Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Not for Sale

Dear Webmaster, I am interested in buying your domain reelstreets.com for $400. I'm onlyinterested in the domain not in your content, so you can sell your domainand move your content to another domain. If you are interested pleaserespond to this e-mail.Regards,Bettina Jensen

Well, how nice of them to offer, John

Saturday, May 28, 2005

The Third Secret

I do not have any copies of the clouded yellow or the small back room but Ihave checked and both appear to be available on dvd.

Another one for you and a real rara avis: "The Third Secret" Charles Crichton (of Ealing) 1964 with Stephen Boyd (whatever happened to him?) JackHawkins, Richard Attenborough Diane Cilento and a very young Judi Dench. Extensively set in London with much filming on the Chiswick side of the River and Strand-on-the-Green Thames riverside; a strange film with a surreal feel to it tho the plot was gripping enough. Only saw it once on TV ages ago but lots of London footage. If you track it down do let me know.....back to work.
Best wishes, Simon rainey

Clouded Yellow etc.

Just discovered your interesting site and am working through bits of it.
The “Clouded Yellow” ends it is true with a scene in the Liverpool Docks with rare footage of the old Mersey Elevated railway (Liverpool like New York had its “El”) but it starts in London with a nice sequence of Trevor Howard driving along Kingsway into Lincolns Inn Fields and then parking at Old Square. There is then a long sequence in the Home Counties (unidentified) ending with a chase starting in Newcastle (excellent scenes of the Side and the great railway bridge over the Tyne) and across to the Lake District (Sour Milk Ghill) before coming down to Liverpool. Almost an advert for “Visit Britain”!

Do you have “The Small Back Room” (1949: Powell/Pressburger with David Farrar, Kathleen Byron)? Good opening sequence of blacked out London and other London scene, ending on Chesil Bank in a very powerful bomb disposal sequence with some good Dorset shots. Well worth a viewing.

Train of events: your street clips are all filmed behind Euston and in the streets between Chalk Farm and Kilburn (where Jack Warner as engine driver lives and whose garden backs on to the main line). I have always wondered about that enormous factory-cum-power station thing in your last still though.

The Astonished Heart: the station is Paddington with its taxi rank right inside the station by the old platform 9 now displaced by the Heathrow Express. I enclose a snap showing Brunel’s unmistakable iron tracery as seen behind Olive Soames (I think!) in your last still.
Fascinating but a terrible distraction from work!!!!

~ Simon Rainey

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Arrested

John,
I took a few shots here on the Broadway outside New Scotland Yard, for File of the Golden Goose, and was nearly arrested! A police woman with a gun asked why I was taking photos of a post office, and said its a bit weird!!!...Police gone mad...I told her it was not an offence, she was not amused and asked where I lived, any id? Looked at the pics on my digital camera,.its a good job I`m easy going...crazy days....nearly arrested for taking a picture of an old post office.....I also told her Columbo was filmed there in the early 70`s...and I have taken pics there before....Kurt Roberts


What fun! I WAS arrested some years ago outside the Guards Barracks in Birdcage Walk for stopping my car to look at the Royal Marines parading in the GUARDS barracks. It was on the occasion of the memorial service to Lord Louis Mountbatten and the cops thought I was an Irish terrorist! But because of my military interest, www.soldierssoldiers.com, I was only concerned with the uniform details, and, after a good kick on the ankle, mine, not theirs, was later released.

Keep going, I'll send you a cake in prison with a hacksaw blade inside.

John

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Dear Leader


Picture of the Dear Leader puzzling out where Richard Widmark got bumped off near Hammersmith Bridge, (remember Night and the City).

Photo Brian Tunstill, but no tenner!