Grand Prix Rejects

Duval/Harry really reminded me of A.J. Foyt, mostly because of the accent and the look, and that appealed to me. I didn't really see a problem with Cruise really, in fact personally I think the acting all round was excellent. The wrecks I will agree with and yes they were overdone a bit, but in the end it's a Hollywood production, and you can't expect otherwise. The score is stuck in my head now, just fantastic. I think the film also reaffirms the fact that NASCAR/oval racing isn't as easy as it seems, this of course directed to people who think its a walk in the park (of course, none of them here). The nod to how hard it was to get into CART IndyCar back then is also a nice touch. The secondary plots were good, the friendship plot between Cole and Rowdy was good I think. The love plot was decent I guess. Great movie all round though!

HonoraryNortherner wrote:[There was a documentrary shown on BBC4 a couple of months ago about Group B, and it was brilliant. Lots of great footage plus interviews with the likes of Rohl, Mouton et all, even Roland Gumpert. Not sure if it came out on DVD or not, but I hope it's on youtube as i'd love to see it again (would check but youtube is blocked at work.... :S). A great insight in rally at that time.

I must admit I do prefer documentaries, as I've always held the belief that racing at its best doesn't need dressing up, it has all the ingredients all ready to be a fantastic story, whether it be bravery, action, danger, inter-personal rivalries and politics. I've never seen Le Mans yet but from what I've heard I'll definately make an effort to check it out.

As for films, I thought Cars was fun with all the in-jokes. I saw driven as a 10 year old an loved it, but haven't seen it for a while, not sure how it would look now.... From memory it did seem a bit 'liberal'. I though Senna was ok, but kind of skipped over quite alot. I don't like the way they portrayed Prost as the bad guy, to me that seemed unfair.

Mate I posted the Le Mans link a few posts back, here you go

The rarity of racing films as a whole, let alone good ones means that yes usually documentaries are better. But if you can get as much as possible accurate, with a hint of drama (Le Mans), you got yourself a stunner. Even a bit more drama won't really hurt (DoT). I mean, what I'm trying to say is, as long as it isn't Driven or Talladega Nights then it's good Senna I did not enjoy so much. Skipping Berger completely in addition to many other things meant I couldn't really appreciate it. I do understand there's a limit but you can't just leave out Berger like that, or the inter-Brazil rivalry with Piquet for instance. I watched Cars when it came out, I was 5 and knew nothing about oval racing. Now much more knowledgable, I rewatched it, and actually it's excellent from my more mature perspective. Obviously its more of a moral story than a racing story, but I thought it was pretty well done, and it's a lot deeper and emotional when watched from an older audience.

HonoraryNortherner wrote:

Jeroen Krautmeir wrote:Just watched Days of Thunder. I guess you could say it really got to me. Great story, great scenes, great lines, great everything. Someone link me to a film about Group B rally cars and I will kill myself for not being born in time for the 70s/80s (although to be fair the film was released in 1990). Golden Age of Racing.

For some reason Russ Wheeler reminds me of a certain German who likes to point his finger at everybody all the time...

There was a documentrary shown on BBC4 a couple of months ago about Group B, and it was brilliant. Lots of great footage plus interviews with the likes of Rohl, Mouton et all, even Roland Gumpert. Not sure if it came out on DVD or not, but I hope it's on youtube as i'd love to see it again (would check but youtube is blocked at work.... :S). A great insight in rally at that time.

I must admit I do prefer documentaries, as I've always held the belief that racing at its best doesn't need dressing up, it has all the ingredients all ready to be a fantastic story, whether it be bravery, action, danger, inter-personal rivalries and politics. I've never seen Le Mans yet but from what I've heard I'll definately make an effort to check it out.

As for films, I thought Cars was fun with all the in-jokes. I saw driven as a 10 year old an loved it, but haven't seen it for a while, not sure how it would look now.... From memory it did seem a bit 'liberal'. I though Senna was ok, but kind of skipped over quite alot. I don't like the way they portrayed Prost as the bad guy, to me that seemed unfair.

I think the BBC4 doc HonoraryNortherner is thinking of is Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years. It's definitely worth checking out if you can find it, as are (if I remember correctly) the F1 and 1955 Le Mans programmes made by the same people.

