Thursday, September 22, 2011

I had hoped I could get all the way through my first viewing of the DVD for the 1971 film "The Andromeda Strain" without stopping but no such luck.




I will mention here in advance of my primary observations that I was surprised to see the scene where "Gunner Wilson" overflew the town of Piedmont and the part that surprised me was that I could have sworn that his oxygen mask disintegrated as he did that. As I wrote that last sentence I wondered if maybe a later scene establishes that detail. I am only now at the forty six minute point and I don't recall seeing anything about that.

I hate having to stop because the references I can find to the dialog are usually not very good and the only way to make a good reference to the relevant dialog for my report is to go back to the DVD and reference the dialog.

I cannot recall the last time I actually watched this work but I feel as I watch it I am generally familiar with it and I think as I watch that I have just not watched it in a long time. I found wondering about the first time I watched. The film premiered in the theatre in 1971 so even if I was sitting in the backseat of the car at the drive-in in 1971 in De Queen Arkansas back then I really doubt I would remember that. What I thought in the past hour as I watched the DVD is that what I remember is from, possibly I thought to myself on this line of thought, that I watched it alone in my bedroom in the late 1970's. I thought to myself in the past hour that the graphics of the video were dazzling enough to me so that I would remember such a work in that timeframe.

I have just now paused the video at the point with the dialog about the so-called "odd-man theory" and I gave that a lot of thought in a few minutes in the context of 1998.