I agree with your assessment of "Blood Diamond". It was a gem of a movie.
Sorry, not sorry. :-)
Seriously, it was a good movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. DiCaprio and Hounsou played very well off of each other. And if the scene near the end where DiCaprio ends up telling Jennifer Connelly "That's alright. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be" doesn't make you feel at least *something*, better check your pulse.
I grew up on Westerns, it was a Saturday afternoon ritual with my father at the movies!
Once Upon a Time in the West is right up there on my list, and I have seem them all!!!! I first saw it in Paris when it was released, and it was a huge hit, lines around the blocks, English subtitles! Then back in Los Angeles it was cut drastically and every now and then it showed up in an Art House theater!!! I own several versions and even my now adult sons share with their friends! This new version excites me! Perfectly cast, an ode to John Ford and his Monument Valley, where little of this masterpiece was filmed!!! The West was the topic of the earliest cinema and continues to fascinate in some fabulous films!!! Thank you for this!!!
Growing up, and now, I live between MGM (now Sony) and 20th Century Fox (now Fox Studios).
My grandfather and mother worked at MGM.
I remember the buildings with the huge advertisements for some of the greatest of cinema of all time. Now it’s game shows and reality TV. At some point in my career I decided to take a year and attend AFI where I was a Production Design Fellow and graduate.
Give me anything with a horse and I am happy!
See my post on FB about my Cowgirl dreams 🤠and Cowboy poetry and I will meet you in Elko Nevada next January for a Cowboy Poetry Festival!!!
The LA in your name is a giveaway!! I am fifth generation Los Angeleno! My great great grandfather was a Mayor! Developed the Bryson downtown! They are all buried in Inglewood! I love my town! Very exciting to grow up here!
I immediately went to Amazon to see if there is a new version and pre ordered a 2 disc something!!! One of my copies does have interviews with commentary, The opening scene is brilliant, all to ambient noise, no score. I love the Maestro Morricone score. I know every frame by heart but always notice something new! The ending credits are nod to Star Wars!!!
I was a Western junkie, because horse nut, but I screened out nearly all the women (except for maybe Barbara Stanwyck) because as soon as they showed up, the male characters started acting like jerks and I had a hard time identifying with any of them.
Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite of the Golden Age! She had the greatest range and longevity and never made a false move! As a comedian you can’t beat The Lady Eve!!!!
Late to the party with this read but boy oh! You've given me plenty to extra enjoy after some long, hard work days on the farm dealing with spring in motion. I normally read-thanks for that too! Now I can expect to be parked in front of the tube. Yay! And guilt free cause TC said I should. ❤️
When the other kids were practicing drawing their six-guns and dying dramatically, I was practicing Vulcan mind melds and giving V-hand greetings "Live long and prosper."
It was, coincidentally, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which I borrowed from my school library that first opened my mind to science fiction aged around 13 going on 14. Fortuitous as it was, due the lessons in English classes at that time which were destroying any childhood joy I had found in swords and magic fantasy fiction by force-feeding and deconstructing Tolstein's Hobbit and Lord of The Rings chapter by chapter over a period of two years. Ruined that entire genre for me ever since. I may be the only New Zealander to never have seen any of the movies, so effective was that aversion therapy. Brad bury led me to the obvious, Jules Verne, Wells, Arthur C Clarke, Phillip K Dick. Quickly past the absolute garbage of Ron L Hubbard (yes he failed miserably at selling his make believe aliens as science fiction stories to teenagers before he sold it to Hollywood actors and other assorted kooks as a religion).
The pairing of Larry Niven (Ringworld) & Jerry Pournelle (aka Wade Curtis) gave us The Mote In God's Eye, one of the best science fiction books ever. Onwards to grokking Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Verner Vinge.
For those interested in later authors, particularly of the hard-science variety, I recommend Neal Asher, Iain M Banks, Stephen R Donaldson (Gap series), Peter F Hamilton, Richard Morgan, Linda Nagata, (Nanotech Succession & Inverted Frontier series - she also writes fantasy), Martha Wells (Murderbot series).
The one fantasy collection that I do love and have read three times now is the Malazan Book of the Fallen 10 book series by Steven Erikson. An epic that makes Tolkein's works seem like bedroom stories for children.
You really should try the three movie trilogy series. You don't have to be a believer in Tolkien, and the English teacher who did that to you should have been convicted of crimes against the language.
I had an honest attempt once when they were screened on TV, but gave up within 30 minutes. Even though it had been 3 or 4 decades, I knew every aspect of the story and could find no romance to or passion for it. All I could see were "the devices and constructs that moved the plot, carrying the reader jn the author's desired direction" or some such. In having been involved in the disection of the whole and the examining of every detail, seeing a movie was just watching a sequence of specal effects and people in makeup telling the story. I felt nothing. There was no appeal. It bored me. Which was more than disappointing because I absolutely loved everything Peter Jackson has made before and since.
