Favorite Racing Documentaries/Movies?

[Sach]

Sitting here trying to think of a few to look up on Netflix. Any suggestions (preferably documentaries)?

 

[prisonermonkeys]

LE MANS and GRAND PRIX are probably your best bet. And SENNA, naturally. Other than that, you're probably starved for choice because there aren't too many big-budget films about motorsports - unless you want to watch TALLADEGA NIGHTS and/or DRIVEN. It's very difficult to make a film about cars that go around in circles. That said, stay tuned: Ron Howard who directed APOLLO 13, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, adaptations of two of Dan Brown's "novels" (I use the term loosely) and FROST/NIXON is making a film about the 1976 Formula 1 season and the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. It's being written by Peter Morgan (who wrote FROST/NIXON, THE QUEEN and did a lot of early work on SKYFALL). It's only in pre-production, but they've apparently cast Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) as Lauda. A release date is expected "autumn 2012", which I'm guessing means September-November-ish. You can read more on it here.

 

[Bigbazz]

Days of Thunder!

 

[Northstar]

If you are into off-road racing "Dust to Glory" is worth a watch, it's follows a few teams during the Baja 1000.

I also recommend Audi's "Truth in 24" which is available for free on iTunes.

 

[Patrick]

My favorite is Senna. I will check that out. Thanks Justin!

 

[Sach]

Days of Thunder!

I was trying to remember the name of that film.

If you are into off-road racing "Dust to Glory" is worth a watch, it's follows a few teams during the Baja 1000.

I also recommend Audi's "Truth in 24" which is available for free on iTunes.

Brilliant, thanks.

 

[Schwartz]

I also recommend Audi's "Truth in 24" which is available for free on iTunes.

Sounds interesting. I'm downloading it now... 👍

 

[Jimlaad43]

The Herbie films were on BBC Two recently.

 

[Prince.M5]

May I recommend BMW's attempt of their ''24 Hours - One Team, One Target'' movie? I haven't watch it but from the trailer it looks amazing. I think some of our members here already own a copy. The movie is directed by Tim and Nick Hahne, and they've done an amazing job with BMW in 2010 making a short movie of their 24 Hours of Nurburgring victory.

 

[Tesla]

That said, stay tuned: Ron Howard who directed APOLLO 13, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, adaptations of two of Dan Brown's "novels" (I use the term loosely) and FROST/NIXON is making a film about the 1976 Formula 1 season and the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. It's being written by Peter Morgan (who wrote FROST/NIXON, THE QUEEN and did a lot of early work on SKYFALL). It's only in pre-production, but they've apparently cast Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) as Lauda. A release date is expected "autumn 2012", which I'm guessing means September-November-ish. You can read more on it here.

I believe that they stated they're going to focus on the people involved and their relationships more than the actual racing. Regardless, it looks good so far.

 

[astrosdude91]

If you're looking for movies on Netflix streaming, you won't find much. Senna and Dust to Glory are really the only two options right now. A few months ago there were a hand full more to choose from. Le Mans, Super Speedway, and a few others were on there not to long ago, but they're gone now.

Another one to check out is Love the Beast. It's still available for streaming on Netflix, and is a must see. It's a documentary about Australian actor Eric Bana (Star Trek, Black Hawk Down, Troy) and his love for his '74 Ford XB Falcon, and the Targa Tasmania road race, which Bana enters. It also features interviews with Jeremy Clarkson and Jay Leno.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I believe that they stated they're going to focus on the people involved and their relationships more than the actual racing. Regardless, it looks good so far.

Well, it is a Peter Morgan script ...

Apparently Morgan met with Bernie Ecclestone, who told him "I hope you aren't going to make a film about Formula 1", and Morgan replied that he only intended to treat the sport as a framing device - that the real heart of the story was the rivalry between Hunt and Lauda; Formula 1 was just the backdrop for it all. This is apparently what Bernie was hoping for, and he gave his blessing to the project.

That said, I'm still really apprehensive about this project. I just don't like Morgan's scripts. I think he fundamentally misinterpreted James Bond when he was working on SKYFALL, and I've found the likes of THE QUEEN and FROST/NIXON to be very impersonal. Morgan's characters tend to spend a lot of time analysing one another; it's almost as if he doesn't trust the audience to understand the characters on their own, and so has to run all the characterisation through another character and feed it back to the audience. The net result is that is is a very impersonal film - you can't engage with the characters because you can't get close enough to experience them for yourself. Maybe it's just the nature of THE QUEEN and FROST/NIXON, but it just feels like the audience is witnessing the film rather than participating in it.

