Ron's Log

3 Women

A discussion on Metafilter of 3 Women, the Robert Altman film shot in and around Desert Hot Springs in the 1970s. With links to Roger Ebert's 2004 review of the movie and a review by David Sterritt.

Some screengrabs from the movie are here including this one of Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek at Coffee's Spa.

IMDB.

Working Mom Saves World

Pretty much.

You (Yes, You) Can Win A Free Dinner With George Clooney (the real George Clooney)

Good news! Two people will be selected to have dinner with George Clooney, travel and hotel included for the winner and a guest. The bad news is that President Obama will be at the dinner, too. "Three's a crowd, Barack!" Maybe if the winner brings the President a distracting gift, like an iPad, he'll got all wrapped up in Angry Birds and not notice when the winner and George slip off to a quieter place.

Start here. They use the word "today", but the rules say "[t]he Promotion starts at 12:00 a.m. (all times Eastern Time) on April 19, 2012 and ends at 11:59 p.m. on April 30, 2012."

Two winners will each receive the following prize package: round-trip tickets for winner and a guest from within the fifty U.S. States, DC, or Puerto Rico to a destination to be determined by the Sponsor; hotel accommodations; and dinner with President Obama and George Clooney on a date to be determined by the Sponsor (approximate retail value of all prizes $3,200). Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. Promotion open only to U.S. citizens, or lawful permanent U.S. residents who are legal residents of 50 United States, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and 18 or older (or of majority under applicable law).

What's America without choices:

• Go here to enter your name WITH A DONATION.
• Or, Go here to enter your name WITH NO DONATION.

PSUSD Digicom Film Festival - May 1

Student and teacher films, Tuesday May 1, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, Palm Springs High School Auditorium. Admission is free. The theme is Imagine.

Here's a video from the 2011 festival created by Evan Williams, a student at Palm Springs High:

To Be Released In 2013

With Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh. Story.

Dust Up At White Plains Airport

Shahrukh Khan is a big star in India and around the world. His filmography. He was selected as this year's Chubb Fellow at Timothy Dwight College at Yale. The Chubb Fellowship seems to be loosely defined, but "is designed to foster among the undergraduates of Timothy Dwight College and Yale University an interest in public affairs."

Mr. Kahn flew on a private plane to White Plains airport where he met our border guards. Now, the United States government is apologizing profusely for detaining him for 1½ to 2 hours at White Plains airport. Homeland Security can't give a reason for the delay, and, of course, Mr. Kahn (just like any other person delayed by Homeland Security) has no idea why it happened. But I suppose it has helped fulfill the goals of the Chubb Fellowship. In some of the comments on the news articles it has been suggested that he was profiled out because "he is a Muslim." He was born to Muslim parents, but Wikipedia includes this information:

After the death of his parents, Khan moved to Mumbai in 1991. He married Gauri Chibber, a Hindu, in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony on 25 October 1991. They have two children, son Aryan (b. 1997) and daughter Suhana (b. 2000). According to Khan, while he strongly believes in Allah, he also values his wife's religion. At home, his children follow both religions, with the Qur'an being situated next to the Hindu deities.

Video of his full Chubb Fellowship address (less than half an hour) is available here.

An example of what we were being protected from:

The report in the Hindustan Times.

Yale News calls Mr. Khan the "King Of Bollywood."

The Professionals - Eagle Mountain Railroad

The Eagle Mountain Railroad runs from the Union Pacific tracks on the east side of the Salton Sea, traverses Salt Creek basin, crosses the Coachella Canal, travels roughly parallel to the Bradshaw Trail for a ways, continues uphill and passes under I-10 west of Desert Center, and then to what was the Kaiser Eagle Mountain Mine. As I mentioned about a week ago, it has been used as a filming location for at least two movies. One of them is The Professionals, a 1966 western starring Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Jack Palance (as the evil, swarthy, and yet unstoppably sexy Mexican revolutionary Jesus Raza), Claudia Cardinale, and Ralph Bellamy.

The movie itself credits only "U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service, Death Valley National Monument, Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Valley of Fire State Park." IMDB lists locations as Las Vegas, Valley of Fire State Park, Indio, Warner Studios in Burbank, Death Valley National Monument, Lake Mead, and Mecca, California. I suppose "Mecca, California" may be standing in place for Eagle Mountain Railroad. Maybe a future reporter for The Desert Sun was responsible for identifying locations.

