Reader Tips

Reader Tips 46 Comments

For those who appreciate cars & technology, here’s an interesting historical retrospective of Mercedes-Benz.
For those love cars & movies, here’s one of the most famous car chases in American cinematic history. It comes from Steve McQueen’s 1968 classic, Bullitt. Arguably even better were the car chases in John Frankenheimer’s 1998 action film, Ronin. You can view them here and here.
Update: Various SDA readers have rated highly these car chases too: Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), The French Connection (1971), Blues Brothers (1980), The Driver (1978), and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
Please feel free to leave your equally exhilarating Reader Tips in the comments!

46 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  3. If you notice, you see the same white Firebird and green VW bug over and over..look at all those beauties parked on the streets of San Fran in 1967!
    The motorcyclist who gets dumped off of his bike ( a BSA twin!) is none other than famous ISDT rider Bud Ekins.
    The stuntman who plays the Mob hitman/driver of the Charger cut his teeth doing car chase scenes in the 30’s in gangster flicks!

  4. Hey, what’s The French Connection, chopped fois gras?
    infinitysquared, I throw caution to the wind, I need advice. Should I adopt five more cats? Please help.

  6. The VW and Firebird were filmed from 3 or 4 different angles. You’re actually watching the same stunt several times, but from a different POV. The “Ronin” car chase was very unpleasant, because it showed such a wanton disregard for innocent bystanders. I found myself rooting for the cops to take out the stars of the film. My favorite car chases were from “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry”, and “Vanishing Point”. Not to disrespect “Bullitt”, it’s still the benchmark.

  8. The charger chasing Bullitt is vastly better styled than the ‘Stang. And apparently the driver of the charger had to ease up at times because the ‘Stang was nowhere near as fast or as sharp handling.
    …
    I think that SunTv owes Kate a royalty cheque too:
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2011/06/11/18271031.html
    “Twelve months after Fox News launched in the U.S. in the late 1990s, it had the same number of viewers Sun News has after just two months on-air.”
    Bravo!!

  9. Ronin is one of my fave movies. They used right hand drive cars for some of the scenes, with prof race drivers sitting beside the actors filmed with the dummy steering wheel. The actors were terrified a good deal of the time!

  10. Nothing beats the car chase from the Blues Brothers!
    “Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don’t fail me now”

  13. The Mercedes vid conveniently skips over the years the nazis were in power… They arguably built their very best passenger and racing cars during that timeperiod.

  14. I just watched the DVD “The Soviet Story”, a film by Edvins Snore. It was produced in 2008 and has subtitles in 30 languages.
    http://www.sovietstory.com
    The film discusses the similarities of and the collaboration between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. It also discusses the mass exterminations carried out by both regimes and why the west ignores the Soviet crimes, including Walter Duranty’s role in hiding the Soviet atrocities.
    I doubt that this documentary will be shown at the University of Ottawa or other universities in North America.

  15. The best was Ryan O’neil in “The Driver.” At least–he was driving a Ford.

  16. Black Mamba: “Should I adopt five more cats?”
    No … and best not get an MBA either.
    Next time you feel like getting cats, reach for the universal cure for any aliment – bacon.

  17. About technology…where do ya get the golf balls that ignite on impact and send up smoke signals to locate? The pink ones make me blind.

  20. “When Government Jumps the Shark”
    “When enough progressive programs have become both unsustainable and untouchable, we move to the final stage. It is bad enough when a government program becomes a shark; it is much, much worse when a social paradigm as a whole jumps past the shark stage. A cluster of unsustainable but untouchable policies and institutions sooner or later reaches the point when it no longer threatens the country with ruin at some indefinite point in the future: imminent ruin stares us direct in the face.”
    http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/10/when-government-jumps-the-shark/
    …-
    >>> “Using government purchasing power to jump-start an innovative homegrown industry and jobs is sound policy.”
    “McGuinty’s ‘explosion’ of green energy? Would you believe implosion”
    “Dalton McGuinty had a dream.
    The Ontario Premier imagined a vibrant green-energy industry that would help ease the transition to a post-auto-manufacturing economy.
    He would do it by offering power producers premium rates for wind and solar power as long as they committed to using Ontario-made equipment and labour. By the end of next year, there would be billions of dollars worth of investment and 50,000 new jobs.”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/mcguintys-explosion-of-green-energy-would-you-believe-implosion/article2057633/

