Once Upon a Time at BOT: Top 50 Westerns Countdown TOP 5 REVEAL TODAY

[The Panda]

Sorry for the delay in getting this up! But without further ado we'll get to counting down these westerns!

Edited September 5, 2021 by The Panda

[The Panda]

Last time I did a list I created 100 haikus. This time, I scoured the internet for the wildest takes (good or bad) about our 50 wild west movies and decided to make you read them (given this list was inspired by a wildly bad take).

 

Number 50

 

 

"I wanted to marry her when I saw the moonlight shining on the barrel of her father's shotgun."

 

Oklahoma is One of the Dirtiest Musicals of All-Time

By Jason Cochrane

 

"Much has been written about the significance of Oklahoma! in the history of American musical theatre.  Most historians place it as the milestone in the integration of the musical’s construction in conveying themes, plot and character.  Its reputation among laymen is one of a simpleminded, quaint musical.  What both factions ignore in their analyses, however, is that Oklahoma! is full of subtle but rough-hewn sexual and violent undertones that in fact contradict its reputation as mere mild entertainment.

 

Oklahoma! was released in 1955 after the New York and touring companies had closed and introduced the new wide-screen process called Todd-AO.  It was re-released in 1956 by 20th Century Fox in CinemaScope.  It tells story of Curly McLain (Gordon MacRae) and Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones), who, in a fit of coquettish spite, accepts an invitation to a social from the brute farmhand Jud Fry (Rod Steiger).  Laurey’s ensuing self-torment plus the tension between Jud and Curly drives the plot from that point on.  True to the Rodgers and Hammerstein style, there is also a contrasting subcouple in the form of Will Parker (Gene Nelson) and Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), who pines for any man with a seductive intent, including the peddler Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert).

 

Oklahoma! has reached the status of an enduring classic, thanks mostly to its mainstream proliferation through the Fred Zinnemann film.  While its bumpkin characters seem homey and charming in light of modern musical works, the film itself remains fresh and entertaining.  The songs and dancing are in part responsible for that, but one might argue that its nearly perverse subthemes of sexual desire and violence help the film maintain a gripping, if subconscious, appeal.

 

The primary sexual themes of Oklahoma! play themselves out in its characters.  There is Laurey, the virginal girl coming of sexual age; Curly, the suave, sexy charmer clearly obsessed with bedding Laurey; Ado Annie, the girl, recently come of sexual age and unable to control her sexual impulses — a victim of her own Freudian id; Jud Fry, who represents an unfettered, unchivalrous sexual carnality that contrasts the cultural expectations of Claremore; Ali Hakim, also a victim of his own id but, unlike Annie, quite aware of his manipulatory manner of obtaining gratification; Will Parker, who is like Laurey in his virginal, wide-eyed view of sex; and Aunt Eller, the matriarch-cum-madam of Claremore, wise in the ways of sex and lust and engrossed with matchmaking her Laurey with a suitable sexual partner — the handsome Curly.

 

It is Aunt Eller who carries out the first sexual act, which, like everything else in Oklahoma!, is disguised with a down-home flavor.  She is seen daydreaming and churning butter (a subliminally phallic gesture), no doubt dreaming of her younger, sexual days.  When Curly chats with her, she keeps her eyes focused on him, surveying him and continuing her phallic strokes.  The first thing she says to him also indicates her sexual desire for the virile Curly: “If I wasn’t an ole woman, and if you wasn’t so young and smart-alecky, why, I’d marry you and git you to set around at night and sing to me [i.e. be intimate with me]”  Aunt Eller’s churning halts when Curly mentions Laurey, her niece.  Although Aunt Eller wears a smile as he mentions her, she promptly stops her action and opens up the churn — in essence, castrating Curly in any hopes of making love to such an “ole woman.”  In a moment, she’s scooping out globs of butter and saying “you young ‘uns!” (The dairy product metaphor for sex is repeated during “I Cain’t Say No”: “S’posin’ ‘at he says ‘at you’re sweeter’n cream/ And he’s gotta have cream er die?”  And later, women’s home-cooked meals are auctioned to their suitors at the Skidmore Ranch.) The butter metaphor is by no means the only sexual undertheme perpetrated by Aunt Eller.  In fact, throughout the film, Aunt Eller is the only person in Claremore who seems to be wise to the ways of sex and appreciates fully the sexual goals of the courtship ritual.  Her primary function is that of matchmaker for the girls, helping them obtain a suitable sexual partner.

