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Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:28 am
by knives
Saw The Virginian and it's an other one of those fascinating early sound westerns. It's really good, probably the best Fleming film I've seen. Cooper's a bit dumber and and stereotypical than in his later roles, but it's still a superb job. His performance in the Romeo scene is amazing. The dialogue is not too good, but he spins it along with Mary Brian perfectly. The thing that works best though is the thing that works best in all of these early Westerns, that it feels more like a story of today (or rather 1929's today). It's intimate and quiet with none of the western ribbons except Cooper's stern face and the horses. It's a shame that this never got to DVD.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:00 am
by domino harvey
Good news
There is so much intellectual mumbo-jumbo at the Criterion Forum I begin to wonder if they are not all graduates of USC Film School. More often than not their professed reasoning over a film has absolutely no relation to the film itself and no realization of what the filmmakers intended. They go bug-hunting nuts over there. The woman doing the survey of westerns column -- domino harvey -- is one of these militant-male-bashing feminists who perceives the genre in terms of an extremist feminist ideology. Every review is some kind of weird-assed value judgment or condemnation. She's a quackpot if ever I read one. While I'm busy being obstreperous, I might as well add that I adamantly disagree with that top 100 westerns list. Few of the voters have seen 100 westerns. I'll bet most voters haven't seen as many as 25 or 30 westerns. Many of the voters don't know anything about westerns, they haven't seen enough westerns to really know the genre, and their minds are full of issues that have no bearing on westerns, but of the handful they've seen, they know what they like so into the top 100 it goes.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:29 am
by knives
Love how horrified they are at Whity's inclusion.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:53 am
by Yojimbo
knives wrote:Love how horrified they are at Whity's inclusion.
is it a case of 'the knives are out', or 'knives is out' for our recent naysayer?
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 4:05 am
by Mr Sausage
Domino, is that the guy who went ballistic on you when the List was ongoing? If so, your suspicions about him were on the nose.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 4:26 am
by zedz
knives wrote:Love how horrified they are at Whity's inclusion.
I couldn't wade through more than a couple of posts of that trainspotterish high dudgeon, but it warms the cockles of my heart to know that
Whity is still outraging people. That's what it's there for.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 4:32 am
by knives
It is like a train wreck that works itself out. After the Nothing clone gets shouted down they remain politely befuddled. I couldn't really understand their objection to Whity though.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 5:06 am
by matrixschmatrix
domino harvey wrote:The woman doing the survey of westerns column -- domino harvey -- is one of these militant-male-bashing feminists who perceives the genre in terms of an extremist feminist ideology. Every review is some kind of weird-assed value judgment or condemnation. She's a quackpot if ever I read one.
I just want to take this home and cuddle it
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 5:22 am
by Mr Sausage
Admittedly, "quackpot" sounds like one of those adorable mispronunciations that children sometimes make. Come to think of it, everything else in that post also reminds me of mistakes a child would make--only, you know, without the adorableness.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:49 am
by colinr0380
Just wait until the horror fans read domino's comments on that thread!
Very strange that they would be upset about Whity, since that film is doing to the spaghetti western what the spaghetti western did to the regular western.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:16 pm
by zedz
colinr0380 wrote:Very strange that they would be upset about Whity, since that film is doing to the spaghetti western what the spaghetti western did to the regular western.
From behind.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:58 pm
by tojoed
Mr Sausage wrote:Domino, is that the guy who went ballistic on you when the List was ongoing? If so, your suspicions about him were on the nose.
I'm not Domino, but that is the same guy. And I can tell you from personal experience that he is as nutty as his posts would suggest.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:17 pm
by Tribe
This almost deserves its own thread!
And I love the term "quackpot."
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:20 pm
by Lighthouse
knives wrote:Love how horrified they are at Whity's inclusion.
Read again. Nobody was horrified. Nobody was upset. Actually nobody has seen Whity except me and most have never heard that a film called Whity exists.
The giggle comment was from me, and it was an ironic comment, only to understand (like some more insider jokes) if you are part of that forum. But that does not include that strange Richard guy, who will hopefully never return to this or another forum I'm in.
Actually I like Whity, but its more a melodrama than a western (and closer in style to what Fassbinder did in his later films), but for such an unknown film it is indeed a bit odd to see it in such a list. And imo it does not to the SW what the SW did to the US Western.
Not the only odd choice, but actually most if not all of that kind of lists have some odd choices, and which film is an odd film, and which not lies of course also in the eye of the viewer.
Frankly said, some of your comments on that thread are not much better than Richard W's comments on your (our) poll. But his are truly more funny.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:24 am
by Cold Bishop
When Westerns Were Un-American - J. Hoberman on the Marxist Spaghetti Western
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:05 am
by flyonthewall2983
Have a laugh and look up #worstwesternsever on Twitter.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 3:10 am
by wigwam
as a graduate of usc film school i want to clarify that a bunch of japanese kids wearing indiana jones hats aren't likely to partake in intellectual mumbo jumbo
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 11:24 pm
by knives
I finally saw Union Pacific today and it is almost hilarious how much the polar opposite it is from Stagecoach right down to Carradine's final act of villainy being shown here as an act of pure heroism on McCrea. It even seems like an answer to how the sea of indians climax could have been worse with painful comic relief and a grotesque joy in each murder coming out of the protagonists like they were scoring points. Every turn of Ford seems countered with a shallow pushing of bile by De Mille. Even the snuffing of the banker gets turned into McCrea smacking the ever living shit out of someone who wants to unionize (oh the irony) portrayed as a lazy hulking idiot. I've slowly been warming up to DeMille lately, but this is enough to get me to run away again.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 11:57 pm
by Yojimbo
knives wrote:I finally saw Union Pacific today and it is almost hilarious how much the polar opposite it is from Stagecoach right down to Carradine's final act of villainy being shown here as an act of pure heroism on McCrea. It even seems like an answer to how the sea of indians climax could have been worse with painful comic relief and a grotesque joy in each murder coming out of the protagonists like they were scoring points. Every turn of Ford seems countered with a shallow pushing of bile by De Mille. Even the snuffing of the banker gets turned into McCrea smacking the ever living shit out of someone who wants to unionize (oh the irony) portrayed as a lazy hulking idiot. I've slowly been warming up to DeMille lately, but this is enough to get me to run away again.
Have you ever seen 'Mackenna's Gold', knives?
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 11:59 pm
by knives
Not yet though it's early enough Thompson I'm interested.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:16 am
by kingofthejungle
Yeah, before I saw Union Pacific, I was developing a theory that the nation building inherent in the genre form made it impossible to make a truly conservative western, since on some level you have to buy into communitarianism and law and order to make it work.
DeMille disproved all of that.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:16 am
by Lighthouse
Union Pacific is a simple but effective and very well made western. The best film of DeMille I have seen so far.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:12 pm
by knives
A simple western isn't 2 and half hours long.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:36 pm
by Lighthouse
If it is a DeMille film, it is that long (actually "only" 135 min). Well, Gone with the Wind is much longer, and even simpler.
Re: The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Proje
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:41 pm
by knives
It's easily the longest film in that set Universal released. Though his '50s film show he could handle those lengths without being so dull about it not to again mention the politics.