Gallup's Coal Avenue: Then & Now

The El Rancho Hotel's Facebook page posted the following images originally posted by Avi Wolf:

According to Wolf:

Route 66 Truck (now just Coal Ave) in Gallup NM facing East, then (from a late 50's/ early 60's postcard) and now (from Google Maps).

The Chief Theater at left (now gone) was once owned by R.E. Griffith, brother of the famed Hollywood director D.W. Griffith.

Downtown Gallup looked like a thriving town back then with colorful business signs along the boulevard. Today, it looks drab with the signs gone.  

Above, the main lobby of the El Rancho Hotel. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Along with the aforementioned Chief Theater, R. E. Griffith built the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup in 1936 that opened in 1937 as a base for Hollywood movie productions. The El Rancho is open today and visitors to Gallup should stop in and take a look at their collection of movie star photographs on the second floor of the hotel's lobby.

"Lincoln" and "Flight" Mini-reviews

Yesterday, I watched two good movies via "award screener" DVDs.

The first was Steven Spielberg's Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis in the title role.  The movie focuses on the final months of President Abraham Lincoln's life and the end of the Civil War.

The movie was well done and Lewis was probably the best movie Lincoln ever and Sally Field was great as Mary Todd Lincoln.

I am disappointed at how the assassination at Ford's Theater was glossed over.  Every Lincoln movie I've seen (dating back to D. W. Griffith's 1930 Abraham Lincoln) re-enacted the assassination.  This movie didn't.  They did depict Lincoln's moment of death in the rooming house across the street from Ford's.  The room was bigger than the actual one (I should know, I've been in it.)

Other than those quibbles, it was a fine movie.  If one is not into political history, they may find the movie long and boring.  There is one other actor who is in the movie who once also played Lincoln.

My grade: A.

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The second movie I watched was Flight, starring Denzel Washington.

Washington plays an heroic airline pilot but his alcoholism causes him trouble when federal investigators look into the circumstances surrounding the crash of the plane he was piloting.

Flight is a riveting movie and Washington's portrayal of an heroic, but flawed pilot was excellent.  Nadine Velazquez provides some eye-candy early on in the movie.

My grade: A+.