When I was a kid growing up in Malta, there was a surfeit of cinemas. Well, in those days going to the cinema was far more common than today, I guess I probably went once a week, usually on a Sunday afternoon. But I remember missing “Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World”. I don’t know why, but I remember missing it.
Then fifty years later, I am in Beijing, and to avoid the embarrassment of olympic visitors and filmcrews seeing DVD shops full of pirated movies, they had a clamp down, and now DVDs are real hard to buy. OK it will get better after the special Olympics and all the fuss, but for now we have to resort to downloading movies from the net.
One day last week while browsing I came across that movie, and thought, “Gosh! I never DID see that! I shall see it now!”. So I did the clicky thing, and Lo! I had the movie.
Tonight I watched it. My word, what a tour de force! I had the 162 minute version, which took three separate downloads, and several scenes in I realised this was a special movie, and while it ran I Wiki’d it.
So when the final car chase was on, a weird coincidence. You see, the last scenes were shot in Long Beach, California, where readers will recall I spent a fortnight a year ago in the Hilton running a course. I didn’t really rate it much, and felt it sad that the “Pike” roller coaster - featured in the movie - had been pulled down, as today it would be a real tourist magnet - for a long time the second biggest in the States . I also found the only decent beer in town at a Micro Brewery on the corner where the car chase comes hammering up from the Pike, on the corner of Ocean and Pine.And later in the scene, an iconic building that I sketched in my notebook, the Villa Riviera was in shot several times. I also recognised some street names, and I’m pretty sure, a bank and one corner gas station.
Malta, Beijing, Olympics and Long Beach. It’sweird wired weird weird world sometimes.
I remember the Saturday matinees, Flash Gordon and the like.... those were the days... I hear they were going to do a horror documentary in some place called Starbeck but it seems the 'horror' snuck away when they weren't looking....hehe!
Now entering its eighth year, welcome to "The New Beachhutman Blog". Beachhutman, accomplished artist, widely published author, polyglot, polymath, and hyperbolist, finds himself living and working in Beijing, and likes it. Except for that Olympic stuff. When not in Beijing, Beachhutman may be found at his home in Spain on the blogroll links here. If you lose the link, this is amazingly, the top result on a Google search for "The New Beachhutman Blog"
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