Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
12-07-09, 11:09 PM
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Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Got the blu-ray for 5 bucks from Target, hadn't seen the movie in probably 13 years.
First off, it is a pretty awesome action flick that holds up really well 15 years later. But I noticed some interesting things while watching it...
1) Can Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay give some credit to this movie? This clearly influenced every one of their movies in the 90's/early 00's. Everything from the cinematography, to the comic relief, to the action, to the music...which brings me to my next thought...
2) Are Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin the same person? Their scores sound the exact same. This was the score that Mancina and Rabin basically did slightly different riffs on for every Bruckheimer/Bay movie they did. Amazing how similar they all sound, yet still remain effective for each film.
3) What the hell happened to Jan De Bont? His career went on a downward spiral of suck (this to Twister to Speed 2 to The Haunting to Tomb Raider 2). Twister was good but everything after...just terrible. You would think that after making such a good debut with Speed, he would have gone on to be very successful, but alas, not the case.
Anyways feel free to share your comments/thoughts.
First off, it is a pretty awesome action flick that holds up really well 15 years later. But I noticed some interesting things while watching it...
1) Can Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay give some credit to this movie? This clearly influenced every one of their movies in the 90's/early 00's. Everything from the cinematography, to the comic relief, to the action, to the music...which brings me to my next thought...
2) Are Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin the same person? Their scores sound the exact same. This was the score that Mancina and Rabin basically did slightly different riffs on for every Bruckheimer/Bay movie they did. Amazing how similar they all sound, yet still remain effective for each film.
3) What the hell happened to Jan De Bont? His career went on a downward spiral of suck (this to Twister to Speed 2 to The Haunting to Tomb Raider 2). Twister was good but everything after...just terrible. You would think that after making such a good debut with Speed, he would have gone on to be very successful, but alas, not the case.
Anyways feel free to share your comments/thoughts.
12-07-09, 11:47 PM
#2
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
That's a good question about De Bont. His films were all profitable, despite many being critically bashed. Post 2003 he seems to have disappeared completely from Hollywood.
I did hear one story that Spielberg made a mockery of him by removing him from the director's chair on Minority Report and personally taking the film over.
I did hear one story that Spielberg made a mockery of him by removing him from the director's chair on Minority Report and personally taking the film over.
12-07-09, 11:47 PM
#3
DVD Talk Hero
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
if you get a chance, watch the movie with the commentary track w/ Ghram Yhost, and Mark Gordon. Its funny as hell, they point out some of the plot holes and scenes that defy the laws of physiscs, and they proudly state that they had nothing to do with Speed 2
12-08-09, 07:25 AM
#5
DVD Talk Hero
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Mancina and Rabin are fine by me. They're just two guys who infuse a traditional orchestra and electronic sounds, with some guitar in there. My favorite Mancina score is Bad Boys. My favorite Rabin score is probably Enemy of the State (only 30% of the tracks are really good by themselves, but they're really, really good).
Since Die Hard, Jan de Bont's camerwork has been defining. Everything has a reason to be there. And, compared to Bay and the newest wave of action flicks, it's very restrained. Yet never dull. It's like they just place the camera there, in a traditional fashion, and then the action needs to be really good, because it's still the centerpiece. We only get one or maybe two movies like this per a year.
Twister is an enjoyable flick and made $100mil+. Speed 2 was a misfire. The Haunting was a short, dumb movie, and ... almost forgotten (I really did forget about it). And Tomb Raider 2 was as good as a Tomb Raider movie could be, and is superior to the first.
I never knew that about Minority Report. Did the shoot start with de Bont? I think it's one of Speilberg's strongest movies.
Since Die Hard, Jan de Bont's camerwork has been defining. Everything has a reason to be there. And, compared to Bay and the newest wave of action flicks, it's very restrained. Yet never dull. It's like they just place the camera there, in a traditional fashion, and then the action needs to be really good, because it's still the centerpiece. We only get one or maybe two movies like this per a year.
Twister is an enjoyable flick and made $100mil+. Speed 2 was a misfire. The Haunting was a short, dumb movie, and ... almost forgotten (I really did forget about it). And Tomb Raider 2 was as good as a Tomb Raider movie could be, and is superior to the first.
I never knew that about Minority Report. Did the shoot start with de Bont? I think it's one of Speilberg's strongest movies.
12-08-09, 11:12 AM
#7
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
12-08-09, 12:16 PM
#8
12-08-09, 01:36 PM
#9
DVD Talk Hero
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
That's obvious, but Spielberg still basically took over the show with Poltergeist.
12-08-09, 01:51 PM
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Speed=Die Hard on a bus. Still, Keanu, Bullock, and Hopper make this very enjoyable.
Bruckheimer was doing this formula since Beverly Hills Cop.
Bruckheimer was doing this formula since Beverly Hills Cop.
12-08-09, 10:43 PM
#12
DVD Talk Limited Edition
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Speed 2 is my favorite bad movie. Or I just love cruises
12-08-09, 11:50 PM
#13
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Speed is a pretty entertaining movie, although I find it doesn't hold up as well as any of the Die Hard movies for me, which it is clearly modeled on (pretend Bonnie Bedelia is the bus driver and Reginald VelJohnson is either the Joe Morton or Jeff Daniels character and you have a "lost" Die Hard 3). I agree that the commentary track with the writers is excellent.
