[Miss Marple]

I am on CBS waiting for Face the Nation. The morning show had a nice piece on Robert Duvall, one of the Hollywood people I respect because he doesn't talk about politics, plus he is a fine actor. There is a movie premiering on AMC tonight which he acted in and edited. It is a western.

[penelopesire]

I like Duval too. Wasn't he in Lonesome Dove?

[Miss Marple]

Lugar presumes NYT report on Casey's plan is accurate. (FTN on now.) Talking about "horrific violence" in Iraq. Says troop draw down now is not likely. Schaefer is having trouble understanding Lugar (and I sympathize with Schaefer on this).

[mathluv]

Duvall was on Fox earliier this week talking about it. I think he was on with John Gibson.

[Peach]

Miss Marple, we watched that western last night and although that isn't typically my cup of tea, it was a terrific movie and well acted by all the actors.

[mware]

The morning show had a nice piece on Robert Duvall, one of the Hollywood people I respect because he doesn't talk about politics, plus he is a fine actor. There is a movie premiering on AMC tonight which he acted in and edited. It is a western.

I loved him in Lonesome Dove.

[Phsstpok]

Robert Duvall is one of my favorite actors, starting with his Boo Radley in  To Kill a Mockingbird. I saw a lot of my Grandfather's youth in his performance in Lonesome Dove. Duvall does, occasionally, talk about politics, and he's rather more right than left. I think that's part of the reason he doesn't live in Hollywierd most of the time. I think he lives mostly in a small town in Virginia.

Because of the premier of part one of Broken Trail tonight on AMC they've been showing Open Range, where he starred with Kevin Costner.  I'm actually listening in the background to the final part on AMC right now. Basically he was still playing Gus McCrae from Lonesome Dove and I bet that's what the character in Broken Trail will be.  That's fine with me.  I know he's got range and I like the Gus McCrae archetype.  John Wayne had more range then most people will give him credit for, but he knew enough to return to characterizations that worked (quick aside, one of the neat things in Wayne's last movie, The Shootist, is how they used clips from lots of different John Wayne movies as background for his character).

Now this may seem totally off topic, but it's not, stay with me here.  Albert Einstein would perform "thought experiments," or in German "gedanken experiment" (really, experiment is the same).  Well one of my favorite time wasters is gedanken casting of the film versions of my favorite books.  Robert Duvall shows up a lot in those hypothetical casts (see, I told you I'd get there).  The book that I return to repeatedly in casting and recasting (mostly as people grow to old or die) is Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.  Duvall is one of my top three to play Jubal Harshaw, my favorite character in that book.