Saturday, November 13, 2010

Trains on film

I like trains. I'm not as fanatic about them as some of my best friends, but I do like trains. If I have the time and the money, and if trains go where I need to go, I will take the train. And there have been a lot of good movies involving trains, too. From "Closely Watched Trains: Memorable Movies on the Rails," a selected few of those:
...[L]et's take a scenic journey aboard some of the most memorable movies in which trains played scene-stealing roles. (The Polar Express is not on this list. Those dead-eyed children give me the creeps). ....

Trainspotting with Hitch — Trains loom large in the Hitchcock ouvre. In The Lady Vanishes, a globe-trotting socialite meets a sweet old lady who mysteriously disappears aboard a train full of eccentrics and sinister types. A diabolical "criss-cross" double-murder plot is hatched between two Strangers on a Train. It is a train belching death-black smoke that delivers a serial killer to quaint Santa Rosa, CA in Shadow of a Doubt, and it's on a Chicago-bound train that femme fatale (or is she?) Eva Marie Saint seduces ad man on the run Cary Grant in North by Northwest. ....

Murder on the Orient Express — Bacall, Bergman, Bisset. And that's just the Bs. A star-studded cast headed by Albert Finney stars in this classy whodunit based on Agatha Christie's classic Hercule Poirot mystery.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three — Accept no remakes. This crackerjack '70s thriller stars Walter Matthau as a Transit Authority officer who matches wits with Robert Shaw, whose color-coded gang has commandered a New York subway train and is demanding a million dollar ransom. .... [and many more]
Armchair Commentary: Closely Watched Trains: Memorable Movies on the Rails

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