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 ...
The director of Westward the Women, “William “Wild Bill” Wellman, is one the greats. Check out his “Yellow Sky” some time. Terrific picture.
There’s another “wagon train of women” movie called “Wagon Master” that’s worth a look.
Yep. What really happens is what the James-Younger gang found out in the Northfield Minnesota robbery. Say hello to an entire town of armed, pissed-off people and oh by the way, there isn't an FDIC so that's their money the gang was stealing. They chose...poorly...
This 86 year old woman loved “ Breaking Bad” and “ Sons of Anarchy”
I don’t like westerns.
Totally agree about High Noon. Highly over-rated, lousy story....
But just about any John Ford Western, from Stagecoach through the cavalry trilogy to The Searchers and on and on... I can watch them over and over. And Hawks' Red River too.
Hates westerns?
It would not have been Ladd’s choice to wear buckskin. That would have been the brilliant George Steven’s decision. I, too, sometimes wish we could see him in black as he was in the book. But it is a minor point for me. Such a wonderful movie and yes, I cry every single time I watch it.
Ladd got so fed up with Brandon DeWilde’s monkeyshines that he said to the kid’s father: “If you don’t get him under control, I’ll beat him to death with a brick!” That story makes me laugh. Ladd had a bit of Shane in him!
There aren’t many Wayne Movies I don’t like- infact I like most westerns- older movies- not today’s crud with their overacting tough guy personalities, perpetual anger an angry rhetoric, and crude filthy language-
Film makers used to know how to make their characters tough by mastering understatement, subtle hints throughout them ovie that ya just don’;t mess with so and so— (ie beware the silent type)- but today- they always gotta be hype-araggressive, hyper nasty- hyper-vile- guess that is what is supposed to pass for toughness in today’s society
Why is Little Big Man never aired anywhere on cable?
That figures. You’re the coolest 86 year old woman I know :)
THANK YOU for responding to me.
I can worry if I want.
Now I won’t :)
DeWilde literally showed the wide-eyed innocence of Joey.
I can never remember the name of the actor who played Chris.
He was a real cowboy, though.
Chris was played by Ben Johnson.
DeWilde was a wonderful child actor - a real boy, none of this faggy stuff. He’s very good as a young adult actor in Hud.
I liked the John Ford westerns. I liked offbeat Wsesterns like The Outrage and McCabe and Mrs. Miller too.
Watching Sox Yankees from London..we got trounced yesterday...a very strange game....so far today going well...we’ll see.
I think one of the best westerns is Magnificent Seven [the one with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, etc. in it].
I also loved James Garner in Support Your local Sheriff, although technically it is not exactly in the western genre.
Forget it, Mark. It’s an American thing and you’re a cool guy but this isn’t your bailiwick.
Favorite part of the movie was “Pay the rent” “But I can’t pay the rent.”
Yes.
Ben Johnson.
He could ride.
He was in Bite The Bullet, wasn’t he?
He ought to watch, Fort Apache and Yellow Ribbon.
I don’t know that movie, sorry. He’s in a lot of movies going back to Mighty Joe Young.
Wagon Master had Ward Bond star. Not long after he was given the role of Seth Adams in Wagon Train.
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