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You are in... Forums > General > General motoring > Cars & The Movies

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kubrick

Joined:

Sep 06

Posts: 1540

kubrick says:

Cars & The Movies

 Gentlemen, 

after having littered another thread with a decidedly off-topic discussion on the use of vintage cars on motion pictures, I thought it might be worthwile to stard a dedicated thread in order to further delve into this subject. 

The usual "The Greatest Car Chases Ever" debates are fair enough, but I'm more interested in a broader picture of the automobile as portrayed by the filmmaking world. 

There are the usual icons of movie cars (think The Graduate's Duetto, Bond's Astons - and a Lotus -, Doc Brown's DeLorean), then there's the omnipresent product placement and, perhaps most interestingly, there are also cases in which a director and/or screenwriter has paid great attention to which automobiles he lent to his characters: proper car casting, if you will. 

 

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  • Posted 357 days ago (30 May 2012 11:49)
car4mh

Joined:

Dec 06

Posts: 1803

car4mh says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

Sam the Eagle said:
car4mh said:

Some ideas for Batmobile base cars:

2008 Spadaconcept Codatronca. 

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Interesting. Is it based on a Corvette? 


Hi Sam. Yes, according to this article from Car Body Design in 2007 the Codatronca is Corvette-based, so I guess it's a similar deal to the Bertone Mantide. It also seems that Spada & son made a roadster edition of the Codatronca last year, the Codatronca Monza (Mantide & Codatronca Monza links via Autoblog). That would make a twin-cockpit Batmobile a la Barris quite easy to design. or for a suitably dramatic canopy to be fabricated. 

Some further research has revealed the Codatronca official site, which has an aminated video with the theme 'This is not Gotham City'. So I'm far from the first to pick up on the Batmobile connotations of its design. 

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  • Posted 348 days ago (08 June 2012 13:24)
Sam the Eagle

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Posts: 3036

Sam the Eagle says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

I quite like the red one with the glass roof. How much?

 

 

Hell is other people.

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  • Posted 348 days ago (08 June 2012 13:46)
car4mh

Joined:

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Posts: 1803

car4mh says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

More Batmobiles candidates, in three categories:

Supercar/GT - The Bertone Pandion (2010) has a suitably-dramatic door opening and bird-like design cues that could easily be repurposed to bat-like forms. The GT by Citroen (2008) looks like it was designed for a movie already but would need door modifications to allow a cape 'n cowl vigilante to easily enter and exit. The Saab Aero X (2006) has a perfect canopy system and lends itself to a jet-car restyle. (all links www.carstyling.ru)

Racing car - These 3 would look like Bruce Wayne contracted a motorsports engineering firm to build his Batmobile chassis. The Caparo T1 looks fine but the cockpit isn't wide enough for two proper seats and the canopy system would need further development. The Tramontana R has a tandem two-seat layout and looks like it's a wingless warplane but its flip-forward canopy may not work on film. The Hulme CanAm Spyder is similar to the Caparo but with side-by-side seating and an open roof perhaps lends itself more readily to Batmobile mods. The downside of this type of Batmobile would be accessory/weapon space and they imply that Batman has moved to the Nurburgring.

Off-roader - I was sceptical when I saw the first images of the current Batmobile/Tumbler but the films have made excellent use of the idea that the best Batmobile is a huge armoured all-terrain vehicle. It's hard to go back to the idea of the Batmobile being limited to roads after seeing it. I'm cheating on AReader's original question by being inspired by Renault's '93 Racoon concept, for an all-terrain Batmobile with variable rideheight and a canopy. More recently, the Volkswagen Concept T and Local Motors Rallyfighter hint at an all-terrain two-seater that could be modified for caped crusading.

Alright, that's more than enough Bat-geek theorising from me. 

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  • Posted 348 days ago (08 June 2012 14:27)
car4mh

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Posts: 1803

car4mh says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

Sam the Eagle said:

I quite like the red one with the glass roof. How much?


According to the 2009 autoblog article linked above in my earlier comment the Bertone Mantide retailed for US$2m for one of ten examples built, based on the current Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1. 

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  • Posted 348 days ago (08 June 2012 14:34)
Sam the Eagle

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Posts: 3036

Sam the Eagle says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

Bit expensive for a 'vette in drag, but thanks all the same.