I saw Speed 2 for the first time a year or so ago, and I didn't really think it was nearly as bad as people were claiming. Not really that good either, but I feel like a) people were hyping up Speed to be better than it was and b) the film is trapped in a void -- once Keanu Reeves passed on the project, the focus inevitably shifted towards Bullock, but the script doesn't play like it was rewritten and the movie needs to be more definitive about whether she or Jason Patric is the hero.
I saw Speed 2 for the first time a year or so ago, and I didn't really think it was nearly as bad as people were claiming. Not really that good either, but I feel like a) people were hyping up Speed to be better than it was and b) the film is trapped in a void -- once Keanu Reeves passed on the project, the focus inevitably shifted towards Bullock, but the script doesn't play like it was rewritten and the movie needs to be more definitive about whether she or Jason Patric is the hero.
12-09-09, 09:08 AM
#14
DVD Talk Special Edition
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
The thing that gets me about about Speed is that it was made for about $30 million!
I would hate to think how much that would cost nowadays, even if they could in LA.
It has got a number of very cool shots in that film.
I would hate to think how much that would cost nowadays, even if they could in LA.
It has got a number of very cool shots in that film.
12-09-09, 12:40 PM
#15
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
Speed is a great, great action movie. I watch it about every year or so, and it never gets old. More exhilarating than any of the Die Hard films.
12-09-09, 03:25 PM
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
he did a good job with Tomb Raider 2, I thought that was a decent movie much better then the first one. as for as The Haunting, it did have Catherine Zeta Jones when she was in her prime ( Entrapment/Mask of Zorro) she was extremely smoking then, still is hot today but those years wow.
12-09-09, 03:54 PM
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
I saw Speed for the first time since high school a couple of months back and was surprised at how poorly it had aged. Typically the films and television I enjoyed in high school are still enjoyable to the 30-something version of me, but Speed had all of the usual cornball dialogue of a B action movie without any of the humor or common-denominator humanity of Die Hard or DH3.
04-24-14, 02:09 AM
#19
DVD Talk Legend
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
One guy probably agrees with you
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs...vies.html?vp=1
This man has a serious need for "Speed."
Ryan Beitz, of Pullman, Wash., is trying to collect every single copy of the movie "Speed" ever made on VHS.
He's calling his efforts "The World Speed Project," and already owns more than 550 copies of the 1994 movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock trying to save a bus from exploding.
Beitz bought the first few copies in a pawn shop as prank Christmas gifts, and now, just like the bus in the movie, can't stop.
"I realized it was really fascinating to have that many, like, same copies of a thing," Beitz told Vice.com of his unusual endeavor. "What really cemented it was when I went to another pawn shop, and they had, like, 30 copies. I said, 'I'll take them all.' They sold them to me for 11 cents a copy."
Now he's even running a Kickstarter campaign to fix up his 15-passenger van to look just like the bus in the movie so he can tour the collection around the nation in super "Speed"-style.
Ryan Beitz, of Pullman, Wash., is trying to collect every single copy of the movie "Speed" ever made on VHS.
He's calling his efforts "The World Speed Project," and already owns more than 550 copies of the 1994 movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock trying to save a bus from exploding.
Beitz bought the first few copies in a pawn shop as prank Christmas gifts, and now, just like the bus in the movie, can't stop.
"I realized it was really fascinating to have that many, like, same copies of a thing," Beitz told Vice.com of his unusual endeavor. "What really cemented it was when I went to another pawn shop, and they had, like, 30 copies. I said, 'I'll take them all.' They sold them to me for 11 cents a copy."
Now he's even running a Kickstarter campaign to fix up his 15-passenger van to look just like the bus in the movie so he can tour the collection around the nation in super "Speed"-style.
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs...vies.html?vp=1
04-24-14, 08:17 AM
#21
DVD Talk Hero
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
So the $2,500 he needs is to make the Dodge Ramvan driveable plus a paintjob to resemble the bus. He's almost halfway to his goal.
The Kickstarter rewards are pretty lame (Big surprise) but amusing. It was interesting that there is one reward where 10 people will receive a laserdisc copy of the movie from his personal collection.
The Kickstarter rewards are pretty lame (Big surprise) but amusing. It was interesting that there is one reward where 10 people will receive a laserdisc copy of the movie from his personal collection.
04-24-14, 08:30 AM
#22
DVD Talk Legend
re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
That guy up above is going to fail. There's a VHS copy in the basement of my parents house, and now that I know this doofus is looking for them, I'm never giving up that copy. 
Re: the OP - Bruckheimer was making movies like SPEED long before SPEED came out. See: Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Top Gun, and Days of Thunder. Now, if you want to talk Michael Bay, that's a different story, as Bad Boys DID come out a year after Speed, and it was really his first big hit.
Re: the OP - Bruckheimer was making movies like SPEED long before SPEED came out. See: Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Top Gun, and Days of Thunder. Now, if you want to talk Michael Bay, that's a different story, as Bad Boys DID come out a year after Speed, and it was really his first big hit.
04-24-14, 08:43 AM
#23
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
04-24-14, 09:19 AM
#24
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re: Thoughts I had while watching "The Bus that Couldn't Slow Down" (1994, de Bont)
I love this movie. I remember buying it on VHS when it came out because I wasn't able to see it in the theatre. I think I watched it 2 or 3 times that night, and probably 30+ times in the subsequent years. Now, I can't remember the last time I gave the 5-star DVD a spin.
Fuck yeah. I'm going to watch this tonight.