Saturday, June 03, 2023

Video of the week

We just finished watching the classic miniseries A Town Called Alice.

someone posted it on youtube: it's a bit fuzzy but the plot is mesmerizing so watch it before the copyright cops find it.

it is also posted in three parts on Internet archives. LINK1 LINK2 LINK3

The audiobook is also posted on youtube:


it was partly inspired by true events (the women for example were moved around for three years, but by truck, and didn't walk like in the movie) and the last part is about rebuilding one's life and community.

the author, Nevile Shute, is most famous for his anti war book On the Beach, but most of his books are about ordinary people.

Few of his books alas have been made into films, but this one is an old classic: about an absent minded scientist who was studying the problem of metal fatigue in airplanes.... 

LINK:The concept of an airliner suffering catastrophic failure due to metal fatigue after a certain number of flight cycles, as outlined in the 1948 novel and this 1951 film, came true with the failures of the de Havilland Comet in 1954. There are a number of eerie parallels between the fictional account and the later actual events.




update: another of his novels that hasn't been made into a film is available on Internet archives as an ebook: Trustee in the Toolroom.

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