I watched Cars again a while ago, and still regard it as a massively underrated film, and one of Pixars greats. It's a shame I can't say the same for Cars 2...

"Grand Prix" is my all-time favourite racing film. It's just brilliant...

But yes, I agree with the documentaries. I liked what BBC4 had a few years back; profiles of Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill. And then there was Grand Prix: The Killer Years which was an incredibly interesting documentary indeed.

HonoraryNortherner wrote:There was a documentrary shown on BBC4 a couple of months ago about Group B, and it was brilliant. Lots of great footage plus interviews with the likes of Rohl, Mouton et all, even Roland Gumpert. Not sure if it came out on DVD or not, but I hope it's on youtube as i'd love to see it again (would check but youtube is blocked at work.... :S). A great insight in rally at that time.

Guess who's got an offline copy, everyone? All I know is that it's definitely not me. Oh no. PM me if you want to know who it is who has it.

One more thing about Days of Thunder, Kyle Busch has said repeatedly he wants to be Rowdy Burns. If a movie can have that kind of effect on a real world driver, it must be doing something right.

I think this was posted in one of the Youtube threads a little while back, but I love it so much I thought I'd post it here. I'm not really a big fan of Metallica, but it goes so well with the Group B cars. Sublime video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYhiJeRPgdw

It would be awesome to see a proper film on Group B with some musical interludes like this!

Sunshine_Baby_[IT] wrote:

DOSBoot wrote:Pretty much explains it. As long as you don't take it too seriously, then it's not as bad as a lot of people say it is. It's not a great movie, but it's nowhere near Stallone's worst film. I have it on DVD, so I thought it was good enough. But for the casual viewer, I would go the "watch before you buy" approach just to be safe.

As I said, I found it on youtube. It's in Spanish, and I know just a little the language... but anyway I will try to watch it there!

Just found the film in english! Whatch it here.

Wallio wrote:Does Street Racing Count? If so, American Graffiti hands down.

Otherwise Le Mans
Grand Prix
Winning

and Too Fast To Race (anybody ever see this?) awesome Group B rallye porn. Don't think its out on DVD sadly....

But for quotes, nothing beats Days of Thunder. The "calculating driver vs, kamikaze driver" line is awesome when you realize Senna and Prost are going at it at this time in F1.....

Too Fast to Race is superb and so is the sequel, Still Too Fast to Race. Some amazing Group B footage from rallies and some good stuff from recent tests.

FloProAct wrote:I think the BBC4 doc HonoraryNortherner is thinking of is Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years. It's definitely worth checking out if you can find it, as are (if I remember correctly) the F1 and 1955 Le Mans programmes made by the same people.

I'm another one who also thinks that Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years is a brilliant documentary. Well worth checking it out. Although those with a faint heart be warned as IIRC there was some footage of Joaquim Santos very disturbing crash into some speculators at the 1986 Portuguese rally.

AndreaModa wrote:I think this was posted in one of the Youtube threads a little while back, but I love it so much I thought I'd post it here. I'm not really a big fan of Metallica, but it goes so well with the Group B cars. Sublime video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYhiJeRPgdw

Thanks for that brilliant video & I agree they do go well together.

AndreaModa wrote:It would be awesome to see a proper film on Group B with some musical interludes like this!

In that case, I would highly recommend Hemlut Deimel's 'The Evolution of Rallying'. Here the utube link for it; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjILuvJ6OQ4

It has some brilliant musical montages throughout the film along with footage of 70's & 80's rally cars at their speculator best. Like at 0:34:13 or 0:41:07. IMO these musical montages somehow describe what has just been discussed (i.e. like how demanding the Safari rally was) much better than words ever could. Top film IMO, which I'm sure you will enjoy.

I managed to finally get 'Grand Prix - The Killer Years' on DVD. I had of course watched on telly but now I've got it.

I realised last night that sometime ago I must have bought '3: The Dale Earnhardt Story', with Barry Pepper playing Dale. I will watch it sometime, but has anyone here seen it?
Link on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401088/

Faustus wrote:I managed to finally get 'Grand Prix - The Killer Years' on DVD. I had of course watched on telly but now I've got it.

