Monday, June 25, 2007
Little Miss Sunshine...
Okay, so I'm a bit late with this one but we've only just got round to watching the film with the bus. Very enjoyable it was too. Best bit, for me, wasn't the bus, surprising though that may be. The wonderful Alan Arkin as Grandpa was the show stealer I reckon. I knew him from So I Married An Axe Murderer (one of the great, criminally overlooked films I think) and he was brilliant in "..Sunshine" as a curmudgeonly geriatric.
The bus, it must be said was lovely and reminded me a lot of the idiosyncracies of the Banana Bus. In the film, they have to start the van by pushing it until it hits 15mph so they can get into third gear due to a clutch failure. In the Banana Bus I have to jump straight into "D" from "R" on the automatic gearbox before the engine cuts out if I've only just started up, whilst reversing - slowly - round the rather tight squeeze into our back yard is a bit of a nightmare if I've not let the van warm up! What else? Of course: the legendary "3 pumps from cold" starting method - apparently an officially recognised aircooled vee-dub starting method. What's that all about?
Still, whatever gets you through the day. I wonder if we could get a resident curmudgeonly geriatric for the camper van?
Okay, so I'm a bit late with this one but we've only just got round to watching the film with the bus. Very enjoyable it was too. Best bit, for me, wasn't the bus, surprising though that may be. The wonderful Alan Arkin as Grandpa was the show stealer I reckon. I knew him from So I Married An Axe Murderer (one of the great, criminally overlooked films I think) and he was brilliant in "..Sunshine" as a curmudgeonly geriatric.
The bus, it must be said was lovely and reminded me a lot of the idiosyncracies of the Banana Bus. In the film, they have to start the van by pushing it until it hits 15mph so they can get into third gear due to a clutch failure. In the Banana Bus I have to jump straight into "D" from "R" on the automatic gearbox before the engine cuts out if I've only just started up, whilst reversing - slowly - round the rather tight squeeze into our back yard is a bit of a nightmare if I've not let the van warm up! What else? Of course: the legendary "3 pumps from cold" starting method - apparently an officially recognised aircooled vee-dub starting method. What's that all about?
Still, whatever gets you through the day. I wonder if we could get a resident curmudgeonly geriatric for the camper van?