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 49

 

"Since I cannot rouse heaven I intend to raise hell."

 

‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’: Sam Peckinpah’s Most Tender Fable of the Dying West

by Sven Mikulee

 

"The Ballad of Cable Hogue, an unorthodox Western comedy and romance that chronicles the three final years of the life of an unsuccessful prospector in the days when the Old West was just becoming new, came out just a year after The Wild Bunch, the brilliant film of a brutal gang’s one last hurrah, dealing with the similar theme but achieving somewhat poorer results in the short term. It managed to cover its cost, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that the critics or the public welcomed it with wide-opened arms. It took some time for The Ballad of Cable Hogue to get the recognition it deserved back in 1970 when it premiered, and it’s a sad fact that Peckinpah hadn’t lived to experience it. “It was really a shame. Cable Hogue is possibly my best film. A real love story,” said Peckinpah once. “I am always criticized for putting violence in my films, but it seems that when I leave it out nobody bothers to see the picture.” The Ballad of Cable Hogue, yes, is a Western without almost any violence, and the symbol of Hollywood’s masculine filmmaking indeed delivered a romantic, tender, thoughtful film that was obviously too easy to ignore. The next time you hear someone label Peckinpah as a bloodthirsty, adrenaline-pumping action director, do their education a solid favor and recommend Cable Hogue, a touching love story that at the same time deals with the ever-inspirational subject of the inevitable changes that the civilization carries with it in the process of civilizing the wilderness.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue manages to function perfectly on two distinct levels: first of all, its surface tells the story of a prospector who finds water in the desert, builds a successful business and falls in love with the local prostitute he decides to spend the rest of his life with. The script is well-written, the characters are quirky, believable and loveable, dialogues are witty and inspired. The film would work just fine even without the larger-than-life theme it’s built upon: the image of the unromantic transformation of the Old West into something new, modern, contemporary, into the industrialized, modernized, fast-paced home of the 20th century American society. This additional background dimension, however, elevates the picture into the ranks of some of the best “dying West” movies ever made, shoulder to shoulder with, let’s say, John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The idea of exploring and taming the wilderness is something deeply ingrained in the collective American identity, and has been a pivotal source of inspiration and motivation since the early beginnings of the United States’ development. In The Ballad of Cable Hogue, we see a man firmly belonging to the Old Ways, peacefully and serenely giving up his place to allow for progress to come. The simple but very effective image of a stagecoach and an automobile crossing paths plainly shows the subtext Peckinpah chose to explore. Even though a lot of people saw this film in the decades upon its release, it still seems The Ballad of Cable Hogue remains somehow overlooked and underappreciated in the evaluation of the filmmaker’s career. The Wild Bunch may be the best film the temperamental American ever made, but there’s no doubt in our minds that Cable Hogue has the most heart.

 

The film had a deep impact on Peckinpah’s career, even though for all the wrong reasons. Bad weather put production way behind schedule so the director and his crew drank heavily in the abundance of their free time, building up a staggering bill of over $70,000 at the local inn. Altogether, The Ballad of Cable Hogue went 19 days behind schedule and 3 million dollars over budget, causing the split between Peckinpah and Warner Bros./Seven Arts. Since Peckinpah was allegedly a favorite to direct Deliverance and Jeremiah Johnson at the time, which both turned out to be huge box-office successes, his break-up with Warner dealt a significant blow to his career. Peckinpah then went to England and made Straw Dogs, a film so disturbing one might suspect the whole experience of making Cable Hogue pushed the director to a rather dark place.

