"Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film."
February 08, 2005
A lot of you may be familiar with the excellent Vertigo...Then and Now site (and if not, go there now!), which compares the streets of San Francisco as seen in 1958 in Hitchcock's classic to how it appears in the present day. An excellent exercise in urban anthropology. Here's another: Peter Yates' 1968 feature Bullitt, then and now. This excellent police drama starring the cooler than cool Steve McQueen was filmed in location in San Francisco, whose vertiginous hills made for an excellent backdrop to what is still the best car chase scene yet filmed. According to this very informative piece, it was McQueen who was determined to have "the best car chase ever done" and insisted that money would not be an object to putting this setpiece on film. He even insisted on doing some of the driving until he overshot a turn and burned out the tires and even cooler heads prevailed and a stunt driver came aboard.
For more on movies in and about San Francisco (still the most beautiful city in the country) see this excellent page from Mister SF.
posted by Sean on 2/08/2005 10:39:00 PM| link