spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Feb 16, 2019 0:27:00 GMT
I've always enjoyed films about characters in search of unknown parts of the world, the sea, or even outerspace. It's a subgenre of sometimes great, sometimes mediocre, but usually enjoyable films, which can also include science fiction endeavors.
A few of my favorites:
Mountains of the Moon (1990) - the story of Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river.
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) - Starring John Mills as Robert Falcon Scott in his attempt to reach the south pole
Apollo 13 (1995)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
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Post by Hairynosedwombat on Feb 16, 2019 0:50:15 GMT
Burke and Wills
American audiences will not have heard about these two explorers who walked across the Australian continent from south to north and died on the way back under tragic circumstances.
Tracks
In 1977 travel writer Robyn Davidson walked alone with 4 camels and a dog 1,700 miles across the desert from Alice Springs to the Western Australian coast.
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Post by mattgarth on Feb 16, 2019 0:58:40 GMT
STANLEY AND LIVINGSTON (1939)
Spencer Tracy as Journalist and African explorer 'Henry Stanley'
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Post by bravomailer on Feb 16, 2019 1:36:10 GMT
Aguirre Wrath of God
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Post by bravomailer on Feb 16, 2019 1:36:52 GMT
Aguirre Wrath of God
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Post by politicidal on Feb 16, 2019 1:38:31 GMT
Oh yeah Mountains of the Moon is great! Other good ones include:
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Post by OldAussie on Feb 16, 2019 2:10:08 GMT
Mountains of the Moon is great - highly recommended.
Several Christopher Columbus movies are around but they're not good.
I saw a Marco Polo movie when I was a kid in the 60s but haven't heard of it since.
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Post by Hairynosedwombat on Feb 16, 2019 4:16:52 GMT
Burke and WillsAmerican audiences will not have heard about these two explorers who walked across the Australian continent from south to north and died on the way back under tragic circumstances. TracksIn 1977 travel writer Robyn Davidson walked alone with 4 camels and a dog 1,700 miles across the desert from Alice Springs to the Western Australian coast. Not familiar with these, baldwombat, but they sound fascinating, especially Tracks for me . Thanks so much for the introduction. Burke and Wills would be as familiar to Australians as perhaps Lewis and Clarke to Americans. Tracks is the film of Robyn Davidsons autobiographical book of her trip which is probably easier to find. |
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Post by mikef6 on Feb 16, 2019 5:26:54 GMT
The Wildest Dream / Antony Geffen (2010). Engrossing documentary about Edward Mallory’s life and death on Mount Everest in 1924 when he was attempting to be the first person to summit the mountain. It is also the story of American climber Conrad Anker, the man who, in 1999, found Mallory’s body on Everest and came back 8 years later to try to replicate as much as possible the 1924 conditions climbing part of the way in clothing and boots like Mallory and his partner Sandy Irvine wore and taking the same route along the more difficult north face to determine if Mallory and Irvine could have reached the summit before falling to their deaths. This film also explores the question of obsessions and motivations of the people who undertake seemingly impossible tasks like this through a look at the life and writing of Mallory and Anker’s own self examination.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Feb 16, 2019 5:46:27 GMT
While Mountains of the Moon was, indeed, beautiful and the costuming and acting outstanding … it is perhaps good to note that it is also quite brutal and bloody.
Viewing Victorian medical treatments are not for the squeamish.
The film did make me want to read the original journals of the explorers ( especially as I have absolutely no faith in the veracity of screen "biographies" .)
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Post by manfromplanetx on Feb 16, 2019 5:57:08 GMT
Great introduction and terrific examples spiderwort , I too enjoy fact or fiction, an adventurous cinematic exploration. Dersu Uzala (1961) Agasi Babayan A wonderful Soviet film, adapted from the books of explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, who wrote of his travels in the remote wilderness of the Russian Far East. It was here he met with a native trapper, Dersu Uzala who became his close friend and companion. Dersu Uzala (1975) Akira Kurosawa is another excellent version of the explorers travels...  Walk Into Paradise (1956) A very exciting exploration adventure tells the tale of an Australia patrol officer Steve McAllister (Chips Rafferty) who is ordered to lead an exploration into unmapped territory of New Guinea.. With an air of pro-colonial romanticism, New Guinea was at the time under Australian administration, an introductory narration opens with 'today a gallant band of young Australian administrators are bringing civilisation to the most primitive people left on the face of the earth’. The film was shot on location the first ever in in several inhospitable locations. Remarkable footage of Sepik River long canoes paddled exclusively by women, and a full-scale highlands sing-sing, with hundreds of warriors in traditional dress is stunning cinema Much of the story reflects incidents in the pioneering expeditions of the Leahy brothers, the first white men to reach the New Guinea highlands, in the early 1930s. A surprisingly excellent highly recommended film from 1950s OZ... The film was later sold to the American veteran low-budget producer Joseph Levine who added more jungle footage and created a lurid and sensationalist poster rebranding the title Walk Into Hell...the original is best !  |
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Post by bravomailer on Feb 16, 2019 6:06:59 GMT
Spencer Tracy et al are explorers of sorts in Northwest Passage.
