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

[The Panda]

Number 40

 

 

"This is the nature of war: By protecting others, you save yourselves. If you only think of yourself, you'll only destroy yourself."

 

Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ was the East’s answer to an American Western

By Martin Wigham

 

"DUBAI: To the casual moviegoer, “Seven Samurai” can appear a daunting prospect. A three-and-a-half-hour, 60-year-old, black and white samurai story set in 16th-century feudal Japan – it seems to be the ultimate in film-buff nicheness. The fact that Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic features regularly on “Best Films Ever” lists might say more about the kind of people who vote in such polls than the movie itself.

 

Like the impenetrable later works of James Joyce, it seems probable that many copies of “Seven Samurai” remain unopened. I was certainly guilty as charged — my DVD copy lurked at the bottom of a “to watch” pile for almost a decade.

 

How wrong my preconceptions of pretension proved to be. More so than its much-touted technical triumphs, “Seven Samurai” first and foremost offers an easily digestible, audience-pleasing tale that gallops along with the pace of an epic adventure, driven by the force of a universal moral fable. This movie is long but never slow.

Besieged by bandits, desperate peasants entice hungry, out-of-work “ronin” samurai warriors to protect them, a gang led stoically by veteran actor Takashi Shimura. Filmed during a year-long harvest, and costing four times its initial budget, the film is more concerned with building unlikely, cross-caste relationships – among and between the outcasts and their suspicious hosts – than the redemptive, rain-and blood-soaked climax.

 

Much has been written of Kurosawa’s debt to – and influence on – the American Western. This film’s sincere mix of action, heroism, camaraderie and slapstick are certainly straight out of the playbook of director John Ford, Hollywood’s master of the genre. It also mirrors the clear moral dynamic found in early examples of the genre — the age-old battle of good versus evil — along with other elements such as a deep respect for the land and an affecting, affirmative sense of brotherhood. All of this is intertwined with a distinctly Eastern sense of hierarchy and honor, at a time when Japan was struggling to redefine both.

 

Six years after its release, “Seven Samurai” was successfully remade in Hollywood as “The Magnificent Seven” – the first of three Kurosawa pictures given the Hollywood Western treatment. The original was not only never bettered, it was destined never to be forgotten."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 39

 

 

"If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass so much, follow me?"

 

How Robert Altman’s Anti-Western Classic ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’ Aged Like Fine Wine

By Koraljka Suton

 

"The legendary director Robert Altman was given an Academy Honorary Award in 2006, “in recognition of a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike.” Although he never won a competitive Oscar, despite having been nominated seven times—two times for Best Picture and five times for Best Director—it is safe to say that the Honorary Award was an accolade that had been long overdue. The highly praised “maverick” who stubbornly went against the current of Hollywood-style filmmaking was forty-five years old when he directed the 1970 movie M*A*S*H, a black comedy war film that cleverly subverted the military comedy genre and paved the way for its director to continue delivering the unexpected by challenging the pre-existing genre tropes, a trait which he would eventually become both known and revered for. The project that fell into his lap after the surprise (s)mash hit was, therefore, right up his alley. Instead of taking up offers for big studio productions which he was advised to do and now finally could to, the auteur decided to stay true to his unique voice and continue playing with that which had not been played with before.

 

In 1968, producer David Foster optioned a pulp Western entitled McCabe, written in 1959 by author Edmund Naughton. But Foster was not actually looking to buy the novel, as he stated on the 2009 Movie Geeks United podcast. His primary goal was meeting with French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, so as to get the movie rights to The Mandarins. Although many others had tried, it was Foster who sealed the deal, despite never having made a single film before. On his way out of Paris where the meeting took place, the novelist’s agent Ellen Wright gave Foster Naughton’s McCabe, which she also represented, and allegedly told the producer that John Huston and Roman Polanski were interested in it, a notion which prompted him to immediately read the book on his plane ride home. Having landed, Foster had his attorney close the deal in regards to both de Beauvoir and Naughton’s novels. Soon afterwards, screenwriter and documentarian Ben Maddow got the job of adapting Naughton’s fiction into a script.

 

But what Maddow’s two drafts succeeded in doing was turning the inherently anti-Western McCabe into a pretty much traditional Hollywood Western. So, when Altman got on board, Maddow was replaced with Brian McKay who was to revise the screenplay together with the director. McKay, who had previously been incarcerated for stealing money orders, was introduced to Altman through the director’s wife Kathryn Reed, who McKay was in contact with. After getting out of jail, he started working with Altman and had a draft ready after only five weeks. But during this period, the two collaborators had a falling-out, as was a common occurrence throughout Altman’s professional life, resulting in them ultimately parting ways. In McKay’s draft, the atypical elements of Naughton’s story were restored and his version was dubbed The Presbyterian Church Wager, a title that remained throughout all the subsequent versions, before ultimately being changed to McCabe & Mrs. Miller. This was due to a complaint issued to Warner Brothers by an official in the Presbyterian Church, asserting that the church was not very fond of being mentioned in a movie that depicts whorehouses and gambling. The infamous title referred to the inhabitants of the town of Presbyterian Church making a bet on whether the movie’s main character would survive the refusal of a tempting business offer made to him.

 

Still, for a movie that puts the opening of a brothel at the center of its narrative, McCabe & Mrs. Miller remains thoroughly chaste in its depiction of sexual activities. Everything is merely implied i.e., left to the viewers’ imagination and fairly little is shown, which renders Altman’s film not only tasteful, but also shows us where his focus truly lies—on the business dynamic between the gambler and the prostitute. As Roger Ebert stated, this emphasis is clearly visible in the movie’s very title, with the ampersand denoting their entrepreneurial partnership, as opposed to a romantic liaison. Even their physical connection is a transactional one, with Mrs. Miller insisting on McCabe paying for her services, whereas he would much rather they move beyond it, for he too “has poetry in him”, although he feels incapable of conveying it. This does not mean that Constance does not care about him, because she does. Their tragedy lies in their failure to clearly articulate their needs and wants—while she does a fantastic job at hiding them from herself and restores to her secret opium addiction to get the relief she so badly craves, he feels hurt by her refusal to see them as more than mere business partners, but does nothing about it. Their romance is, therefore, something that exists merely as a potential to be utilized, yet remains never truly realized.