 

Starring the phenomenal Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner in what a lot of critics call the best performances of their careers, shot by American cinematographer Lucien Ballard (The Killing, Ride the High Country, The Wild Bunch, True Grit), cut by the great editor Lou Lombardo, who worked with Robert Altman for more than thirty years, and with Jerry Goldsmith’s original score, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a curious but priceless entry in Peckinpah’s opus, proving his undervalued versatility and subtlety not so evident in some of his more famous work. The reason why The Ballad of Cable Hogue is cherished dearly here at C&B is the fact that it shows how great a storyteller Peckinpah really was. The additional plus is definitely the character of the ambitious and determined prostitute played by Stevens, a full-blooded, integral part of the story incorporated in a strong-willed, independent woman that can be used as the main argument against the theory of Peckinpah as an anti-feminist filmmaker."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 48

 

 

"Soldier can never think by his heart, ma'am. He got to think by the book."

 

When Hollywood Westerns Fought Racism
By M.W. Jacobs

 

"Now when Hollywood is reeling from a much-deserved diversity scandal, it’s a good time to remember the historical role of Hollywood in civil rights. Hollywood was ahead of the country as a whole during the civil rights era of the 1950s. This was especially evident in the unlikely genre of the western, where a frontal assault on American racism involved some of the biggest names in Hollywood history such as John Ford, John Huston, and others as familiar.

 

But before the 1950s, the Confederacy ruled the heart of Hollywood. The influential first movie epic, Birth of a Nation, is having its centenary this year.  Directed by D.W. Griffith, Kentucky-born son of a Confederate colonel, the film featured the heroic KKK saving white women from animalistic black rapists. This helped catapult a near-defunct Klan to the status of minor political party in the 1920s with membership in the millions, electing governors and senators. Birth of a Nation  was the biggest grossing film until another Southern white-suffering epic, Gone with the Wind (1939), which is the top-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation, according to the website Box Office Mojo. GWTW established the movies’ and the nation’s dominant version of the Civil War: invaded white Southerners who were benign slaveholders with content loyal slaves.

 

This version began to change during the civil rights era of the 1950s, which was also the golden age of the Western movie. In the moral atmosphere created by the civil rights movement, and in the aftermath of the unimaginable racist atrocities of World War II, some of the best Hollywood directors were compelled to take on American racism in their Westerns.  At a time when the subject was far too controversial to address directly, filmmakers had Native Americans stand in for African Americans as the targets of racism.

 

There is only one western of the classic period that directly takes-on racism against African Americans, and that is John Ford’s Sergeant Rutledge (1960) about a black cavalry soldier accused of the rape and murder of a white girl. This is not to say that any of the other movies mentioned were not also about anti-Indian racism. Indeed, John Ford ended his career with Cheyenne Autumn (1964) in which he drew an explicit parallel between Indians and Jews under the Nazis.

 

In Cheyenne Autumn, a German-immigrant army officer, who loves and studies Indians, is willing to send a group of captured Cheyenne into the certain death of a forced march in the dead of winter.  When repeatedly challenged, he counters each time, in a thick German accent, with a variation on the famous defense used by Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Holocaust: “I was just following orders.” The same year that the script was written, 1962, Eichmann was tried on international television. The German-American officer is last seen in Cheyenne Autumn staggering in a daze through the strewn corpses of soldiers and Indians including mothers with babies wailing beside them. When the dust settles from this current diversity crisis, it’s historically likely that Hollywood will eventually do the right thing."

 

 

[Cap]

@TalismanRing

 

We did it!  That was all us.  

 

 

 

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 47

 

 

"Now, I don't wanna kill you, and you don't wanna be dead."

 

1985 Chevrolet Silverado

By Oodle Marketplace

 

"The truck is a redone from the frame up, no rust anywhere on the body or frame. 400 engine, 350 trans. 373 gears in the rear end bug shield,visor, Also we have other vehicles sold at auction prices, only you have time to test drive and check out, Please come by and check out my place of business, I think you will be very happy. Im located at 593 Kriner Road, Chambersburg, Pa. My phone number is . I have around 15 cars on the lot. Thank you,Full Financing Is Available!!!!"

