Tuesday, January 18, 2005

MOVIES : Two lane black top

This is a drag racing movie made in 1970/1 on the tail of easy rider. It follows the lives of two wandering racer Dudes who pick up a girl (bloody young too!) and then enter into a race with this loner fantasist. This is not the sort of film I usually like, the story arcs are very subtle, and the conclusion isn't, but the director drew me in and kept me interested the whole way through and made me think about why he ended it the way he did.
I would imagine that this film was reasonably successful for at least one reason; the two lead boys are incredibly sexy, Bruce you listening?
The boys are total 'nerds', unable to relate to anyone or anything outside of cars, and it is this inability to connect that is the reason the real race - to win the girl - is no give away. The director apparently loves landscape, but hates just showing tablous (director of Hero, are you listening), and thinking over it you do get an amazing feel for the landscape they are driving through, but don't even realise this at the time.
The only downer about this film is the sound; it's only stereo and the cinema was set up to only play through the front speakers. We really wanted the sound of the gunning engines to be ringing around our ears, not just emanating from the screen. Oh well.
All in all a surprisingly sophisticated film about a very simple obsession, see it if you can.

1 Comments:

Blogger M said...

Seen it!! d'y remember the song? I pinched the title from this movie (and the ending of the song from the ending of the movie) but used the theme/imagery from an episode of the Halloween TV series which was about a vampire/demonic car....

yes, well, back in the dark old days of youth.. cough cough.

did you get my e-mails? also re:Iain and A Mee.
also, just got off the phone from Jo. send us your work details and I'll call you too.

:-)

12:00 am  

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