 

But even though McCabe and Mrs. Miller’s love story never managed to truly take off, the actors portraying them were a couple at the time and ended up doing the movie because they were looking to collaborate on screen. Beatty was in the position to select the roles he wanted due to the success of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) which he both starred in and produced. And although Altman initially wanted Elliott Gould to play his protagonist, the actor declined the offer for the sake of the movie I Love My Life. Altman told him he was making the biggest mistake of his life and Gould agreed later on. Thus, Beatty was cast. It has been said that the actor’s control issues did not play well with Altman’s, but that in no way affected his wonderful performance. On the topic of their relationship, Julie Christie said the following: “You had two very different types of ego working in a small area. I’m not going to go any further than that. To my mind it’s Bob’s best film. It needed the tightness that Warren brought to it and it needed the expansiveness that Robert brought to it… I think he’s a great director, a great, unique, adventurous, experimental, confrontational, provocative director.”"

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 38

 

 

"History isn't here yet. It's coming, but we got here early this time. Maybe this time, we can be ready for it. We can take it on our own terms."

 

McCabe and Mrs Miller with cows

by David Jenkins

 

"In the year of our Lord 2008, I was a victim of subtweeting before the term had entered into the popular lexicon. For those who remain blissfully unaware of the word’s origins, it’s essentially a form of stealth criticism whereby one is called out for an opinion or action taken, but remains unnamed, allowing for a level of “blind item” anonymity to those not in the know. As a wide-eyed journalistic lickspittle, I had been commissioned to review the film Wendy and Lucy by the director Kelly Reichardt for the pages of hallowed arts listing organ, Time Out London.

 

At that time, and under the auspices of a, shall we say, “wacky” new editor-in-chief, Time Out no longer rated art out of the traditional five stars. Now things were out of six. The malformed guiding principle behind this decision was that the final sixth star equated to something otherworldly and unique – an example of untrammelled genius, never to be repeated or replicated. So astounded was I by Wendy and Lucy’s portrait of a young woman foundering on the precipice of the American margins, I decided to cash in all my chips and lay down for the big one: six shining yellow stars. It was a very big moment. Being able to proselytise about this film in such a hyperbolic manner made me feel alive. Sometimes, it’s what makes this game worth playing.

 

Yet the high was short-lived. Three days after the review appeared in print, I found myself surfing the salmon-pink pages of the Financial Times, whose film critic at the time was the august and unpredictable Nigel Andrews. I had long been a fan of his writing. His reviews were like dainty little diary entries where literary flourishes adjoined neatly with hyper-articulate analysis (he is now retired). He did not like Wendy and Lucy at all. His archly dismissive review compared it to sentimental slush like Lassie Come Home. His coup de grace was to call out the critic at Time Out (me) for reckless mismanagement of the time-honoured star system, and for drastically overrating what he considered to be a textbook example of American indie mediocrity.

Let me first say that this anecdote is not intended as an act of retribution or late-game bitterness: then, as now, it was water off a duck’s back. If anything, I was flattered that this legendary critic was reading my words. Sometimes you can be made to second guess a judgment, maybe through a conversation, or reading other criticism, or perhaps as a result of your naturally maturing and expanding definition of personal taste. For a long time I wondered whether I had overrated the film, to the extent that I was a little scared to rewatch it. What if my youthful zeal was misplaced? What if Nigel Andrews was right?

 

Upon belatedly rewatching Wendy and Lucy, not only were my paranoid fantasies instantly debunked, but in fact the film was even more rich and sad than I’d initially supposed. A seven star film, if you will. This should have come as no surprise, as in the intervening years, Reichardt has delivered one extraordinary film after the next, nary leaving so much as a perfectly calibrated frame out of place. The lovely term “pocket symphonies” is often used to describe the music of the Beach Boys, and it also applies to Kelly Reichardt’s cinema.

Via extremely modest means and assiduous cinematic construction she is able to whip up melodious, sweeping and tactfully political dramas which cut deep into the often-challenging experience of living, working and thriving in America. They are the small formal acorns from which tall thematic oaks grow.

 

Her latest film, First Cow, is a hushed, intimate, heartbreaking story about nothing less than the birth of modern America. It is the thoughtful, bookish cousin to Martin Scorsese’s mythically-inclined fisticuffs aria, Gangs of New York, from 2002 (with a dash of 2012’s The Wolf of Wall Street thrown in as well) but this actually manages to do and say a lot more with a lot less.

For Reichardt and her trusty co-screenwriter Jon Raymond (their fifth collaboration), it is about two men who find themselves unwittingly at the centre of a push for American cultural expansionism and a nascent form of supply and demand economics. And as usual, Reichardt is interested in the concept of the dashed dream, and particularly how the promise of those dreams usually arrives laced with peril and degradation. We only see folly when it’s too late.

 

Within Reichardt’s immaculate canon of films, First Cow does have something of a megamix quality to it: there’s the bashful male kinship of 2006’s Old Joy; the idea that we can overreach even the most humble of personal ambitions as articulated so poignantly in 2008’s Wendy and Lucy; there’s the perfume of violence that hung in the air during the pioneer days from 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff; and the idea of crime being justified by a destabilised form of personal morality in 2013’s Night Moves.

 

I often see Reichardt’s films as all being about the struggles of being an independent artist, and the roadblocks that come from prizing originality and trying to work off of the mainstream grid. In the story of Cookie, King-Lu and their beloved but illicit treats, the metaphor works once more. And at the same time as being part of this close-knit cinematic family, the film is entirely unique: a shaggy cow saga one minute; a treatise on class, ethnicity and the mechanisms of capitalism the next; and then, in its final moments, a rumination on how storytelling, cinema and a curiosity in the past is the only practical way of keeping the dead alive."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 37

 

 

"What can I do, Mausi. That is how my heart is."

 

The Singing Cowboys: Sholay and the Significance of (Indian) Curry Westerns within Post-Colonial Narratives

by Madhuja Mukherjee

 

"

During the 1970s, Hindi mainstream cinema experienced a spurt of what may be described as “Curry Westerns” or adaptations of Westerns within Indian contexts, which in reality pointed out specific undercurrents of political change. While, on one hand, these films were remarkably different from the erstwhile dacoit (bandit) films (for instance, the ground- breaking film Gunga Jumna  (Nitin Bose, 1961)), they also tackled the iconicity of a barren landscape and narrated the inclusion of the outsider into the community. On the other hand, the so-called Curry Westerns did not carry the bleakness of Spaghetti Westerns, though they involved a sense of harshness, betrayal and the presence of a demonic villain, who often emerged as if from nowhere. The concern in these films was not the conquest of the wilderness and the subjugation of nature or issues of territorial rights. Here, the world was organized around codes of honour, kinship, and personal vendetta. These films were premised on questions of justice, which, as apparent from other Indian films produced between the 1950s and 1980s, was essentially denied by the newly instituted secular law of the country. This paper focuses on Sholay (aka Flames,Ramesh Sippy, 1975), one of the most enduring Indian films, in order to recognize the function of the popular within the political. Consequently,this paper addresses the historical impact of the film both within the fieldof popular practices, as well as within the chronicles of the politicaleveryday. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the film’s visual style, along with the soundtrack, in order to study its multiple influences, as well as to examine the implications of re-framing a dominant Hollywood genre within Indian settings.

