Savant's new reviews today are
Happy Sunday. Los Angeles held its annual Marathon today, which I completely missed, even though the route snakes within three blocks of the Savant homestead. Savant instead took one of his rare movie excursions, slipping out of town at 4:30 AM and heading north to Red Rock Canyon, to try and find locations used in the Westerns MAN OF THE WEST and THE BIG COUNTRY, and the science fiction film ROCKETSHIP X-M. Red Rock Canyon is an area with several interestingly weathered cliff faces that catch the light nicely and are easy to spot in many old films. I did find most of the views I was looking for, although a particular set of cliffs escaped me. Where the Mars explorers find the blind cavegirl, and where Gary Cooper guns down Lee J. Cobb must have been only a few yards away, but I ran out of time. My guide was Vic Henney, a veteran hiker who seems to know every side road, ghost town and rock formation within two days' drive of LA. It took me years to find Bronson Caves by myself, so he was a great help. Vic spotted three separate exact locations in Death Valley from one look at the DVD of ROCKETSHIP X-M. We spent an hour at the site, burned up a lot of expensive gasoline, and were back by 11 AM.
Pictures? Great idea, but that's for people who remember to recharge their digital camera batteries. I'm learning.
Reader mail was fun this week. Reader "Arnaud" settled the PASSION OF ANNA title debate by saying Bergman used the title L182 because it was to be Svensk Filmindustri's 182nd film.
Like the rest of you, I'm deluged by junk mail of various kinds, but I still want to respond to every Email I receive. So try to use subject headings that indicate that you're not trying to enhance part of my body or are selling drugs online. I answer Emails immediately, or if I'm working, every night. I received a couple of "undeliverable" messages this week, accredited to full mailboxes at the reader end. I didn't remember to resend them all, so if you didn't get a response, don't be afraid to re-submit. Thanks, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at March 07, 2004 05:53 PM