Peter Brook's 1963 film of William Golding's The Lord of the Flies was filmed in Puerto Rico. This huge site devoted to the film includes a scene by scene gallery and extensive background information. It was clearly a major life experience for the troop of young actors, many of whom re-united for a 1996 BBC documentary and also contributed to the site.

Aside: there seems to be an interesting cultural shift between the 60s film and the 1990 re-make, with the former's focus often appearing a bit dubious, especially in these more sensitive times. We mention the film because Vieques was our Christmas and New Year destination (precise location). The beaches used for filming in 1963 appeared totallly unchanged.

More scans. Thanks to textism for pointing out Posters from the WPA. Some of these are available in vast uncompressed archival tiff files (up to 33mb!) This image in particular sent us scurrying off to Google. We had seen a Catalina. flying boat, presumably abandoned, on the tarmac at San Juan (along with many, many functioning Dakotas). The Caribbean would seem to be the perfect spot for a modern-day flying boat service, a form of transport that combines the drama of flight with the romance of the ocean. Current services are fun, but small.

Other contemporary concepts, especially of the Wing in ground effect type (Boeing's vast, daft Pelican transport and the Soviet Union's ultimately abandoned Ekranoplan experiments) might be awe-inspiring, but they're not quite the same as the great flying boats made by firms like Shorts. (More galleries: I, II, III, IV)

Elsewhere. Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, paragon of 1980s style. Classic photography for sale at the Josef Lebovic gallery. Don't link!: daft linking policies. Slower gets into black and white and snow. Beat music combo Belulah have a pleasingly retro-tinted site. More dead aeroplanes (courtesy of the veritable linkfest at Muxway). Image of the day.posted by things at 08:38 / 0 comments