 

As suggested by Kuan-Hsing Chen in the crucial work Asia as Method, the questions this paper will raise in regard to Sholay are about its status as anemanation of the Global South: “How does it [the Global South] operate?What are the discursive content, form, and direction of the argument put forward [within the film]? What ideological structures does it [the film]assume and connect with? As a cultural imaginary, what are its [historical]sources and its resources?” (26). Briefly, the attempt here is to use Sholay as a method and thus, by means of its analysis enquire about its cultural,political, and ideological links with the times. In addition, this paper maintains the distinction between Hindi language films produced in Bombay, and the umbrella notion of the “Bollywood” film industry. Of late, scholars of Indian cinemas have studied the Bollywood phenomenon as a specific shift within the film industry during postliberalisation. Rajadhyaksha describes the “Bollywoodization of the Indian cinema” as the corporatisation of the film industry in its efforts to re-integrate finance,production, an distribution, along with the music industry (see Rajadhyaksha). Furthermore, Prasad in “Surviving Bollywood” suggests that “successful commodification of Indian cinema as Bollywood in the International market is based on the idea of an unchanging essence that distinguishes it from Hollywood” (49). Through an analysis of Sholay,however, we are looking at the industrial structure that precedes this moment, as well as an aesthetic system that is much more eclectic andimportunate than that expressed in Bollywood cinema."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 36

 

 

"All I can say, McKay, is you take a helluva long time to say good-bye."

 

Orvis Cattle Co. - The Big Country Locations

By Orvis Cattle Co.

 

"Several people have asked about where some of the scenes in the Big Country were filmed. Most of the green ranch scenes (as opposed to the desert ranch scenes) were filmed near on or near Snow Ranch.  Part of the stage run at the beginning of the movie was filmed along Copperopolis Road near the intersection with the Farmington Road. They took the fence down and built a dirt road in the field parallel to the highway. The stage ran down the dirt road and the camera car ran down the paved road. During the stage scene, if you look at the lower right corner of the screen, you can see a little of the ditch that runs along the edge of the paved road.

 

Several scenes were filmed on this field. A road that you cannot see in this image runs along the base of the hill at the left of center, curves up and goes over to the trees near the center of the image. Part of the stage scene was filmed on this road. The buckboard/ambush scene was filmed over next to the trees and along this road. Ambush1 - At the beginning of the movie, Gregory Peck and Carol Baker are in a buckboard that is ambushed by Chuck Conners and his men. The buckboard runs along this road and up the hill to the left of the trees.

 

Ambush2 - Just before they ambush the buckboard, Chuck Conners and his men are hanging out just to the right of the trees in Ambush1. Some of them are sitting on a log. As you can see, the trees are down and there is not much left of the log (a lot can happen in 50 years). The creek has also eroded a bit into the area where the scene was shot but you can still match the rocks and bushes in the background. At one point in this scene, Chuck throws a knife that goes between the toes of one of his men. When Chuck swings his hand back to throw the knife, he actually drops it and swings his hand forward. The knife you see in the scene is actually sliding down a wire where it was launched with a spring. I used to know where the nail was in that log where the wire attached.

 

For additional information, there is a Wikipedia Page on the movie."

 

 

[4815162342]

If First Cow made this list then Meek's Cutoff better have damn well made it too

[Plain Old Tele]

2 hours ago, 4815162342 said:

If First Cow made this list then Meek's Cutoff better have damn well made it too

It’s too old. 

[The Panda]

Number 35

 

 

"What's that smell? Is the treasure rotting?"

 

“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” vs. “The Good, the Bad, the Weird”

By William Wasieleski

 

"What’s the greatest western ever made? More times than not, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly will be near the top of that list. It  is heralded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest western of all-time. So what happens when a Korean film-maker decides to remake the film and change some things around? We get The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Let us get our ringside seats and watch a shoot-out, knock-down, good ol’ western brawl.

 

Script:  The Ugly has a number of side stories written into it which helps keep our interest in the slow paced film. There is the beautiful duality of Tuco and his brother who have chosen far different paths in their life. Of course Tuco passionately tried to defend his actions. There is the civil war battle near the end with the bridge scene. The entire film seems to be pointing out while there is good, bad, and ugly, everything tends to be ugly. As for the dialogue in the film, there are some great lines but there are some moments where the sparsity seems to not work. The Weird is a more straightforward film with less dichotomies. While there is a simpler story to it, the visuals we are presented are fabulous. While there are a few great scenes in The Ugly, almost every second of The Weird is a beauty to watch. Added to the great visuals is the hilarious dialogue of Yoon Tae-goo and the narrator-esque guide of the Black-Market Gang. These two elements give the film a little more bite to it. Weird takes the round: 10-9.

 

Director:  Sergio Leone, director of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, was relatively unknown when he started his Man With No Name trilogy. At the time it was released, Ugly was a film with mediocre reviews. Much of this was due to the violent deaths in the film. However, over time, it has come to be regarded as a classic, and one a few definitive westerns. The film also helped move Leone into Hollywood where he would next make Once Upon a Time in the West, which is also regarded as one of the best westerns to have ever been made. The Good, The Bad, the Weird is the 7th film by Korean director Kim Ji-woon. Ji-woon’s other films are also genre films as The Weird is, having made a gangster film and a horror film previously. However, The Weird was Ji-woon’s major breakout film, with a budget of 10 million USD (grossing 40 million). Ji-woon uses the money wisely by putting together some terrific action sequences which are shot beautifully.  As The Ugly put Leone on the map, The Weird has helped put Ji-woon on the map. However, at the end of the day, it’s tough to beat an all-time great. Ugly takes the round: 10-9.

 

Performances:  The Ugly has three fantastic actors in Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef. In this film Eastwood fills his role of Blondie admirably and Van Cleef is menacing as Angel Eyes.  However, it is Wallach who shines. He of course provides us which some laughter, but one could say he’s almost as sinister as Van Cleef. Wallach shows major chops in the scenes with Tuco’s brother, and Wallach plays the scene to perfection. Those few scenes alone show us the true ugliness of the world these men live in. The Weird‘s performances play out similar to The Ugly. Jung Woo-sung displays a solid effort in his portrayal of The Good. Song Kang-ho is brilliant in his portrayal of the Weird. He seems less sinister than Wallach’s Tuco, but much of this can be attributed to the more slapstick humor in The Weird compared to The Ugly. Finally, there is one standout amongst all the performances in either movie, and it’s Lee Byung-hun’s The Bad. He has all the menacing nature of Angel Eyes and “bad” behavior. However, his appearance on screen always brings a feeling of dread … sometimes it’s a look or an action. There is one specific scene halfway through the film when one of his gang members jokes over dinner about how he heard Byung-hun wasn’t the best in a shootout. The look he gives his gang member says everything the audience needs to know about his character. Weird takes the round: 10-9."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 34

 

 

"Australia. What fresh hell is this?"