  21. *O’crumbles: O’s narcissistic rage.
    H/T Black Mamba at June 13, 2011 2:34 AM.
    …-
    “OBAMA SCREAMS AT STAFF: “What the F**k Was That?” After Netanyahu Meeting”
    “The essence of the president’s rage and embarrassment can best be summed up with him yelling out very loudly, “What the f-ck was that!?” That phrase was apparently repeated a number of times in the span of about five minutes, a time period in which Obama’s voice became “louder and louder” and culminating in Obama exclaiming, “Never again! Do you understand me? Never again!” Any response by Bill Daley back to the president, if given, was not overheard.”
    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/06/obama-screams-at-staff-what-the-fk-was-that-after-netanyahu-meeting/
    …-
    “Barack Obama – Narcissist or Merely Narcissistic?
    Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. – 8/13/2008”
    “*Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression.”
    http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

  22. Thanks macd, wtf? Obama himself doesn’t believe it’s “winning the future.”

  23. Glad to see somebody remembered Vanishing Point.
    Car chases just aren’t the same since CGI and those frickin’ air cannons that shoot the cars into the air. Notice nobody mentioned The Matrix car chases? CGI.
    Best WWII aircraft scenes by the way are in The Battle of Britain. Real planes doing real stunts, including -real- ME109s and an HE 111. Compare that movie to the recent Pearl Harbor flick (which is crap generally) and you’ll see the CGI just doesn’t cut it. For one thing, pilots don’t go close to the ground if they can help it, particularly in combat. Altitude is life.

  26. What, no James Bond chases? Every movie has one or more and you have to admit they are entertaining if not realistic. Personally, I like 007 being chased while driving a tank(Golden Eye) but for pure comic relief Roger Moore driving a half a car around Paris(A View To A Kill).
    Seriously, in modern day it was Bullitt or French Connection as the standard. The most dangerous chases though had to be the silent movie genre. No CGI in those days

  27. Ferrari vs Trolley Car in “The Rock” anyone?
    Motorcyclist: Hey Man. You just f###ed up your Ferrari!
    Goodspeed: It’s not mine…Neither is this!
    (Takes motocycle.)

  28. Two Lane Blacktop – a ’55 Chev versus a GTO cross country. And oddball casting: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson and Laurie Bird. It’s a little artsy at times, but there’s lots of good old car action and attention to mechanical detail.

  29. I think I saw the French Connection 3 more times in the theaters, after watching it the first time.

  30. Both men of power were caught using their privilege of power to help them take advantage of much younger women – repeatedly. So help me get this straight;
    The Clinton’s and the Weiners have been very close – to the point of mentor/confidant/idol.
    Anthony Weiner is falling out of favor with the Democrats and the media … because?
    Bill Clinton was made into an icon by the media and continues to campaign and get rich to this day … because?
    But but … didn’t Anthony Weiner just showed his while Bill Clinton shoved his?
    So what’s the call here media and Dems – a plain old we-iner is a no no while a wee-in-er is ok ?
    IMO, both are despicable.
    Why the double standard?

  31. Cars used to be a lot of fun! Fast, luxurious, comfortable and powerful! I miss thrill of the ride that was..the tin/plastic cans that the manufacturers make now are dull as dirt.

  32. This is from Michelle Malkin
    “ABC’s Claire Shipman, who happens to be married to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, took extra advantage of the situation to give a smackdown to white men:
    [She said] “There’s also an economist at the University of Michigan who has studied diversity and decision-making and has found that, in every business decision, diversity leads to better decisions. In other words, a group of all white men are not going to reach the best decisions.”
    How’s that for the thinking-of-the-left.
    And Malkin notes that: “Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters adds:
    Imagine for a second a televised panel of exclusively white men discussing why a group of non-white men or an assemblage of females of any ethnic group would not reach the best decisions.”

