"Y"s on Film,

... and other media

or ... the star is the car!

Music

Films and videos

annA rydeR

Singer-songwriter and musician annA rydeR wrote a song featuring, among others, a Y Type - well two Y Types actually.

annA say's:

'The song is called Put Another Car In My Graveyard and I wrote it some time ago.

'I have a friend called Pete Jones, who "suffers" from a compulsive obsessive car-type syndrome and thinks "cars are kind of alive".

'He lived in Leamington not far from me and had several old bangers in his front drive. He also would put cars in his garden which he could not resuscitate. When he moved to Wales guess what he did? He took all 17 of these cars out of his garden and front drive on a trailer from Leamington to Wales. Personally I think he is strange. He actually has an MG Y-type saloon and the names of cars in the songs are what cars he actually has in fact. Yes it's true. That is the extent of the knowledge I have of the reason I put this car in my song. I love the names of all the cars and I have no idea why it's a Y-type but I expect you do!'  (annA now knows the answer to that  - webmaster.)

Click here to download and play the song in MP3 format (playable via any Windows compatible media player - file size is 5mB, but huge fun and worth the download - webmaster! ), and the full lyrics for the song can be downloaded here in PDF format. 

This is a private exclusive recording for the MG Y Register.  Both lyrics, and the recording are copyrighted to annA rydeR and are not to be copied or otherwise used except for personal use. Please contact annA through her site to obtain copyright permissions for use.

Warning: Video Clip files are very large files, and will take a while to download on dial-up, but they are worth the wait! 

You will need a "media player" to view them.

Another You Tube film - this time featuring Y 5888 of Willem van der Veer.

March to Aldermaston

(1959)

March to Aldermaston is a documentary looking at the anti-war, anti-nuclear bomb march starting on Good Friday in 1958. With interviews with those involved and footage from the entire march, the film captures the spirit of those trying to force change for the better as they get closer to the factory in Aldermaston.

The film does make important points through narration Richard Burton but it spreads them too thinly across too much footage. If it had done a better job of providing more interest in the footage then it would have covered the gaps but it doesn't manage it and the film feels too long as a result. It ends strongly with pictures of the victims run against the march and with a challenge from the film to the viewer, which does rather save the film because this is the impression one is left with, but it is difficult to ignore the bagginess and length as you are watching it.

Critique courtesy of International Move DataBase website.

Gilles Bachand revitalises his Semaphore arms after at least 12 years of non-use.  He was so thrilled, he posted this vdeo on YouTube!

Hoi seung fa

(1986)

Hoi seung fa was released in 1986.  The Mandarin title literally translated means Sea Top Flower, although the international title is Immortal Story.  Recorded in Cantonese and staring Sylvia Chang, Paul Chun, Sui-Wong Fan, Shingo Tsurumi, David Wu, Wai Yiu, and Yonfan.  Apart from that, ... I have not been able to  find out anything about the plot!

YouTube

(2005)

Malta Story

(1953)

  This film, Malta Story, was produced at Ealing Studios in 1953 and was directed by Brian Hurst.  Staring Alex Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Steel and Muriel Pavlow.

In 1942 Britain was clinging to the island of Malta as it was critical to keeping Allied supply lines to North Africa open. The Axis also wanted it for their own supply lines. The film contains many realistic re-enactments and archival combat footage, as the British are besieged and fight off the Luftwaffe. Against this background, an RAF reconnaissance photographer's romance with a local girl is endangered as he tries to plot enemy movements.  This film is a great credit to the magnificent fortitude of the Maltese people, and the Armed Forces stationed on the island, and those who sought to supply them against seemingly overwhelming odds.  A slight bit of directorial discretion then in the use of a YT, but it is a great film about a phenomenally dark time (great flying scenes and also features contemporary news reel film clips in the film too).

Evelyn

(2002)

Evelyn was made by United Artist in 2002 and based on a true story.  Produced by, and staring Pierce Brosnan, Evelyn is set in 1953 in Dublin, Ireland.

Times are tough, but no one has it tougher than Desmond Doyle when his wife runs off, with a guy in an MG Y, (Pierce Brosnan, or an MG Y owner - which would you choose ladies!!): his beloved daughter Evelyn and two young sons are sent to an orphanages by the government under the 1941 Children's Act (Ireland).  Enlisting the help of loyal friends (Juliana Marguiles, Stephen Rae) and a feisty American lawyer (Aidan Quinn), he takes his case to Ireland's Supreme Court in a history-making quest to topple an ironclad law ... and wins back custody of his children!

