and why were they called Airport when all the action took place on airplanes?
― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, 8 February 2003 16:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 8 February 2003 16:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Saturday, 8 February 2003 18:33 (twenty-one years ago) link
Thank you, DV, for allowing my to get this long-buried trauma out in the open. I feel slightly better now.
What was that film about the haunted/possessed 747 called?
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Saturday, 8 February 2003 18:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Paul (scifisoul), Saturday, 8 February 2003 19:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
errr, the ghost of flight 409 or something? that one is meant to be REALLY SCARY because it is BASED ON A TRUE STORY.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Sunday, 9 February 2003 01:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Mott (Ben Mott), Sunday, 9 February 2003 06:53 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Well, they don't call it a cockpit for nothing."
(Airport '80, classic.)
― Wintermute (Wintermute), Sunday, 9 February 2003 08:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
Counter-Search: unedited Fight Club as in-flight entertainment.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 10 February 2003 12:29 (twenty-one years ago) link
looks like i picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue...
― piscesboy, Monday, 10 February 2003 14:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
on the series
http://www.avclub.com/article/star-studded-airport-movies-reach-great-heights-un-215647
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 3 March 2015 12:34 (nine years ago) link
These were, for some reason, a big hit in our family when I was a kid.
― Drop soap, not bombs (Ste), Tuesday, 3 March 2015 15:03 (nine years ago) link
If they're still remaking fuckin' Star Is Born w/ a straight face, it's time to revive this franchise. NO JOKES, either.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 4 March 2019 13:51 (five years ago) link
We should be right around the 50-year anniversary of the first one getting filmed at MSP.
― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Monday, 4 March 2019 15:50 (five years ago) link
MD'A on it:
https://letterboxd.com/gemko/film/airport/
Funny to read the contemporaneous reviews of this juggernaut (still one of the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, adjusted for inflation—about $550 million domestic in today's money), which almost uniformly treat it as beneath contempt. Wonder what they'd think if I could zip back there in a time machine and show them what today's equivalent looks like. For a big dumb event movie, it's almost surreally adult by current standards, albeit in a shallow, soapy kind of way; even the ostensible "villain" has an utterly banal, real-world motivation for his behavior, never coming across as anything more than a terrified, desperate loser. Nor would any mass audience today tolerate such a slow, patient, methodical buildup. I've never read Hailey, and assume his novels have no literary merit (though critics tarred Stephen King with that same brush...), but in broad conception they seem to be not unlike, say, Casino, employing narrative primarily as a hook in order to explore the working details of a given milieu; enough of that approach survives here to exert a certain behind-the-scenes fascination even in the film's dopier interludes. And let's be honest: It's often preposterously entertaining. When Helen Hayes sat down next to Van Heflin, I got downright giddy anticipating where that must be headed, and yet the abrupt, weirdly sadistic, ultimately forlorn way it played out still caught me off guard. Everything after that is arguably anticlimactic (and starts becoming recognizable as fodder for Airplane! gags), but even the so-called happy ending boasts elements that would be unthinkable now, e.g. Burt Lancaster's sister—an apparently perfectly nice woman we've been given no reason to dislike, and did I mention she's Burt Lancaster's sister? anyone remember Sweet Smell of Success?—arriving at the gate to greet hubby Dean Martin, only to watch him accompany Jacqueline Bisset to the hospital, ignoring her completely..hold on her deflated expression as she realizes her marriage is over...aaaand roll credits (after one last scene to confirm that Burt Lancaster's marriage is also over). Amazing.
― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Monday, 4 March 2019 15:51 (five years ago) link
There has been a Poseidon Adventure remake; how has there not been an update of Airport, perhaps riffing on the MH370 disappearance?
And this thread reminds me; apparently the original Airport contains an almost balletic sequence of snowplows clearing a runway. Can anyone speak to this?
― Anne Hedonia (j.lu), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:02 (five years ago) link
Aren't planes in peril movies a tougher sell post 9/11?
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 4 March 2019 16:03 (five years ago) link
Who can chew up scenery today like George Kennedy? Ed Harris would have been the obvious choice a few years ago, but he might be too old now.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 16:07 (five years ago) link
Nicholas Cage, duh.
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:10 (five years ago) link
Bingo! You've just been signed on as casting director.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 16:11 (five years ago) link
Betty White for Helen Hayes.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 16:12 (five years ago) link
The Lancaster role has to go to Pacino. I'm excited; let's get a Kickstarter going.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 16:17 (five years ago) link
apparently the original Airport contains an almost balletic sequence of snowplows clearing a runway. Can anyone speak to this?
Not sure it's "balletic," per se, but to this day the MSP airport plows clear in what they call a conga line.
― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:29 (five years ago) link
Meryl Streep as Burt Lancaster.
― Let's have sensible centrist armageddon (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:30 (five years ago) link
Post Malone as Van Heflin.
― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:32 (five years ago) link
Nic Cage in a modern-day Airport remake would be AMAZING, and best viewed on the back of the economy class seat in front of you on a Virgin Atlantic flight.
― Zeuhl Idol (Matt #2), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:32 (five years ago) link
Which, btw, everyone's playing the actual actors named, not the characters from the original Airport movie.
Who's this generation's Lee Grant?
― Zeuhl Idol (Matt #2), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:34 (five years ago) link
Would watch Eric's meta-Airport.
The only one of these I've seen is whichever one has the plane getting stuck underwater.
― Timothée Charalambides (cryptosicko), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:36 (five years ago) link
can already see Judi Dench as dear little pixie Helen Hayes.
― Let's have sensible centrist armageddon (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:39 (five years ago) link
Margo Martindale would make a keen Maureen Stapleton.
― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Monday, 4 March 2019 16:42 (five years ago) link
Matthew McConaughey for the Dean Martin role. Not morose, True Detective/Dallas Buyers Club serious-actor McConaughey, but some cross between the rom-com and alright-alright-alright guy. That's Martin.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 19:11 (five years ago) link