoxxo

What would have been *really* cool is sparks and smoke falling to the ground behind the cars like from the space ships in the early Flash Gordon films.

Definitely. The man hole cover issue has been real since around 1978+ when the serious ground effect cars came into being. At Long Beach back then they had to tack weld the covers down along the track.

Z//

napacruzerc5

Wasn't the first full length (and boy was it long) Cinerama movie "How The West Was Won?"