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Mining Movies

Buddies (Mining Themed Australian Movie – 1983)

http://www.ozmovies.com.au/

(Note: this synopsis and listing contains spoilers).

Sapphire-grubbing Mike (Colin Friels) gets the show underway by wildly fornicating with Stella (Kris McQuade).

Mike is buddies with partner grubber Johnny (Harold Hopkins) as they hunt for sapphires in central Queensland – in even more wretched tin shanties just across the way in this small community lives tall Ted (Bruce Spence) and bearded, aged Hans (Ralph Albring).

The buddies decide that they’ll peg some new land, but then the big boys, led by evil, smirking Andy (Dennis Miller), with guns and ‘dozer drawn, move in on their stake. ‘Word is they’re pegging everything that isn’t nailed down’, says Harold, and the ‘dozer shows Andy means business by flattening Mike’s car.

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My Bloody Valentine 3D (Mining Themed American Horror Movie – 2009)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

My Bloody Valentine 3D is a 2009 American horror film, and a remake of the 1981 slasher film of the same name. The film was directed and edited by Patrick Lussier, and stars Jensen Ackles, Jaime King and Kerr Smith. The film had a 3D theatrical release;[2] it was released on January 16, 2009 by Lionsgate to generally mixed reviews but nevertheless a box office success. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 19, 2009.

On the Valentine’s Day of 1997, in a small town, a cave-in on the north side of a Hanninger mine trapped six miners. Six days later, rescue teams found five dead miners and the comatose Harry Warden (Richard John Walters), who survived by killing the other miners with a pickaxe, allowing himself to breathe. Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), the mine owner’s son, was blamed for the mine disaster because he forgot to vent the methane lines and caused a cave-in, but also Harry Warden for killing the miners.

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Outland (Mining Themed Movie – 1981)

This information is from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Outland is a 1981 British science fiction thriller film written and directed by Peter Hyams. The film stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, and Frances Sternhagen. Set on Jupiter’s moon Io, it has been described as a space Western,[3] and bears thematic resemblances to the 1952 film High Noon.[4][5]

Plot
In the future, Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) is assigned to a tour of duty at the titanium ore mining outpost ‘Con-Am 27’ operated by the company Conglomerates Amalgamated, on the Jovian moon of Io. Conditions on Io are difficult: gravity is 1/6 that of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere, spacesuits are cumbersome, and miners carry their own air supply. Shifts are long, but significant bonuses are paid. Con-Amalgamated mining franchise general manager Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle) boasts that since he took over the running of Io, productivity has broken all previous records.

Carol O’Niel (Kika Markham) feels she cannot raise their son Paul to live inside a sterile environment far from Earth and with little to do. She takes Paul and flees to the space station serving Io, awaiting a shuttle back to Earth.

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Mining magnate Rinehart takes court action against TV series – by Jamie Smyth (Financial Times – February 13, 2015)

http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

Sydney – Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, has taken a television channel to court in an apparent attempt to block the broadcast of a hit miniseries detailing her colourful family and business history.

Lawyers for Mrs Rinehart told the New South Wales Supreme Court on Friday that the House of Hancock series was potentially defamatory, malicious and full of inaccuracies.

They applied to the court to force Channel Nine to hand over a copy of the second and final instalment of the show, which is due to be broadcast on Sunday, to see if there are grounds to seek an injunction to stop it airing.

Judge Peter Garling granted the application, saying that based on promotional material and interviews there was a prospect the show would air statements that are not entirely accurate or perhaps even falsified.

“I am satisfied the plaintiff is entitled to see it,” he said. The billionaire is now able to view the show before deciding whether to seek an injunction on Saturday.

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REVIEW: MURDOCH MYSTERIES MINES SILVER AND GROUP OF SEVEN – by Greg David (TV-EH.com – January 20, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/murdochmysteries/

http://www.tv-eh.com/

Not sure if my spring/2014 essay [ http://bit.ly/1upri55 ]on Northern Ontario mining history had any influence on CBC to incorporate the Cobalt Silver Rush into a recent episode of the highly acclaimed “Murdoch Mysteries”, but you have to give the giant broadcaster credit for helping educate all Canadians about a little known part of our history!  (Stan Sudol – Owner/Editor RepublicOfMining.com)

TV, eh? covers news, reviews and interviews about Canadian television shows, with the odd foray into the odd industry that produces them.

