I love that movie.
I don’t remember enough about that show to remember how often they were actually going to space, versus a desk job.
In my heretical opinion Duel is still Spielberg’s best film. Mistakes and all (there are several).
Same with Nirvana’s “Polly” (Wikipedia:)
According to Vig in the 2005 Classic Albums: Nirvana - Nevermind documentary, Cobain accidentally sang the first two words of the third verse, “Polly said,” too early, during the instrumental break, but the band decided to leave it in.[7] However, earlier versions of the song also feature this line, including the original home demo, the 1989 Peel version, and most pre-Nevermind live versions.
Also NASA was never a military organization like it was portrayed in the series. True all early astronauts came from the military, but the show makes it look like the USAF was in charge of the entire space program.
The higher-ups were USA, but Major Healey wore a green uniform. He must have been Army.
The lines were especially blurred during the Gemini program, because at the time the USAF was heavily pushing to expand Gemini into a standing military capability to conduct manned space missions for national defense purposes. Manned Orbiting Laboratory - Wikipedia
Captain/Major Nelson was a Mercury, Gemini AND Apollo astronaut!
Specifically from the Engineers, who provided quite a few of the Army’s aviators.
Wally Schirra flew all three for real, and Gus Grissom flew Mercury and Gemini (and of course died on the ground in Apollo 1).
John Young was part of the second astronaut group selected and flew on Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle over a span of 18 years.
My brother-in-law wanted to check out the sound on his home theater system, so he screened Fantsia 2000. I just noticed that the first movement of Symphony No. 5 had been severely truncated, missing, among other things, the oboe cadenza.
Many/all of them are truncated. I know Firebird and Rhapsody in Blue well enough to know they are truncated, so I kind of assume the rest are as well.
On some DVD extra they were discussing talking to James Levine about this, and the conversation went something like:
Disney: “Do you think we can make a 5 minute version of the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 5th?”
Levine: “That depends which 5 minutes it is”
(Heavily paraphrased from memory.)
Also, glad to see someone other than me ever acknowledging the existence of Fantasia 2000, which I think is in general criminally overlooked.
Aside: The original plan for Fantasia was to have maybe three or four movies’ worth of segments, and to continually rotate them through the theatrical release, so every time you went to see it, there’d be a couple of new songs. A bold experiment, that didn’t quite work out.
“Why, he’s playing a cadenza! He must be out of his mind! He thinks it’s an oboe concerto!”
Exactly. I was waiting to shout that out to my niece and nephews. Very disappointed. So this morning I called it up on Youtube for them.
I went to New York City for a weekend and saw it at a theater near Times Square. It was fun to watch the Rhapsody In Blue segment and see animations of places I had been to earlier in the day.
“They’ve got a new theme going on down there; I can’t believe it!”
I was just reminded of Peter Schickele yesterday watching a documentary about Horn & Hardart automats.
I agree. I love both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, despite the cuts they made.
This isn’t something I just realized, but a question I have always had, about the Hitchcock movie The 39 Steps.
In the first music hall scene, when there are gunshots and a stampede to the door, the hero (Richard Hannay) rescues a somewhat exotic-looking young lady with an accent and gets her safely out to the street, whereupon she asks him “May I come home with you?” He says “What’s the idea?” in a friendly but curious tone, and she says “Well, I’d like to.” Then he says “Well, It’s your funeral” and proceeds to take her home on a bus.
We learn later what she really wanted, but before we find that out, what would we, the audience, have been expecting from this woman in 1935? And what would Hannay have been thinking (remembering that he was visiting from Canada, if that makes any difference)? Was it that she was something like a streetwalker, plying her trade? What I’m looking for is a social context to interpret this scene, because in the social context I am familiar with it doesn’t make sense. If he was a nice young man, as he was being portrayed as, would he have been so easily persuaded to take a strange woman home with him, however attractive?
Damsel in distress.
BTW, if you get the chance, watch the stage version, a four-person show.