popular model kits

What's even more interesting is to see how much they're going for....

Yeah, I had that Aurora T Rex. Ouch. :-(

Pat

I ~have~ the Moon Bus. Seeing prices like that give me pause to consider selling out. Naaahhhhhh....... 8^P

I found Moon buses on sale at K-Mart back in the mid 70's and used them for a cheap source of parts for rocket models. I got them for a dollar or two each.

Pat

Years ago (mid1970s) I found a bunch of Monogram Speedee Builts (the

1:48 solid balsa kits) on a trip to visit my then-in-laws in Montreal Canada. The Frenchman that sold them to me sold them at the marked price - 29=A2 each. There were three available, the F-84, the P-40 and (I think) the P-51. I sold the P-40 to a friend who collected things Curtiss for $5.00, the F-84 to a co-worker who built one as a kid for same and gave the last one away as a birthday present. Twenty years later I found out just valuable that those kits have become.... Oh well, I don't really do balsa, so that's okay.

I found a Strombecker wood Douglas Skyrocket kit around that time also. I've never even seen one of the Monogram ones in real life.

Pat

Now we know why they're rare. ;)

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Everyone forgets that at the time 2001 came out, it was considered more confusing than a classic, and its box office appeal wasn't that great. I still don't think it is all that great of a movie, although I like HAL and the apes at the beginning. The ending was pretty much incomprehensible unless you read the book. I think Aurora ended up with a warehouse full of Moon Buses that they were trying to get rid of all the way to the end of the company. Just wait; thirty years from now models from the Star Wars prequels will be worth a fortune. Okay... maybe not. Lets face it, the movies sucked. :-D

Pat

Thank heavens someone else admits that the movie was confusing. The first time I saw it I was wondering why it was supposed to be a 'Classic'. Bizarre beginning and confusing ending - yep, that makes a classic.

BTW, I'm left flat by "Citizen Kane" and "Gone With The Wind". Had I met Miss Scarlet, I'd have run as far and as fast as possible.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I find it one of the over-rated movies ever done. I think 2010 is a far better movie than 2001. I mentioned that on the sci.space.history newsgroup, and they nearly tore my head off for daring to speak anything less than praises of it. For a really imaginative (and really funny also) science fiction movie of recent years it's hard to beat "The Fifth Element", which is like something like Harry Harrison or Eric Frank Russell would come up with. Of course having Mobius design how the future will look was a brilliant move on Bisson's part. I keep thinking that that movie probably did a pretty good job of predicting just how odd yet familiar the future really will be.

Kane's great from a cinematographic viewpoint, but the story is really pretty simplistic. But it looks and sounds really impressive, so it must be great...of course that same description could be used for Orson Wells. Gone With The Wind is basically a steamy (or what would pass for steamy at the time) big-budget soap opera. Scarlett comes across as a lot more trouble than she'd ever be worth, but a woman wrote the book and in a lot of soap operas men throw themselves at women who are real pains in the ass or outright psychos. For a real shot at the latter, check out the bizarre movie version of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"*. In that one both lead characters come across as complete wackos... but I guess it's the same in the book, so it's probably a good adaptation.

*She wrote most of the script and was around while they were filming it, so I assume she _wanted_ it to end up like that. One can only assume that Lucas wanted those Star Wars prequels to end up like that also, though God knows why. At least Spielberg is still doing quality science fiction movies. (Pat looks out window and notes Optimus Prime battling a Martian War Machine in the street, as Dakota Fanning stands outside his door and screams and screams, only to be dragged off by police for her murder of Tom Cruise in 2013) On second thought, maybe 2001 isn't that bad of a movie after all. ;-)

Pat

I did watch "The Fountainhead" as there was this silly woman at work who thought Ayn Rand was the bees' knees. I've never seen a bigger waste of Gary Cooper's talents.

My colleague at work thought business people were of the highest morals. I told her I thought of them rather as cats in heat. She didn't like that much but I had to agree with her that a society is in its best health when it produces what it needs. That means putting its own people to work doing thus. 'Service Economy' to me means nothing more than shuffling others' product around. It produces nothing.

