Subject:
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Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.adventurers
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Date:
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Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:35:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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1111 times
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In lugnet.adventurers, Craig Hamilton writes:
> oh! and how can you look at set #5976 ~river expedition~ and not think of john
> huston's classic, "The African Queen"(1955)!?
>
> the boat driver even resembles bogart! this is another gorgeous movie, filmed
> on location in the belgian congo. kathrine hepburn wrote a great book/ memoir
> about her adventuresome experiences while making making the movie.
> it seems tht this movie would doubly qualify. first, the story of the souse • and
> the spinster travelling downriver in africa during WW1, combating the elements
> and the germans...(not to mention each other!). then, the story of huston
> (senor palomar w/ a nicer face, behind movie camera) making the film.
>
> later ~ craig
Craig,
I can speak from experience on this one. I was in the Republic of the Congo
for a six month vegetation survey two years ago. While the river basin is
stunningly beautiful it is at the same time one of the most inhospitable
regions on Earth for Westerners. The vegetation is absolutely breath taking.
Think of every plant, tree, vine, and shrub on a gargantuan scale and
thoroughly pissed that you want to get by it. The fauna is everywhere. You
can't turn around without find thirty somethings crawling, slithering, biting,
or excreting on you. The weather is also powerful. Humidity remains at 99%
to 100% for the entire year. Malaria is rampant (I got my second dose of it
here). Water, while plentiful is not to be trusted, try brushing your teeth
with beer or Pepsi. The locals who travel up and down the Ubangi branch of
the Congo river are a mix of hunter-gatherer natives and Guerillas. As
sketchy as it was to be mixing with dissidents, you were happy to have them
around, because where there were no people there was an abundance of sleeping
sickness, giardia, and tsetse flies. No people translated into low survival
rates. I cannot imagine trying to film something here. Especially in the
1950's. You always think of the jungle as the cradle of life and assume that
it is therefore nurturing to you. It is nurturing in a way. Nurturing to
EVERY type of life...the majority of which are highly hostile to humans. The
phrase, "It's a jungle out there" doesn't have much meaning to most of us from
the West and I guess that is why Huston really wanted to film on location. By
showing a thoroughly miserable Bogart and Hepburn, Huston captured the spirit
of the Congo. If you can deal with the unbelievably calous dialogue, Joseph
Conrad's The Heart of Darkness also captures this region. I will say this as
someone who has been there, I have mixed emotions about it. I can't rightly
say I would ever want to go back, but at the same time I could not say I would
turn down the oppurtunity. It is a region that will truly test your mettle
and then some. When I took the career path I did, I am a Climatologist
specializing in vegetation patterns to be brief and nontechnical, I had no
idea I would go some of the places I have gone. Of all my fieldwork that six
months in the Congolese republic was the most hellish and wonderful. In the
end I realized how utterly ill equipped I was to go without bathing, clean
laundry, fastfood, clean water, steady bowels, etc., etc., etc. When you hear
people berating Westerners for being gluttonous wasteful pigs just smile
politely and be thankful that we are. I know this had nothing to do with lego
but I thought I would share that with the world. This is what Adventurers is
all about to me. And if you really want horror stories ask me sometime about
Cameroon or Botswana, those are scary due to the political circumstances so I
didn't include them.
Cheers,
Mark
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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| Someone once defined adventure as someone else having a hard time a long ways away. What an adventure! :-) I have a Congo African Grey parrot. Just take the gray Lego parrot and slap some red paint on its tail feathers and thar ya go! Bruce (...) (25 years ago, 28-Oct-99, to lugnet.adventurers)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Last Call for Adventure movies poll
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| (...) oh! and how can you look at set #5976 ~river expedition~ and not think of john huston's classic, "The African Queen"(1955)!? the boat driver even resembles bogart! this is another gorgeous movie, filmed on location in the belgian congo. (...) (25 years ago, 28-Oct-99, to lugnet.adventurers)
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