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Post by OldAussie on Feb 16, 2019 6:24:58 GMT
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Post by mattgarth on Feb 16, 2019 8:37:05 GMT
THE FAR HORIZONS (1955) -- MacMurray and Heston as explorers Lewis and Clark
and Donna Reed perfectly cast as ... 'Sacajawea'
(That's the name Trump originally wanted to use on Senator Elizabeth Warren -- but he kept mispronouncing it and switched over to 'Pocahontas' instead)
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,101
Likes: 9,421
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Post by spiderwort on Feb 16, 2019 14:08:41 GMT
The Wildest Dream / Antony Geffen (2010). Engrossing documentary about Edward Mallory’s life and death on Mount Everest in 1924 when he was attempting to be the first person to summit the mountain. It is also the story of American climber Conrad Anker, the man who, in 1999, found Mallory’s body on Everest and came back 8 years later to try to replicate as much as possible the 1924 conditions climbing part of the way in clothing and boots like Mallory and his partner Sandy Irvine wore and taking the same route along the more difficult north face to determine if Mallory and Irvine could have reached the summit before falling to their deaths. This film also explores the question of obsessions and motivations of the people who undertake seemingly impossible tasks like this through a look at the life and writing of Mallory and Anker’s own self examination. Haven't seen this one, Mike, but it sounds fascinating. Especially love the part I highlighted above. Those are critically important subjects. I hope I can see the film sometime.
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,101
Likes: 9,421
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Post by spiderwort on Feb 16, 2019 14:23:21 GMT
Great introduction and terrific examples spiderwort , I too enjoy fact or fiction, an adventurous cinematic exploration. Dersu Uzala (1961) Agasi Babayan A wonderful Soviet film, adapted from the books of explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, who wrote of his travels in the remote wilderness of the Russian Far East. It was here he met with a native trapper, Dersu Uzala who became his close friend and companion. Dersu Uzala (1975) Akira Kurosawa is another excellent version of the explorers travels... Walk Into Paradise (1956) A very exciting exploration adventure tells the tale of an Australia patrol officer Steve McAllister (Chips Rafferty) who is ordered to lead an exploration into unmapped territory of New Guinea.. With an air of pro-colonial romanticism, New Guinea was at the time under Australian administration, an introductory narration opens with 'today a gallant band of young Australian administrators are bringing civilisation to the most primitive people left on the face of the earth’. The film was shot on location the first ever in in several inhospitable locations. Remarkable footage of Sepik River long canoes paddled exclusively by women, and a full-scale highlands sing-sing, with hundreds of warriors in traditional dress is stunning cinema Much of the story reflects incidents in the pioneering expeditions of the Leahy brothers, the first white men to reach the New Guinea highlands, in the early 1930s. A surprisingly excellent highly recommended film from 1950s OZ... The film was later sold to the American veteran low-budget producer Joseph Levine who added more jungle footage and created a lurid and sensationalist poster rebranding the title Walk Into Hell...the original is best ! Thanks, planet. I've haven't seen Babayan's Dersu Uzala, but I have seen Kurosawa's version and I love it! It's one of my favorites. One of these days I hope get to see the Babayan version. I'd also love to read the Arsenyev journals, though I know I never will. But what a great subject it is. I admire the story so much. Your mention of it for some reason brought to mind a film that doesn't, I guess, really meet the requirements of this thread, and yet in some ways has vague similarities: Karen Blixen aka Isak Dinesen's journey to Africa, documented in Out of Africa.
Sorry to say I haven't seen Walk into Paradise, but it sounds like a winner. Another great story, but these exploratory odysseys almost always are.
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Post by teleadm on Feb 16, 2019 16:42:37 GMT
 Surpriced it didn't win the Oscar for best feature length documentary 1953, Isn't it possible that some Nepalese sherpa could have conquered it long before and thought nothing about it, for them it might have been just another top that meant nothing to them.  BBC 1971 TV-series The Search for the Nile, the obsession in 19th century to find the clue to the Nile, and they they did find it, but has then proved wrong. The natives are treated as trash, but they might have known long long ago, but getting a title was more important for the explorers, becoming a Lord or a Sir. Over the years I've found lot's of cinematographers filmographies, who did nothing but filmeing lifes in far away places in the very early silent days, traveling Asia, Africa, South America, and Pacific Islands, they too are explorers, even if most of their films are lost. Sorry for the side step! |
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Post by koskiewicz on Feb 16, 2019 18:51:05 GMT
A few:
The Mosquito Coast
The Emerald Forest
King Solomon's Mines
Flight of the Phoenix
Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,101
Likes: 9,421
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Post by spiderwort on Feb 16, 2019 21:54:53 GMT
Surpriced it didn't win the Oscar for best feature length documentary 1953, Isn't it possible that some Nepalese sherpa could have conquered it long before and thought nothing about it, for them it might have been just another top that meant nothing to them. BBC 1971 TV-series The Search for the Nile, the obsession in 19th century to find the clue to the Nile, and they they did find it, but has then proved wrong. The natives are treated as trash, but they might have known long long ago, but getting a title was more important for the explorers, becoming a Lord or a Sir. Over the years I've found lot's of cinematographers filmographies, who did nothing but filmeing lifes in far away places in the very early silent days, traveling Asia, Africa, South America, and Pacific Islands, they too are explorers, even if most of their films are lost.
Teleadm, I think you're probably right about the Nepalese sherpas. And I definitely agree with you about the documentary filmmakers traveling the globe in search of so much remarkable footage of places foreign to them and to others. Robert Flaherty and Nanook of the North (1920) immediately come to mind, but I know there are legions more. Thank God for what they do and have done. They've broadened our horizons immensely.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Feb 17, 2019 5:02:02 GMT
Lara Croft. Most recently portrayed by Alicia Vikander in the movie Tomb Raider (2018). Previously played by Angelina Jolie in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and its sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003).  |
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