I've grabbed some screenshots from the parts of the movie shot on the Eagle Mountain Railroad. The parts shot in Valley of Fire State Park (beautiful, colorful rocks and slot canyons) and Death Valley National Monument (hell warmed over) are easy to spot, but I didn't grab any scenes from those.

My photo may be at the location of the two shots above.

I believe this is the same trestle as above. This is from a hike I took in 2007. My photo is distorted because it's a panorama created from several smaller images. The railroad trestle does not actually arch like that.

The first view of the steel trestle in the movie.

On a Jeep trip in 2008.

This scene with a joshua tree concerns me. No where does the Eagle Mountain Railroad reach the elevation where joshua trees would normally grow. This could be a transplanted one, or it could mean that some of the railroad shots were made elsewhere, possibly in Nevada.

No ambiguity about this shot. That's the Salton Sea in the background. There is nothing in the story to explain the occasional glimpses of a gigantic lake in what is supposed to be the most severe desert in all of Mexico.

This is the terminus of a narrow gauge mining car track. Maybe it was constructed just for the movie. There shouldn't be any little mines with tracks running out to the Eagle Mountain Railroad. The Eagle Mountain RR was solely for the use of Kaiser to carry iron ore from Eagle Mountain to Fontana. No little wanna-be gold miners tagging along.

Similar view about a week ago.

Here are some more of my photos of Eagle Mountain Railroad. And here are yet more.

A satellite view of the area, plain and annotated:

I'm not going to give you any better directions than this. It's not an area for casual exploration. It's difficult to get to, it's difficult to get out of. You can die there - easily. Four wheel drive is mandatory. Don't travel in just one vehicle. Take a cellphone. Cellphone coverage is spotty at best. Take a lot of water. Don't vandalize. Don't take souvenirs. Beware the Chocolate Mountains. They are just southeast of the railroad and are very clearly identified with frequent warning signs that they are a LIVE BOMBING RANGE. If you plan to hike in the area, be aware that you are close to sea level, so the temperatures are warmer than they are in the Palm Springs area. If you hike on the railroad it will be even hotter because of the black ties. There is no shade. There is no potable water - well, okay, the Coachella Canal water is probably drinkable, but you will fall in and drown while trying to get at it. It's very isolated. You can die there. Stay home. Rent the movie from Netflix.

Of course there are rattlesnakes! Who asked that?

Actress In A Supporting Role

The best supporting actress award never seemed so fascinating before this.

Rear Window

The full Rear Window panorama, digitally re-assembled.

Wings

Wings, the 1927 film that won the Oscar for "Outstanding Picture" at the first Academy Awards in 1929 has been restored and released on DVD. It's available at Netflix (DVD only, not streaming, I am told, no Blu-ray) or Amazon has it as a DVD or Blu-ray. Amazon has a deal where they make it available for streaming immediately after you buy the physical disk, they say. I've never tested that.

The disc comes with your choice of soundtracks: full orchestra with sound effects or pipe organ. There is no commentary on the disc, but there's a separate feature on the making of the film and its reception by the movie-going public. It was the most expensive film made at that time and the public LOVED it, even though tickets were $2 each. It was the first commercial, feature film that the U.S. Army had assisted in making. The flight and battle sequences were shot in Texas. It's monochromatic, but the flames on planes as they plummet to the earth were handpainted in color.

The Wikipedia article about Wings.

I looked up the N.Y. Times review of its premier. And let me tell you that one experience has me convinced the N.Y. Times paywall is doomed to fail big time. They have adopted all of the customer service qualities that AOL had about a dozen years ago. Much as it pains me to say it, the process of paying $3.95 for an archived Desert Sun article is far more pleasant than the 99¢ experience I had with the Times. Here, I give you 99¢ worth of history:

Movie Review
Wings (1927)
THE SCREEN; The Flying Fighters.
By MORDAUNT HALL.
Published: August 13, 1927

Amazing air duels and an impressive study of aviators are depicted in "Wings," Paramount's epic of the flying fighters of the World War, which was launched last night in the Criterion Theatre. After the exhibition of the first half of this absorbing subject, Commander Richard E. Byrd was noticed in the lobby talking to Jesse L. Lasky and the words of the hero of the North Pole and transatlantic flights evidently pleased the producer. As the Commander turned to re-enter the theatre he remarked:

"And I wouldn't say so if I didn't think it."