  34. “Migrant workers in China attack police in third day of riots”
    “Angry migrant workers in China have attacked police and burned dozens of cars and buses during three days of rioting near the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, in the latest of a series of recent incidents of social unrest to sweep the country.”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8572680/Migrant-workers-in-China-attack-police-in-third-day-of-riots.html
    …-
    “Roubini warns of China hard landing”
    “China faces a “meaningful probability” of a hard economic landing and the eurozone is storing up problems for the future by not tackling the debt crisis head on, said Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the global financial crisis.
    He said U.S. Treasury prices, which have risen sharply as investors sought a safe haven from the euro area debt crisis and worries about a slowdown in the global economy, were fairly valued although he was cautious about U.S. equities.
    New York-based Roubini is closely followed by Wall Street because he predicted the U.S. housing meltdown that precipitated the global downturn.
    China avoided a hard landing during the global credit crunch but faces a downturn after 2013 as it will struggle to keep increasing fixed investments, Roubini said.
    “There is a meaningful probability of a hard landing in China after 2013,” he told a financial conference in Singapore.
    [More]”
    http://www.jacksnewswatch.com/

  37. “Chile ash cloud forces UN chief Ban Ki-moon on to bus
    Herald Sun”
    H/T UNaBomber Mo Strong, the uncle Mo of Liberal leader Basement Bob Rae.

  39. Viva the New American Revolution!
    After Breitbart suffered slanderous blackballing from left and right alike for his handling of the Shirley Sherrod affair, it was a genuine thrill to see him vindicated. Standing before the biased reporters he’d scooped once again, he challenged them, “The media says, ‘Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies.’ Give me one example of a provable lie. One — one!”
    http://pajamasmedia.com/andrewklavan/2011/06/13/viva-the-new-american-revolution/

  40. Of Wreckers: H/T Comrade Stalin.
    “Politico: Obama White House tried to gag engineer who inconveniently points out that new flood-control pumps in New Orleans don’t work”
    H/T: http://www.newswatchcanada.ca/
    …-
    “More trouble ahead for New Orleans?”
    “Maria Garzino is somebody you’ve probably never heard of.”
    “She hasn’t tweeted pictures of herself to amorous strangers. She hasn’t expounded comically on half-remembered episodes of U.S. history. She hasn’t even been the vessel for psychic messages about dead bodies in an empty house. There’s absolutely no reason she should be in the news, as it’s currently conceived.”
    Except that she knows why the new, expensive system to protect New Orleans from hurricane storm surge can’t work as advertised. She knows, because she’s been there, how the hydraulic pumps at the system’s heart have design defects that render them unable to perform under storm-surge conditions.
    And she knows how the White House has responded – or not responded — to that information.
    Garzino was, and still is, a civil and mechanical engineer in the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Her job, in the chaotic weeks and months after 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded, was to supervise the testing and installation of the pumps at the center of the “new, improved” system that the corps was building to replace the structures that catastrophically failed in 2005.
    She was at the Florida testing facility when these pumps repeatedly failed their tests — even after the standards were lowered to enable them to pass. (Where was that system when I was in college?) Though she reported this to her supervisors, the pumps were ordered installed to meet the corps’ self-imposed deadline of June 1, 2006. They’re still there.”
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56795.html

  43. Ken, my grandparents were gassed by the Soviets in what was Hungary now Romania because my Mom escaped.
    Never hear about those gassing in the news.

  44. Black Mamba: “Should I adopt five more cats? Please help.” By all means — please consider taking one of mine.

  45. tomax7, you won’t either, as the MSM and the educational system have been covering for the Soviets for 90 years. Why? It is simple because by and large they support that sort of system or something similar.
    Ever wonder why you see Che T-shirts in high schools and universities? Their teachers have told them Che was a good guy. The last time I looked, the McNally Robinson book store in Saskatoon was selling Che T-shirts. They either are ignorant of Che’s history or support it.
    Black Mamba, take only four cats. Our collie Dolly needs another friend to snooze with and tease.

  46. Everyone just ask Kate for my home address (I guess she’s got it, it’s attached to my PayPal account) and mail me your spare cats, dogs, ferrets, whatever, anything even slightly fluffy and needy that won’t bite me all the time, I’m cool. And booze, I’ll need booze, mail me booze.

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