I realised last night that sometime ago I must have bought '3: The Dale Earnhardt Story', with Barry Pepper playing Dale. I will watch it sometime, but has anyone here seen it?
Link on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401088/

I did, but I don't remember it being remarkable. It was neither epic nor terrible. Now the preand post movie interviews with real people (which I imagine are on the DVD) were EPIC. Particularly Jeff Gordon's story of how Dale keep bump drafting Mrs. Gordon #2 (or was it #3?) after a race......on public roads when both were in RENTAL CARS!

BBC Four in the UK had a great documentary a couple of weeks ago, called 'Madness in the Desert - Paris to Dakar'. It was produced by the same company that produced 'Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years' and 'Grand Prix: The Killer Years'. I really enjoyed it. Some great choices of period footage and some very good and insightful interviews from former and current participants.
Link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r1cnw

I'll be all over that like a rash. To iPlayer we ride!

Faustus wrote:BBC Four in the UK had a great documentary a couple of weeks ago, called 'Madness in the Desert - Paris to Dakar'. It was produced by the same company that produced 'Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years' and 'Grand Prix: The Killer Years'. I really enjoyed it. Some great choices of period footage and some very good and insightful interviews from former and current participants.
Link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r1cnw

As I said on the Youtube thread I've acquired Grand Prix: The Killer Years, so if anyone hasn't seen it they can have it if they wish...

I felt that it's time to give this thread a bump, because a trailer for Rush has just been released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9igiKOCh5Wg

Ooh, thanks for the link. It's inevitable that I will be going to see this at the cinema ...

I will, however, be somewhat distracted, as I know that my local track, Snetterton, was used for some of the filming, so I'll be on the lookout for shots of it. I know that some of the Fuji scenes were filmed there, more by luck
than judgement, as it was very wet when they were at the circuit. They allowed the public into the circuit to watch, so long as they dressed in 1970s gear in case they ended up on camera ...

Looking forward to it already. Wonder if they ever considered slipping in some real-life footage to make it 'realistic'? Because bits of the trailer seemed a bit Driven-style CGI to me. Could be wrong, but will have to watch it to find out.

Strangely enough, Snetterton / MSV have removed all mention of the track being used as part of the film from their website, but here is a link from a Norwich newspaper with a quick video clip of the cars on the back straight :

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/video_of_1970s_f1_cars_at_snetterton_as_part_of_ron_howard_film_rush_1_1364846

Re-watching the trailer, and the start/finish and pit lane shots of Fuji do look a lot like the start/finish at Snetterton, with added CGI grandstands and spectators ...

Just saw the trailer myself just a few minutes ago. Love the look of it so far. I was very impressed by how accurate Niki's crash was done. Right down to Brett Lunger hitting him. Will try to see it whenever it comes out.

I've just seen the rush trailer too. I too hope that the crashes aren't over the top with CGI. Though how Thor has become James Hunt is hilarious

johnnyCarwash wrote:I've just seen the rush trailer too. I too hope that the crashes aren't over the top with CGI. Though how Thor has become James Hunt is hilarious

I agree with both of those things But at least it doesn't look like it will beat Driven for most ridiculous crashes. Every driver in the entire field did two backflips at some point and a quater of them nearly drowned in a lake or river.

Did Lauda always have that thick of an accent?

JeremyMcClean wrote:Did Lauda always have that thick of an accent?

I thought it was weird too. And I think Hemsworth might be closer to what James Hunt looked like than Brühl to Lauda.

On a side note, I just noticed that when Daniel Brühl is pronounced correctly in French, it sounds like "Daniel brûle", which means "Daniel burns". Considering what happens to Lauda, I wonder if that's an intended pun or not...

I'm really excited for Rush. Looks absolutely fantastic!

DOSBoot wrote:

nome66 wrote:a plot hole i found between sequels is that Han from Tokyo Drift said in the 4th movie (which based on Han i assume it's a prequel to #3) "i hear there's some crazy [stuff] in tokyo. maybe i'll head out there"
and any viewer who's seen the 3rd film will assume "that's the last we'll see of him forever", but in Fast Five he's there throughout the entire movie! whaaatt?
we assume that's the only reason they're making a 6th one, so he finally disappears to patch up that little hole in time.
Me and a bunch of other avid movie-goers saw Fast Five in theatres and audibly muttered "wait, what?"