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 46

 

 

"There are only two things more beautiful than a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. Ever had a good... Swiss watch?"

 

The right's twisted symbol: John Wayne and conservatives' lost dignity

by Allen Barra

 

"“Professional American,” wrote Greil Marcus in “John Wayne Listening.” “He wears the mantle of Manifest Destiny easily, happy to represent America to the world, to itself, and to himself.” Exactly. That explains why John Wayne was the most popular American movie star for decades before his death in 1979 and for years afterward. And maybe even today. A 1995 poll asking “Who is your favorite movie star?” ranked him first, ahead of Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Kevin Costner. (He was the only dead movie star in the top 10.) That’s also why Wayne is the symbol of conservative – that is to say, white – America. As Garry Wills wrote about the big showdown scene in “Red River,” “Here was Manifest Destiny on the hoof.”

 

Wayne’s legend, or, more precisely, his screen image, means nothing at all to me, strikes no chord of shared dreams. Bogart lived my unlived lives, and Bogie’s world and the Duke’s didn’t even intersect. Which is why I can with all honesty say that Scott Eyman’s “John Wayne: The Life and Legend” is one of the greatest movie star biographies ever written: If someone impervious to Wayne’s persona can enjoy it so much, anyone at all interested in movies should.

 

Eyman, author of John Ford (“Print the Legend”) and Ernst Lubitsch (“Laughter in Paradise”) bios, manages the rare critical feat of appreciating his subject’s qualities while maintaining distance. “John Wayne’s story,” he writes, “is about many things – it’s about the construction of an image, the forging of a monumental career that itself became a kind of monument. It’s about a terribly shy, tentative boy reinventing himself as a man with a command personality, of a man who loved family but who couldn’t sustain a marriage, and of a great friendship [with John Ford] that resulted in great films.

 

Gable never had the good fortune to latch onto two directors as great as John Ford and Howard Hawks.  Gary Cooper’s image has been eclipsed by Wayne’s. James Stewart, in his heyday as big a star as Wayne until the mid-1960s and a far more versatile actor as well as a real life war hero, never allied himself with Manifest Destiny. Clint Eastwood, once regarded as the late-20th-century version of Wayne, has dropped out of the running. “Does anyone expect Clint Eastwood to be America’s favorite star a decade-and-a-half after his death?” Garry Wills asked rhetorically in 1997. I don’t think Eastwood is as popular as Wayne is right now."

Edited August 19, 2021 by The Panda

[Dementeleus]

I’m delighted that CABLE HOGUE made it in… especially since I forgot to send a list. 

[4815162342]

6 hours ago, Plain Old Tele said:

I’m delighted that CABLE HOGUE made it in… especially since I forgot to send a list. 

 

This is proof your old age is catching up with you, Methuselah

[The Panda]

Number 45

 

 

"I'll get paid for killing, and this town is full of people who deserve to die."

 

How Kurosawa's Yojimbo Became Leone's A Fistful of Dollars

by Jason Bailey

 

"His name might not mean much to Joe Moviegoer, but among a certain kind of cinephile, Stephen Prince is a legend. Others may know their Kurosawa, but Prince wrote a brilliant deep-dive on the great Japanese director’s films (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa), although his movie-geek street cred is mostly due to his Criterion Collection audio commentaries, which appear on the DVDs and Blu-rays for pretty much every Kurosawa film they’ve released–including Yojimbo, which was the one that brought us together. Last weekend, I had the honor of talking to Prince about Yojimbo at the Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita, Kansas (one of our favorite under-the-radar film fests). Specifically, we discussed the link between that film and its unofficial remake, A Fistful of Dollars (which also screened at the fest).