 

And indeed enough Batmobile stuff - can we get back to real world cars on screen please?

 

 

 

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Hell is other people.

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  • Posted 348 days ago (08 June 2012 15:03)
kubrick

Joined:

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Posts: 1540

kubrick says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

  Here's a curious one: Michael Chimino's Desperate Hours. A stinker of a movie, it fundamentally fails to deliver any kind of thrill or suspense, which would be somewhat welcome, given it likes to see itself as a psychological thriller.

And this is despite a superb cast, including Mickey Rourke as god created him and Anthony Hopkins right before he developed a penchant for Fava beans. Almost equally excessive is the film's car casting - someone (probably either Cimino or one of the screenwriters) really likes his European cars: Hopkins drives the then brand new BMW 750iL (E32) and Kelly Lynch - who must rank among the most unconvincing barristers in movie history - can be seen driving both a Jaguar XJ-S convertible and an Aston V8 Volante.

Mind you, Desperate Hours' failure certainly wasn't due to a lack of funding or capable craftsmen. The eyes behind the lens, for example, belonged to Doug Milsome, who had previously helped turn Beckton Gas Works into Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. And he also knew how to present BMW's breakthrough executive saloon in the right light.

And if you're still with me, you might even care to learn that Desperate Hours' editing was supervised by Peter Hunt, who invented a fast paced editing style for the Bond movies, which would help establish what we today know as the action movie. Not only that, Hunt also directed arguably one of the finest entries into the 007 franchise, involving Emma Peel, Theo Kojak and that Aston DBS with the world's screechiest tyres.

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  • Posted 343 days ago (13 June 2012 11:34)
AReader

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Posts: 3693

AReader says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

Seeing that XJ-S next to a 60s Mercury Cougar made me think it was a good job they did not use an XJ-S coupe and a 71 Cougar - it would have been flying buttress overload (per recent lookalike).

Also, thanks to all for the Batmobile siggestions. I particularly liked seant's BMW concept. car4mh's Citroen GT also struck a chord. It would look great in black.....

Surprised no one suggested 2008 BAT 11. Perhaps too obvious?

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  • Posted 343 days ago (13 June 2012 18:04)
car4mh

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car4mh says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

@AReader - BAT11 completely slipped my mind. Bertone seem to have cornered the market in batmobiles recently. 

I've been trying to think of something to contribute to this thread that doesn't involve superheroes, 'top awesomest 10 car chase movies ever ROFL' or television. Only to find the movies I've been watching the past couple of weeks have been largely devoid of worthwhile cars to comment on.

A couple of days ago I watched Abbas Kiarostami's 2010 film 'Certified Copy', another film that has very little to suggest great thought was given into the choice of vehicles. My first impression was that they'd chosen Juliette Binoche's car from the nearest Hertz counter. But after seeing Bertandnairobi's photo gallery and his comments on the Focus ST article, I wonder if he was involved in the production. Especially when I saw what else was sitting in the car park. Would a French antiques dealer living in Tuscany who looks like Juliette Binoche drive a basic Mk 2 Focus?

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  • Posted 341 days ago (15 June 2012 13:12)
kubrick

Joined:

Sep 06

Posts: 1540

kubrick says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

 car4mh said:
Would a French antiques dealer living in Tuscany who looks like Juliette Binoche drive a basic Mk 2 Focus?


------ End Quote ------

Because intellectuals and aesthetes despise the automobile. At least that's what some intellectuals (and even fewer aesthetes) would have you believe. 

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  • Posted 338 days ago (18 June 2012 10:41)
bertandnairobi

Joined:

Feb 07

Posts: 4487

bertandnairobi says:

Re: Cars & The Movies

There´s a Lancia Thesis next to the Focus in that last photo. I think that choosing such an ordinary car was a clever touch. It would be absurd to put Binoche in something obvious like a little red sports car. She doesn´t take time to choose her fridge and nor does she care much about her car other than it´s neatly, professionally styled, has good steering and first rate interior hard trim (especially the stuff around the b-pillar, c-pillar and the liftgate).

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  • Posted 338 days ago (18 June 2012 12:54)
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