 

From ‘Idiot Prayer’ to ‘The Proposition’: exploring the cinematic work of Nick Cave

by Luke Buckmaster

 

"If 2020 were a song, what would it be? The brutish realities of this foul year would surely translate into something dark, morose and heartbreakingly sad – something, dare I say it, resembling a Nick Cave song. I am thinking particularly of a track like his mournful ‘Girl In Amber’, which was one song Cave performed recently in his livestreamed-in-iso July concert Idiot Prayer. In a year full of terrible surprises, this was a rare example of a good one, featuring the great Australian performer crooning alone in Alexandra Palace in London. It was beautiful, lonely and moving – with a slick sort of pathos that could only come from the 63-year-old Bad Seed, whose performance style is aging like fine wine. When the film arrives in Australian cinemas today, it will mark another addition to Cave’s detailed cinematic oeuvre spanning over 30 years. Besides regularly appearing on soundtracks, Cave composes scores, writes screenplays and appears on screen in various contexts. There’s not enough space here to cover all of the multi-hyphenate’s contributions to cinema in detail – but even Cave devotees will have some titles to track down.

 

For a poet who waxes endlessly about the human condition, deeply and sensitively contemplating the way people think and behave, Cave sure has an unusual gravitation towards on-screen violence. The three features he’s written or co-written (the quasi-documentary 20,000 Days On Earth notwithstanding) are hard-hitting and squeamish, with moments of lacerating confrontation. Cave’s legacy of blood-splotched screenwriting began in the late ’80s with director John Hillcoat’s excellent prison drama Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead, which Cave co-wrote, co-scored and acts in. Inspired by a non-fiction book written by a convicted murderer, and based in a maximum security clink, it’s an intensely uncomfortable film told with brutal lyricism, oscillating between inmates reflecting via voiceover on their lives. Cave plays one of them, turning in a small but high-impact performance as a psychotic racist who paints vile pictures on the walls using his own blood. The film marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Hillcoat that led to the magnum opus of Cave’s screenwriting thus far: the 2005 neo-western The Proposition. It stars Guy Pearce as a criminal who agrees to an arrangement with the police to track down and kill his violent, sociopathic brother (Danny Huston) in exchange for the life of a gentler sibling (Richard Wilson).

 

Dirtied up with a gritty and bloody texture, the film has shootouts, robberies and confrontations – as well as softer moments emphasising Cave’s dialogue-crafting ability. That is also on display in a less effective film, 2012’s period drama Lawless (Cave adapted it from a 2008 novel), which was also directed by Hillcoat and also stars Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Jason Clarke. Released in 2014, 20,000 Days On Earth is a ‘day in the life of’ quasi-documentary that follows the singer-songwriter as he goes about his supposed daily business, which involves reflecting to a shrink and driving friends such as Kylie Minogue around. Fictitious but executed in a doco style, this derivative and prankish film contains some interesting insights into Cave’s approach to writing, but it’s a minor addition to his resume. It is deliberately unclear how much he wrote and how much was ad libbed."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 33

 

 

"No no no no, you see it's a gun fight. We both have guns. We aim, we fire, you die."

 

Sharon Stone says she paid Leonardo DiCaprio's 'The Quick and the Dead' salary because the studio didn't want to hire him

by Zac Ntim

 

"In Sharon Stone's new memoir, "The Beauty of Living Twice," the actress recounts the difficult casting of "The Quick and the Dead," revealing that she paid Leonardo DiCaprio's salary because the studio didn't want to hire him. In the 1995 western, DiCaprio plays a freewheeling character named The Kid who befriends Stone's Ellen after she moves to a rural town in the Old West. Stone, who was also a coproducer on the film, wrote in her memoir, published Tuesday, that she and the producers auditioned many teens for the role.

 

"This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition, in my opinion: he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died in the scene," she recalled in the book. However, Stone said TriStar Pictures, the studio that produced the film, wasn't keen on hiring DiCaprio, who was starting his career and had yet to star in "Titanic" or "Romeo and Juliet." "'Why an unknown, Sharon, why are you always shooting yourself in the foot?'" Stone said of the studio's reply. "The studio said if I wanted him so much, I could pay him out of my own salary. So I did."

 

Stone wrote that she also had to fight for the studio to hire Sam Raimi to direct the movie. At the time, she said, the studio thought of Raimi as a "D-movie director" because of his films "The Evil Dead I" and "Army of Darkness," both of which were low-budget, experimental horrors. In the end, Stone said, she told the studio that Raimi would "would work nearly for free as an enticement," and he was hired. Later in the book, Stone speaks at greater length about the difficulties actresses face as producers in the movie business. "Getting a producer credit as an actress is often thought of in my business as a 'vanity deal,' meaning they pay you for the job but shut the fuck up and stay out of the way," Stone wrote."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 32

 

 

"Down there I sell whiskey and cards. All you can buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head. Now which do you want?"

 

A Look at Joan Crawford and the Gay Icon Phenomenon

By Sara Clements

 

"The adoption of female stars as icons by gay men isn’t a new phenomenon. Many examples spring to mind, such as Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. But what’s the reason for their gay icon status? And why is this only bestowed on a select few? Why is Joan Crawford, like so many others, deemed a gay icon and why, in the AlterHéros “100 Best Things about Being Gay?” list, does she sit at №46 because gay men “viscerally understand” her? In The Death of Camp: Gay Men and Hollywood Diva Worship, from Reverence to Ridicule author Daniel Harris writes that “film provided a vehicle for expressing alienation from our surroundings and linking up with the utopic homosexual community of our dreams, a sophisticated ‘artistic’ society inhabited by Norma Desmonds and Holly Golightlies who, while breakfasting at Tiffany’s, spoke a type of English heard only in the back lots of MGM and Twentieth-Century Fox.”

 

But there is nothing gay men love more than their icons’ figurality. This is one of Crawford’s first roles where she exudes feminine masculinity as she usurps masculine power and achieves her own independent success in the world. With her over-accentuating shoulder pads and masculine-looking suits, this suggests Mildred’s sexual fluidity and Crawford having what one fan called a “masculine anima projection, where other female stars of her day held the typical feminine anima projection.” Her blending of the feminine and masculine and growing camp persona continued as her career reached the 1950s, with such films as Nicholas Ray’s 1954 western Johnny Guitar. The film’s camp effect is emphasized not only by Crawford’s padded shoulders, dark eyebrows and red lipstick, but also on its crossing of a female star vehicle with the stereotypically male western. As Robert Osterloh’s character, Sam, says: “Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I’m not.”