 

[Ardius]

My favourite documentaries;
Grand Prix - The Early Years (BBC)
1955 Le Mans Disaster (BBC)
"Senna" 1995 (BBC)
The Team - A Season with McLaren (BBC)

My favourite films (not much choice to be honest);
Le Mans
Grand Prix
Senna
TT: Closer to the Edge

I would never suggest Driven, though it is mildly amusing, if anything just because its a motorsports film..despite being absolutely terrible.
I can't recommend "The Team - A Season with McLaren" enough - its a fascinating insight into McLaren during 1993, there is so much detail you can pick up from the recorded conversations, I just love listening to all the various details of how the team works during the race weekends. Plenty of it is on youtube. Also interesting because it briefly touches on Michael Andretti's brief appearance as well as a young Mika Hakkinen and the last full season of Ayrton Senna.

 

[Sach]

My favourite documentaries;
Grand Prix - The Early Years (BBC)
1955 Le Mans Disaster (BBC)
"Senna" 1995 (BBC)
The Team - A Season with McLaren (BBC)

My favourite films (not much choice to be honest);
Le Mans
Grand Prix
Senna
TT: Closer to the Edge

I would never suggest Driven, though it is mildly amusing, if anything just because its a motorsports film..despite being absolutely terrible.
I can't recommend "The Team - A Season with McLaren" enough - its a fascinating insight into McLaren during 1993, there is so much detail you can pick up from the recorded conversations, I just love listening to all the various details of how the team works during the race weekends. Plenty of it is on youtube. Also interesting because it briefly touches on Michael Andretti's brief appearance as well as a young Mika Hakkinen and the last full season of Ayrton Senna.

Great suggestions. Thanks, mate. 👍

 

[Nicksfix]

Heart like a Wheel

The true life story of Shirley "cha-cha" Muldowney.

 

[Bottoz]

 

[TyrrellRacing]

Grand Prix:The Killer Years - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmlzni_grand-prix-the-killer-years_auto
WARNING: Features disturbing content, not recommended for younger viewers.

Excellent documentary that aired on BBC4 last year. It also gives a somewhat basic overview of the 60's and 70's seasons. Very critical of Colin Chapman.

BBC4 also aired 3 1hour documentaries about Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and Jim Clark. They were all on YouTube, but have since been removed. They're probably on the internet somewhere.

 

[Ardius]

^Ah thats the one I was referring to in my earlier post, not "Early Years" as I said.
I recommend that too. 👍

 

[Schwartz]

I also recommend Audi's "Truth in 24" which is available for free on iTunes.

I just finished watching this. Probably the best documentary I have seen in a long time, very captivating. I would recommend this to anyone.

 

[nitrorocks]

I just finished watching this. Probably the best documentary I have seen in a long time, very captivating. I would recommend this to anyone.

Yes it's a great movie. I love it.

 

[jtv90069]

If you are into off-road racing "Dust to Glory" is worth a watch, it's follows a few teams during the Baja 1000.

I recommend it people who like racing in general. Great documentary.
1000km off road single stage race(no closed roads either), I think the prize money for the top class is only $5000 but still attracts all the top off road teams. It mentions that Robbie Gordon only races in NASCAR to fund his efforts in this race. Most bike teams use two or three riders but there is one person who attempts it solo, if I remember correctly he fell broke a bone and continued to the finish still.

I am not into off road racing, but was enthralled by this race.

 

[Patrick]

Watched Truth in 24 last night. As others have said incredible film. It's now my favorite documentary.

 

[somebodysb2]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1698010/

 

[plate88]

Days of Thunder!

I don't know why, but I like that movie. It doesn't even depict NASCAR that well.

You got me interested so I was searching some documentaries out. There's a 5 part(each part around 9 min.) documentary called "The Secret Life of Formula One" on YouTube. I haven't watched it yet, but its looks to be interesting. I'll give it a look later today.

 

[IceMan PJN]

LE MANS and GRAND PRIX are probably your best bet. And SENNA, naturally. Other than that, you're probably starved for choice because there aren't too many big-budget films about motorsports - unless you want to watch TALLADEGA NIGHTS and/or DRIVEN.

Days of Thunder!

Le Mans is great for racing footage, but the plot is pretty nonexistent. Grand Prix is great for getting to see cars and tracks of generations past (great for folks like myself who weren't alive back then) and actually has some character development and plot between the racing events. In Grand Prix you get to see the old Monza complete with the banked oval portion. Senna is fantastic and anybody who doesn't get anything out of that just doesn't appreciate motorsports. I don't generally care for NASCAR but I actually liked Talladega Nights and Days of Thunder.