For over 15 years, Greg David has been a television critic for TV Guide Canada, the country’s most trusted source for TV news. He is a member of the Television Critics Association. greg@tv-eh.com

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Sudbury’s Hard Rock Medical returns – by Laura Stradiotto (Sudbury Star – February 1, 2015)

 

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The medical drama series inspired by Sudbury’s own medical school is gearing up for its second season. Season 2 of the TVO series Hard Rock Medical premieres Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. with a special one-hour broadcast of two back-to-back episodes.

The critically acclaimed series, loosely inspired by the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, follows eight medical students and the challenges they face practising rural medicine and living in the North. Filmed in Sudbury, it stars Northerners Jamie Spilchuk of North Bay and Stephane Paquette of Sudbury.

In Season 2, Spilchuk’s character, Cameron Cahill, receives divine inspiration when lightning strikes, while Paquette’s character, Charlie Riviere, struggles to support himself financially through school with a fourth child on the way

With a growing family and responsibilities, Charlie wonders whether he be able to continue medical school. “So ,I have to find alternative financial support,” Paquette said about his character.

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Investors tapped to fund gold fraud film – by Ben Bland (Financial Times – December 10, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Jakarta – Two of the world’s toughest mining tycoons battle it out with a star geologist, a chancer and a dictator’s children for control of one of the world’s largest gold discoveries in the heart of the Indonesian jungle, until it is exposed as a huge fraud.

The true story of Canadian company Bre-X Minerals, which collapsed in 1997 after attaining a market capitalisation of $6bn, reads like a movie script and the producer of hit film Home Alone is trying to raise $18m from mining investors to put it on the silver screen.

Malcolm Burne, a serial mining entrepreneur and former Financial Times journalist, has given Hollywood producer Scott Rosenfelt $150,000 of seed capital and together they are tapping minerals investors from Canada to Australia to fund a film about a scandal that changed the industry.

“It’s an amazing story with political and financial intrigue and thousands of people’s lives shattered as well as those who are still standing tall like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold,” says Mr Rosenfelt, who has tentatively titled the film Bre X: King for a Day.

Gold-mining companies struggled to raise money for years after the fraud, which prompted stock market regulators in Canada and Australia to bring in rules forcing miners to disclose detailed technical information about new finds.

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Rio Tinto restoring old TV series ‘Death Valley Days’ – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – October 14, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

40 years after the final broadcast, Death Valley Days returns to television, thanks to Rio Tinto’s Dr. Williams Adams.

LONE PINE, CALIFORNIA (MINEWEB) – In September 1930, the Pacific Coast Borax Company and its advertising agency, McCann-Erikson created one of the longest running western radio broadcasts and television series in U.S. history—solely to sell Boraxo hand soap and 20-Mule Team Borax laundry detergent booster to the American public.

Since its first radio broadcast on NBC’s old Blue Network to its transition to television as a western anthology series in 1950 to the final episode aired in 1975, “Death Valley Days” would also be credited with launching the political career of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whose two years as host of one of the most popular western television series in U.S. history was credited with helping elect him as governor of California.

The radio show produced more than 600 episodes, while the TV anthology would yield another 458 episodes, all written by advertising copywriter Ruth Woodman, who also dramatized the story of Pacific Coast Borax Company, which would subsequently become U.S. Borax and a Rio Tinto subsidiary.

Woodman, who spent every summer traveling through California and Nevada to soak up western history, wrote scripts based on such renowned and real-life characters as prospector Death Valley Scotty; bandit Black Bar; Ishi, the sole surviving member of the Yahi Tribe; and Sequoia, who developed a written language for his tribe and for whom California’s towering redwood trees are named.