Oops, I stumbled up onto a soap box. Sorry 'bout that.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

It's great watching him spout that stuff in his courtroom appearance scene while his eyes and whole delivery say: "I don't have a clue what I just said is supposed to mean...what the hell is she driving at, anyway? He blows up poor people's housing because they want balconies, and that's okay? Is she nuts?"

By the moral standards of piranhas, they probably are. It's the old Social Darwinism idea; the more ruthless we all are to each other, the better things will get. It's an interesting inversion on the Biblical idea of God rewarding good people with plenty. Instead of "Your goodness has been rewarded with riches by God." it has become "The fact that you are rich proves you are a good person in God's eyes." which isn't the same thing by a long shot.

Probably took a swing at you with her riding crop, then threw some statuary out of a nearby window, right? Ever wonder where that thing landed at several floors below? I half expected to hear a shriek followed by ambulance sirens. Boy, the parody you could do of that movie. After Roark dynamites Cortland and gets away with it, he sets out on a one-architect reign of terror across the entire country, blowing everything to hell he thinks wasn't built by a pure act of will on the part of a single designer. The FBI finally catches up with him as he is getting ready to dynamite Mt Rushmore on the grounds that "It should have only Jefferson's face on it as he was the one who wrote the Declaration Of Independence...so the United States was his idea alone, and the other three presidents meddled with his plans." Here, Roark shows a model of the revolutionary "Domino Tower":

unfortunately toppled in a stiff breeze two weeks after it was completed in 1952. Not to be stopped by something so trivial as nature, Roark next built the "Intrepid Incline" apartment building: unfortunately fell into the street in 1958 when all the tenants rushed onto the front balcony simultaneously one day after hearing a rumor that Marilyn Monroe was entering the building's first floor...naked. Undaunted, Roark continued onwards and upwards...producing his first masterwork, the Wynand Building: unfortunately was destroyed when the Moon collided with it in 1964. But there was no stopping a man of Roark's drive and ambition, and even greater architectural accomplishments lay ahead: Pat

I wouldn't have given a damn.

Tower":

...which unfortunately toppled in a stiff breeze two weeks after it was

Looks like the U.N. building on stilts......

I've always thought that 2001 was a brilliant movie but the end is mostly special effects. I'd call the first 90% of the movie excellent and why it's a classic. Someone mentioned the book... yes, having read the book, the end of the movie makes more sense.

Citizen Kane... again a better book than movie, but also an excellent classic. It's a terrific story based on one of the Fitzgeralds of Boston (Kennedy ancestors) and it also means much more if you know about the Kennedy family. Once you read about the Fitzgeralds, then watch Kane...you'll be riveted.

I guess to watch movies that can be pretty multi-faceted like that, it helps to have read some background first.

Gone with the Wind.... never into it. It's a taste thing, I guess.

---Stephen

Stephen Tontoni wrote in news:tontoni- snipped-for-privacy@comcast.dca.giganews.com:

That's interesting. I always understood it was based on William Randolph Hearst, Right down to the mansion he built in northern California, the newspapers, etc.

I think, for their times, Citizen Kane and 2001 were certainly breakthrough movies. Whether they stand the test of time is always an issue.For me, Forbidden Planet still stands the test of time in Sci Fi.

Gary Anderson

Tower":

> ...which unfortunately toppled in a stiff breeze two weeks after it was

Pity it's not a breezy day.

All the boys at National Review :-P

It certainly looks like one of the main inspirations for Star Trek, right down to having a United Federation Of Planets Cruiser for a United Planets Cruiser, and a captain who gets the moves put on him by a hot scantily dressed babe. In the original series concept, Enterprise's front saucer shaped section was supposed to detach and land on planets, but the budget wouldn't allow it. That would have made the resemblance to FP's C-57D even more striking. Of course, Kirk would have killed Robby on sight, and cut another notch in his phaser for the destruction of a soulless intelligent machine that wouldn't let people suffer and die the way they are supposed to. But at least Morbius was smart enough to blow up the whole Krell planet because it had a powerful thinking machine on it that could give you whatever you wanted, and Kirk would have applauded him for that. No halfway measures when dealing with those damn things.

Pat