I doubt it was the teacher's fault, possibly it was part of the curriculum at that time, combined with my wierdly wired grey matter. The powers had some strange restricting ideas. In our Colleges (your High Schools? Years aged 14 to 16.) English and Mathematics were compulsory. In my final year, for School Certificate as I had elected for Metalwork & Technical Drawing (in order to get an apprenticeship) I was not allowed to opt for Science classes (which I enjoyed an excelled at) but had to choose between either History or Geography. Everything about geography was a begrudgingly thankless chore. Apart from the field trip, with Julie and Nights in White Satin.by the Moody Blues.
I'm watching 'American Rust: Broken Justice" and "Fallout." Jeff Daniels is fantastic as is Maura Tierney. "Fallout" is fascinating. I'm three episodes in. Walton Goggins as The Ghoul (with apologizes to the late, great Ron Sweed - look him up) is really high camp. "The Cleaning Lady" and "Will Trent," are having excellent seasons as well.
ya think? I liked the first season, but the second season had a lot of indications that it was written on some kind of autopilot. if they withheld some important piece of plot information, I knew by the second episode they were gonna supply the missing information in less than three minutes. they set up an obvious third season, but I won't watch. and yes, I'm a fan of pretty much all the actors, but you need the other stuff
honestly, the quality of the writing on TV this past year has been awful. "Manhunt" has good actors, excellent production values, but when Edwin Stanton talks about "the elephant in the room" (not lingua franca for at least another century), it pisses me off.
if my sense of great 19th century dialogue has been spoiled by "Deadwood," then so be it.
but the fourth season of the wonderful "Slow Horses" is coming in a month or so and I still await the second season of "Rogue Heroes." I won't watch "Shogun" until every episode is available. I'm a lot more of a binger than one of those guys who can wait a week between episodes of ANYTHING.
one series with Jeff Daniels that was terrific (and beautifully written, with absolutely believable 19th century dialogue) was "Godless" which was already at least five years ago. Jeff Daniels was genuinely terrifying as a psychopathic outlaw and (as I recall) won a much-deserved Emmy for it.
and "Ripley" is worth a look (gorgeous B&W that looks like an Antonioni movie), especially since Andrew Scott is now one of my favorite actors after his great "Hamlet" in 2018 (available free, with no commercials, on YouTube) and the magnificent "All of Us Strangers" on Hulu. Scott's ability to convey very complicated emotional states with almost total transparency is fucking AMAZING.
I was wondering about the Zwick book, since I have a thing for Hollywood memoirs (unless they're obvious bullshit). now I can grab it...
Billy the Kid's final season comes back next month. I recorded the last four episodes on the Lincoln County War, to watch with these four.
"A Gentleman in Moscow" is also very good. You know the writers have watched "The Prisoner." A good thing.
And just saw the restored "The Passenger"tonight, with Nicholson. Antonioni is still as weird as he was, but for some reason the whole thing made more sense this time than when I saw it 50 years ago in a theater. It's on rotation now at TCM
yes, I'm also waiting for the last "Billy the Kid" episodes. I hate when they do that (splitting the last season into two mini-seasons). "Slow Horses" shoots two seasons at the same time, so they can be released a few months apart. my genuine love for the series prompted me to try Mick Herron's books, and they're terrific...the series catches their tone perfectly and the casting is absolutely spot on. it certainly revived my hibernating Gary Oldman Fan thing. and don't get me started on Rosalind Eleazer (she plays Louisa) because I might not stop. she shares my birthday and that could be an okay pick-up line if 1) we lived in the same place and--alas!-- 2) I'm forty years older with whistling dentures, bad posture and shoulders that dislocate several times a day.
I have a couple of comments that may be slightly interesting.
One relates to "Once Upon a Time in the West." I was doing research at The Huntington Library when "Unforgiven" came out and everybody who was anybody was hailing it as an anti-western or a rejoinder to how westerns had been made, etc. The longtime head of research at The Huntington was Martin Ridge, who was an old-fashioned western historian who made it possible for a bunch of younger lions like Patricia Limerick and Richard White to get the research fellowships that they used to argue with him--in other words, Martin was a lovely man. One day at lunch, as others were carrying on about Clint's movie, Martin pointed out that it was actually a totally traditional western: The woman is wronged, the gunfighter is reluctant, there's corruption, and it's defeated. He didn't say this, but it could just as easily have been Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur in Shane. Anyway, Leone doesn't get enough credit for standing on its head the John Wayne tradition of the good guy being the one who kills Native Americans on screen and is a bigoted hypocrite off screen.
