All the commenting on the election like it’s a “horse race” made me think about how the two main sports paid attention to in my house when I was a kid were the fights and "the ponies." So when I couldn’t get back to sleep last night after the gerbil chewing his little wooden house down the hall in my son’s room woke me up (and after I put him in his tank out on the screened in porch and closed the door to it, one of the major attractions of this apartment) I concentrated on making another alphabet list on films in which horse racing or the track play a major part in a movie or at least in a turning point in the plot. But there were too many letters missing, so I moved on to my other favorite list making device, trinities, and here they are:
3 FAVORITE FILM NOIR MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES
THE KILLING (Stanley Kubrick’s first great flick)
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (great Noir flick with playing the ponies at its core)
TIP ON A DEAD JOCKEY (not exactly “noir” Noir)
3 FAVORITE COMIC MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES
A DAY AT THE RACES (not the best Marx brothers flick, but still)
IT AIN’T HAY (what can I say, I was a big Abbott & Costello fan as a kid)
THE STING (not exactly a comedy, except in the Greek sense)
3 FAVORITE MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES AND A LITTLE GIRL FIGHTING THE ODDS
LITTLE MISS MARKER
NATIONAL VELVET
DREAMER (based on a true horse race story)
3 FAVORITE MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES ONLY IN ONE SCENE BUT IT’S A PIVOTAL SCENE
MY FAIR LADY (her first public outing as a “ly-die” is at the races)
MARY POPPINS (supercalifragilisticexpialidocious anyone?)
THE QUIET MAN (a great scene in a great movie)
3 FAVORITE MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES WITH THE BEST HORSE RACES
BEN HUR
HILDAGO (maybe the best horse race movie ever and Viggo Mortensen is great in it)
SEABISCUIT
3 FAVORITE MOVIES INVOLVING THE PONIES THAT DON’T FIT ANY OF THE OTHER CATEGORIES
BUG BOY (a short film in which I play the race horse owner)
RACING STRIPES (the winning "horse" is a zebra, this also falls into the little girl fighting the odds category, I got into this when my youngest son was even younger)
VIEW TO A KILL (not the best Bond movie, but surreal racehorse plot pivot)
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5 comments:
Black Stallion? Cheated a little by looking up on IMDB, felt like some major ones where left out but not really. It also mentioned Pope of N.Y.. But I don't honestly remember.
Lal--If ponies, why not mules? Hence a trio of any two Francis (the talking mule, remember?) movies: "Francis," and "Francis Goes To West Point," the third being "Scudda Hoo Scudda Hay."
Bob Berner
The Champ (I've only seen the remake from the 70's) Mixes the fights and the ponies. I liked it a lot when I was a kid but have no idea how well it would hold up.
Yeah, I thought of BLACK STALLION and the CHAMP both, but couldn't figure how to make a triplet out of them and also couldn't remember if actual racing was involved, though I do remember that a lot of THE CHAMP takes place around the stables at the track. So I just used ones I could remember (I also thought of GLORY, which was Margaret O'Brien's attempt to make it as a teenage star rather than a child star and it didn't work, but I loved her and so loved the movie, but it didn't quite fit either) As for Francis, I loved those movies as a kid and wonder what they'd look like now. Though in my memory it was FRANCIS JOINS THE ARMY, I didn't realize it was about West Point. I assume that's where they got the idea for the TV show about Ed the talking horse (wasn't that his name? as you can see my memory is very selective these days!).
great list - john huston also loved the ponies - did he ever make a movie about them ???
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