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Reality series to follow gold exploration exploits – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – May 6, 2014)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

When it comes to reality TV series, the fishing show Deadliest Catch has orange gold, forestry’s Ax Men has green gold, and the oil industry is encapsulated in the show Black Gold. Now, hard-rock gold mining has its own version.

Fool’s Gold, which will premiere on May 13 on the Discovery Channel, follows Todd Ryznar and seven friends as they try their hand at grassroots gold exploration at the former Straw Lake Beach Mine, located about a 90-minute drive from Fort Francis in northwestern Ontario.

“This is hard-rock mining; all the other shows on TV are about placer gold, and that’s something totally different from what we’re dealing with,” said Ryznar, founder of Shotgun Exploration. “It’s something you’ve never seen on TV before, so it’ll be very interesting.”

A former lakefront property realtor, Ryznar purchased the Straw Lake Beach Mine property in 2005, and, five years later, with inspiration from reality television shows like Deadliest Catch, started filming work being done on the property.

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NEWS RELEASE: It’s Gold Mining, MacGyver-Style, when FOOL’S GOLD Premieres on Discovery May 13

New original Canadian series mines for gold…and for laughs!

Discovery Fool’s Gold 

TORONTO (April 21, 2014) – Todd Ryznar and his ramshackle crew at Shotgun Exploration are looking to strike it rich in the gold-laden hills of Northern Ontario and retiring in style. The only problem for this start-up DIY mining company? They don’t know what they’re doing! Premiering Tuesday, May 13 with back-to-back episodes at 8 and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery, FOOL’S GOLD follows modern-day prospector Ryznar and his ragtag gang of would-be miners in their search for gold. But first, they’ll have to figure out what to do and how to do it – after all, their search for gold won’t be easy when the main equipment is made from a rusty bed frame and a an assortment of old washing machine parts!

Commissioned by Discovery Canada and produced by Toronto’s 11 Television Canada, the humorous eight-part series joins the beleaguered Ryznar and his rookie crew – at the mine and on the town, through bug-infested days, frigid nights, and beer-fuelled weekends – as they make a hilariously haphazard foray into the world of the professional gold digger. Armed with backwoods ingenuity, perseverance, stubbornness – and little else – will their beginner’s luck be rewarded, or will their hopes be dashed?

A real estate speculator-turned-gold prospector, Ryznar purchased the Straw Lake Beach Mine near Fort Frances, Ontario in 2005. After years of failed attempts of finding gold on his own, Ryznar has convinced a hastily-assembled group of his friends to spend eight weeks in the Ontario wilderness in a single-minded search for their share of Northern Ontario’s surprisingly plentiful gold deposits.

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New Mexican miners commemorate “Salt of the Earth” – by Roberta Wood (People’s World – March 26, 2014)

http://peoplesworld.org/

GRANT COUNTY, N.M. – “Where is Anita Torrez?” growled the sheriff’s deputy at the young pregnant woman sitting at a table stuffing envelopes inside the union hall’s doorway.

“I really have no idea,” answered Anita Torrez with a good show of calm. The deputy had come on the sheriff’s orders to round up those on a “wanted list” of union wives. The frustrated deputy finally went on his way and the women laughed heartily. But it didn’t take away the fear.

More than 60 years later, Torrez is still iron-willed but soft-spoken, so she is reluctant to talk about herself and didn’t tell that story when she spoke on Mar. 15 at the University of Western New Mexico on a panel titled “From Women’s Auxiliary to Women of Steel.” But she did eagerly share it with family and comrades over a plate of carne asada, beans, rice, and plate-sized flour tortillas. The meal preceded the panel and was prepared by brothers from a steelworker local in nearby Tucson using a portable grill outside the same local hall where Torrez outwitted the sheriff’s deputy.

The confrontation took place in 1951 during a miners strike here. The strike was marked by government and company intimidation and violence and a new role for women. The story of the courage of the women led to the making of a unique movie, “Salt of the Earth” whose 60th anniversary was commemorated last weekend.