 

The first time we see Crawford as Vienna, she’s being shot from below, the framing emphasizing her power and feminine masculinity as she comes down the stairs of her saloon wearing black jeans, a black buttoned-up shirt and string tie — again, making the audience question her sexuality. The film tips the scales of gender-bending as Crawford alternates between masculine and feminine costume throughout the film, which can be a butch and femme reflection to gay audiences. The gay subtext doesn’t end there, as the relationship between Crawford’s Vienna and Mercedes McCambridge’s Emma emanates nothing but sexual tension throughout the film, but because this is the 1950s, it’s downplayed by the relationship between Crawford and Sterling Hayden’s Johnny.

 

Crawford’s screen persona, biography, and many of her roles all tapped into the rags-to-riches Cinderella narrative. And why gay men have an affinity to certain female celebrities is because, like them, they have faced adversity, but these women remain equally vulnerable and strong in the face of it. Like many gay icons, Crawford was an outcast who overcame odds, something her fans who spent time in the closet can relate to. She overcame poverty and physical abuse. As a child, she was looked down upon by her mother and peers, yet overcame a crippling accident to become a dancer, and then an actor, and then a star. Her zest for life and gaiety resulted in F. Scott Fitzgerald naming her “the best example of a flapper.” Flappers were a symbol of the 1920s; a young woman who did what society did not expect. They danced to jazz, smoked, wore makeup. They were liberated. Crawford’s flapper image faded quickly, but her evolving style, constant reinvention, and obsession with glamour have mesmerized her gay fans for decades, as they live by her motto: “I never go outside unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”

 

The possibility that she was a member of the LGBT community herself has been a topic of speculation over the years. Many sources have claimed that Crawford had intimate relationships with such other female stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo. However, if there’s one thing that her gay fans will tell you they admire most about Crawford, it was her love and support of gay men in Hollywood. She was friends with many gay men, such as actor Cesar Romero, director George Cukor, and costume designer Adrian. But it’s her special bond with silent film star William Haines that her fans admire most. Haines appeared with Crawford in many films of the 1920s. He was open about his sexuality, and this eventually led to him having to choose between being himself or pursuing his career. When he quit acting, Crawford stood by him, saying: “He had never kept it a secret that he was homosexual. It was never anything that mattered to me, but most people in Hollywood didn’t like it. I can’t imagine why they thought it was any of their business. What mattered to me was that for a long time, he was my best friend.”

 

Lucille LeSueur became “Joan Crawford” after the name was chosen by a film fan in a 1925 competition in Movie Weekly. She frequently stated that it was her fans that made her what she was. And it’s her gay male fans that made her into an icon. The women given the title of “gay icon” are chosen because they are relatable; they are survivors. They are seen at their best, and at their worst. According to author Daniel Harris, worshipping these women helps members of the gay male community get in touch with their masculinity the way sports does for straight men. Gay men saw these women participate in a sport where their feminine qualities triumphed over the masculine, and as Harris wrote, “beneath all those layers of cosmetic beauty lies the kind of true grit John Wayne never knew.”"

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 31

 

 

"First time?"

 

James Franco “First Time?”

by Know Your Meme

 

"James Franco "First time?" refers to a memorable quote by an unnamed cowboy character on the gallows in the 2018 western film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, as portrayed by American actor James Franco. Since the film's release in November 2018, a screen-captured image of the scene has been used in image macros as the punchline to jokes about one's inexperience usually to emphasize an uncommon or ridiculous occurrence in normal society that has become a regular occurance in a community.

 

On September 12th, 2018, Netflix uploaded a trailer for the film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs to YouTube. At the end of the trailer, there is a clip of the James Franco asking a crying man on the gallows, "First time?" The post received more than 1.7 million views in less than three months. Two months later, on November 25th, Twitter [2] user @Ayub_dz posted a screen shot of the moment with the caption, "When you're hiding from a school shooter and the foreign exchange student starts crying." The tweet received more than 37,000 retweets and 131,000 likes in five days (shown below).

 

That day, a version of the tweet was shared on Imgur, [3] receiving more than 5,800 points and 158,000 views in five days, and Reddit, [4] where it garnered more than 58,000 points (87% upvoted) in four days. Following the post, others on Reddit began sharing variations, particularly in the /r/dankmemes subreddit. On November 26th, Redditor[5] Dako_01 posted a version about the anti-vaccination movement. The post received more than 15,000 points (97% upvoted) and 130 comments in four days (shown below, left). On November 27th, Redditor[6] hunchoivs posted a version with the caption "When you're watching the new Lion King film and a six year old starts crying when Mufasa dies." The post received more than 9,00 points (98% upvoted) and 70 comments (shown below, center). On November 30th, Redditor[7] vk1198 posted an object labeling version of the meme, referencing various video game developers. The post received more than 2,700 points (97% upvoted) and 95 comments in 24 hours (shown below, right)."

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 30

 

 

"Hey, Doc! Where you goin' now? Back to the future?"

 

It salvaged the trillogy

by Terry K on Amazon Reviews

 

"Part 1 is one of those movies that has remained funny despite the fact that it is nearly 30 years old. I saw it in the theater as a young adult. Part 2 did not get very good reviews, and probably is now even less funny, Since it takes place in 2015 and no one new for sure what 2015 would be like. Needless to say, (and we should all be relieved) that they missed their mark when predicting what society would be like today.
After missing part 2, I totally missed part 3...until now.
Downloaded the trilogy to watch with my kids...they loved it! Being kids, they found a lot of humor in part 2 being so far off base.
But when filming part 3, they once again had the advantage of knowing what the past looked like, so they could better adapt the plot to make things conceivable, and actually were able to finish it off with some positive philosophy.
Another note: all of the comedy manages to stay away from the inappropriate jokes which are so often hidden in today's comedies."

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by The Panda

[The Panda]

Number 29

 

 

"I drink your milkshake!"

 

THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN HORROR WESTERN

by Charles Evans

 

"Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, which made many critics’ lists as one of the best movies of the aughts, is often placed under a handful of different headings. Western. Turn of the century drama. Existential tragedy. Dissection of American greed and the birth of modern capitalism. And it is indeed all of those things, and quite successfully so. But another aspect that cannot be ignored is that There Will Be Blood is in many ways a horror film. Moreover, a closer inspection reveals that not only does it derive energy from the horror genre, but it actually follows the template of a monster movie. 

