Whattaya Want on Your Tombstone?

No, not the frozen pizza brand.

So, to further broaden my scope of westerns I added in a couple I’d never seen before:  Pale Rider, yet another Clint Eastwood special; and Tombstone, with Kurt (Disney-owns-my-ass-and-always-has) Russell, Sam (If-this-isn’t-the-biggest-mustache-you’ve-ever-seen-you’re-fibbin’) Elliott, Val Kilmer and some other chumps like Powers Booth, et. al.

In addition, we grabbed a copy of Kevin (I-have-a-sissy-voice-and-can’t-act) Kostner as Wyatt Earp.  So I sat through four westerns in two days.  Wyatt Earp was almost the life of Wyatt Earp in real time.  JEEZ!!  Two discs long.  UGH.  And BORING.  Crikey.  END IT, already.

Pale Rider is very similar to another movie made previous called Shane.  It has that supernatural/paranormal element of which I am so fond, but in many ways, it was just another version of High Plains Drifter.  Clint likes his ghost cowboys.  I do too, but c’mon … gimme some variety, willya?

Tombstone, however, was great.  I thought it was flat out great.  I loved it.  I loved the tension, the action, the characters, the dialog, the acting, the setting … it was an awesome movie.  And if I ever run across it for sale somewhere, I’m going to buy it.  That one will go into my permanent collection.  (So will Unforgiven, do y’ken.)

So, that’s that for movies lately.  I hate to be difficult, but I didn’t find The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to be the holy grail of westerns, let alone all movie-dom, but I did like it.  It would’ve been better had about an hour been left on the cutting room floor, but that’s just my opinion.  I liked it; it was, as I said, decent.  I didn’t think it was great, and that’s what I think.  If you don’t like that, too bad.  (You know who you are … don’tcha?  Eh??  EH??)

But I still hold Unforgiven as the best western I’ve ever seen, followed by Tombstone, then High Plains Drifter, then GB&U, then … well, I’ll hold the other slots open for a bit.  There are, after all, more westerns to see.  I have to catch up to The Outlaw Josey Wales on this trail somewhere, and maybe I’ll even indulge in the other spaghetti westerns in the GB&U trilogy.  Even if some of you don’t think I should because I don’t worship at the altar of GB&U as the best movie ever.

I’m up to my neck in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, and I just cracked the sixth book of the seven book series.  I’m in the final bend, I guess.  This one’s a bit shorter than some previous entries (book five was a hair over seven hundred pages and book seven is more than eight hundred), so I should be able to wade through this one – under five hundred pages – in a timely manner.  IF I get reading time in, that is.  Movies have sort of taken precedence over all lately.

Sorry I’m late with this post.  I’ll try and be up earlier tomorrow and we can talk about something else.

See ya!

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

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Old West Shootout

We had an old fashioned shootout here recently, discussing western movies, their stories and characters, and so, I’ve endeavored to see some of the movies recommended to me by some of you.

I finally saw The Good, The Bad and The Ugly end-to-end as commended by WIGSF and GoodBadandUgly2.  They both claim it’s the best western ever; GBU2 goes so far as to say it’s her favorite movie of all time (could you tell?).  My beloved liked Silverado, and recommended that one.  I, myself, got her to sit with me through High Plains Drifter, one of my favorite all-time westerns, and if I can ever find it unedited and without commercials I’ll make her wade through Unforgiven.  On the horizon is The Outlaw Josey Wales, someday, when I run across it.  And how can I forget Pale Rider for westerns??  Come on, TCM!  Or AMC, whichever.  Show ‘em.

So far, for me, Unforgiven is the undefeated champ of western movies.  High Plains Drifter pulls a close second.  Both were excellent, fun movies, and I loved the supernatural twist of HPD.  But The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was a decent movie.  For my tastes, it was too long.  Some of the stuff they included either dragged on too long or could’ve been left on the cutting room floor without hurting the story at all, and the pace would’ve been better.  Still, there were some good moments, and the overall story was sort of cool, too.  Not that there’s anything unique or original about three shady-ish characters hunting for hidden gold, but the movie was well-done for the most part.  And if anyone knows what the other two parts of that trilogy are called, shout out; I’d be interested in seeing ‘em.

