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I managed to find the original newspaper article about the cowboys finding the "winged dragon" in Tombstone!
(google "april 26 1890 tombstone epitaph")
[url]https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95060905/1890-04-26/ed-1/seq-3/[/url]
Now that's a step back in time!
This led me to some more recent discoveries. I didn't even know that finding pterodactyls is a thing, like Big Foot.
"Pterodactyl in the Cornfields of Missouri":
[url]http://cryptozoologynews.com/pterodactyl-in-the-corn-fields-of-missouri-town/[/url]
"A Few Sightings of Pterosaurs in 2016":
[url]http://www.livepterosaurs.com/inamerica/blog/?p=1543[/url]
And there have been a number of alleged sightings over the years in New Guinea:
[url]http://www.livedino.com/modernpterosaurs/[/url]
[url]http://www.livepterosaur.com/LP_Blog/archives/7525[/url]
[url]http://www.live-pterosaur.com/Prodigy/nation2006/[/url]
Fascinating stuff.
I kind of hope they aren't corrected. Someone already quoted this below, but here is the quote and the source:
"Gwangi's apparent color changes several times over the course of the movie because there was so much animation to do that Harryhausen did not have enough time to do proper color testing."
[url]http://gwangipedia.wikia.com/wiki/Gwangi[/url]
"Gwangi's apparent color changes several times over the course of the movie because there was so much animation to do that Harryhausen did not have enough time to do proper color testing."
Source: [url]http://gwangipedia.wikia.com/wiki/Gwangi[/url]
1. T.J. wanted to train the Eohippus for a circus act, which will bring in more money in their show's format. People come to the circus and sit in an arena. What would you have them all do, thousands of people walk single-file past the cage to see it? That isn't their show's format.
2. Tuck wasn't a very nice guy initially when he showed back up, so some mistrust is warranted.
3. It is a similar storyline to "King Kong," so yes, the unpleasant people in this tale exhibit disrespect for nature, along with greed: they are only thinking of themselves. There would be no story without this.
4. The old woman who didn't want to mess with the prehistoric animals, in order not to upset Gwangi, was the only gypsy who had any sense. She wasn't afraid of Gwangi, in my opinion; she was a realist. The others were stupid not to listen to her (annoying though she was).
5. Elephant battle -- since it was a clay elephant battling a clay dinosaur, I enjoyed looking at Harryhausen's work. If it had been a real elephant, it would have been different.
6. Gwangi in the church -- I loved that scene. Spectacular, with fire, and Gwangi in his death throes. Harryhausen at his finest. I wonder how he worked around that fire.
The movie did have a strong moral message. I wonder if it stemmed from the growing anti-pollution and anti-nuclear movements in the 1960s -- "man playing God" -- or maybe, since O'Brien authored both it and King Kong, it was a similar theme and nothing more.
*****SPOILERS****
[QUOTE]"The Captain is responsible for the lives of everybody on board, INCLUDING the ones he threw overboard. Following that logic he only saved half the lives he was responsible for, and at that the easiest ones to keep alive."[/QUOTE]
If he hadn't ordered some overboard, they all would have died. The boat was only meant for 9, not 26.
"He did not obey the rules he himself had set; the child was 'deadweight' and needed to be jettisoned (following his logic). If this did not happen he had no right to throw anyone else overboard."
He set rules, and they were HIS rules. He chose to make an exception, since both mother and father were being cast into the sea, in order that there would be a future for that family. I don't see him as a hypocrite. I don't envy him, either.
"What you then have is a man who throws sick, unconscious people, incapapable of self defense, out into the open sea. The criteria for who is cast out is not strictly adhered to, which makes this man a hypocrit as well as a murderer."
I would love to see how you would have handled it. I assume everyone would have ended up dead under your watch. The man was in an impossible situation. Perhaps he should have kept all of the sick people and thrown the healthy ones into the sea?
"Furthermore, no attempt is made to improve the situation. In the beginning the lifeboat finds itself in the middle of a debris field. It is possible to steer and propel the lifeboat. Why then does the Captain not try and find suitable pieces of flotsam for smaller rafts to get people out of the lifeboat and water?"
Because at that time, it had not dawned on him not to try and save all 26 people. He still had faith he could save all of their lives. The more experienced captain and the other mate helped him see this was not the case. Even if he had done that, those people would have been likely doomed, as no S.O.S. signal had been sent.
No, the premise behind Lifeboat [spoiler]"Several survivors of a torpedoed ship find themselves in the same boat with one of the men who sunk it."[/spoiler] is not the same as the premise of this movie.
I liked it. I like that they used their real voices instead of dubbing. It would have been challenging to cast someone with Frankie Valli's three-octave voice. It made sense why Eastwood cast the guy who had played Valli for 1,200 performances -- as Eastwood stated, "How much better could you know a character?"
It wasn't a super flashy film. No explosions, no Hollywood glitz, no special effects. Just a simple story about some guys from Jersey, and I was fine with the way it was told.
This was Clint's directorial debut in a musical, but he had sung in "Paint Your Wagon" and "Kelly's Heroes" and directed music-driven movies like "Honkytonk Man," "Bird," and others. I don't think he wanted the voices too perfect.
I disagree with this. Dubbing would have ruined the movie, or at the very least made the suspension of disbelief more difficult for the audience. Clint likes realism and grit, so it doesn't surprise me that he didn't dub their voices. Hearing their real voices was charming and added more to the movie for me. Sure, it would have been nice if the guy playing Valli could have reached a three-octave range, but I would rather have someone in the role that had played that part as many times as he had.
Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin sang in "Paint Your Wagon" and thankfully used their real voices and nothing was dubbed. Would have been a different movie otherwise.
Isn't it? I didn't know either, until watching this movie.
If you smash a hole in a mountain side to gain access to the Forbidden Valley, be sure to leave that hole unpatched so million-year-old creatures can wander through the hole straight into modern times.
If a circus is coming to your town, do not build a nice cathedral there.
[quote]You really need a good art director to keep Gwangi the same color throughout the picture.[/quote]
Trivia: "Gwangi's apparent color changes several times over the course of the movie because there was so much animation to do that Harryhausen did not have enough time to do proper color testing."
Source: [url]http://gwangipedia.wikia.com/wiki/Gwangi[/url]
[quote]That when you empty your rifle into Gwangi, it is pretty well pointless in throwing the empty gun at the beast. I pretty well thought that would be the final thing that killed him[/quote]
Hahaha! When James Franciscus did that, I LOL'd. Blam! Blam! Blam! *throws rifle at dinosaur and runs* LOLLLLLLLLLL
She was the moral voice in the movie, albeit an annoying one. The circus folk and cowboys were meddling with nature on a scale never intended. The gypsies wanted to leave nature alone. The cowboys and circus folk couldn't resist, and we saw what happened as a result. The primary cause and human motivations were similar King Kong: human greed, lack of empathy toward animals or wildlife, Man's belief that nature should bend to his will. I do not blame the old gypsy woman.
Still, if she had gotten trampled on, I would have cried ... (wait for it... pun alert!) crocodile tears.
I didn't particularly care for her, but let's get the facts straight. SPOILER ALERTS
1. She didn't "have her men steal the Eohippus." Miguel stole it on his own. Her other son picks up the bag with the Eohippus inside and she states, "No! Leave it. He who takes from Gwangi the evil one is cursed." The man defies her and takes it anyway, saying, "Only by an old woman's tongue." The old woman persists, saying, "If he (the Eohippus) does not go back to the Forbidden Valley, we shall all suffer a terrible fate." He mouths off, "Keep your superstitions to yourself, old woman!" and walks away with the bag. She says, "Fool! One day he will learn to obey the law of Gwangi. Or, like his brother, he will perish!" 2. "which leads Tuck and the others to the valley" Nope--The archaeologist was led to the valley from wanting to do scientific research and Tuck was led there -- the first time, at least -- motivated by greed and the thought of selling the horse to a rival circus. 3. "Where they encounter Gwangi and get attacked" yeah because of the aforementioned reasons, and their stupid decision to go after the Eohippus which had rightly been set freed by the gypsies. 4. "Which results in Gwangi taken captive" --again, humans' fault. They should have first attempted to get Gwangi back to his valley (fault of humans that he left the valley in the first place) -- and if not, killing him would have been better than the fate they had planned for him, taking him back to town so they could profit on him in a circus; 5. the dwarf releasing Gwangi was the two gypsies' attempt to set things right, since the other humans had failed to do so. She had no reason to think the greedy circus folk would ever let him go (and she was right; they wouldn't have and there was no reasoning with them).
Another post below; (ran out of room).
Haha guys!
Yes, the fake clay elephant.
Some trivia on the model elephant:
"Special effects master Ray Harryhausen has said that sequence of the elephant performing its act and its subsequent fight with Gwangi were done with no shots of a real elephant because no such animal was available. However, there is an elephant in the very early scene of the Wild West show's parade through the town, and Ray's animation puppet is a perfect double for it."
They really do make it worth watching! I agree, technically it qualifies as good rather than great, yet with Grant and Loy in it, I will rewatch it many more times. Such an enjoyable and funny movie. :)
Do you happen to remember if it was a period piece, or what era/decade it depicted?
I found an Australian website that lists their films by decade or genre. Realizing that you said it [i]may[/i] be Australian, although not necessarily. [url]https://aso.gov.au[/url] The site includes video clips and the "Curator's Notes" per film are of special interest (they do include spoilers).
The site includes a list of films sorted by decade or by genre.
I found:
Flirting (1990) [url]https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/flirting/[/url]
Also I found a history of Canadian television that may be useful: [url]http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/listing_and_histories/television[/url]
I loved it, too! Was it my favorite Cary Grant movie ever? No, but I enjoyed the black humor of them [spoiler]sinking more and more dough into that money pit, the double well digging scene, [/spoiler] and it was another classic Grant film of him doing what he does best.
I am a Conan fan, but I was disappointed. Parts of the show were embarrassing. He needed to show more sensitivity and not do his usual schtick. Haitians are friendly people, but they must be sick of opportunistic Americans.
Some of his comedy appeared to be well received, while other bits did not. I think he should have toned it down this trip. I know he was well-meaning and wanted to help the Haitian people, but he also wanted to do a comedy special. He should have shown a little more empathy and a little less comedy, since some of his comedy did not translate well due to the language barrier and because some of it just wasn't funny (giving that kid the hat that said "Haiti is great already." Really??).
Again, I love Conan. I watch him every night. I would have liked to have seen something a bit different this time than the clueless, tone-deaf American comedian/traveler, when not everyone gets the joke -- because maybe there was no decent joke to get. Or maybe it didn't play well because Haiti is a poor country with as many problems as Haiti has. A comedian can't tell jokes without knowing his audience -- it was painfully obvious this show was designed to cater to Americans back home and not to the Haitians right in front of him.
Some of the bits were funny. But not all of them were, and occasionally they were cringe-worthy.