 

“Sergio Leone had seen (Yojimbo) and thought very highly of it,” he told me at a post-screening Q&A, “and studied it on a Moviola. So Fistful is a very close, almost scene-for-scene remake. What’s kind of interesting about that is that Kurosawa was, at this time, an internationally famous director, and it’d gotten to the point where he started his own production company, was putting his own money into these movies, and he had established his film style… By contrast, when you’re looking at Fistful of Dollars, you’re seeing a filmmaker who’s really starting out, and with each subsequent film, the visual rhetoric that Leone involves becomes more and more elaborate, and more and more insistent.”

 

Leone was, as Prince noted, “very struck by the Western parallels in Yojimbo, and adapted that to a European framework. But it’s not the Western by way of Hollywood, it’s the Western by way of Japan, and then filtered through Leone’s perception of America that had come to him in the late ’40s, with the Occupation and the war.”

 

Film historian Stephen Prince and Flavorwire film editor Jason Bailey talk Kurosawa at the Tallgrass Film Festival. Photo credit: Tallgrass Film Festival.

 

And just as Leone was struck by the parallels in Kurosawa’s film, Kurosawa was struck by the parallels in Leone’s. “Y’know, Kurosawa did see Fistful,” Prince said, “and he liked it, just like he liked The Magnificent Seven. But in the case of Fistful, it was an infringement. So Toho (Kurosawa’s studio) sued Leone, and Kurosawa sent a letter, and Leone was very pleased to get it; the letter said, ‘I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it’s my movie.'”

 

Aside from Fistful, Yojimbo was also reworked in 1996 by director Walter Hill, who adapted it into an American bootlegger story with Bruce Willis called Last Man Standing — and those are just the most obvious children of Yojimbo (in his book, Prince writes convincingly that Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was Peckinpah’s take on the material). I asked Prince what it is about this story, about this character, that is so “adaptable” to different cultures and time periods.

 

“It’s an archetypal story,” he explained. “On one level, it’s a revenge tale, very stripped-down–the fact that there’s no backstory surrounding the character of Sanjuro, who is the first Man with No Name, it’s a nonsense name. It’s a character familiar to American audiences from the Western; we watch a film like Shane, the character there has no backstory. So, when you do that, you can create a mythic aura around a character, and that can be very enjoyable to watch onscreen.”

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 44

 

 

"I wish I knew how to quit you."

 

Jake Gyllenhaal says Heath Ledger hated Brokeback Mountain jokes: 'This is about love'

by Cydney Henderson

 

"Fifteen years ago, Jake Gyllenhaal starred alongside Heath Ledger in the critically acclaimed film "Brokeback Mountain," a same-sex love story he said "meant so much to us." "It opened tons of doors," Gyllenhaal told Willie Geist during an interview Thursday for "Sunday Today." "It was crazy. It was amazing. It's defined my career in different ways.” Gyllenhaal played Jack Twist and Ledger, who died in 2008, portrayed Ennis Del Mar, two sheep herders who develop a passionate relationship in the Wyoming mountains in the 1960s. Despite becoming a pop culture phenomenon amid the film's success, "Brokeback Mountain" was plagued by insensitive jokes and often dubbed a "gay cowboy movie." Gyllenhaal said Ledger took issue with the parodying because it diminished the story.

 

"I see people who have joked with me or criticized me about lines I say in that movie," Gyllenhaal said. "That's the thing I loved about Heath. He would never joke. Someone wanted to make a joke about the story or whatever, he was like, 'No. This is about love. Like, that's it, man. Like, no.'" The "Spider-Man Far From Home" actor, 38, said the "little movie we made … meant so much to us," even before they realized how much the same-sex love story resonated with others. "This is a level of focus and attention that hits a certain nerve," he said. "This is bigger than me. … It has become not ours anymore. It's the world's."

 

On the film's 10th anniversary in 2015, Gyllenhaal told Out that Ledger was very protective of the film's story, including the iconic "I wish I knew how to quit you" moment.  "He was extraordinarily serious about the political issues surrounding the movie when it came out," Gyllenhaal said. "A lot of times people would want to have fun and joke about it, and he was vehement about being serious, to the point where he didn’t really want to hear about anything that was being made fun of." 