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Top Ten Mining Events in Northern Ontario History – by Stan Sudol (March 22, 2014)

This column was also published on the Huffington Post – the “New York Times” of the web: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stan-sudol/ontario-mining_b_4885841.html

Klondike Versus Northern Ontario

For crying out loud, I continue to be astonished with our collective Canadian obsession over the Klondike Gold Rush while northern Ontario’s rich and vibrant mining history is completely ignored by the Toronto media establishment, especially the CBC.

Discovery Channel’s recent six-hour mini-series on the Klondike – vaguely based on Charlotte Gray’s book, “Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike – once again highlighted this glaring snub.

Unfairly, the Klondike did have the benefit of terrific public relations due to famous writers like Jack London, Robert W. Service and Pierre Berton, but I still don’t understand how this brief mining boom continues to dominate the “historical oxygen” in our national psyche.

At its peak, the Klondike only lasted a few years – 1896-1899 – and produced about 12.5 million ounces of gold. And unlike the California gold rush that created one of the largest and richest states in the union, the entire Yukon Territory’s population today is about 36,000. Contrast that with booming Timmins with 45,000 hardy souls who have dug out of the ground about 68 million ounces and counting of the precious metal, since the Porcupine Gold rush of 1909.

It’s enough to make to make Benny Hollinger, Jack Wilson and Sandy MacIntyre – the founders of this extraordinary deposit – spin in their collective graves!

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Gold diggers: Yukon adventurers pull money from the ground in hit docu-series – by Ruth Myles (Vancouver Sun – February 25, 2014)

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Popcorn bowls, Tupperware containers, cereal bowls — you name it, the miners on Yukon Gold use it to store the riches they pull out of the ground.

Janine Johnson is particular to an empty Kraft peanut-butter jar, the plastic kind with the green twist-off lid. On the second episode of the series, she and her husband Cam use it to tote their latest findings into Dawson City to have it weighed. The gold — which takes up about a quarter of the jar — comes in at just a hair under 70 oz (almost 2 kg), netting them a cool $90,000.

“We use everything to hold our gold, as long as we feel safe. We have it in old tobacco cans, in snuff cans, whatever works,” Cam Johnson says. “You’ll go see the banker in the Dawson and he’ll say, ‘Only you gold miners would walk down the street with $150,000 worth of gold but not even think about it.’”

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Dawson City toasts Klondike TV miniseries (CBC News North – January 21, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/north/

A few inaccuracies don’t tarnish the allure of the modern Gold Rush myth

You don’t need a prospector’s sharp eyes to spot inaccuracies in Klondike. But residents say it’s a fun adventure series and a fine reason to throw a costume party.

Last night Dawsonites packed the KIAC ballroom to watch the first episode of the new Discovery Channel miniseries.  Rian Lougheed-Smith was working the bar at the event. “You know what, I think it was entertaining,” she says. “The sets are really incredible, the storefronts, the mud…”

Lougheed-Smith says it doesn’t really take away from the series but there are more than a few inaccurate details. One example: Snow and darkness in Dawson in July.

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Klondike [mini-series] is lovely – just less than it could be – by John Doyle (Globe and Mail – January 20, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Pasadena, Calif. — It starts tonight. It’s Discovery’s first-ever scripted project, Klondike (Discovery Canada, 9 p.m.). And here’s how a Discovery executive described the making of it: “56 days, 9,000 feet above sea level, above the cloud cover, temperatures that dropped to almost 30 below zero for 16 hours straight, and raging rapids. For our cast and crew, that was a day on the job. This is Klondike.”

The six-hour, three-night miniseries (continuing Tuesday and Wednesday) is based on Charlotte Gray’s 2010 book, Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike. The guy in charge of the lavish adaptation is Ridley Scott. And there’s a stellar cast – Richard Madden from HBO’s Game of Thrones, Abbie Cornish, Tim Roth and Sam Shepard.

It’s good, entertaining and visually it is stunning. Just don’t look for premium-quality cable drama subtlety and nuance here.

As fine as it is, it seems like it was a quickie but eye-wateringly expensive production. Tim Roth was asked, “When you play a villain like this, do you do an elaborate backstory to justify how you behave?” To which he answered, “No!” And scoffed.

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