Girlfriend in a Coma

This is a good song.

EW's Top 15 Westerns

For the first major phase of the Cowboys and Indians Project at Lost Red Sweater, I've decided to work my way through Entertainment Weekly's "Fifteen Must-See Westerns. Being that I am wholly unfamiliar with the genre, I have no real way of knowing if the list is even any good. From first glance, however, I can see that it's got your John Waynes and your Clint Eastwoods, spans several decades, and, at any rate, is a place to start. At present, I have seen one of these movies...and it is Dances with Wolves. Dances with fucking Wolves. Eighth grade American history required viewing, which I DID NOT enjoy, thank you, but anyway, without further ado, here is the list:

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967)
• Red River (1948)
• Lonesome Dove (1989)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
• Seven Men from Now (1956)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
• The Searchers (1956)
• Tombstone (1993)
• Shane (1953)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• High Noon (1952)
• Unforgiven (1992)
• My Darling Clementine (1946)
• Dances with Wolves (1990)

Barmy

This is a good song.

The Great Train Robbery

So it turns out that one of the first narrative films in all of cinema history was a Western. The Great Train Robbery (1903) is largely remembered for its technical achievements--early approximations of cross-cutting, double exposure, and, you know, moving the camera. The director, Edwin S. Porter, had served as the cameraman at the world's first movie studio, Thomas Edison's Black Maria. The films Porter helped produce at the Kinetographic Theatre in West Orange, New Jersey are extraordinary little gems of art and science. I found this one, of Annie Oakley, endlessly captivating (I mean, it's Annie Oakley! Shooting a gun!):

But to watch these seconds-long clips is to understand the director's ambition in undertaking a film with fourteen separate scenes.

The story follows a band of villains as they hijack a steam engine, nab all the loot on board, force the passengers out on the side of the tracks, and escape into the woods. Aesthetically, the film is a transparent reflection of its time, perceptively caught between the conventions of the stage and the innovative capacity of a new medium. The movements of the actors are dramatic and theatrical, but real trees speed past open railway car doors. Thanks to Porter's habit of meticulously recording action from start to finish, I was struck by the realization that tying someone up probably takes much longer than anyone expects. Producing a rope can now be taken as shorthand for binding and gagging, and directors tend to cut away. I'd be willing to bet that, subsequently, most modern young men and women, when tying up their first victim/hostage/consensual sex partner, are surprised to find it tedious and time consuming process. Let The Great Train Robbery set the record straight.

When a little girl finds the railway dispatcher on the floor of the telegraph office and sets him free, he heads immediately to a dance and rallies the townspeople.

***SPOILERS***

The film's famous surprise ending is terrific. The townspeople locate the outlaws at their hideout in the woods and proceed to gun them down. Suddenly, the camera cuts to a close-up (the film's only) of the last villain standing. He points the gun at the camera and fires--at you! I can't really imagine what that must have been like for audiences in 1903. It's such a severe and threatening instance of breaking of the fourth wall that is in no way predicted by the film's preceding structure. We are wrenched violently from our roles as spectators and then we are dead. Frankly, I found it vaguely unsettling.

You can watch The Great Train Robbery in its entirety, here:

Manifest Destiny

THE COWBOYS AND INDIANS PROJECT

At Lost Red Sweater

Attempting to understand the genre--one Western at a time.

I think my grandfather is the only person in my family who loves movies as much as I do*, only his racket is Westerns, specifically. He's almost completely deaf and has a tendency, once he's located the nearest sturdy armchair, to flip on TMC, crank up the volume, and fall asleep. As a result, many of my holiday memories are accompanied by the curious soundtrack of tinny saloon piano music, gunfire, and snoring.

Somehow though, I've managed to go all this time without paying any attention whatsoever to these films that he loves and of which, I think, he's seen almost all. But because Popee is a man of class and taste, I've resolved to mend my ways and see if I can't figure out this mysterious American lore, chronicling my mission on Lost Red Sweater via the Cowboys and Indians Project. Stay tuned.

*With further consideration it became apparent that my brother is also a major contender for the crown.

Head

This is one of my favorite things: a piece by performance artist Laurie Anderson from 1982 called "Head." It's hardly the summit of her work, she of the tape-bow violin and "O Superman," but when everything's all added up on the Maria von Trapp Value Indication Axis, this little number is what warms my heart after a long night of dancing in the gazebo with my Nazi boyfriend.