Going Underground

This is a good song.

(I think that if I were a Brit Pop band I would be The Jam--punky, but in a weird, uptight sort of way. And like the whole time I'd want to be the Clash or the Sex Pistols, but I'd be The Jam and wear scarves with suits and cover David Watts.)

Have Gun Will Travel Pt.2

Did I mention that Richard Boone was a seventh generation grandnephew of Daniel Boone?

Or that Daniel Boone and I have the same birthday?

Additionally:

TVOD-Have Gun Will Travel

And I'm officially addicted. Have Gun--Will travel is downright wondrous television. It stars Richard Boone as Paladin, a roaming gunman-for-hire and frequent inhabiter of complicated ethical territory based out of 'frisco. Each episode is a perfect little morality play, dark and innovative, deeply interesting, and twenty minutes long. It's candy--fucking delicious bite-sized Swiss chocolate type candy for the cultivated palate. And we're not saving any of it for later. No sir, we're eating it now.

For Pete's sake, it has a PERFECT (Great Train Robbery inspired?) opening.

One of the best themes of any television show ever. Hands down.

Not to mention that most of it is conveniently available on Netflix Watch Instantly. And there you have it--yet another chapter in this, the story of my life:

Ride A White Swan

This is still a good song.

Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood won Best Director at the 1993 Academy Awards for his work on Unforgiven. Gene Hackman got Best Supporting Actor. Their Oscars were well deserved. The film's screenplay was also nominated, but lost out to The Crying Game, which is a shame really because, when watching Unforgiven, it's the writing that stands out. David Webb Peoples (12 Moneys, Blade Runner) is the man responsible for the tale of William Munny (Eastwood), a down-on-his-luck reformed gunslinger who returns one last time to his old life. A young man who calls himself "The Schofield Kid" turns up to tell Munny about a thousand dollar bounty offered by the women of a brothel in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming. The prostitutes want revenge on two men responsible for cutting up one of their own--a girl named Delilah. Unforgiven manages to expose many of the Old West's grim realties simply by not shying away from them. The brutal violence of Delilah's attack is not shielded from the audience, nor is the emotional complexity of murder. In the words of one reviewer, "Never did deaths count so much in a gun-slinging drama, never did shooting a man come so hard."

The storytelling here is absolutely top notch. If you really want to get into in, the film exemplifies pretty much all of achetypes in Northrop Frye's theory of modes. Munny is the alazon, a self-deceiving hero who claims to no longer be the man he once was. Little Bill (Hackman), his nemesis and the sheriff of Big Whiskey, is the eiron. Bill's prohibition of firearms in town is the film's major source of conflict. Delilah is undoubtedly the suppliant or sufferer, badly scarred and consequently unable to earn a living as a prostitute. Munny's former partner Ned (Morgan Freeman) is first the plain dealer who attempts to forestall inevitable tragedy, then becomes the pharmakos, or sacrificial victim of circumstances, when he is captured by Little Bill's men.

The mythos of Unforgiven isn't exactly tragic--its hero ultimately triumphs. Yet the justice he archives is so fraught with moral ambiguity that, when he achieves it, we are utterly denied the satisfaction of a happy ending. Like The Misfits, it is a revisionist Western, purposefully uncertain of its characters and their values, but at its heart Unforgiven is a cowboy picture. It doesn't present cowboys in a new context, it uses the old context to reexamine them. It's like if you had some wonderful book you'd read over and over again that you thought was the best book ever, but then one day you found a copy with Daniel Webb Peoples' margin notes and realized that the author had left out all of the most interesting parts. Basically, Unforgiven is like one great big fantastic edit of all past Westerns made by a guy who starred in a lot of them. It deals with the moral dilemmas already present the genre and in doing so, rewrites it--splendidly.

Public Image

This is a good song.

Seven Samurai at the Film Forum

PSA: The Film Forum is already well on its way through its Six Weeks of Kurosawa series honoring the hundredth anniversary of the acclaimed Japanese director's birth, but plenty of good stuff is still on the way. The basis for EW Top 15 Western The Magnificent Seven, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, will be featured on January 29th and 30th. Tickets will be available online starting on the 22nd.

Slippin' and Slidin'

This is a good song.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

My Wall-to-Wall with Vanessa P. (A Fragment) :

Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.

December 19 2009 at 6:07 pm

Vanessa P. What about it, my above-water ally?

December 19 2009 at 6:09 pm [This is an inside joke.]

Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan HAWT.

December 19 2009 at 6:15 pm

Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan Have you seen it?

December 19 2009 at 6:15 pm

Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan Just watch it now.

December 19 2009 at 6:15 pm

Vanessa P. I'm afraid you've underestimated me! That gorgeous and just-sweaty-enough buddy film is in my "favorite movies" list, in fact! Did I make you watch "The Sting" btw? Another Redford/Newman bonanza? Though Newman has the moustache in that one.

December 19 2009 at 6:18 pm

• Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan Yes. Obvi. That's like one of my top you memories is watching that. I'm sorry I doubted your infinite knowledge of gorgeous and just-sweaty-enough buddy films. December 19 2009 at 6:20 pm
• Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan Also the quote is, "It's no trick to make a lot of money... if all you want to do is make a lot of money," and it's Bernstein who says it, not Charlie K, so I was right to be a little skeptical as your facebook profile is obviously a rather unreliable repository of questionable information. December 19 2009 at 6:31 pm
• Hannah Elizabeth Sheehan I love when Newman has the moustache. December 19 2009 at 6:35 pm

I think the key phrase here is "gorgeous and just-sweaty-enough buddy film"...obvi.

Roger Ebert says this movie is afraid to be a Western because not much killing or other bad things, likesay, happen in it, exactly. But one thing it's not afraid of is to be homoerotic and well, thank god for that. It's also not afraid of bicycles or Burt Bacharach which, all thing considered is quite brave, and also lovely.

Oh good lord to be Katharine Ross in that scene, if only for a moment.