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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 27, 2022 13:52:46 GMT -5
My most recent watches were a re-watch of For a Few Dollars More with Number Three Son. Often the forgotten middle child, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that it's my favorite of the three Leone/Eastwood films. The addition of Lee Van Cleef elevates it above Fistful. And while I love Good/Bad/Ugly (and particularly Eli Wallach) I do find that it's a bit overlong and drags in places.
Also watched Sons of the Desert for the first time in quite a while. While I still find Laurel & Hardy work better in shorts, this is clearly one of their strongest feature films. They could definitely use some marriage counseling though.
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Post by berkley on May 27, 2022 14:34:37 GMT -5
My most recent watches were a re-watch of For a Few Dollars More with Number Three Son. Often the forgotten middle child, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that it's my favorite of the three Leone/Eastwood films. The addition of Lee Van Cleef elevates it above Fistful. And while I love Good/Bad/Ugly (and particularly Eli Wallach) I do find that it's a bit overlong and drags in places. Also watched Sons of the Desert for the first time in quite a while. While I still find Laurel & Hardy work better in shorts, this is clearly one of their strongest feature films. They could definitely use some marriage counseling though. Agreed on For a Few Dollars More. Also, I found watching Good/Bad/Ugly on the big screen last summer made that one feel like a different movie to me. It's like Star Wars, it needs to be seen on the big screen to get the full effect. I remembered the Civil War, bridge-blowing scene as feeling a little unnecessary and out of place when seeing the movie on tv as a kid but this time it felt completely organic and an integral part of this huge epic story, leading into the famous showdown at the end, which was incredible. Van Cleef is great in it too, in spite of playing such a villainous part. I might still give the nod to FaFDM as my current favourite of the three but it's close between those two.
I wish they'd give Once Upon a Time in the West a re-release now, would love to see that one on the big screen.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
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Post by Confessor on May 28, 2022 19:07:31 GMT -5
I "third" the idea that For a Few Dollars More is the best of the so-called Man With No Name trilogy. It's always been my favourite of the three, although the other two are really damn good too.
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2022 20:45:06 GMT -5
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly is my fave of the trilogy and has the best score.
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Post by berkley on May 28, 2022 23:33:21 GMT -5
The scores to the other two, especially From a few Dollars More, are really good too. But yeah, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly stands out in that respect. "The Trio", the music to the climactic 3-man showdown, is mind-blowing. After seeing the movie last year I was listening to it obsessively on youtube for about a month afterwards (just the music, I didn't want to keep re-watching the scene itself because I think that desensitises you in a way that repeated listenings to music doesn't, or at least not as fast). It's hypnotising in the way it conveys the underlying tension, the escalation of danger, the fatalism of the whole sequence. One of the greatest combinations of sight and sound in all film, up there with 2001 and Noé's Climax. Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More has what I think must be one of the greatest introductory scenes to a character in movie history - I mean the entire opening sequence from him on the train to shooting the bandit with a bounty on his head: the viewer immediately understands exactly the kind of character he is, without knowing a thing about his back-story. In The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, he plays an entirely unsympathetic character, but I found he still carried the movie for me.
He has some of the most effective body language I can think of in film, at least in the tough guy, action-movie vein - more like Charles Bronson than Eastwood, I would say. A kind of natural way of standing and moving that conveys an impression of deadly competence. There's a moment in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly during the scene where his henchman is administering a beating to "the Ugly": Van Cleef is sitting down smoking his pipe, while the other two guys are careening around the room, knocking things over, etc. At one point they nearly bang into van Cleef and he casually - but not too casually - sticks an arm out to push them away so that he can carry on sitting down enjoying his pipe. It impresses on the viewer something important about the character - that he's a dangerous person because who is at home with violence and doesn't get ruffled when it's thrust in his face - but I think the reason it works is that it looks so real - he's almost knocked over himself along with his chair and has to give them a good push, but just carries on smoking his pipe.
I'd be curious to know whether that moment was improvised or if it took multiple takes before they got it right - but whichever it was, the effect was perfect for the character he was playing. Anyway, that was just one fleeting little moment that came to mind. Both movies, and to a lesser degree the first one too, really made a much bigger impression on me this time around than seeing them on tv a a kid or teenager. They've vaulted from "movies I like" to "greatest of all time" status in my personal hierarchy.