 

A partial adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, Anderson’s film tells the tale of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis, in an Oscar-winning performance now considered career-defining), a silver prospector turned oil magnate in the early 1900’s. Setting up a new operation in the forgotten dustbin of Little Boston, California, Plainview comes into conflict with Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the local faith healer. As the two engage in a passive-aggressive rivalry as to who will truly steer the future of this rejuvenated community, Daniel becomes increasingly paranoid, vindictive, and possessive of his business, giving way to acts of malice and eventually murder. Caught in the middle is his adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), rendered deaf early in the film by a pressure explosion at the oil well.

 

The title indicates a fair amount of gore, yet there is actually very little onscreen carnage displayed in the film. The movie’s true relationship with the horror genre is not by way of blood and guts, but the transformation of Daniel Plainview throughout the story, as we watch him wrestle with his humanity as the darkness slowly takes root in his soul. While the cinematic touchstone for the movie’s look and tone was (according to Anderson and his cinematographer Robert Elswit) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the director very specifically calls upon the horror film to convey Daniel’s fall from grace. (Let’s not forget that he’s well acquainted with the genre: P.T. Anderson’s father was the performer behind the popular horror TV host Ghoulardi, after which Anderson named his production company). One of the other main inspirations for the film’s style was Stanley Kubrick, something that becomes apparent in the first 15 fifteen minutes, which portray Plainview’s discovery of his first oil well as a kind of creation myth. Obviously, this harkens back to Kubrick’s 2001 and its opening sequence which depicts the evolution of man. But another Kubrick work that Anderson is tapping into is The Shining. The score for this sequence, composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is a series of menacing atonal drones that recall a number of moments in Kubrick’s film, which famously combined an electronic soundtrack by Wendy Carlos with a handful of orchestral pieces in order to convey an ever brooding sense of menace.

 

But it’s not until the final 20 minutes that There Will Be Blood fully reveals itself as a horror drama. Flashing forward to 1927 and casting off the Western aesthetics, Daniel is visited in his mansion by an adult H.W., who has come to tell his father that he’s establishing his own oil well. At this point Daniel has devolved into a raging, mistrustful alcoholic who shuffles around his manor shooting furniture for fun. Already he and H.W. seem to have drifted in both their business partnership and relationship, but upon hearing this news, Daniel again goes into monster mode. Never comfortable with H.W.’s deafness, he takes the opportunity to repeatedly make jabs at his son’s disability, then kindly informs him that the two of them aren’t actually related. “You’re just a bastard from a basket,” he announces, relishing in the cruelty. But the attempted spiritual assassination of his erstwhile son doesn’t work. “I thank God there’s none of you in me,” H.W. replies before walking out of Daniel’s life forever. Daniel’s reaction is to continue screaming “BASTARD FROM A BASKET,” a gibe H.W. can’t even hear.

 

This scene, though set in Los Angeles, is filmed like a Gothic horror tale. The sky is grey and foreboding, thunder can be heard in the distance, and Daniel’s office is all gloom and shadow, a crackling fireplace in the background, the smoke from his cigarette slithering through the window light. Daniel himself appears wet and oily, some kind of slimy creature living in this deranged castle as he slowly kills himself. Again, the movie recalls The Shining, as Jack grows fixated on killing his son Danny, chasing him through the hotel grounds with an axe. Both Jack and Daniel’s rage towards their children is redirected self-hatred. Though Daniel is not physically trying to hurt H.W., his goal is the same: destroy the son. But it’s Eli who ends up becoming the target of Daniel’s destruction. Throughout the film, Eli has been a foil for Daniel’s plans, constantly trying to assert himself as the two of them vie for different versions of the same thing: Daniel for control, and Eli for the spotlight. Eli Sunday is presented as a charlatan, a snakeoil fraud taking advantage of people’s pain and loss with his promises of healing and salvation. It’s not easy to miss that their feud is rooted in the parallel between religion and capitalism, and Daniel is often as blatantly insincere and manipulative and jealous as Eli. But Plainview’s method of cheating and using people is simply superior in a Darwinian sense, and Eli keeps finding himself upstaged. (Though some have criticized his performance, Dano manages to imbue the extremely hateable and pompous Eli Sunday with a miniscule amount of pathos, despite the fact that his sanctimonious faux piety is so grating that it’s like rusted nails scraping across a chalkboard).

 

In case there was any doubt that this a monster movie, Anderson frames Daniel (who has a bad back and leg from injuries sustained decades before) as some kind of demented goblin, hobbling around the basement as he taunts and threatens Eli, screaming “draaaaainage” while drool seeps from his mouth. He picks Eli up and somehow throws him across the bowling alley. “I told you I would eat you! I am the Third Revelation! IIII AM THE THIRD REVELATION!!!!” While there’s still an element of dark comedy to this scene, as it’s so unhinged and both characters so pathetic, it also embodies apocalyptic horror. The comedy completely evaporates, however, as Daniel begins to beat Eli with a bowling pin, hitting him over and over until he crushes Eli’s head. He has fully become the monster, and has consumed Eli’s soul. His final line is spoken like a man who has just completed a meal. “I’m finished!” he declares to his butler, or maybe to himself, or possibly no one in particular. There is nothing left for him to do, because there’s nothing left of him.

 

Daniel’s evolution is a monster story where the monster wins. He begins as a man with an almost superhuman will to succeed, but that drive slowly replaces any and all human connection, something already sparse for him in the first place. He becomes some kind of grotesque parasite who will take and take and suck and suck, but whose appetite will never be sated. When he murders Eli, he’s doing so because he can. Yes, it’s revenge, but more so it’s an act of desperation, the beast inside him filled with self-loathing and needing something to destroy, and Eli has conveniently stepped into the crosshairs. There Will Be Blood is a tale where Larry Talbot becomes the Wolf Man but never comes back, where Mr. Hyde wins and Dr. Jekyll is never seen again. It’s Jack Torrance, but this time his house is haunted only by hatred and greed. The Shining and There Will Be Blood are both, in a sense, frontier horror stories, despite The Shining being set in modern day. Both films depict white men parading into the mythical wilderness of America—what could be more wild and untamed than oil?—and irrevocably transformed into bloodthirsty creatures by this landscape they don’t truly understand. This sensibility has taken root in recent years as what could be called the horror Western.