I didn’t like Silverado quite as much as my first two choices, but it certainly moved along much faster and had a lot more action than a lot of them.  Same guy wrote the script who wrote Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so that figures.  The bad guys were slimy and despicable, as should be.  The good guys were sort of caricatures, as is typical.  But the acting was decent and some of the scenes were fun, and in this western, they had to reload the guns.  Ha!  Nice touch!  A nice romp, really, but lacked the depth of some of the others.  Still, I agree with my wife: a fun movie.

I never thought I’d be a cowboy movie fan, but I’m getting there.  Thanks to The Dark Tower, I’ve reconnected with my love of cowboys and things western.  I even sat through Charles Bronson acting for The White Buffalo, which my son enjoyed with me.  (I didn’t really enjoy it, but it was okay.)

Now, I need to find a way to stop myself from watching cowboy movies and comparing hats to find the coolest one.

What genres of movies have surprised you?  What sorts of movies took you by surprise, made you enjoy them despite your insistence that you don’t like those kinds of movies?  Let me know, and tomorrow, we’ll get back to some “horror” movies I saw recently.

God bless, all.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

Untried Things

In the past, I’ve written here about wanting to try new things as I learn about them.  One of the things I’ve wanted to try is a full-on western.

Last night, my beloved and I sat through High Plains Drifter.  All the talk about Unforgiven and the quirky, fun characters made me yearn for a good western, and I couldn’t find The Good, The Bad and The Ugly anywhere in my cable system, so I settled for what I remember being a good movie.

It was.  It didn’t have the same humor and good characterization as Unforgiven, but that’s why the latter is one of the best westerns ever made … maybe THE best western ever made.  (But I have a few recommendations now to check out before I can say that emphatically … thanks, Delaney and WIGSF.)  It even had a supernatural, paranormal type element to it.

Interestingly, it didn’t contain that element in the original script.  Clint Eastwood decided to inject it.  I think it was a good choice, but he could’ve made the reference just a hair more clear, especially at the end.  And, while it’s a character-driven movie, it is such in a much different way than Unforgiven.  The story is equal to the characters in import here, and it moves along very well.  I was impressed more this time than the last time I saw it.

Still, a fun movie.  And it made me want to try some untried things.

For one, I’m still hankerin’ to do that western fiction piece.  I know, I know … I did the one I linked to, but that’s just a short story.  I want to try one full-on someday.  And I think I might like to have a little horror element in it.  I think horror in the Old West would be horrible indeed, and without our technology to help us or save us, it’d be even better.  So there’s that to try.

I want to try a real, all-out redneck horror piece, too.  Haven’t tried that yet, but have flirted with it.  One day I’ll lower my head and get going.

And I’d like to give my hand a try at gunsmithing.  All those guns, all those bullets flying (ever notice how in so many movies and TV shows the shooters never had to reload?), must have set my mind drifting.  I probably need to get out of this industry I’m trapped in.  I need to do something different, and I think working with my hands would be excellent and fun.  All that metal and oil and wood.  Ooh, yeah.

Once, I had delusions of success in the cabinetry industry.  I was awakened rudely and quickly.  I’m sure something similar will happen in the firearms industry should I ever venture that way, but it’s something I’d  love to learn and try.

What about you?  What sorts of things would you like to take a stab at (and no, your annoying in-laws don’t count)?  What sorts of things would you put your hand to if you could?  What do you have planned to try that you just haven’t gotten to yet?

Sound off, everyone, and have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend.  Remember our service men and women as you do.

God bless.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

Questionable Character

The movie Unforgiven is, in my estimation, one of the best movies in my memory, and while I’m not a connoisseur of the genre, it is hands-down the best western I’ve ever seen.

The characters in the movie are vibrant, alive and teeming with quirky, lovable qualities which make them stand aside from the archetypal cardboard figures typified by some of the cheap, Saturday afternoon television westerns of yesteryear.  Certainly, they aren’t much like the “characters” in the spaghetti westerns of their heyday.  These characters are rich with history and memory and weakness and frailty.  The protagonist, William Munny, played by Clint Eastwood, is a man on a mission to change who he is, trying to run a failing pig farm and put his questionable past behind him.  The opening title card for the movie reads:

She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have suspected, but of smallpox. That was 1878.