The other relates to Zwick. I loved "Glory," as most Civil War historians should. The producers or the studio asked my graduate adviser to blurb it, basically. He watched it and wrote something like, "This is a wonderful way of learning what it was like to be a Black soldier," etc. They replied that that wasn't good enough. What did they want, he asked. They said, "Can't you say it's accurate?" He replied no. Why not? He said why. They were very disappointed.
I was in grad school and I was asked to speak on "Glory" at a film forum. I did and then, when it was over, took questions. A certain documentary series had just aired on PBS. The first question was, "Should McClellan have entrenched his left flank at Seven Pines?" I smiled and said, "You watched Ken Burns!" The answer, of course, was that if McClellan didn't do something, he should have, and if he did something, he shouldn't have.
McClellan even tops the collection of American clucks like Mark Clark - whose colossal blunder in ordering VI Corps to attack toward Rome in the Anzio breakout rather than join up with Eighth Army and force the German Tenth Army to surrender because they were surrounded - so he could be "the liberator of Rome" (already declared an "open city") added a year to the miserable Italian Campaign.
Eric Sevareid was covering Clark and tried hard to get across in CBS broadcasts that he was an incompetent egomaniac, but couldn't always get it through censorship.
They had to finally boot him "upstairs" so they could bring in Lucian Truscott who won the war there - and then had the courage to go to the opening of the American cemetery at Anzio-Nettuno and publicly apologize to the dead if any of them were there from any bad decision he had made.
have you ever read Malaparte's "The Skin?" he paints a devastating picture of Mark Clark (very lightly disguised as "Mark Cork") in Naples. both "The Skin" (filmed by Liliana Cavani with Mastroianni as Malaparte and Burt Lancaster as Clark and not a great movie, but worth watching) and "Kaputt" are magnificent, and magnificently weird takes on WWII. "Kaputt" should still be filmed, but there's no way it's gonna happen. too expensive, too risky, and with a total lack of any anything resembling a "hero."
A history major college mate of mine was in a Union uniform in "Glory" where most of the extras were Civil War re-enactors from across the US. That struck me as a wise thing for Director Zwick to do because the re-enactors were already battle hardened, one might say.
as soon as that first battle scene happens in "Glory," you know that those guys knew what they were doing.in every school I worked in, I'd insist to my friends who taught Social Studies that to spend a session or two watching "Glory" would be time well spent. nobody ever did. my interpretation of why this was was that by a few years into this new millennium, social studies teachers had caught on to the fact that NOBODY in charge thought the subject deserved much attention because there were no "make or break" standardized tests on it and the teachers were perpetually bummed out about it. during the presidential campaign of 2008, I figured that Obama running would have given the teachers a wonderful "way in" to the stuff that used to be covered in Civics. I must have said this to a dozen people. and the answer was always a shrug. disheartening as fuck.
All of my high school and college history teachers were men, the majority of who had served in either WWII or Korea. I suspect that war in general was in their wheelhouse; whereas, women teachers may have looked at the broader sweep of history, mostly because they liked the big picture and not the minutiae. Just a speculation, and I'm sure that's changing as there are an increasing number of women vets going into teaching. (Thank you, GI Bill.)
completely agree that "Unforgiven" was, in fact, a pretty classical western. I remember that in the '50s, "Gunsmoke" was considered one of the first "adult westerns." ridiculous.
if I had to name the first "adult western," I'd say it was "the Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck at his finest hour. "The Gunfighter" and "Twelve O Clock High" were made back-to back...same star, same director, same important co-star (Millard Mitchell). it's interesting that "The Gunfighter" seems to play out in real-time, but without calling attention to itself ("High Noon" doesn't quite do it, although it aspires to do so. my own favorite "real time" movie (and my favorite boxing movie) is "The Set Up," directed by Robert Wise of all people. it's also probably the movie that best knew how to use Robert Ryan, a fabulous actor but a little too subtle for late forties Hollywood, which saw him primarily as a "good villain."
I agree but I will note that I think critics thought of "Gunsmoke" as the first TV adult western. And that's debatable, too!