And there were scores of others who found the realism of the episodes highly exciting, not excepting a young officer of Uncle Sam's flying force who declared loudly:

"That crash in No Man's Land was a real bust-up."

If the audience was thrilled by some of the scenes in the first part of the production, the subsequent chapters must have proved ever more stimulating, for in the course of these sequences William A. Wellman, the director, has adroitly spliced actual war scenes with those filmed in this country specially for the production. There is an underlying idea throughout some of the episodes that the motto of the gallant warriors of the clouds was:

"Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we (may) die."

This feature gives one an unforgetable idea of the existence of these daring fighters—how they were called upon at all hours of the day and night to soar into the skies and give battle to enemy planes; their light-hearted eagerness to enter the fray and also their reckless conduct once they set foot on earth for a time in the dazzling life of the French capital.

The glimpses of the young uniformed men in the Folies-Bergère and other places are pictured as they often happened to the fighters of all the allied nations.

John Monk Saunders is responsible for the story, which aside from the climax of having John Powell, the hero, eventually bring down the plane in which is his friend, is a conventional narrative that serves its purpose as a background for the remarkable scenes in the air. Some of the incidents are based on memorable occurrences during the great war, notably the one in which Powell plunges through the air seeking vengeance on the enemy for having, as he then thinks, slain Bruce Armstrong, his buddy. He tears over the German lines, scatters troops, brings down hostile airmen; he swoops over the enemy trenches, catches German soldiers on the highroads, causes automobiles with staff officers to crash over inclines and sets fire to several sausage balloons.

Each time an airplane hurtled in flames to the earth there was a doleful hooting behind the screen. When the aviators are about to take-off and the propellers are set in motion, the sound of whirring motors makes these stretches all the more vivid.

The last chapter, that concerned with the return of Powell to his home in this country, is, like so many screen stories, much too sentimental, and there is far more of it than one wants.

In most of the scenes in which he appears Charles Rogers, as Powell, gives a sterling performance. He is especially clever in the Paris episodes, where he is supposed to be so inebriated that he fancies bubbles burst from everything that sparkles. Clara Bow, bright-eyed and attractive, does her bit to add to the interest of this photoplay. Richard Arlen as Armstrong is undoubtedly earnest in his acting, but there are moments when his head-shaking becomes a trifle tedious. "Gunboat" Smith, the ex-pugilist, is excellent as a Sergeant, who finds sometimes that physical persuasion is necessary.

The Magnascope, which gives a picture twice the usual size, is used to a great extent in this film.

The Flying Fighters.
WINGS, with Clara Bow, Charles Rogers, Richard Arlen, Gary Cooper, Jobyna Ralston, El Brendel, Arlette Marchal, Richard Tucker, "Gunboat" Smith, Henry B. Walthall, Julia Swayne Gordon, George Irving, Hedda Hopper and Nigel de Brulier, adapted from a story by John Monk Saunders, directed by William A. Wellman. At the Criterion Theatre.

The cast. Top billing to Clara Bow. Charles Rogers played Jack, Richard Arlen played Dave, Gary Cooper is listed below in smaller type.

Only after Jack beats the tar out of Dave do they suddenly realize their happy, joyful love for each other in the usual manly way.

Gary Cooper as Cadet White. He had only 90 seconds in this film. Prior to Wings he had been in The Winning Of Barbara Worth, but was not a big star. By the time Wings was released his star power had increased considerably and his visage was added to the film's advertising along with the three big stars.

I missed it the first time I watched it, because this is midway in a fascinating tracking shot, but them fellers ain't fellers! How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?

There are a zillion shots like this in the film with Charles Rogers or Richard Arlen at the controls of a biplane. They were three easy steps to making them: (1) teach your stars how to fly a biplane with all the skill of a WWI fighter ace; (2) bolt a camera in front of the cockpit aimed at the pilot; (3) install a remote so the star/pilot could operate the camera. Jackie Chan isn't half as accomplished as these guys.

The death scene.

The complete set of stills I grabbed from the film is here.