Watched the DVD “Ray” about Ray Charles starring Jamie Foxx
About 20 min into the movie about Ray Charles we see his antique
tour bus going under a bridge in 1953 that has a …DOUBLE STACK
TRAIN??? on top of the bridge…
Now on the other hand I enjoyed the fact that there were plenty of trolleys in the streets of Dallas and the the citys shown…in the 50s HOWEVER many trolley lines were closing or being shut down at the same time in the early 50s and had been repleced by bused
I think the scene was explained on an Art Bell program as hyperdimensional
quantum worm hole multireality time leaps…Indeed,…west of the Rockies…
Hmm–I wonder if the stack train was being pulled by the same SP SD Tunnel Motors that show up in Los Angeles in the 'forties in the Warren Beatty film BUGSY?
Tom
It always amazes me how the ‘Continuity’ director on movies overlook rail scenes and backgrounds that are out of character for whatever locality or time period the movie is attempting to portray. On almost every movie that has some rail scene or background, something is not right.
No surprise there,
Seen 'Flags of our Fathers" yet, great scene in the movie, they are on a train being pulled by a vintage F unit, no problem there, but is the lounge car there a big picture of a PA1 in the background, nice except that the movie takes place in 1944, and the PA1 wasnt even concieved of till 1950! opps!
Seen “Flyboys” and the unbeleivably obviously British locomotive and coaches with “Union Pacific” logos stuck to them? Maybe they ment “Union Jack & Pacific” hehehe
Movies are full of flubs like that, most could be easily overcome by a little research.
The golf movie “Bobby Jones – Stroke of Genius” was filmed partly in Scotland at St. Andrews. Later, it had a scene where Bobby triumphantly returned to Atlanta, Georgia in 1930 after winning the British Open for his Grand Slam in Great Britain.
However, the passenger train he got off in “Atlanta” had a 5-digit British or Scottish locomotive (no headlamp, bumpers on front) and the passenger cars had individual exterior doors to each compartment. Turns out the studio filmed the scene over there to save production costs.
Terrible movie, BTW. Just plum awful. Lasted less than two weeks in the theatres and grossed less than $1.2 million its opening weekend and $2.7 million overall. Cost over $20 million to make. (A modern-day “Producers”!) [(-D]
EDIT: This got me to thinking and I Googled around and found the above. The railway used in the motion picture is owned and operated by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society’s Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway near Firth of Forth. I believe the locomotive and the cars pictured above plus the station were used in the movie.
Look at the photo and tell me it looks like a scene from Atlanta in 1930.
Yeah, sure. The rest of the movie was equally accurate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LiveAndLetDieNew.jpg
In Live and Let Die James Bond Rides what looks like a ICG train from New Orleans to points unknown…The Train is orange…?
In the movie JFK, after the assassination, the investigators are searching for clues at the bottom of a RR embankment. The train rolls through w/ BN America doublestacks. Classic!!
In The Road to Perdition is a scene where Tom Hank’s character and his son drive into Depression-era Downtown Chicago, southbund on LaSalle Street bridge over the Chicago River.
Most of the scene was assembled digitally since the skyline is much changed. But someone failed to to their homework – the L train that passes through the scene ahead of them had cars of a design from the early 1980s – stainless steel – while in the early 1930s they would have been wooden cars painted in brown tones.
How about “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” et al e.g. the Spaghetti Westerns? Obviously not US West turn of the century railroading…
[C):-)]
Ahhhhh, who cares! Still a great classic Western!
Movies are always full of anachronisms. I recall once seeing a movie supposedly set in the 1960s where a character is running along some railroad tracks and passes a locomotive in Norfolk Southern paint.
IMDB has a whole page full of anachronisms for “Ray” including the stack train.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0350258/goofs
It must be really hard to film a movie on location that contains no such mistakes.
Millions of dollars at stake in the productions but none wants to spend a few thousand research payroll.
Been seeing a few animated commericals lately.
I have a feeling that future films will be generated entirely on computer with life like fidelity. No need to travel somewhere and shoot.
It’s funny how they will fill the scripts of these movies with all of the 4-letter words. ( in the name of realism.)
Is that the one that is three hours long and the script has four pages of dialog? Good thing Eastwood wasn’t getting paid by the word… [(-D]
While your comment has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, I’ll bite anyway.
They use those words because that’s how most people talk. Really, what do you expect if you turn on something like The Sopranos? Dialog ala Mary Poppins?
I’m not ridiculing anyone for their choices. But I think anyone who is so easily offended by language should avoid watching such shows and movies, that’s all.
I do not appreciate when TV networks artificially sanitize the language in such shows because it sets up a ludicrous double-standard. That hypocracy is what really offends me – it’s like saying: “It’s totally okay to violently murder a person, but not acceptable to curse while doing so.”
Gimmee a break. [banghead]
watch Pearl Harbor. there’s an Amtrak P42 in it
The stainless steel streamlined passenger cars appearing in the movie were also manufactured after 1941.
BTW, did you realize that “Pearl Harbor” was a “non-smoking” movie? Not one soldier or nurse was seen smoking a cigarette – while at the time almost all of them did.
Don’t be silly. Everyone knows Ray Charles was blind. He didn’t know it was a stack train.[;)]
Grease (famous movie set in the latter 1950’s) shows an Amtrak train running past the concreted L.A. River where a drag race is being held.
Emperor of the North (Lee Marvin movie set in the 1930’s Depression) has a scene in a freight yard which includes a box car with the huge 1960’s-style “SP&S” lettering on the side.
Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (Robert Blake movie set in the early 20th Century–TR or Taft was the U.S. President) includes a freight train with an steel SP bay-window caboose. Blake did NOT shoot out its windows, however.
I’m glad that those Italian trains (with two-axle rail cars) which appeared in Clint Eastwood’s “spaghetti westerns” got mentioned also.
The classic deep south movie “In The Heat of the Night” filmed in the vicinity of Sparta, IL has some very good scenes at the former GM&O depot in town- which fits with the Mississippi setting of the story… yet during the thrilling chase scene in the movie a MoPac freight train with SD40s is shown rolling along the Chester Sub with the Muddy Miss in the background as the criminal tries to get away from the chasing cops.