 

The Western genre itself had experienced a resurgence around the same time as Anderson’s film, with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, 3:10 To Yuma, and No Country For Old Men (filmed by the Coen Brothers not far from Blood’s production in Texas) all released within the span of a year and a half. No Country could certainly fall under the horror Western genre, as it contains a relentless ghoulishness–carried over from the Coen brothers’ earlier work like Blood Simple and Fargo–and a mythic landscape of savagery and bloodshed where men struggle for power. Javier Bardem’s hitman Anton Chigurh is as unsettling a character as Daniel Plainview, a walking angel of death so lacking in human frailty that he might as well be Michael Myers. Tapping into the existential questions raised by many of these neo-Westerns, the film wonders whether it is noble duty or foolish romanticism to fight the chaos of human nature, another spin on the question of good vs. evil."

 

 

[The Panda]

1 hour ago, Plain Old Tele said:

It’s too old. 

 

Here's a movie nearly as old as Tele

 

Number 28

 

"Well, I guess you can't break out of prison and into society in the same week."

 

Stagecoach – The Legend At 80

by Henry C. Parke

 

"Eighty years ago, director John Ford and screenwriter Dudley Nichols combined their talents, and those of star character-actors Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, John Carradine and newcomer John Wayne, and made Stagecoach, a movie that would forever alter Western film history. It’s been called the Citizen Kane of Westerns—ironic, since Stagecoach preceded Kane by two years. Yet it’s an apt comparison, because those films changed the future of movies, not by an innovation easy to point out, like Technicolor or 3D, but by utilizing all of the aspects of the filmmakers’ arts to tell stories perfectly. John Ford had been directing films since 1917, beginning with the silent Western three-reeler, The Tornado, and had made nearly 60 Westerns since then. In 1939, with his first of four Oscars under his belt for 1936’s The Informer, he could work anywhere he wanted, with studio bosses like Daryl Zanuck and David O. Selznick happy to bankroll any project he’d like. Only now he wanted to make a Western, a genre he hadn’t touched in 13 years, since his silent hit 3 Bad Men, which he would remake in 1948 as 3 Godfathers.

Dan Ford, John Ford’s grandson, says, “He always preferred to work from shorter projects and expand them, rather than work from novels and cut them down. A lot of his movies came from The Saturday Evening Post or Colliers magazines.” Ford’s son Patrick had read the Ernest Haycox story Stage to Lordsburg in Colliers, and told his father it might make a good movie. Rarely read today, Haycox was a very popular, very driven Western author in his day, who started in the pulps but, as Haycox biographer Richard Etulain puts it, “took the Western out of the ‘pulps’ and took it into the ‘slicks’,” that is, higher-quality magazines printed on smoother paper. Growing up poor in Oregon, Haycox, like so many of his characters “had hardscrabble origins. He’s virtually an orphan by the time he’s 10, out on the street, selling newspapers.” In his mid-teens he lied about his age to join the Army, and fought under Pershing against Pancho Villa on the Mexican border. He fought in World War I, then graduated from The University of Oregon in 1923 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Ernest Hemingway once noted, “I read The Saturday Evening Post whenever it has a serial by Ernest Haycox.”

 

The usual price for film rights to a Colliers story was $1,100, but Ford paid $2,500 for Stage to Lordsburg. When he tried to set it up at a studio, Ford came up against two powerful objections: it was a Western, and he insisted on casting an unknown in a pivotal role. The once-popular Western genre had fallen out of favor, except with rural and juvenile audiences. In 1930, Fox had spent $2 million making a Western epic, The Big Trail, shot in a new process called Grandeur. Unfortunately, during the Great Depression, exhibitors who had just spent a fortune converting their theaters to play “talkies” had no interest in spending another fortune to convert to wide-screen. Except for in a handful of theaters, the movie played in standard, square 35mm, and it bombed. The virtually unknown actor Ford wanted to feature was a former college athlete and prop man who had accidently wandered into a scene Ford was directing, startling Ford with how photogenic he was. He was groomed by Ford, given small bits in films until he suddenly got a big break and was cast as the lead in The Big Trail.  His name had been Marion Morrison, but they’d changed it to John Wayne. And now Ford wanted Wayne to star in Stagecoach.

 

The film was completed for just under $550,000, four days over the 43-day shooting schedule. Ford was paid $50,000, less than his then-current rate. Trevor, at $15,000, was the highest-paid cast member, with Wayne, at $3,700, the second lowest, making $34 more than Carradine. The aftermath of Stagecoach is well known. It made John Wayne a star. Wayne and Ford would have a legendary collaboration on a dozen more films, some of the most highly regarded movies in film history. Grandson Dan Ford reveals another outcome of the success. “It was important to [Ford] because he had a big piece of Stagecoach, a big money-maker, and it sustained his family for the war years, so he could go off in the Navy.”  Ford, who saw trouble coming earlier than most Americans, enlisted before the Pearl Harbor attack and went overseas, often handling cameras on the front lines. He achieved the rank of Rear Admiral and made about a dozen military films, covering subjects as varied as The Battle of Midway and sex hygiene.

 

Claire Trevor had a splendid career as a leading lady in A movies, and a long and happy marriage. Thomas Mitchell had an unbelievable 1939, starring in not only Stagecoach, but Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Gone With the Wind. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Stagecoach, and receiving the award, commented, “I didn’t think… I didn’t know I was quite that good.” It was also a wonderful year for Ernest Haycox. In addition to Stagecoach, his novel Trouble Shooters became Union Pacific, directed by Cecil B. deMille, and starring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. He was brought out to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, but didn’t care for it, and soon returned to Oregon, where he wrote successful novels and over 300 short stories. Seven movies were made from his stories in his lifetime. He died at the age of 51 in 1950, and his widow lived a comfortable life licensing his stories to films and television, and reportedly watched endless hours of Western TV to make sure his stories weren’t being used for free."

 

[The Panda]

 

Number 27

 

"Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals."

 

Is this the face of Butch Cassidy and proof he DIDN'T die in 1908 shootout with the Bolivian army?

by Daniel Bates from DailyMail

 

"It is one of the most enduring stories to emerge from the American Wild West. But the death of Butch Cassidy may not be quite as dramatic as we have been told. A lost manuscript claims that the outlaw did not die in a gunfight in a shootout alongside his partner in Bolivia in 1908.  The scene was immortalised by Hollywood in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford  running out into a hail of bullets after being  cornered by troops.

 

Instead, in a plot which could also have come straight out of a movie, Cassidy is said to have fled to France where he had surgery on his face before sneaking back into the U.S. Furthermore, according to the same account, he lived out his final days quietly and anonymously in Washington State – and wrote an autobiography which he disguised as a biography. American rare books expert Brent Ashworth and author Larry Pointer have obtained a 200-page manuscript from 1934 called Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy written by a William T Phillips which they claim was actually written by Cassidy.

