Coming Attractions:

Johnny Depp in The Tourist

The Tourist

Opens in U.S. December 10:  Starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.  Now There’s some scenery!

The background scenery promises to be enticing, too. Venezia. (Not my favorite city, as I explained over a Your Life Is a Trip–but it does make good movie.) The movie is a thriller and I’ll watch Johnny Depp in most anything, so, December 10 is marked on the calendar, you’d better believe. Check out the action-packed web site for The Touristwith games to keep you busy until the opening. Or download a Twitter skin. Or an icon — you can have Angelina’s face as your icon! Uh, guys, you might want to use Johnny Depp’s face instead??? I’m just sayin’.

On the Road with Fridge

Round Ireland With a Fridge

Great Britain: Opened in Sept. U.S.: Maybe Never. Great, funny book by Tony Hawkes. Questionable movie (roundly panned in this review) from Cambridge (England). We in America may never get to see the scrumptious Irish scenery if all the reviews are that bad because it will never get distributed in the U.S.  I have been looking forward to this one, too. Ah, well. The book is still on my TBR list, so guess I’d better go read it. Meanwhile, you can watch a trailer on You Tube. Or buy the DVD from British Amazon. Or visit the film’s web site. Or follow author Tony Hawkes on Twitter @fridgeman.

LISTS

Ten modern movies that are almost as good as traveling to their settings. From Bootsnall (the Platinum Sponsor of Passports With a Purpose–where you can win incredible travel prizes that may let you check out those locales yourself.)

Movies that make you want to travel from the blogger who calls himself The Brooklyn Nomad

General Movie Research for Travelers:

Best site to find movie locations. Clicking on google map shows picture of specific location.

Best web site for movie insider stuff. Film Gecko

What is the absolutely BEST travel movie you have ever seen? (Suggest you check Brooklyn Nomad’s article and all 44 comments before answering. You may have forgotten one.)

Also read:Posts

• Bruges, the movie
• Ireland in animation
• Vienna’s Third Man
• Cuba is Music

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Movie: Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale

This clip, not associated with the movie, comes from You Tube.

I am never sure whether to be amused or perplexed when bad guys become tourist attractions.  I guess the correct word is “bemused.”  While we sometimes give equal time to heroes–Wyatt Earp, for instance, in Tombstone, Arizona–I am at a loss as to why Billy The Kid draws people to a museum in Hico, Texas.

And now we have the reckless, not-too-bright, ruthless John Dillinger indirectly doing good for his home state of Indiana, his hideaway state of Wisconsin and Chicago, home of hoods. Wisconsin, particularly, betting the movie Public Enemies will be a smash hit, launched a tourism campaign that stops just short of calling Dillinger “Wisconsin’s Favorite Son.” “See bullet holes from the 1934 shoot out” at Little Bohemia (now a restaurant rather than a lodge). “Go ‘on the lam’ in Wisconsin,” the tourism touts recommend on a web site listing Wisconsin tours .

Chicago, of course has had mobster tours for many years.  Nearly as soon as the gunshot wounds healed from gang fights in the twenties and thirties, Chicago started cashing in on its reputation as capitol of crime.  Boosting that business, the movie gives us some nice glimpses of Chicago’s El and the Public Library.

And Indiana gets into the act because Dillinger was born there, so there state Archives will run special exhibits this summer.

My own town of Tucson does its bit for Dillinger’s fame with yearly Dillinger days at the Hotel Congress.  The gang was staying there when a fire smoked them out and law officers discovered their heavy suitcases were packing lead (so to speak).

A little pouting here, because the Public Enemies film makers truncated the Tucson story, leaving out the fire. Worse, they did not film in Tucson.  However, if you visit the downtown Congress Hotel, you’ll be seeing it pretty much the way Dillinger saw it.  The old switchboard with its tangle of wires sits behind the lobby desk. In the sparsely-furnished rooms you will not be watching TV (although you can watch at the seating area at the end of the hall) but you can make phone calls on one of those old black dial telephones. You know, the ones that can serve as a weapon in a pinch. And you can still stay at the hotel, across fromt the railroad depot.

Is Public Enemies, the movie, going to stick around long enough to give a tourism boost to Wisconsin and Indiana and other places that celebrate the public enemies? Maybe.  After all Johnny Depp plays Dillinger.  And the movie does have style. Someone tweeted, “Do you remember when we dressed so well? Me either.”

Actually, I am old enough to remember when men wore hats, before John F. Kennedy killed the hat industry by going bareheaded.  However, it still seems strange to see killers in fedoras and topcoats.  The car talk, comparing the horsepower of old flivvers provides a lot of fun.  The street scenes are well done and the bank interiors are gorgeous.

But, personally, I wish we could find out where Melvin Purvis came from, so I could pay him tribute.  Why should not somebody be celebrating the G-man who finally stopped Dillinger’s spree of killing and robbing?

The movie is really about Purvis and his methodical chase.  Viewers not carried away by the glamor of Johnny Depp, the actor, will see that Depp plays the supporting role of psychotic, heartless gang leader.  Inevitably, the FBI gang, headed by another unbalanced individual, J. Edgar Hoover, beats the Dillinger gang.

What do you think of the movie, if you have seen it? And what do you think of the American tendency to idolize anti-heroes? Let’s talk.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.