Nov 21, 2010

Adventure movies or what I'll be watching in the next few days

So today I went to the last session of the Movie Genres seminar I was attending on Saturdays. The genre we reviewed today was previously chosen by vote and even when the competition was fierce, my option, ADVENTURE, won. Yay! I really wanted to know more about this genre since I just liked it because I love Errol Flynn's movies.
It was really cool to discover new exciting titles that I'm planing to watch and review very soon. Here are some of them:


Tarzan the Ape Man (1932; W.S. Van Dyke)
Of course I knew about this one, but it never caught my attention. Anyway, knowing that Johnny Weissmuller was Olympic medal winner swimmer and that even Clark Gable was one of the options to play Tarzan, was all I needed to really wanting to see it. Plus the scene we saw was very exciting, with crocodiles AND hippos trying to eat Maureen O'Sullivan and her people. I'll try to watch the 6 starring Johnny and Maureen.


→ The Thief of Bagdad (1924 and 1940)
I really never heard of this one before. Douglas Fairbanks stars in the one from the twenties playing a thief (that's all I know about it), but the one from the 40's was directed by Alexander Korda and Indian actor Sabu plays the thief Abu and John Justin (never heard of him before but he was gorgeous) plays the Prince that has to rescue the princess from Jaffar. Oh, there's a genius too and a flying carpet. Disney's Aladdin anyone?

Moby Dick (1956)
The famous book by Herman Melville, directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck. The end.

Les tribulations d‘un chinois en Chine (1965)
Based on a book by Jules Verne and directed by Philippe de Broca this is really an adventure comedy set on the Himalayas and the clip we saw was hilarious because of the dialogs and the situations.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)
This is the one that I liked the less, but I'm gonna watch it because:
a) Ray Harryhausen's motion picture effects (they look really outdated in this one but it seems that his work was brilliant and everybody admire him and even in Pixar's Monster Inc. a restaurant is called like him as an homage)
b) John Wayne's son, Patrick, plays Sinbad and Tyrone Power's daughter, Taryn, plays the daughter of an old alchemist, thank you very much.


The man who would be king (1975)
Three names: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, John Huston. The director wanted to do this movie like all his life, and even wanted Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to play the leads. Anyway, it's based in a book by Rudyard Kipling, and it's about two English soldiers in an ancient place where Connery is taken as a divinity. Disney's Road to El Dorado?

White Hunter, Black Heart (1990; Clint Eastwood)
I'm watching this one just because it tells the story behind John Huston wanting to shoot a movie in Africa ("The African Queen"). It seems that what he really wanted was to hunt elephants.There are characters that are supposed to be Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn, so I really want to see how that came out, even when the film ends before they start shooting "The African Queen".

Of course more movies were named today. I already saw some of them, like "The African Queen" or "Around the world in 60 days" and I won't see Bernard Herzog's movies like "Aguirre The Wrath of God" or "Fitzcarraldo" because they give me the creeps. 

5 comments:

  1. Ooh! You'll have to let us know about these after you watch them. I love adventure movies!

    I saw Tarzan once when I was a kid. I think it was this one from the 30s -- at least, it was B&W. I remember it being quite good, and oddly, my dad and I discussed it a bit today. I'm going to try to see again soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I was about 28 my husband and I were at a hotel in Florida and Johnnie Weissmuller was there, My husband asked him would he teach me to swim, he gave up. Much later I
    saw him again in Acapulco, Mexico.
    Very nice man, still can't swim even with my own pool.

    yvonne

    ReplyDelete
  3. That is something I would really love: to go to Movie Genres seminars. I mean, really!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is something I would really love: to go to Movie Genres seminars. I mean, really!

    ReplyDelete
  5. When I was about 28 my husband and I were at a hotel in Florida and Johnnie Weissmuller was there, My husband asked him would he teach me to swim, he gave up. Much later I
    saw him again in Acapulco, Mexico.
    Very nice man, still can't swim even with my own pool.

    yvonne

    ReplyDelete