That's okay, Frank. I just enjoy sci-fi, comedies, and jungle flix, sorta in that order, and when you can get them all in one movie, I'm definitely there. I also enjoy digging into the makings of these motion pictures, their sources of inspiration, and the whys of my own preferences.

Around the World in Eighty Days. Pick up the book. For a piece of Northern Hemisphere history, it's quite an enjoyable read, and far more quirky than it is funny. Recall that the story is presented as the diary of Phileas Fogg's man-servant, with both of them having to suddenly depart England on a bet, while unknowingly being pursued for the crime of grand theft. This being the case, and with some of their traveling connections having to be made on the run, at times our adventurous Mr. Fogg at least appears to be a bit guilty, and Passepartout a bit complicit.

The movie was filmed using three cameras, for that extra, extra wide, three-panel screen. I first experienced the movie at the Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus. Utterly astonishing! There is a seen shot from the cow-catcher of a train rolling through India and crossing a tressele bridge. Imagine the technology involved for the time, that a person half a world away could sit back in a very comfortable chair and have this simple bit of construction passing under, over and around him.

Other Panoramic marvels I enjoy include:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Airport (1970)
Alien 3 (1992)
Battle of the Bulge (1965)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Blade Runner (1982)
Brainstorm (1983)
Can-Can (1960)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Cleopatra (1963)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Contact (1997)
Die Hard (1988)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
How the West Was Won
Ice Station Zebra (1968)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Krakatoa, East of Java (1969)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Lord Jim (1965)
Masters of the Universe (1987)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Patton (1970)
Porgy and Bess (1959)
South Pacific (1958)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Bible: In The Beginning (1966)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)
Tron (1982)
West Side Story (1961)

All built for the cinema experience.

Now, for a bit of insight on creating "Around the World in Eighty Days":
As with the story itself, the whole thing had started out as an argument among friends at the club regarding the philosophical size of our planet Earth (how it had seemed to have shrunk over the years), and how long it would take for a person to physically travel the globe. In a fit of creative fury, the amazing Jules Verne put his point to the public, writing the entire novel from his desk in England, with train and shipping schedules as his only real data sources, along with a healthy use of -- poetic license.

For "Mountains of the Moon," we follow Sir Richard Burton and Lt. John H. Speke on their journey into “darkest Africa,” in search of the headwaters of the Nile. My favorite part involve the meeting of Burton and Livingstone at the Royal Geographic Society. Utterly excellent.

A side note on Burton (and not part of the movie), his last words were along the lines of: “My, God, I'm dead!”

Seems he was with his wife and dying of malaria or some such, when his home was invaded by a group of Shi’ite Muslims. Burton made no secret of his investigative research into the religious and private lives of the Muslim world and there had been a sort of open-ended jihad for his head. Getting up from his bed, he fought them off, but was fatally wounded. Taking up her husband's sword, Mrs. Burton promptly dispatched his killer. You see, she had been trained by the greatest swordsman of the time, one Sir Richard Burton.

Cheers.