Posted on 06/30/2019 8:03:37 AM PDT by Rummyfan
I don't like Westerns.
Not just those creaky serials spoofed by SCTV's "Six Gun Justice." I mean the genre's purported masterpieces:
High Noon is coma-inducing — despite its "exciting" real-time gimmick, those 85 minutes feel like 200. Howard Hawk's "answer film," Rio Bravo, is a door-slamming farce without the jokes — five men running in and out, a simulacrum of "action." Shane? I don't get it. Stagecoach hasn't aged well, leading me to wonder, heretically, whether it was ever any good.
Besides today's movie, the only old Westerns that impressed me were The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the operatic Douglas Sirk-meets-David-Lynch camp classic acid trip, Johnny Guitar.
But those don't really count as "old," because they're considered precursors to the revisionist anti-Western of the Little Big Man sub-species, which ham-fistedly allegorized the Vietnam War or some such. (Don't laugh: The Shooting is about the Kennedy assassination, which is perversely funny: the Zapruder film itself — history's most argued-about strip of celluloid — is somehow less ambiguous, plus a LOT shorter...)
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Just double checked it wasn’t Wagon Train it was Have Gun Will Travel. Quite the man flew 85 missions during WW2. Ended up a captain with the DFC.
Whoa. 85 missions is Catch-22 territory. Whatta guy.
That’s right. But Joe’s a great man and you know he has quite a future!
I think it was Jean Arthur’s last movie. I’ve always loved her.
New forms of music come out and those generations listen to it and like it.
Everyone’s kinda getting up there in years here but not THAT up there that they don’t know rock n roll replaced a lot of types of music.
And now that horrible pop music with the “girl power” singers is popular.
And the kids thing the same way of me that I thought of my pop when he HATED rock n roll.
Too cool for school? What’s that like, a 50s saying? :)
I LOVE Christmas music.
Especially “baby its cold outside” now that the left said it’s a song about date rape :)
They ruin Everything
That review said she was 13 years older than Ladd, and 8 years older than Van Heflin.
My wife is 7 years older. It works.
That’s great! What’s wrong with an older woman, a younger man? I totally believe it can work.
Yes, I know Arthur was not that young by the time they filmed but she’s pretty and her cracked, inimitable voice is so lovely. What a woman.
What do you think of her wearing trousers in the film? It’s very different from most westerns where the women wear gingham and aprons.
TCM has always had that attitude. They still show great movies, even anti-commie ones.
Wrong SciFi series!
Supposedly the quote comes from Rodenberry when asked about Star Trek: TOS. He claimed he sold it to the network as a sort of “Wagon Train to the Stars”. Frankly I can’t see it.
Now Firefly definitely is whether it was intended to be or not!
Guys like dresses. And don’t forget the pointy bras in most of the other westerns.
The review I linked talked about the costumes, so pants were practical for her lifestyle.
1974. I was 27, she was 34.
She’s still got it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtC-QEbUq88
The thing most folks seem to forget is that if most town folk were really that helpless, the United States would have stopped at the Mississippi River.
It took smart, tough, hard, folk to create all those towns and fight to keep them going.
Those smart, tough, hard, folks didn’t just turn over their hard won gains to a bunch of 21st century pussies; the pussyfication took up to as many as 7 to 8 generations.
Thank GOD it didn’t happen everywhere.
Because it SUCKED?
You are mistaken. Gene Roddenberry actually pitched Star Trek to the suits at Paramount using that exact phrase. And the show very much was that...
The Outrage with Paul Newman was a remake of Rashomon.
I was never a huge western fan, but a few are still good and are old favorites. The Good the Bad and the Ugly was the first movie I ever remember seeing in an actual theater. I still remember thinking how someone saying “you bastard” was using dirty language...I was about 10...my aunt took me to see it.
Then there were a couple of other Eastwood movies that were good, Outlaw Josie Wales was one of those. Never was a big John Wayne fan, saw a few of his movies on TV over the years, and True Grit in a theater later on.
TV shows Bonanza and Gunsmoke were always on, my father liked those, and the Rifleman. Also The Lone Ranger TV show and sometimes Cisco Kid.
I always remembered Once Upon A Time in the West was a good movie, but couldn’t remember much about it, finally got a copy (directors cut) on DVD not long ago, the instant I first heard the harmonica I knew what was so good about it...wondering what that damn harmonica meant...great job by Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, good movie all around.
West World is one I thought was pretty good too. More sci-fi than western though...
And it’s been 50 years since I saw Shane, can’t remember a thing about it. Just the kid yelling Shaaaaane...if that’s even in it...I was a kid. Didn’t Pink Floyd use that sound byte in a song?
What else...I just also got a dvd with 4 old westerns, never heard of any of them.
Hit the Saddle, 1937.
Don’t recognize any names except Rita Hayworth - JP McGowan, Bob Livingston, Ray “Crash” Corrigan and Max Terhune, Rita Hayworth.
Sagebrush Trail - 1933.
Second in John Wayne’s “Lone Star Series”. (From the label) John Wayne, Nancy Shubert, Lane Chandler, Yakima Canutt.
Yukon Flight - 1940.
James Newill, Dave O’Brien, Louise Stanley, Warren Hull, William Pawley, George Humbert. Never heard of it.
The Pinto Bandit - 1944.
Dave O’Brien, James Newill, Guy Wilkerson, Mady Lawrence.
All B&W, John Wayne and Rita Hayworth are the only names I recognize. Haven’t watched it yet, no idea if any of them are decent movies, got it mostly for a friend who is more of a western fan than I am. I figure I’ll watch it then take it to her. Seems like I have another one I can’t remember that’s pretty good...Had Tombstone on VHS but player went belly up.
I know, Men in Black!!
LOL
Without westerns there wouldn’t have been Blazing Saddles.
Met Robert Taylor (Sheriff Longmire) just crossing the street in Las Vegas NM where some of it was filmed...Came across as a regular guy and remained in character...Series is one of my all time favorites...
If you can still get broadcast channels off an antenna, Grit network has western series and movies, many still in black and white.
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