 

They claim the book is Cassidy’s own story of his life as an outlaw. It describes how after surviving the shootout in Bolivia he went to Paris and had his face altered then went back to the U.S. and reunited with an old girlfriend, Gertrude Livesay. The authors say they married in Michigan in 1908 and moved to Spokane in Washington state in 1911. He apparently died in 1937, aged 71.

 

Its discovery is the latest of many theories surrounding the life and death of the two outlaws. It is also claimed by other writers that Sundance survived. Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker in 1866 in Utah, the oldest of 13 children in a Mormon family. He robbed his first bank in 1889 in Telluride, Colorado, and fell in with cattle rustlers who hid out at The Hole in the Wall, a refuge in northern Wyoming’s Johnson County. For 20 years, his Wild Bunch gang held up banks and trains across the West and in South America. Despite the claims of Pointer and Ashworth, not all are convinced by the manuscript’s authenticity. ‘Total horse pucky,’ said Cassidy historian Dan Buck. ‘It doesn’t bear a great deal of relationship to Butch Cassidy’s real life, or Butch Cassidy’s life as we know it.’"

 

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by The Panda

[The Panda]

Number 26

 

"I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything."

 

Why Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ keeps inspiring new retellings like ‘The Magnificent Seven’

By Lewis Beale

 

"The plot of director Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic, “Seven Samurai,” can be summed up in one sentence: Mercenaries are hired to protect a farming village from marauding bandits. Yet within that simple framework is a rich tale involving self-sacrifice, honor, male bonding and sympathy for the underdog. And that’s why Kurosawa’s masterpiece continues to inspire filmmakers and other artists.

 

“It’s classic mythology, it’s the hero’s journey, and it’s about the best of us coming together for one cause, to do the right thing,” says Antoine Fuqua, director of the recently opened “The Magnificent Seven,” the latest screen version of the “Samurai” tale. Fuqua’s film stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt as gunmen leading a gang of mercenaries — a multiracial group that includes a Mexican, Asian and Native American — against a rapacious mine owner (Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizing a Western town. It is not just a rethinking of the 1960 movie of the same name — which was a western remake of “Seven Samurai” and featured Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson saving a Mexican village from bandit leader Eli Wallach — but the latest example of the Kurosawa work’s influence.

 

All three films, says Fuqua, involve “the classic question of who we are as human beings. Do we step up to the plate when the time comes? The question is: When do you put your life on the line for the right reasons? And it’s not for your family, it’s for people you don’t even know.”

 

Writer-director John Sayles believes that one of the main attractions of the story is that it is anti-cynical. “Mercenaries are meant to be the ultimate cynics, sometimes changing sides in the middle of the fight if they get a better offer,” said Sayles, who wrote the screenplay for the 1980 film “Battle Beyond the Stars,” which sets the “Seven Samurai” story in outer space. “People like the concept of honor; they like to root for underdogs,” he adds, “and the tensions between the mercenaries and the villagers makes for good personal drama.”"

 

 

 

[Cap]

Magnificent Seven over Stagecoach and Cassidy is my first HMMMM of the otherwise very solid list. And lol at the Crawford write up. I think I have actually read that before. 😂

 

 

[chasmmi]

15 hours ago, The Panda said:

Number 35

 

 

"What's that smell? Is the treasure rotting?"

 

“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” vs. “The Good, the Bad, the Weird”

By William Wasieleski

 

"What’s the greatest western ever made? More times than not, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly will be near the top of that list. It  is heralded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest western of all-time. So what happens when a Korean film-maker decides to remake the film and change some things around? We get The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Let us get our ringside seats and watch a shoot-out, knock-down, good ol’ western brawl.

 

Script:  The Ugly has a number of side stories written into it which helps keep our interest in the slow paced film. There is the beautiful duality of Tuco and his brother who have chosen far different paths in their life. Of course Tuco passionately tried to defend his actions. There is the civil war battle near the end with the bridge scene. The entire film seems to be pointing out while there is good, bad, and ugly, everything tends to be ugly. As for the dialogue in the film, there are some great lines but there are some moments where the sparsity seems to not work. The Weird is a more straightforward film with less dichotomies. While there is a simpler story to it, the visuals we are presented are fabulous. While there are a few great scenes in The Ugly, almost every second of The Weird is a beauty to watch. Added to the great visuals is the hilarious dialogue of Yoon Tae-goo and the narrator-esque guide of the Black-Market Gang. These two elements give the film a little more bite to it. Weird takes the round: 10-9.

 

Director:  Sergio Leone, director of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, was relatively unknown when he started his Man With No Name trilogy. At the time it was released, Ugly was a film with mediocre reviews. Much of this was due to the violent deaths in the film. However, over time, it has come to be regarded as a classic, and one a few definitive westerns. The film also helped move Leone into Hollywood where he would next make Once Upon a Time in the West, which is also regarded as one of the best westerns to have ever been made. The Good, The Bad, the Weird is the 7th film by Korean director Kim Ji-woon. Ji-woon’s other films are also genre films as The Weird is, having made a gangster film and a horror film previously. However, The Weird was Ji-woon’s major breakout film, with a budget of 10 million USD (grossing 40 million). Ji-woon uses the money wisely by putting together some terrific action sequences which are shot beautifully.  As The Ugly put Leone on the map, The Weird has helped put Ji-woon on the map. However, at the end of the day, it’s tough to beat an all-time great. Ugly takes the round: 10-9.

 

Performances:  The Ugly has three fantastic actors in Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef. In this film Eastwood fills his role of Blondie admirably and Van Cleef is menacing as Angel Eyes.  However, it is Wallach who shines. He of course provides us which some laughter, but one could say he’s almost as sinister as Van Cleef. Wallach shows major chops in the scenes with Tuco’s brother, and Wallach plays the scene to perfection. Those few scenes alone show us the true ugliness of the world these men live in. The Weird‘s performances play out similar to The Ugly. Jung Woo-sung displays a solid effort in his portrayal of The Good. Song Kang-ho is brilliant in his portrayal of the Weird. He seems less sinister than Wallach’s Tuco, but much of this can be attributed to the more slapstick humor in The Weird compared to The Ugly. Finally, there is one standout amongst all the performances in either movie, and it’s Lee Byung-hun’s The Bad. He has all the menacing nature of Angel Eyes and “bad” behavior. However, his appearance on screen always brings a feeling of dread … sometimes it’s a look or an action. There is one specific scene halfway through the film when one of his gang members jokes over dinner about how he heard Byung-hun wasn’t the best in a shootout. The look he gives his gang member says everything the audience needs to know about his character. Weird takes the round: 10-9."

 

 

 

 

So this is what victory feels like...

[The Panda]

Sorry for the delay in getting this going again, I’ve had a busy week with the university getting started (and back in person). I’m hoping to get started and finish off the second half through this coming week