Robert Ryan was so good in Bad Day at Black Rock but since Spencer Tracy was perfect in everything, it could be hard to notice. Ryan actually did a Broadway musical, "Mr. President," which was Irving Berlin's last show and didn't get great reviews but did last a few months (with Ryan as president, the similarly underrated Nanette Fabray as first lady, and the similarly underrated Anita Gilette as the first daughter). He also did one I really would have liked to see him in--"The Front Page."
at the end of his career, Ryan did the Great Thing older actors always talk about and played what critics said was a great Lear at one of the big Summer Shakespeare Festivals. the reviews were splendid. what's funny is that he always specialized in playing bigoted (and occasionally psychopathic) bad guys but in real life was one of the biggest Hollywood liberals, a Civil Rights protester before it was cool and a very good guy.
as was (and is) so often true, Hollywood demonstrated that it had no idea how to use him, probably because he didn't conform to any well-established star "norm." there are many such stories, but I think that Ryan's one of the best examples.
from the late fifties on, they had no real ideas about how to use Mitchum. and Sterling Hayden was in the wilderness (probably also self-sustained because of the deep guilt he felt about his "friendly testimony") until near the end, when Altman realized that the weird old drunk he'd become was perfect casting for the old drunk in "The Long Goodbye." and THAT led to "1900."
the fabulous casting in "The Wild Bunch" demonstrates that Peckinpah was a genius, at least on the days he could stand up. and probably on plenty of the other ones. but it's in the casting you see it most clearly.
I thought I already had the Director's Cut of OUATITW...it was a deluxe box with LOADS of extra stuff. needless to say, the clutter had defeated me but I'll do a better search later. I do remember that the version I saw in '68 was almost completely worthless, although everybody--even then (or mebbe ESPECIALLY then) was flipping out at Fonda being THAT evil. Fonda used to tell the story that when he arrived in Italy to start shooting, he'd worn brown contact lenses to play Frank and Leone started yelling at him that his famous blue yes were THE WHOLE POINT. when I find the one I have, I'll know if I must buy this new one.
OUATIA has fantastic moments, but I doubt there'll ever be a version that makes perfect sense because it simply never got finished before Leone died. in the set that I have (somewhere), it's mentioned that the whole movie is actually an opium dream, which sounds more than a little facile to me. but visually, that gorgeous view of the Williamsburg Bridge has become canonical. and, needless to say, I love that the gangsters are Jewish (which, of course, they certainly were on the Lower East Side). I remember another movie with Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin that turned on the existence of whorehouses and other bad shit in the same neighborhood. for some reason, the title I remember is "Last Embrace," but I could be wrong.
and "Young Man with a Horn" really IS terrific. at the time, it was considered innovative because of the authenticity of the music, the fact that there's so much of it and the fact that Curtiz (who was famous for mangling the English language, but was also a careful craftsman who did a lot of research on whatever his next movie was going to be) allowed most of the numbers to play out when previous directors would have cut to something else. if you look at a list of his movies (a HUGE list), even the worst of them are still very watchable. I saw a made-for-TV movie a year or so ago about Curtiz's "issues" during the making of "Casablanca." I forget the title and it was too "arty" by more than half, but I didn't turn it off.
there's a fairly recent, comprehensive biography of Curtiz called "Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film" by Alan Rode. if you're one of those guys who like big, fat biographies of movie people (which I obviously am), it should be the next one on your list.
According to an interview I did with Julius Epstein back in 1983, the story of him and his brother Philip having to find a diplomatic way to convince Curtiz to shoot the finale of "Casablanca" as we know it was a real struggle. The studio saw Casablanca as just a "B" movie, no big name stars and all, and the suits were bugging Curtiz to "wrap it up." The Epsteins convinced him that everyone who would be in the scene thought doing in one or two medium shots would destroy the picture, and that the actors had all figured out what they had to do, so shooting it wouldn't take any longer than the bad idea. And everybody did their bit on a first take. I also love that "Round up the usual suspects!" came when the Epsteins were driving down Sunset Boulevard and got stopped by the traffic light at Cherokee, just past Sunset and Highland. Philip was the passenger, and was looking around at the "characters" on the street, and turned to Julius and said "Round up the usual suspects!" as he gestured around at the street. You could do that today.
I knew the story, and it's a great one. I'm also a big fan of Leslie Epstein, who's written several novels about LA in the forties. I forget which one was his dad, but it was probably Philip. he's a literary figure of some renown, mostly in MFA circles I'm guessing.
Thanks TC. Even your media reviews are good stories.
Can’t help himself.
I agree with your assessment of "Blood Diamond". It was a gem of a movie.
Sorry, not sorry. :-)
Seriously, it was a good movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. DiCaprio and Hounsou played very well off of each other. And if the scene near the end where DiCaprio ends up telling Jennifer Connelly "That's alright. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be" doesn't make you feel at least *something*, better check your pulse.
I grew up on Westerns, it was a Saturday afternoon ritual with my father at the movies!