BTW, I heard only recently that Alex Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, wrote a book about the Dollars trilogy - though from the title, 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Spaghetti Western (2008), it must be about spaghetti westerns in general. Either way, I plan to read it one of these days.
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Post by Calidore on May 29, 2022 9:24:34 GMT -5
The Music Box Theatre is resuming their annual 70mm film fest next month after it was cut short in 2020 by COVID. It would be funny if the last movie I saw in a theater before the pandemic shutdown, West Side Story at the 2020 fest, becomes the first one I see subsequently. But I'm also thinking about catching Lawrence of Arabia, which I've never seen and is running the day before. Of course, all that also depends on the pandemic status when the time comes. Numbers are going back up, and masking is going way down, so we'll see. musicboxtheatre.com/events/the-music-box-70mm-film-festival-2022
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Post by berkley on May 29, 2022 12:46:53 GMT -5
Lawrence of Arabia definitely worth catching on the big screen if you have the chance. Another one that's almost a different movie when seen in that format compared to tv.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 29, 2022 14:40:34 GMT -5
Lawrence of Arabia definitely worth catching on the big screen if you have the chance. Another one that's almost a different movie when seen in that format compared to tv. Lawrence is absolutely a film that screams to be seen on the big screen. Preferably in an old-school single-screen theater rather than the current Googleplexes.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2022 7:09:38 GMT -5
Released 35 years ago today, directed by William Dear: This film sees George Henderson (John Lithgow) and his family camping near the Cascade Mountains. While driving home, they accidentally knock over Bigfoot. Not wishing to leave him for dead, they take him home - but he awakens in their house, and then the tomfoolery starts. Complicating things is the fact that Bigfoot draws attention to himself in the suburbs. You know, this film peaked for me after ten minutes. The initial camping scenes, and then Bigfoot being knocked over, is fun. After that, well I can’t say Bigfoot hiding in the suburbs did much for me. If I see this film on TV at any time, I just watch the first ten minutes or so. Still, the ten minutes were fun while they lasted. After knocking over Bigfoot, George looks in the rear-view mirror and says, “It’s gotta be a bear.” His wife asks, “Could it be a gorilla?” George replies, “I don’t think they get that big around here.” I always preferred the UK title this was released under, Bigfoot and the Hendersons (who’s Harry?). But nowadays, on UK DVD releases and TV airings, they use the name Harry. I can’t believe they got a TV show spin-off out of the concept, lasting 3 seasons, 72 episodes in total. But at least one episode featured WWF wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan. May as well share a clip from the movie:
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Post by berkley on Jun 10, 2022 23:46:33 GMT -5
We were talking about musicals in the Favourite Film of Year xxxx thread, and I just happened to see a classic they were showing at the local cinema a few nights ago: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Beautifully photographed colour film with all the dialogue sung, so it's more like a kind of jazz/pop opera than like a traditional Hollywood musical. The story is quite realistic and unsentimental - again, in sharp contrast to musicals as a film genre. It's quite an interesting experiment, one I think any film fan would probably want to try even if they don't usually like musicals.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2022 8:24:48 GMT -5
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was released 50 years ago today, directed by J. Lee Thompson: As you no doubt all know, it’s set in North America, circa 1991, where apes are used as pets/slave labour after a pandemic wiped out dogs and cats. To cut it extremely short, this is the film where the apes begin their uprising. I found this really scary as a kid, especially the way those gorillas in red caretaker outfits went from being docile slaves to intellectual militants. Not that you can really blame them. Of the five films in the original series, this one, the fourth in the series, is my favourite, outside the original. Glad we got past 1991 without an ape uprising…
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 14, 2022 20:58:28 GMT -5
