I got, “The Happening” on PPV last night, and even though it bombed in the theaters I actually thought it was pretty good (well acted and while the premise was far-fetched, the story line was good enough to pull it off pretty well, plus the chick who played Mark Wahlberg’s wife is a knock-out in my opinion).
Anyway, I thought it was funny when their Philly commuter train stopped in Filbert, PA because they lost contact with the railroad dispatcher and everybody else. The tracks where the train was stopped outside the depot had lots of grass/weeds growing-up through the ties - it looked like some old, under-used branch line and not a commuter line.
Thats the magic of hollywood. did you notice how sharply dressed the train service employees were? do they typically dress that way on commuter railroads? they were wearing the traditional conductor dark blue uniforms with hats and brass buttons. i think the train itself might have changed too. at one point it was amtrak equiptment but later it was commuter. im not sure though it has been awhile since i watched it.
Reminds me of the final scene in The Manchurian Candidate from a year or so ago where the “radio chatter” in the background of a helicopter scene was actually a recording of a Norfolk Southern defect detector! I had to go back and listen several times to convince myself I was actually hearing it. Jamie
I guess realism just isn’t a high priority when movie producers set up scenes with trains. It got a laugh, but how many things are wrong with this scenario: In the movie Infamous, Truman Capote and his assistant Nell Harper Lee (yes, that one) take the train to Holcomb Kansas in late 1959; they arrive in one non-airconditioned reddish coach with the ATSF name rendered wrong and with nothing to Holcomb but a sign and a platform to indicate any kind of civilizations. [8)]
In the first two pages of IN COLD BLOOD Capote indicates that Holcomb only gets an occasional freight train, and that it’s in Garden City that “celebrated expresses” like the Chief, Super Chief and El Capitan stop. Also, Gerald Clarke’s biography of Capote indicates that Capote left town after Lee. On the train from the then-Santa Fe depot in Garden City. [banghead]
Would it have been soooo difficult to cheat the reality? Nell had gone on before him. If there isn’t money to use fake snow and fake streamliner, why not just zoom-lens photo someone with small feet and an expensive valise getting on any Superliner? These days the snowstorm the real Capote left during could probably be portrayed (or inferred at least) by using c.g.i. (We needn’t see Capote’s character from the front). Doesn’t the step on board a Superliner look very much like Santa Fe’s hi-rise cars like El Cap chair cars? I hate it when the source material is deviated from with no dramatic reason for it, not even compresion. Of course, the real Truman Capote would never have traveled coach class at that point in his life, but that would be the kind of cinematic detail that wouldn’t upset me. [#oops]
I guess realism just isn’t a high priority when movie producers set up scenes with trains. It got a laugh, but how many things are wrong with this scenario: In the movie Infamous, Truman Capote and his assistant Nell Harper Lee (yes, that one) take the train to Holcomb Kansas in late 1959; they arrive in one non-airconditioned reddish coach with the ATSF name rendered wrong and with nothing to Holcomb but a sign and a platform to indicate any kind of civilizations. [8)]
In the first two pages of IN COLD BLOOD Capote indicates that Holcomb only gets an occasional freight train, and that it’s in Garden City that “celebrated expresses” like the Chief, Super Chief and El Capitan stop. Also, Gerald Clarke’s biography of Capote indicates that Capote left town after Lee. On the train from the then-Santa Fe depot in Garden City. [banghead]
Would it have been soooo difficult to cheat the reality? Nell had gone on before him. If there isn’t money to use fake snow and fake streamliner, why not just zoom-lens photo someone with small feet and an expensive valise getting on any Superliner? These days the snowstorm the real Capote left during could probably be portrayed (or inferred at least) by using c.g.i. (We needn’t see Capote’s character from the front). Doesn’t the step on board a Superliner look very much like Santa Fe’s hi-rise cars like El Cap chair cars? I hate it when the source material is deviated from with no dramatic reason for it, not even compresion. Of course, the real Truman Capote would never have traveled coach class at that point in his life, but that would be the kind of cinematic detail that wouldn’t upset me. [#oops]
I got a bit of a chuckle out of the railroad scenes in that movie too. I USED to be an M. Night Shymalan fan, but this one wasn’t anywhere near his best work. it was gore of the sake of gore. Although I must admit, I did enjoy seeing Zooey Deschanel in the movie.
In the old Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Vera-Ellen, and Rosemary Clooney movie “White Christmas” they are riding a train from Florida to Vermont, and it’s the Santa Fe Super Chief!
I had no idea that the Santa Fe ran up the east coast of the U.S. I always thought it was a western railroad. [#oops]