Once Upon a Time in the West is right up there on my list, and I have seem them all!!!! I first saw it in Paris when it was released, and it was a huge hit, lines around the blocks, English subtitles! Then back in Los Angeles it was cut drastically and every now and then it showed up in an Art House theater!!! I own several versions and even my now adult sons share with their friends! This new version excites me! Perfectly cast, an ode to John Ford and his Monument Valley, where little of this masterpiece was filmed!!! The West was the topic of the earliest cinema and continues to fascinate in some fabulous films!!! Thank you for this!!!
Claudia Cardinalli is a Goddess!!!!!
You always amaze me in the best way, Judith.
Growing up, and now, I live between MGM (now Sony) and 20th Century Fox (now Fox Studios).
My grandfather and mother worked at MGM.
I remember the buildings with the huge advertisements for some of the greatest of cinema of all time. Now it’s game shows and reality TV. At some point in my career I decided to take a year and attend AFI where I was a Production Design Fellow and graduate.
Give me anything with a horse and I am happy!
See my post on FB about my Cowgirl dreams 🤠and Cowboy poetry and I will meet you in Elko Nevada next January for a Cowboy Poetry Festival!!!
Didn't know we both lived in the City of Lost Angles, Judith (though I'm in the Valley).
The LA in your name is a giveaway!! I am fifth generation Los Angeleno! My great great grandfather was a Mayor! Developed the Bryson downtown! They are all buried in Inglewood! I love my town! Very exciting to grow up here!
https://pcad.lib.washington.edu/building/2658/
Very interesting!
Here if you go over that way!
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02J99h5wfuxgcaBtKtv6GN6q2Jz5SefKFddyu1KigjHSbpbQEaX9TGaSWsuw68VEPWl&id=643864098
I immediately went to Amazon to see if there is a new version and pre ordered a 2 disc something!!! One of my copies does have interviews with commentary, The opening scene is brilliant, all to ambient noise, no score. I love the Maestro Morricone score. I know every frame by heart but always notice something new! The ending credits are nod to Star Wars!!!
So happy to see you writing about this today!
I was a Western junkie, because horse nut, but I screened out nearly all the women (except for maybe Barbara Stanwyck) because as soon as they showed up, the male characters started acting like jerks and I had a hard time identifying with any of them.
Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite of the Golden Age! She had the greatest range and longevity and never made a false move! As a comedian you can’t beat The Lady Eve!!!!
Late to the party with this read but boy oh! You've given me plenty to extra enjoy after some long, hard work days on the farm dealing with spring in motion. I normally read-thanks for that too! Now I can expect to be parked in front of the tube. Yay! And guilt free cause TC said I should. ❤️
Thanks for these! I rarely watch movies (migraines - bah!), but want really good ones for when
I’m up for it, and these sound perfect. Keep watching and reporting - please!
When the other kids were practicing drawing their six-guns and dying dramatically, I was practicing Vulcan mind melds and giving V-hand greetings "Live long and prosper."
It was, coincidentally, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which I borrowed from my school library that first opened my mind to science fiction aged around 13 going on 14. Fortuitous as it was, due the lessons in English classes at that time which were destroying any childhood joy I had found in swords and magic fantasy fiction by force-feeding and deconstructing Tolstein's Hobbit and Lord of The Rings chapter by chapter over a period of two years. Ruined that entire genre for me ever since. I may be the only New Zealander to never have seen any of the movies, so effective was that aversion therapy. Brad bury led me to the obvious, Jules Verne, Wells, Arthur C Clarke, Phillip K Dick. Quickly past the absolute garbage of Ron L Hubbard (yes he failed miserably at selling his make believe aliens as science fiction stories to teenagers before he sold it to Hollywood actors and other assorted kooks as a religion).
The pairing of Larry Niven (Ringworld) & Jerry Pournelle (aka Wade Curtis) gave us The Mote In God's Eye, one of the best science fiction books ever. Onwards to grokking Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Verner Vinge.
For those interested in later authors, particularly of the hard-science variety, I recommend Neal Asher, Iain M Banks, Stephen R Donaldson (Gap series), Peter F Hamilton, Richard Morgan, Linda Nagata, (Nanotech Succession & Inverted Frontier series - she also writes fantasy), Martha Wells (Murderbot series).
The one fantasy collection that I do love and have read three times now is the Malazan Book of the Fallen 10 book series by Steven Erikson. An epic that makes Tolkein's works seem like bedroom stories for children.
You really should try the three movie trilogy series. You don't have to be a believer in Tolkien, and the English teacher who did that to you should have been convicted of crimes against the language.
