My new favourite racing movie: Michel Vaillant

Hi Andreas,
indeed a nice movie, not top of the bill, but still very nice.
I have it on DVD.

 

I would love to get a copy of this in Region 1 DVD so that I can play it here.......
Luc Besson has some of the best movies out there.......including Taxi 1,2, and 3

any word about getting one here to work on our DVD players?????

 

If you like Michel Vaillant you should try the 60's TV show now available on dvd. The script and dialogs are completely outdated but the images shot during real races at Sebring, Le mans, Targa Florio in the 60's are worth seeing.
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hi

you can find a lot about michel vaillant on the official site http://www.michelvaillant.com/ but only in french at this moment
i've read his stories for maybe 30 years

luc besson shot the movie during the le mans race in 2002 (you can see the mocie crew on the start of the race scene, they are in the middle of the track)

2 cars were really racing, a lola as a vaillante and a panoz as a leader

 

Just another ridiculous racing movie.

The transporter hits trouble on the way to the track. Well, let's just unload the racingcars, drive them to the track on the open road and just burst onto the track, right in time for qualifying.

A waste of my time.

 

I like the Michel Vaillant movie a lot! I went specially to Belgium to see it on big screen. It is just what a comic book is: reality and less realistic events put together in a way that we easily can choose our heros and the villans. And off course great attention to all visual stuff and creating situations that we would like to attend (driving the le Mans circuit blind folded and racing your cars to the grid by the open road, that's real hero stuff!) I've got a model car of the LEADER which could not be anything else than the Panoz LMP1, great typecasting! The Lola B2K they used as Vaillante did the job also quite wel. Hope to find a model of that once.

So completely different from classics at Le Mans and Grand Prix, but a proper petrolhead movie in every aspect.

 

Favorite racing movie "Driven"? Are you serious?? "Driven"??? How does that rate up there higher than Grand Prix or LeMans with Steve McQueen??

"Driven" with Sylvester Stallone, really...... Wow, I would have never thought it. I would choose Herbie over Driven and we all know just how realistic that movie is......

Not dissing you, I just thought,,,,,well, you know......

 

Marnix,
read the Lemans tread here on the board.
Mark's "Kram" stories are great and you'll see much weirder things happened during LeMans in the past.

 

I haven´t read those stories but I´m still a bit troubled by the notion of a Panoz LM-racingcar, setup for Le Mans qualifying, driven on the road, straight out of the transporter.

It is just that I believe a genuine racingmovie doesn´t need this nonsense. Same goes for Driven. What the hell was that all about? Racingcars that have about 27 gears, racingcars that seemingly suddenly find some extra speed on the straight away, drivers that drive these cars on public roads (we´re talking Indycars here!) without their helmets and -get this- are actually talking to oneanother while driving, NOT using a radio but just their voice.

These films portray racing as something ridiculous. Something that needs to be made into something it is not, just to make it interesting. I resent that.

Le Mans isn´t a very good movie as well, but at least it took it´s racing serious.

 

But why did Topgun succeed? Granted, there wasn't much of a story there, but as far as bringing fighterjets to the screen, it is a definite hit. Surely an equivalent for racingcars should work. Racingcars are, after all, not that different from fighterjets.

 

Agreed, but would Topgun be a lesser film if the goofy stuff with the camera and all, wasn't in it? I suppose not. The thrills were in the 'dogfighting'-sequences and we can have that in a racemovie just as easy.

Like you said, a racemovie will never get anywhere near an Oscar (unless we are talking about a homosexual driver with somewhere in the movie a slightly disabled kid as well), but still I believe a racemovie that is entertaining, that doesn't make a mockery of racing and has at least some reality, should be possible.

 

Exactly and sorry Driven was a complete w@nk ... made me embarrassed to be a petrol head. Note I have not seen this "Michel Vaillant" film, but if it is even remotely like Driven ... er, I'm not interested.

These films do NOT help our sport, interest at all ... just make the rest of the population think we are utter w@nkers. So no I do not agree that any film about racing is a good film ... I'd rather they never made any if they are going to continue to snck. I'm 100% with GTE.

Le Mans was great as is the 60's F1 movie ... we don't need some w@nky Hollywood type cr@p incouraging road racing by driving race cars on the road.
Pete
ps: Infact I'd like to see a racing film where there was NO females at ALL, no children, no wife ... just a man trying to prove himself to HIMSELF and work his magic on the car. Maybe sort of inside his head angle ... the sensation of speed, the balance act, the nerve's, the tension, and the satisfaction when it all clicks. Heck chuck in the drama when it all goes wrong and the efforts to get back out their to continue the obsession. That is what we all race for ... not to get sex, not to save our children ... infact not for anybody else at all, simply because we are challenging ourselves and love it.

Boxing films do it ... so why do racing films have to have all the extra vomit?, that reduces racing to some sort of male 'I want sex/attention' act bollocks.

 

^^^ Agree though some nice pretty girls in various stages of nudity lounging about the pit wont hurt that much

And none of that shifting up/down 100 times a lap - it seems like that's the only way movie race car drivers know pass - there is always a miraculous gear they can call upon at any time while making passes. Ridiculous.

 

Utter rubbish IMO ... I think we watched different films, but that scene had me vomitting in my popcorn. That is not how I find the groove, and I have never known a professional driver to bring his race car to a halt by effectively doing a hand brake turn. Remember they only have so many sets of rubber to wear out ... again amature sensationalism, added cause the director just doesn't 'get the sport'.

Hi, hope you had a good Chrissy, etc.

Yeah but they don't change down to accelerate past ... if they are not already in the right gear they would be left behind. Amature cr@p.

Stories and drama are what makes movies ... not just the 'lovely' shots.

Pete

 

You know, I will have to agree with you on a racing movie being like a pizza. I would rather watch even a fairly poor one than some of the stuff that is out now. When I was with FoD we had a very nice movie viewing room. I mean very nice, like $700,000 worth of video and audio equipment. We ran Driven several times just for the sound. It absolutely rattled the walls. It was a lot of fun to sit in the middle of the room and hear the cars coming from one side and pass "thru" you on the way to the other side of the room (track).

I wish someone would really do a good job of making a racing movie with a believable script, good actors and real cars. But, unfortunately I cannot bankroll something like that.......

 

When I watch Le Mans ... at certain parts the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and afterwards I want to go out for a blast, I'm pumped fill of petrol head fumes.

I felt none of that with Driven.
Pete

 

The melodious sounds of the 917 and 512 also played a small role in that didn't it. I love the start of Grand Prix as well with the split screens and racing tachs of the GP cars ... Bella

 

Driven was horrible...days of thunder was a better racing movie.

Last week I saw a documentary about the making of Lemans. Sparked a whole new interest for me. The director tried some very innovative things. There was one seen where he wanted to have a moving camera attached to a race car so that the camera could swing from the side of the car to the rear of the car. The driver I believe it was Derek Bell said their first attempt was at speed and when the camera boom got to the end of it's travel the momentum swung the back of the car around and nearly took out both cars. I don't know if they were the first but they used some radio controlled cars for some of the crash scenes. I respect that movie so much more when I saw how it helped develop special effects in movies in general.