4 and 5 are both prequels to Tokyo Drift. I assume the Han character was thinking about it in 4, but didn't go to Tokyo until after 5, which I assume they will find a way in 6. (Yeah I know, it's confusing, but at least it's not as bad as other movies.)

When i go to see Fast 6 in May, my friends and I are wear shirts that will read "Han Dead Yet?".
ALSO: saw that trailer for RUSH. looks amazing, and i do see the CGI issues. hope they use better modeling programs than Driven's Power-Point usage.

wmetcalf68 wrote:I'm really excited for Rush. Looks absolutely fantastic!

Yeah, welcome back BTW...

darkapprentice77 wrote:

wmetcalf68 wrote:I'm really excited for Rush. Looks absolutely fantastic!

Yeah, welcome back BTW...

Thanks!

I saw the kiddies' film 'Turbo' for the first time ealier this week (thought it would go better in this thread rather than the other, more generic, film thread). Not bad for switching off for a short time, and the IndyCars do look like the Dallara DW12s.

But... Guy Gagné as the racing antagonist? Name is just not funny. To me, it's equivalent to saying that it was just some guy that just won. At least they got some alliteration into that name. And the snail brother of Turbo critising the fact that all they do is turn left, turn left, turn left - Well guess what? Even NASCARs turn right occasionally! The film ain't necessarily gonna convert the 'driving round in circles' critics of motor-racing, although Indy is one of the best-known races in the world (obviously alongside Le Mans and Monaco).

But, knowing that the whole concept is incredible, and that you HAVE to suspend belief, it isn't too bad for a kids' film. Although for animated kids' racing films, I prefer Cars. And I think Roary the Racing Car is better than that (albeit that that is a TV series).

So, listing favourite motor-racing films? Here is an attempt:



Haven't seen Grand Prix, Days of Thunder or Le Mans for a while - maybe rewatching them may move their positions? And as soon as I have seen 1, there may well be a new entry in my top-10?

As an aside, I think Driven is the only really bad movie in the above list. I did actually enjoy all the others to a greater or lesser degree. Driven was just stupid for the scene where they hop into a couple of show-cars and race on public streets. Plus non-believable crashes - non-believable even with a suspension of belief!

Time for a laugh (watch from about 0:40 in):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAMB2HQKFD0

Ah, so that's what Christian Fittipaldi was trying to emulate at the end of that Italian GP.

I have to say 1971 Le Mans movie. Nothing beats a classic

http://www.madeitoutalive.com/

Noted Formula 1 Reject Rupert Keegan (37 entries, 25 starts, 0 points) is apprently making a documentary about noted Formula 1 Reject...uhhh...Rupert Keegan

dr-baker wrote:
But, knowing that the whole concept is incredible, and that you HAVE to suspend belief, it isn't too bad for a kids' film. Although for animated kids' racing films, I prefer Cars. And I think Roary the Racing Car is better than that (albeit that that is a TV series).

Speaking of TV series based on racing, Any love for NASCAR Racers?

Sonic 06 wrote:

dr-baker wrote:
But, knowing that the whole concept is incredible, and that you HAVE to suspend belief, it isn't too bad for a kids' film. Although for animated kids' racing films, I prefer Cars. And I think Roary the Racing Car is better than that (albeit that that is a TV series).

Speaking of TV series based on racing, Any love for NASCAR Racers?

I'm assuming it's an American TV series? It hasn't come across to Britain yet, as far as I know...

dr-baker wrote:

Sonic 06 wrote:

dr-baker wrote:
But, knowing that the whole concept is incredible, and that you HAVE to suspend belief, it isn't too bad for a kids' film. Although for animated kids' racing films, I prefer Cars. And I think Roary the Racing Car is better than that (albeit that that is a TV series).

Speaking of TV series based on racing, Any love for NASCAR Racers?

I'm assuming it's an American TV series? It hasn't come across to Britain yet, as far as I know...

Yeah its american. heres a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMbUWmU7iL8