Dance with a stranger

(1985)

Dance with a stranger is based on the true story of the last woman hanged in England. Staring Miranda Richardson in her "spectacular movie debut" (Vogue), along with Rupert Everett and Ian Holm, Dance with a stranger is the "stunning, powerful [and] fascinating" (Vogue) winner of the 1985 Cannes Best Picture Award.

Ruth Ellis (Richardson) is a private dancer with a tough exterior.  But her armour begins to crack when she meets wealthy racecar driver David Blakely (Everett).  And despite warnings against the affair by her friends and would-be lover Desmond Cussen (Holm), Ellis is quickly seduced by Blakely's charms.  But when his passions turn cold, she is caught in a dark dance of obsession which gives way to desperation and finally culminates in a deadly confrontation that shatters the stillness one fateful night with a shocking act ... that may ultimately destroy them both.

Le Petit Soldat

(1963)

This film, Le Petit Soldat directed by Jean-Luc Godard, was made in 1960. It was subsequently banned by the French government and not commercially released until 1963, when the war in Algeria was over and Algeria had gained its independence. It is sometimes difficult to recall, so many years after the fact, that the Algerian conflict was then tearing France apart and, had anyone but a World War II veteran like De Gaulle been in charge, probably would have led to civil war.

The lead character is a somewhat reluctant and half-hearted member of a right wing terrorist group, opposing Algerian independence, planning assassinations and tortures of members of left wing terrorist groups supporting Algerian independence. Godard demonstrates that there is really no difference between the two, that they are both morally bankrupt and ultimately nihilistic. Members of both groups are shown with remarkable objectivity - remarkable if you know Godard's own political leanings, which were far to the left, Maoist in fact.

Stylistically the film has a documentary, cinema verite feel. Godard used hand held cameras decades before they came into vogue. The characters seem real, so much so that, except for the beautiful Anna Karina, it is necessary to remind oneself that these are actors.

By the way, probably very few viewers, except those who may have been in France at that time, will know the significance of a scene where, several times in succession, several cars blow their horns "ta ta tum, tum tum". That was a very public code that existed in France at the time and stood for "Algerie Francaise," or loosely, "Keep Algeria French." A very topical film.

Review by William Fickling of South Carolina, USA.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

© 1984

Indiana Jones is almost a household name for home entertainment, and never more so than in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, especially given the cameo appearance of an MG Y saloon (just to the right of the door to the door with the neon bar sign for Club Obi Wan). 

In this fictional action adventure film, Indiana Jones (aka Harrison Ford), having escaped the Singapore night club Obi Wan (shades of Star Wars??), crash-lands in India and uncovers a sinister scheme that has enslaved a remote village's children to dig in the mines for the mystical Shankara Stones.  Indiana Jones has to outwit the villains and there is a great chase through the mine in mining carts, ... oh and save the children of course! 

The film is set in the 1935 so what a Y is doing there? Who knows, it's as big a mystery as any Indiana Jones was involved in!

Murder at the vicarage

(1986)

Staring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and Paul Eddington as Reverend Clement, Agatha Christie's most popular character, prim and proper Miss Marple overhears the mild mannered Reverend Clement swearing in anger about the most unpopular Colonel Lucius Protheroe.  Throughout the day, Miss Marple learns that certain other villagers have reason to hate the Colonel, so that when his body is found the next day, there is no shortage of suspects. To complicate matters, some villagers have alibis, others have confessions.  It will take all of Miss Marple's intuitive powers to separate the killer from the pretenders.

Directed by Julian Amyes, produced by George Gallaccio, Murder at the Vicarage was filmed on location in Middle Wallop and Romsey, Hampshire, UK for the BBC in1986 by Lionheart Television International Inc.  The Hampshire scenery is beautiful too! All clips and stills are copyright of the BBC and are used here by kind permission of the BBC.

Sweeney 2

(1978)

Sweeney 2, the sequel to Sweeney!, were spun off from an original TV series made in the UK from 1975 - 1978. The Sweeney was a hard-hitting (for its time) police series set in the world of the Flying Squad.  In Cockney Rhyming Slang 'Sweeney Todd' is 'Flying Squad', a team of plain clothes detectives based in London's New Scotland Yard, dealing with serious crime. The show mainly concerned itself with the exploits of Detective Inspector Jack Regan, played by John Thaw, and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant George Carter, played by Dennis Waterman. The show was generated quite a lot of complaints from those who liked their policemen to be seen politely helping little old ladies across the road... I guess you could say it was the NYPD Blue, or The Shield, of its day.

We need your help on locating stills from these films / TV shows please:

X - the unknown factor 1952 TV Drama "Short short dramas"?

Any others that you know about?  Tell the Webmaster