 

 

[The Panda]

1 minute ago, The Panda said:

Number 44

 

 

"I wish I knew how to quit you."

 

Jake Gyllenhaal says Heath Ledger hated Brokeback Mountain jokes: 'This is about love'

by Cydney Henderson

 

"Fifteen years ago, Jake Gyllenhaal starred alongside Heath Ledger in the critically acclaimed film "Brokeback Mountain," a same-sex love story he said "meant so much to us." "It opened tons of doors," Gyllenhaal told Willie Geist during an interview Thursday for "Sunday Today." "It was crazy. It was amazing. It's defined my career in different ways.” Gyllenhaal played Jack Twist and Ledger, who died in 2008, portrayed Ennis Del Mar, two sheep herders who develop a passionate relationship in the Wyoming mountains in the 1960s. Despite becoming a pop culture phenomenon amid the film's success, "Brokeback Mountain" was plagued by insensitive jokes and often dubbed a "gay cowboy movie." Gyllenhaal said Ledger took issue with the parodying because it diminished the story.

 

"I see people who have joked with me or criticized me about lines I say in that movie," Gyllenhaal said. "That's the thing I loved about Heath. He would never joke. Someone wanted to make a joke about the story or whatever, he was like, 'No. This is about love. Like, that's it, man. Like, no.'" The "Spider-Man Far From Home" actor, 38, said the "little movie we made … meant so much to us," even before they realized how much the same-sex love story resonated with others. "This is a level of focus and attention that hits a certain nerve," he said. "This is bigger than me. … It has become not ours anymore. It's the world's."

 

On the film's 10th anniversary in 2015, Gyllenhaal told Out that Ledger was very protective of the film's story, including the iconic "I wish I knew how to quit you" moment.  "He was extraordinarily serious about the political issues surrounding the movie when it came out," Gyllenhaal said. "A lot of times people would want to have fun and joke about it, and he was vehement about being serious, to the point where he didn’t really want to hear about anything that was being made fun of." 

 

 

Oops this did not have 2 top 10 placements, sorry I forgot to delete that from Yojimbo!

[The Panda]

Number 43

 

 

"I'm lookin' at a tin star with a... drunk pinned on it."

 

EXAMINING THE HANGOVER CURE IN THE WESTERN “EL DORADO”: WAS ASAFOETIDA KNOWN IN THE OLD WEST?

By Slices of Blue Sky Blog

 

"For some forgotten reason, I recently watched the 1966 Western El Dorado. It’s one of the better Westerns I have seen, with more humor and a lot less racism than the typical Western (though there’s a short cringe-worthy stereotyping of a Chinese person near the end). The film has a top-notch cast and crew: the great Howard Hawks directing, John Wayne playing a roving gun for hire, Robert Mitchum as a troubled sheriff, and James Caan as a mysterious man from the South with a mysterious grudge (they call him “Mississippi”). The performances are engaging: John Wayne is in full “John Wayne mode” but not over the top, Mitchum gives a laid-back performance that feels more 1960s than 1860s, and Caan is enthusiastic in his supporting role.

 

Like many Westerns, the central conflict is access to water: a big rancher wants to take a family’s water. The town sheriff (Mitchum) recently had his heart broken by the main female character and has been drowning his sorrows in a lot of alcohol, so he can’t help in the battle for justice against the nefarious rancher and his goons. But when things get really serious, the sheriff needs to sober up.

 

Mississippi suggests a sure-fire potion to free someone from alcohol’s grip that has a bunch of odd ingredients, including asafoetida (full recipe at Booze Movies). When I heard Mississippi say “asafoetida”, I was quite surprised. It’s something that I completely associate with Indian cooking and not at all with the United States in the 19th century or medicinal use (to be sure, that’s a subject that I’m ignorant about). So I started wondering: Was it put into the script because the word “asafoetida” has an exotic sound that makes it a perfect ingredient for a quack remedy? Or was this ingredient actually known in the U.S. in the late 19th century so that Mississippi could have run across it (in his fictional life)?

