ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[memento]

From Wikipedia: A family is on the run from a mysterious, inexplicable, unstoppable event that threatens not only humankind – but the most basic human instinct of them all: survival. The way this event threatens the human race is in three stages. The first stage is the loss of speech, the second stage is physical disorientation, and the third stage is suicide.

[Fran]

This musical sci-fi film was directed by Alfred L. Werker.

From IMDb:  An aviator who crash-landed on an island in the South Pacific returns home to find that he is the last fertile man left on Earth after an epidemic of masculitus.

[southendmd]

IMDb: On May 30, 1889 the South Fork Dam, which maintained a pleasure lake for wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists and their families, failed due to very heavy rains and poor maintenance by the dam's owners. The burst dam sent a wall of water and debris, 40 feet high and half a mile wide, 14 miles downstream to the bustling industrial city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. More than 2000 people lost their lives in the disaster. This documentary tells the story, and tells us that the disaster was easily avoidable.

[MaineWriter]

Hi everyone!

I just took a nap and had a really really crazy dream which prominently featured Paul (!). I took that as a sign I was supposed to get up and play a movie.

"Krakatoa, East of Java" immediately comes to mind as a K disaster but I know I played that, so let me go hunt for something else.

L

----

Killer on Board ... with Patty Duke Astin, Claude Akins, George Hamilton, and Jane Seymour (?!) is the story of a cruise ship, its passengers, a trans-Atlantic crossing and...A KILLER VIRUS!

Sorry, couldn't find a picture!

[southendmd]

Hi everyone!

I just took a nap and had a really really crazy dream with prominently featured Paul (!). I took that as a sign I was supposed to get up and play a movie.

"Krakatoa, East of Java" immediately comes to mind as a K disaster but I know I played that, so let me go hunt for something else.

L

So, dreaming of me makes you think of disasters?  LOL

Welcome back, Leslie!  We missed you!

[MaineWriter]

So, dreaming of me makes you think of disasters?  LOL

Welcome back, Leslie!  We missed you!

Well, I didn't know the movie round was on disasters, but yes, in the dream we were all on a hurricane watch.

It featured boats, water, kids participating in breast cancer fund raisers wearing pink baseball caps and a big bottle (really big) of Tanqueray gin.

Thanks for the welcome back!

L

[southendmd]

Well, I didn't know the movie round was on disasters, but yes, in the dream we were all on a hurricane watch.

It featured boats, water, kids participating in breast cancer fund raisers wearing pink baseball caps and a big bottle (really big) of Tanqueray gin.

L

Aha.  I have more in common with gin than with volcanoes.  Wait, that doesn't sound right.

[Fran]

A comment from IMDb:

If you liked "Gladiator," then "The Last Days of Pompeii" is a good choice for an empty afternoon of slash-em-up moralizing. The sets are expansive and ornate, there's loads of action and the story, though pretty one-note, is well-written and well-acted. Normally I can't stand classical actors, but the performances in "Pompeii" are so energetic that I got sucked in, anyway. The moral underpinning of the movie does include a couple of appearances by Jesus Christ, complete with awed crowds of followers and the obligatory boys choir, but compared with some of the later Jesus epics that Hollywood produced ("King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told"), "Pompeii" handles the material with considerable flair. The only major nitpick I have for this movie is its freewheeling use of history. At most, the story only covers 20 years, but Jesus died around 35 AD and Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. But then, when has Hollywood let the truth get in the way of a good story?

=aside= Leslie
Welcome back!!

[Ellemeno]

This was insightful, from IMDb:  Was there something in the water in 1979? I was reading up recently about some of the films that major movie stars made in 1979 and it is remarkable how many actors were busy wasting their talents on duds in that year. Michael Caine in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure; Laurence Olivier in Dracula; Roger Moore in Escape to Athena; Jason Robards in Hurricane; Peter Cushing in A Touch of the Sun; Donald Sutherland in Bear Island; James Mason and Anthony Quinn in The Passage; Robert Shaw and Lee Marvin in Avalanche Express; and Richard Harris in A Game For Vultures. Even some directors seemed to be affected by the curse of 1979 - Steven Spielberg, for instance, made his only fully-fledged turkey in the shape of "1941". The '79 trend for big stars in bad films also extended to Sean Connery. Poor old Sean's 1979 film, Meteor, is a disaster movie of stupefying awfulness.



Sean Connery    ...   Dr. Paul Bradley
Natalie Wood    ...   Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya
Karl Malden    ...   Harry Sherwood, NASA
Brian Keith    ...   Dr. Alexei Dubov
Martin Landau    ...   Maj. Gen. Adlon
Trevor Howard    ...   Sir Michael Hughes   
Richard Dysart    ...   Secretary of Defense
Henry Fonda    ...   The President

[MaineWriter]

The original Titanic movie. One of my father's favorites. How many times I have seen this? LOL