That’s a brilliant opening, and the rest of the movie doesn’t disappoint.  While I’ve never been a fan of westerns, this one captured my imagination, and I even wrote a short story based on it, having been touched somewhere in the deepest little-boy part of my psyche by the idea of a good ol’ fashioned cowboy story.

When I considered what made the movie so enjoyable for me, I realized (last night) it was the characters.  The story was all right.  It wasn’t typical of westerns, really, but the characters were the riches of the movie.  They were extraordinary in their ordinariness, and they came to life through talented and well-directed acting and vibrant, fun dialog.

My post yesterday about super-villainous antagonists with unlimited resources at their disposal, including mental capacities and wealth, drew a lot of insightful comments.  Folks know a lot about why TV bad guys are such cardboard cut-outs, that’s for sure.  But what about heroes in TV and movies?  Are they any more dimensional, less flat and predictable, than the bad guys?

I don’t think so.  All of them have their superiority.  All of them have their one flaw, the Achilles heel, which, of course, the bad guys can exploit.  But are the heroes any better than the bad guys?

I don’t think so, in all honesty.  I think TV protagonists are pretty thin.  They seem altruistic in their goals, working good purely for the working of good; they are always strong and fast and good-looking (who wants to watch an ugly hero or heroine?); they are always the smartest and best at whatever it is they do.  If they aren’t, then they have the sidekick who’s the best at everything they lack.  If they’re supergeniuses who can’t shoot to save themselves, then their sidekick will be the most deadly marksman law enforcement has ever seen, and the most skilled hand-to-hand combat specialist, and the most sophisticated weapons specialist.  So, while the heroes aren’t always fabulously rich (though you’d never know by looking at their clothes, cars and homes), they are the top-tier of all humanity in something.

Shows like House have gone out of their way to inject quirky, off-beat behavior into the central character.  Gregory House is the world’s greatest diagnostician, but he’s a drug-addict and sarcastic, cynical and distrusting.  At first these things were charming offsets to the typical hero, who is not only fabulously attractive, incomparably brilliant, and so unbelievably sensitive and aware of others he’d make Mother Theresa Green with envy, but also always has the most clever lines and the last word.  House was different … initially.  Now he’s a caricature of himself, too far to the extreme and getting farther out with every season.  (Too bad.)

Yesterday I mentioned “Red John” from The Mentalist, but the protagonist is almost as bad; he can out-police the entire California Bureau of Investigation (which appears to be four people, from what I can gather), is better at picking up evidence than all of California’s crime scene technicians, and can hypnotize, manipulate or trick any and all people who cross his path.  Oh, except for Red John, of course.

But some of the most beloved characters are quirky in some way too.  Columbo, with his forgetful act, his absentminded methodology.  Kojak, lacking any hair, less than a physical prototype for males, and sucking on a lollipop.  Monk, with his OCD and hand-washing habit.  None of those characters fit the prototypical protagonist mold, yet they were popular and long-lived in TV.

William Munny was a murderous outlaw who was tamed because he loved someone.  Those things still exist in him, though; they’re part of his character, and we see some of them peek out from behind the frayed edges of his time-softened personality.  But they’re fused forever with his conscience now, and he’s not able to do and be what he once was, except for the vengeance of his dearest friend.  But through most of the movie he’s trying to convince his fellow assassins he’s not the same man he once was, that a new leaf has been turned, and the tragedy of that desperation is the comedy of the character, even to the very end of the movie.

Characters of questionable character, not fitting the golden-haired, chiseled-featured cookie-cutter of TV and movie heroes make for more interesting and watchable people, people it’s easy to root for and to want to see succeed.  But we so seldom get that on television anymore, and not often enough in the movies.

What do you think?  Do we need more out-of-the-ordinary, quirky or flat weird heroes?  Do you have a favorite one?

Sound off y’all.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.