 

A 1991 article by Alice Jean Matuszak in the journal Pharmacy in History focuses on the 1942 film In Old California from Republic Pictures [Matuszak]. Set in 1848, John Wayne (in his 81st film) portrays a man from the East Coast who has a dream: become a successful pharmacist in Sacramento. There are bad guys in his way, of course, and a lot of other things going on, and I assume that Wayne steps away from the pharmacy to throw some punches and be a tough guy (I skipped over the detailed synopsis because I’ll probably watch the film sometime).

Wayne’s role in this minor film warranted a journal article because it was a highly positive portrayal of a pharmacist and it was slightly biographical: Wayne’s father (Clyde Morrison) was either a pharmacist or drug clerk and Wayne worked in pharmacies when he was a student.

 

...

 

iIn a 1941 issue of The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Ruby Mixon proposes a research plan (as an outline) that can guide any group that is researching the history, culture and traditions of their local county. Sections include county geography, Indian history, pre-1890 settlements, and so forth. In section VII (“Social activities”), the JSTOR search engine found this item: “K. Home remedies–common ailments, snake bite, asafoetida, etc.” Nothing more is given, so I don’t know how asafoetida fits into the history of Texas home remedies, but its presence on this outline implies that it was well known as a home remedy in Texas."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 42

 

 

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from the crow."

 

…REFLECTIONS ON DEAD MAN…

by Supreme Being

 

"…An acid western, a revisionist western, a post-modern western, the western Tarkovsky never made, Jim Jarmusch’s masterpiece, Dead Man (’95), has been dubbed many things. It is best not to categorize it in this way. It is set in the American west, in the latter half of the 1800s. It is a poem…

 

…The transitions between scenes are done by fading out to black and fading back in, giving every scene, no matter its length, a feeling of completeness, as though every one is an individual movie in itself. Like stanzas in a poem…

 

…There is a story to Dead Man, there is a through-line, there is drama and tension and action, yet these elements are understated, episodic, elusive. Dead Man presents the journey of a dead man to the other side, whatever, if anything, that other side may be…

 

…Crispin Glover’s weird monologue in the train. Is he a terrible actor in the scene? Or is he just right? I go back and forth between viewings. His speech foreshadows the end of the movie, the still boat, the landscape moving past…

 

…We come to understand that Blake is dead from the time he’s initially shot. He’s a dead man, his is a soul misplaced, and Nobody must lead him to the other side. But I wonder if Blake isn’t dead from the outset. The train ride marks the beginning of his journey. His fate has already been sealed…

 

…Dead Man is bookended by scenes of Blake walking through settlements. He begins walking through the desolate town of Machine, where he sees coffins, animal skeletons, a horse pissing, a woman fellating a man with a gun to her head. Blake exits the film being led through an Indian settlement, through a strange wooden gate, and finally onto the boat that will carry him from this life…

 

…If it’s neither sad nor depressing, what is it? It contains moments of sadness and moments depressing . It’s a meditation on life and death. The amount of grimness one finds in this may depend greatly on what each viewer brings to it…

 

…Dead Man was widely panned upon its release, primarily, I believe, because most reviewers are fucking morons. In one of the few positive reviews, J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote: “This is the western Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to make.” Indeed, its pace and lack of clearly delineated plot would fit right in with the Russian filmmaker known for his laconically paced, impressionistic films…

 

…Roger Ebert’s typically insipid review contains this marvelous and telling line: “Dead Man is a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us with more time to think about its meaning than with meaning.” How sad for Mr. Ebert. He’s going to have to figure this one out on his own…"

 

 

[The Panda]

 

Number 41

 

 

"I will find you! No matter how long it takes, no matter how far. I will find you!"

 

Tribal Depictions in Mann’s Film, The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

By Nicole Smith

 

"Although it is clear that director Michael Mann seeks to present viewers with a more culturally sensitive interpretation of colonial wartime Indian and colonist relations in the 1992 film “The Last of the Mohicans”, there are a number of biases that are so ingrained in our culture that they are almost difficult to detect immediately within the film. Most prominent among these colorings is the almost inescapable tendency to either romanticize Native Americans in a variety of ways or to make the viewer engage in the task of discerning between the “good and bad Indians."