I had an honest attempt once when they were screened on TV, but gave up within 30 minutes. Even though it had been 3 or 4 decades, I knew every aspect of the story and could find no romance to or passion for it. All I could see were "the devices and constructs that moved the plot, carrying the reader jn the author's desired direction" or some such. In having been involved in the disection of the whole and the examining of every detail, seeing a movie was just watching a sequence of specal effects and people in makeup telling the story. I felt nothing. There was no appeal. It bored me. Which was more than disappointing because I absolutely loved everything Peter Jackson has made before and since.
I doubt it was the teacher's fault, possibly it was part of the curriculum at that time, combined with my wierdly wired grey matter. The powers had some strange restricting ideas. In our Colleges (your High Schools? Years aged 14 to 16.) English and Mathematics were compulsory. In my final year, for School Certificate as I had elected for Metalwork & Technical Drawing (in order to get an apprenticeship) I was not allowed to opt for Science classes (which I enjoyed an excelled at) but had to choose between either History or Geography. Everything about geography was a begrudgingly thankless chore. Apart from the field trip, with Julie and Nights in White Satin.by the Moody Blues.
Thank you, TC. This piece contains so much I don’t know but want to know, especially about the swing era. I’m immensely cheered up.
I'm watching 'American Rust: Broken Justice" and "Fallout." Jeff Daniels is fantastic as is Maura Tierney. "Fallout" is fascinating. I'm three episodes in. Walton Goggins as The Ghoul (with apologizes to the late, great Ron Sweed - look him up) is really high camp. "The Cleaning Lady" and "Will Trent," are having excellent seasons as well.
American Rust was excellent.
ya think? I liked the first season, but the second season had a lot of indications that it was written on some kind of autopilot. if they withheld some important piece of plot information, I knew by the second episode they were gonna supply the missing information in less than three minutes. they set up an obvious third season, but I won't watch. and yes, I'm a fan of pretty much all the actors, but you need the other stuff
honestly, the quality of the writing on TV this past year has been awful. "Manhunt" has good actors, excellent production values, but when Edwin Stanton talks about "the elephant in the room" (not lingua franca for at least another century), it pisses me off.
if my sense of great 19th century dialogue has been spoiled by "Deadwood," then so be it.
but the fourth season of the wonderful "Slow Horses" is coming in a month or so and I still await the second season of "Rogue Heroes." I won't watch "Shogun" until every episode is available. I'm a lot more of a binger than one of those guys who can wait a week between episodes of ANYTHING.
one series with Jeff Daniels that was terrific (and beautifully written, with absolutely believable 19th century dialogue) was "Godless" which was already at least five years ago. Jeff Daniels was genuinely terrifying as a psychopathic outlaw and (as I recall) won a much-deserved Emmy for it.
and "Ripley" is worth a look (gorgeous B&W that looks like an Antonioni movie), especially since Andrew Scott is now one of my favorite actors after his great "Hamlet" in 2018 (available free, with no commercials, on YouTube) and the magnificent "All of Us Strangers" on Hulu. Scott's ability to convey very complicated emotional states with almost total transparency is fucking AMAZING.
I was wondering about the Zwick book, since I have a thing for Hollywood memoirs (unless they're obvious bullshit). now I can grab it...
Billy the Kid's final season comes back next month. I recorded the last four episodes on the Lincoln County War, to watch with these four.
"A Gentleman in Moscow" is also very good. You know the writers have watched "The Prisoner." A good thing.
And just saw the restored "The Passenger"tonight, with Nicholson. Antonioni is still as weird as he was, but for some reason the whole thing made more sense this time than when I saw it 50 years ago in a theater. It's on rotation now at TCM
yes, I'm also waiting for the last "Billy the Kid" episodes. I hate when they do that (splitting the last season into two mini-seasons). "Slow Horses" shoots two seasons at the same time, so they can be released a few months apart. my genuine love for the series prompted me to try Mick Herron's books, and they're terrific...the series catches their tone perfectly and the casting is absolutely spot on. it certainly revived my hibernating Gary Oldman Fan thing. and don't get me started on Rosalind Eleazer (she plays Louisa) because I might not stop. she shares my birthday and that could be an okay pick-up line if 1) we lived in the same place and--alas!-- 2) I'm forty years older with whistling dentures, bad posture and shoulders that dislocate several times a day.
I only saw the first season. I didn't know there were more.
I really LIKED the first season. the new one ("American Rust: Broken Justice") is a gigantic comedown.
I have a couple of comments that may be slightly interesting.