Driven is alright, but I disliked some of the bullcrap. If memory serves, it was originally supposed to follow F1 but that didn't work out and it instead revolved around Champ Car, but the film starts out with some bullcrap figure about like 700 million people (or maybe it was even higher than that) watching Champ Car, which is ridiculously off. F1 only has like 600 million, which is far more than Champ Car had. I did a quick search and came up with Champ Car fan base figures along the lines of 80 million, which is still respectable but just a fraction of what the film suggested.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Ron Howard filming Rush at the the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

F1 fans are in for another cinema treat following the success of SENNA.

RUSH, which tells the story of James Hunt and Niki Lauda’s battle for the 1976 World Championship, is being filmed by Oscar awarding-winning director Ron Howard.

Howard’s crew have been filming at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, scene of Lauda’s near-fatal crash that year, using cars from the period.

These images show a McLaren M23, Surtees TS19 and a pair of March 761s lapping the Nordschleife. See here for more pictures.

 

[Hun200kmh]

Watched Truth in 24 last night. As others have said incredible film. It's now my favorite documentary.

Got from twitter the info that Audi had made this available (or allowed it to be made available) on Youtube and I checked indeed it is (HD, 720p). Will save it to a pen (it's around 2 GB) to watch on my TV.

[OT]
I have been doing this lately. HD on Youtube is indeed HD now, and I'm gathering non-commercial clips for personal view. Storing them in my PS3, watching them in their full glory on my HD TV.

So far I got:
- Motoman builds a Morgan (ep. 1 and 2). A great - and very funny - documentary on the Morgan factory and how Morgans are built.
- The Hobbit Video blogs (#1 to #5) and the Hobbit trailer (one of the blogs was published in 1080p)
- Truth in 24. It's the biggest clip yet (1h32) and after hearing so much about it I jumped on this oportunity.
[/OT]

Outside of Youtube, and about racing documentaries, I really want to buy the BMW Nurburgring movie, but I'm not too fond of online shopping so I'm waiting still for it to be available (to buy or to order) in a regular store.



EDIT - Amazing pics. However, I will reserve judgement on this movie, I heard it goes beyond the racing and into the personal life of James Hunt, featuring Olivia Wilde as the wife he supposedly "sold" off to Richard Burton, this being played by Russell Crowe. If true, it means we're not talking about a proper motorsports movie.

Because I strongly dissagree with a previous comment in this thread about "LE MANS" having no plot.

What made that movie the greatest motorsports movie EVER is exactly the fact that:

Racing is the plot, everything before and after the race scenes is just ... waiting!



EDIT2 - Besides, those cars and those helmets remind me of the cowboy and indian clothes seen in the 50's western movies. They're too clean and too perfect to be real, obviously taken out from a museum or collector's hands and polished even further. Brett Lunger's white helmet looks better than my own when I was taking it out brand new of the box.

 

[Ardius]

Le Mans is great for racing footage, but the plot is pretty nonexistent. Grand Prix is great for getting to see cars and tracks of generations past (great for folks like myself who weren't alive back then) and actually has some character development and plot between the racing events. In Grand Prix you get to see the old Monza complete with the banked oval portion. Senna is fantastic and anybody who doesn't get anything out of that just doesn't appreciate motorsports. I don't generally care for NASCAR but I actually liked Talladega Nights and Days of Thunder.

Driven is alright, but I disliked some of the bullcrap. If memory serves, it was originally supposed to follow F1 but that didn't work out and it instead revolved around Champ Car, but the film starts out with some bullcrap figure about like 700 million people (or maybe it was even higher than that) watching Champ Car, which is ridiculously off. F1 only has like 600 million, which is far more than Champ Car had. I did a quick search and came up with Champ Car fan base figures along the lines of 80 million, which is still respectable but just a fraction of what the film suggested.

Wait, the film's pretend audience figure is the first thing that comes to your mind thats wrong with Driven? What about the completely unrealistic "street race"? There are a hundred things wrong with that film.

Le Mans doesn't lack a plot. It lacks dialogue. The plot is pretty simple but it is there.
I love it for that, it doesn't mess about trying to create drama or make me care about characters who mean nothing to me like Grand Prix does (which I do enjoy as well, but for different reasons). It just displays the emotion and atmosphere of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, its simplicity is what makes it great. In my opinion, more racing films should be made like this - the race itself is the story, there is no need for excessive dialogue.

 

[Hun200kmh]

the race itself is the story

Exactly! 👍

 

[Brend]

Senna has to take it for me.

On a slightly more fantasy note...Speed Racer.