 

There are other important themes in “The Last of the Mohicans" that deserve discussion along the lines of stereotypes of Indians. Throughout the film “The Last of the Mohicans” there are the tension between the idea of the civilized versus the savage Indian that is quite prevalent and because of these reasons, the correct historical representations (in terms of clothing, weapons, etc.) are overshadowed by the more philosophical questions of traditional representations and ways of viewing Indians, especially on the part of the non-Native person. In general, while there are only a few errors in aesthetic representation of the two main groups, the Mohicans and the Hurons, the more subtle themes that remind us of the old Western “cowboys and Indians" games are still present. The final result is that the viewer of “The Last of the Mohicans” might have a better understanding of the way these Native peoples really appeared or talked, but the same persistent stereotypes are still present.

 

It is impossible to ignore the blatant romanticism behind Mann’s portrayal of not only some of the Native Americans in the film (most notably those associated with the more “white-like" Mohicans) but of the very setting. From the beginning of the film “The Last of the Mohicans” by the director Michael Mannand throughout it, the viewer is constantly given the notion that the earth was untouched and perfect. The opening scene reveals vast shots of a perfect wilderness that is unspoiled by civilization, even though if it were to be truly depicted, there would be signs (from the view from above) of the existence of the Mohicans and related Delaware tribes.

 

For instance, “Burning was an important tool for clearing and improving the land for cornfields, as well as for opening the under story of the forest to encourage the growth of grasses and berries which attracted game" (Dunn 2000, 26). From so far on high the wilderness around this small group as well as the other Delaware tribes around it would not be completely untouched. For many centuries the act of burning areas within a confined geographical region left large patches of scorched earth and thus one cannot help but think the Eden-like representation of this vast perfect landscape is, at least in some ways, stereotypical. Furthermore, as a side note to this fact, the idealization of a perfect savage wilderness is further explored when the scene settles in on the three remaining Mohicans who are “one with nature" throughout their hunt.

 

There is nothing about this scene in “The Last of the Mohicans” that is completely “savage" but instead, it seems to be a romanticized notion of the hunt. When the deer is shot and killed, it is historically and culturally accurate that a prayer is made for the deer since the Mohicans and related tribes attributed great power to the animal world, but it is worth remarking on the fact that this act is the opening of the film “The Last of the Mohicans” and thus immediately informs its viewers that these are “good" (versus savage or “bad" Indians.) The reverence for nature, especially on the part of the three Mohicans is certainly played up and even, to some degree, used to make them appear as the good guys from the first moments of the film. Later, as we see the Hurons and their “savage" acts of war and brutality, this more sensitive opening scene causes the viewer to make an immediate contrast between what we would consider good and bad Indians. In effect then, we are much like the original colonists as the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” forces us to choose sides and in effect, enact war through our feelings against the “bad Indians" such as Magua."

 

 

[TalismanRing]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

‘I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it’s my movie.'”

[Fancyarcher]

Just discovered this list was happening. Really enjoying the non-conventional approach you're taking to presenting it. Some of those written takes are just wild. The Oklahoma one, made me laugh hard.  

[Cap]

Also if you are looking for wild takes I wrote my final paper for my finale class of college of the The Searchers this year. It’s a doozy. Pretty long though. Like 3 or 4K 😂😂😂

[TalismanRing]

24 minutes ago, Fancyarcher said:

Just discovered this list was happening. Really enjoying the non-conventional approach you're taking to presenting it. Some of those written takes are just wild. The Oklahoma one, made me laugh hard.  

 

I'm never going to be able to watch Aunt Eller  churn butter with a straight face again. 

 

 

[The Panda]

6 hours ago, Cap said:

Also if you are looking for wild takes I wrote my final paper for my finale class of college of the The Searchers this year. It’s a doozy. Pretty long though. Like 3 or 4K 😂😂😂

Send me your best snip of it!