One relates to "Once Upon a Time in the West." I was doing research at The Huntington Library when "Unforgiven" came out and everybody who was anybody was hailing it as an anti-western or a rejoinder to how westerns had been made, etc. The longtime head of research at The Huntington was Martin Ridge, who was an old-fashioned western historian who made it possible for a bunch of younger lions like Patricia Limerick and Richard White to get the research fellowships that they used to argue with him--in other words, Martin was a lovely man. One day at lunch, as others were carrying on about Clint's movie, Martin pointed out that it was actually a totally traditional western: The woman is wronged, the gunfighter is reluctant, there's corruption, and it's defeated. He didn't say this, but it could just as easily have been Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur in Shane. Anyway, Leone doesn't get enough credit for standing on its head the John Wayne tradition of the good guy being the one who kills Native Americans on screen and is a bigoted hypocrite off screen.
The other relates to Zwick. I loved "Glory," as most Civil War historians should. The producers or the studio asked my graduate adviser to blurb it, basically. He watched it and wrote something like, "This is a wonderful way of learning what it was like to be a Black soldier," etc. They replied that that wasn't good enough. What did they want, he asked. They said, "Can't you say it's accurate?" He replied no. Why not? He said why. They were very disappointed.
I was in grad school and I was asked to speak on "Glory" at a film forum. I did and then, when it was over, took questions. A certain documentary series had just aired on PBS. The first question was, "Should McClellan have entrenched his left flank at Seven Pines?" I smiled and said, "You watched Ken Burns!" The answer, of course, was that if McClellan didn't do something, he should have, and if he did something, he shouldn't have.
McClellan even tops the collection of American clucks like Mark Clark - whose colossal blunder in ordering VI Corps to attack toward Rome in the Anzio breakout rather than join up with Eighth Army and force the German Tenth Army to surrender because they were surrounded - so he could be "the liberator of Rome" (already declared an "open city") added a year to the miserable Italian Campaign.
Eric Sevareid was covering Clark and tried hard to get across in CBS broadcasts that he was an incompetent egomaniac, but couldn't always get it through censorship.
They had to finally boot him "upstairs" so they could bring in Lucian Truscott who won the war there - and then had the courage to go to the opening of the American cemetery at Anzio-Nettuno and publicly apologize to the dead if any of them were there from any bad decision he had made.
Lucian IV does come from some good stock, his grandfather was one hell of a general.
have you ever read Malaparte's "The Skin?" he paints a devastating picture of Mark Clark (very lightly disguised as "Mark Cork") in Naples. both "The Skin" (filmed by Liliana Cavani with Mastroianni as Malaparte and Burt Lancaster as Clark and not a great movie, but worth watching) and "Kaputt" are magnificent, and magnificently weird takes on WWII. "Kaputt" should still be filmed, but there's no way it's gonna happen. too expensive, too risky, and with a total lack of any anything resembling a "hero."
A history major college mate of mine was in a Union uniform in "Glory" where most of the extras were Civil War re-enactors from across the US. That struck me as a wise thing for Director Zwick to do because the re-enactors were already battle hardened, one might say.
Yes, he says in the book that, without them, it couldn't have been done.
as soon as that first battle scene happens in "Glory," you know that those guys knew what they were doing.in every school I worked in, I'd insist to my friends who taught Social Studies that to spend a session or two watching "Glory" would be time well spent. nobody ever did. my interpretation of why this was was that by a few years into this new millennium, social studies teachers had caught on to the fact that NOBODY in charge thought the subject deserved much attention because there were no "make or break" standardized tests on it and the teachers were perpetually bummed out about it. during the presidential campaign of 2008, I figured that Obama running would have given the teachers a wonderful "way in" to the stuff that used to be covered in Civics. I must have said this to a dozen people. and the answer was always a shrug. disheartening as fuck.
All of my high school and college history teachers were men, the majority of who had served in either WWII or Korea. I suspect that war in general was in their wheelhouse; whereas, women teachers may have looked at the broader sweep of history, mostly because they liked the big picture and not the minutiae. Just a speculation, and I'm sure that's changing as there are an increasing number of women vets going into teaching. (Thank you, GI Bill.)
Agreed. They had some notion of what to do!
completely agree that "Unforgiven" was, in fact, a pretty classical western. I remember that in the '50s, "Gunsmoke" was considered one of the first "adult westerns." ridiculous.
if I had to name the first "adult western," I'd say it was "the Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck at his finest hour. "The Gunfighter" and "Twelve O Clock High" were made back-to back...same star, same director, same important co-star (Millard Mitchell). it's interesting that "The Gunfighter" seems to play out in real-time, but without calling attention to itself ("High Noon" doesn't quite do it, although it aspires to do so. my own favorite "real time" movie (and my favorite boxing movie) is "The Set Up," directed by Robert Wise of all people. it's also probably the movie that best knew how to use Robert Ryan, a fabulous actor but a little too subtle for late forties Hollywood, which saw him primarily as a "good villain."
I agree but I will note that I think critics thought of "Gunsmoke" as the first TV adult western. And that's debatable, too!
