Westerns(not necessarily restricted to spaghetti)

definitely 2nd a handful of these including johnny guitar and of course high plains drifter, which is easily one of my very favorite movies. Clint makes a midget mayor and literally paints the town red. Oh and gets away with rape. So brazen in that movie.


Yall forgot Django though! the machine gun in the coffin man.

Coming out this Tuesday. Just so happens to include every Budd Boetticher film I've seen (which is actually kind of a bummer). All of them are great. All star Randolph Scott. Probably my favorite westerns.

watching django right now, rules


also, the great silence

Django is fan-fucking-tastic. Especially the end. Speaking of Franco Nero his birthday was Sunday Nov. 23rd. And you should watch Companeros. Oh, and that Sukiyaki Western Django movie is just atrocious, but you should definitely watch My Name Is Nobody if you dig these kind of flicks. One of my favorites.
Watched Joe Kidd the other day: pretty decent if not a mile marker.

Ulzana's Raid (Aldrich). Not sure if there's a decent DVD edition available--it's been trimmed in various versions, & the copy I got hold of was cropped to fullscreen--but for fans of 1970s Westerns (e.g. Peckinpah) it's a great combination of "classic" Western storytelling & "revisionist" Western tropes (greater evenhandedness in the portrayal of the natives, some very graphic violence with echoes of Nam). & the camerawork, even on the cropped version, is stunning.

Ulzana's Raid (Aldrich)

this is a good one- i saw it as a little kid and the "throwing the heart around" scene freaked me out for many nights

Ah yes, that's a memorable scene indeed...! Wasn't quite clear if that was supposed to be the heart or the scalp they were tossing around, but I can't say I wanted to look too close....

One of the best dvd releases of 2008 & practically a steal at the list price.

Screened this one a few nights ago. Two thumbs up.

Watched Appaloosa tonight. Thought it might be OK for the first fifteen minutes, then I thought I might be able to ignore the bad casting and sub-par acting and Ed Harris trying to be Eastwood and all that. Then, when I thought the musical score could get no worse, there sounded, introducing a showdown scene, a soft jazz muted trumpet (like one might hear in a bad detective flick from the eighties). The ending just made things worse.
On the other hand I've been watching these Boeticher flicks and immensely enjoying them.

Andrew Dominik, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, 2007

Enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would (except perhaps the music.. my oh my how Nick Cave has mellowed since he grew that li'l moustache..), including the slow pace, screenplay and Bressonian through-the-window shots.

Watched Appaloosa tonight. Thought it might be OK for the first fifteen minutes, then I thought I might be able to ignore the bad casting and sub-par acting and Ed Harris trying to be Eastwood and all that. Then, when I thought the musical score could get no worse, there sounded, introducing a showdown scene, a soft jazz muted trumpet (like one might hear in a bad detective flick from the eighties). The ending just made things worse.

Yep, agreed. I was completely bored by the film; when will hard-bitten gunmen learn that these women jus' ain't no good... . Mortensen's moustache was probably the best thing about it.

And does Renne Zellweger's face always look like that? I thought she'd been jumped by a Botox clinic...

Andrew Dominik, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, 2007

Yes this wasn't bad, I was surprised at Casy Affleck showing a modicum of talent, sure didn't get it from his brother.
Sam Fuller directed "I Shot Jesse James" in 49' dealing with the same character.

Yes, and the two make for an interesting comparison. The bath scene in the Fuller, where Jesse asks Bob to scrub his back, is daring to say the least! Helluva debut.

Budd Boetticher, Buchanan Rides Alone, 1958

Budd Boetticher, Ride Lonesome, 1959

Terrific, in every sense.

anyone seen Warlock (Edward Dmytryk, 1959)?

I just read the book (by the awesomely named Oakley Hall), which was quite good (and evidently a Pynchon fave, he has a nice mini-essay on the back cover), and I see in a review on the web that this film was evidently something of an ur-text for Sergio Leone:

"That was his favorite. He had it printed in his head."
- Luciano Vicenzoni on Warlock and Sergio Leone

http://www.pseudopodium.org/ht-20050811.html#2005-08-11

some more research comes up with this interesting alltime top 10 from Paul Simpson's 'The Rough Guide to Westerns":

1. Shane (1953)
2. Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)
3. The Searchers (1956)
4. Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973)
5. Johnny Guitar (1954)
6. Warlock (1959)
7. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
8. Red River (1949)
9. Bad Day At Black Rock (1954)
10. The Tall T (1957)

the other 9 of those are all quite familiar names to me (although there are a few I haven't seen yet), but Warlock is new.

Crazy, I've seen every one of those films except Warlock, thanks for the pointer Jon.

edit: Snagged it in Netflix-Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Richard Widmark...I thought this was going to be esoterica. I love serendipitous discoveries.

anyone ever see Benno Friedman's painted/ decayed westerns?- kind of brakhage style...

here are some stills...


http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen9/westerns.html

One movie that people don't often mention is Altman's "Mccabe & Mrs. Miller"... it's more of a character drama that takes place in the gold rush-era Pacific Northwest. So it's set at the same time as westerns, and everyone has hats and revolvers, but it's Warren Beatty wandering around in fog and snow for half the movie. Plus there's only a little action in it, so it doesn't really provide what a lot of people want in a western, but it's one of my absolute favorites. Beautiful cinematography, great writing and acting, a Leonard Cohen score that works perfectly with the movie (although I'm not really a Cohen fan). There are only a half dozen movies that I like enough to own and rewatch, and that's one of them.