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was released 50 years ago today, directed by J. Lee Thompson: As you no doubt all know, it’s set in North America, circa 1991, where apes are used as pets/slave labour after a pandemic wiped out dogs and cats. To cut it extremely short, this is the film where the apes begin their uprising. I found this really scary as a kid, especially the way those gorillas in red caretaker outfits went from being docile slaves to intellectual militants. Not that you can really blame them. Of the five films in the original series, this one, the fourth in the series, is my favourite, outside the original. Glad we got past 1991 without an ape uprising… Read the novelization, by John Jakes (yeah, that one, as in The Kent Family Chronicles, Brak the Barbarian, and North & South). It goes deeper into the society and the reaction to the uprising, more of what went on within that society. Pretty chilling stuff. It suffers, a bit, from budget, as they went on a decreasing scale. The use of the new Century City Complex gave it a bit of a futuristic look, at the time, though it looks extremely dated, today. The uprising was intended to mirror slave revolts in the US and other civil unrest, including the Watts Riots. It was massively popular in urban theaters and they actually changed dialogue at the end, to dampen some of the violent images (and edited it down a bit. The novel includes the nuclear exchange that feeds into Battle for the Planet of the Apes and the devastation that clears the way for ape society. Titan books has reprinted all of the novelizations, including the adaptations of the live tv episodes and those for the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes. They also published Andrew Gaska's Death of the Planet of the Apes, which serves to bridge Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Escape From the Planet of the Apes, detailing what happens to Taylor, when he disappears in the Forbidden Zone, more about Milo, Cornelius and Zira, and more about the mutant society. There is also an anthology, Tales From the Forbidden Zone, edited by Rich Handly and Jim Beard, which has short pieces from various ends of the series and continuity, including tv and animated series. Lot of good stuff in there, including one story from comic artist Ty Templeton.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
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Post by Confessor on Jun 15, 2022 17:06:26 GMT -5
I watched Coogan's Bluff for the first time last night and it was...OK-ish. Clint Eastwood's moody, no nonsense cop from Arizona stuck in the "foreign" environs New York City is definitely something of a blueprint for his later Dirty Harry character -- not to mention many other TV and film cops from following decades. The storyline was kinda so-so and, for me, the scenes set in amongst the swinging '60s hippie, love & peace crowd might've been the most entertaining parts of the movie. Truthfully, I was expecting better considering that this was directed by Don Siegel, who came up with much more entertaining stuff with Eastwood later on in such films as Two Mules for Sister Sara, Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. Watching Coogan's Bluff passed the time and kept me reasonably entertained, but it failed to really grip me.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 15, 2022 17:51:52 GMT -5
I watched Coogan's Bluff for the first time last night and it was...OK-ish. Clint Eastwood's moody, no nonsense cop from Arizona stuck in the "foreign" environs New York City is definitely something of a blueprint for his later Dirty Harry character -- not to mention many other TV and film cops from following decades. The storyline was kinda so-so and, for me, the scenes set in amongst the swinging '60s hippie, love & peace crowd might've been the most entertaining parts of the movie. Truthfully, I was expecting better considering that this was directed by Don Siegel, who came up with much more entertaining stuff with Eastwood later on in such films as Two Mules for Sister Sara, Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. Watching Coogan's Bluff passed the time and kept me reasonably entertained, but it failed to really grip me. I've tried watching it before; but, I would rather watch the tv series, McCloud, that was inspired by it, with Dennis Weaver. Far more interesting character and Weaver was more of a character actor, which gave more dimension to the idea, for me. Clint always comes off more reactionary in these things, especially the older I get. I find I prefer him more in things like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or Escape, or Two Mules, or even Firefox.
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Post by berkley on Jun 15, 2022 23:56:20 GMT -5
I've seen Coogan's Bluff in a strange, dislocated way: back in the early 1980s I saw the first part, set in Arizona, and just the beginning of the NYC section on tv one morning before having to leave for work. Then, a few years later, I think in the late 80s or early 90s, I came across it on tv when it was half over and thus finally saw the last part. So I have seen the whole movie, but separated by nearly ten years. I think I liked it more than Confessor or Codystarbuck, although, like Cody, I was already familiar with the McLeod tv series, which I watched as a kid in the early 70s. But for me, Eastwood's screen presence is so different to dennis Weaver,s that they're essentially two different characters. I liked the ending, with Coogan showing some understated compassion or empathy for the bad guy, who in the end seems to be more of a wild, misguided young guy than a violent, evil menace, and he just arrests him almost with a bit of a pat on the back, like, "OK, you've had your spree, time to come home with me now"; as opposed to Dirty harry who probably would have gunned down in a shoot-out or at least administered a serious beating. So Isaw it as a slight departure for Clint.
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