Robert Ryan was so good in Bad Day at Black Rock but since Spencer Tracy was perfect in everything, it could be hard to notice. Ryan actually did a Broadway musical, "Mr. President," which was Irving Berlin's last show and didn't get great reviews but did last a few months (with Ryan as president, the similarly underrated Nanette Fabray as first lady, and the similarly underrated Anita Gilette as the first daughter). He also did one I really would have liked to see him in--"The Front Page."
at the end of his career, Ryan did the Great Thing older actors always talk about and played what critics said was a great Lear at one of the big Summer Shakespeare Festivals. the reviews were splendid. what's funny is that he always specialized in playing bigoted (and occasionally psychopathic) bad guys but in real life was one of the biggest Hollywood liberals, a Civil Rights protester before it was cool and a very good guy.
as was (and is) so often true, Hollywood demonstrated that it had no idea how to use him, probably because he didn't conform to any well-established star "norm." there are many such stories, but I think that Ryan's one of the best examples.
from the late fifties on, they had no real ideas about how to use Mitchum. and Sterling Hayden was in the wilderness (probably also self-sustained because of the deep guilt he felt about his "friendly testimony") until near the end, when Altman realized that the weird old drunk he'd become was perfect casting for the old drunk in "The Long Goodbye." and THAT led to "1900."
Ryan was absolutely perfect in The Wild Bunch as a guy with his own moral scale.
his best late role. and the movie's moral anchor.
the fabulous casting in "The Wild Bunch" demonstrates that Peckinpah was a genius, at least on the days he could stand up. and probably on plenty of the other ones. but it's in the casting you see it most clearly.
Bless you for including the sources for your recs, Tom. It helps.
I thought I already had the Director's Cut of OUATITW...it was a deluxe box with LOADS of extra stuff. needless to say, the clutter had defeated me but I'll do a better search later. I do remember that the version I saw in '68 was almost completely worthless, although everybody--even then (or mebbe ESPECIALLY then) was flipping out at Fonda being THAT evil. Fonda used to tell the story that when he arrived in Italy to start shooting, he'd worn brown contact lenses to play Frank and Leone started yelling at him that his famous blue yes were THE WHOLE POINT. when I find the one I have, I'll know if I must buy this new one.
OUATIA has fantastic moments, but I doubt there'll ever be a version that makes perfect sense because it simply never got finished before Leone died. in the set that I have (somewhere), it's mentioned that the whole movie is actually an opium dream, which sounds more than a little facile to me. but visually, that gorgeous view of the Williamsburg Bridge has become canonical. and, needless to say, I love that the gangsters are Jewish (which, of course, they certainly were on the Lower East Side). I remember another movie with Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin that turned on the existence of whorehouses and other bad shit in the same neighborhood. for some reason, the title I remember is "Last Embrace," but I could be wrong.
and "Young Man with a Horn" really IS terrific. at the time, it was considered innovative because of the authenticity of the music, the fact that there's so much of it and the fact that Curtiz (who was famous for mangling the English language, but was also a careful craftsman who did a lot of research on whatever his next movie was going to be) allowed most of the numbers to play out when previous directors would have cut to something else. if you look at a list of his movies (a HUGE list), even the worst of them are still very watchable. I saw a made-for-TV movie a year or so ago about Curtiz's "issues" during the making of "Casablanca." I forget the title and it was too "arty" by more than half, but I didn't turn it off.
there's a fairly recent, comprehensive biography of Curtiz called "Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film" by Alan Rode. if you're one of those guys who like big, fat biographies of movie people (which I obviously am), it should be the next one on your list.
According to an interview I did with Julius Epstein back in 1983, the story of him and his brother Philip having to find a diplomatic way to convince Curtiz to shoot the finale of "Casablanca" as we know it was a real struggle. The studio saw Casablanca as just a "B" movie, no big name stars and all, and the suits were bugging Curtiz to "wrap it up." The Epsteins convinced him that everyone who would be in the scene thought doing in one or two medium shots would destroy the picture, and that the actors had all figured out what they had to do, so shooting it wouldn't take any longer than the bad idea. And everybody did their bit on a first take. I also love that "Round up the usual suspects!" came when the Epsteins were driving down Sunset Boulevard and got stopped by the traffic light at Cherokee, just past Sunset and Highland. Philip was the passenger, and was looking around at the "characters" on the street, and turned to Julius and said "Round up the usual suspects!" as he gestured around at the street. You could do that today.
I knew the story, and it's a great one. I'm also a big fan of Leslie Epstein, who's written several novels about LA in the forties. I forget which one was his dad, but it was probably Philip. he's a literary figure of some renown, mostly in MFA circles I'm guessing.