Friday, April 11, 2008
It’s a grey, rainy evening.
Good for nothing more than drinking a nice hot toddy by the fire (too bad I don’t have one) in my jammies. And maybe a little amuse me blogging — since I’m still sick. You know the drill so in the comments, if you please.
1) Favourite cowboy film and why.
2) Favourite Bette Davis film and why.
3) And just to change things up, name one book you’re reading right now.
Me first.
1) Hmmmm, that’s a toss up between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Silverado. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is just hands down one of the best films ever made, regardless of genre. The casting of Paul Newman and Robert Redford is just magical. They play the characters so perfectly that it’s virtually impossible to imagine anyone else in the roles.
Silverado is such an old school western film that it plays almost as an homage to the genre. It has all the necessary elements – stoic gunman with an inalienable sense of right in Scott Glenn, bad guy gone good Kevin Kline, absolutely excellent heavy in Brian Dennehy and Kevin Costner in the one role, besides Bull Durham and The Upside of Anger, where one could actually understand the hype around him. Hell, it even has John Cleese.
2) Ooooh, All About Eve — no question. Davis is simply outstanding as Margo Channing. As much as the story may be about Eve’s insinuation into Margo’s life, this is Davis’ film from start to finish. And the dialogue. This movie has to have some of the best lines ever written.
3) A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore ... which I highly recommend. In fact, you should just read anything that has his name on the cover. He’s witty and clever and unbelievably bent, not to mention laugh out loud funny. It’s all about the hilarious journey of one Charlie Asher, Beta Male extraordinaire, who has a relatively normal life until he wakes up one morning to find out that he’s Death or, more accurately, a Death Merchant. You should read it. Seriously.
Your turn.
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20 comments:
1) Unforgiven.
2) She fails to move me. I can't remember any. Sacrilege, I know.
3) I'm re-reading: Cryptonomicon
1) Paint Your Wagon - Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin sing!
2) Return From Witch Mountain - fine, I was a 12-year-old who didn't know she was famous.
3) Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman. My dad stole this book for me back in the '72. I read it every couple of years.
1) the culpepper cattle company. dirty and grainy. puts me right there on the plains.
2) the nanny. visually stunning and emotionally draining. that voice, like jagged glass, never served her better.
3) i'm supposed to be reading chuck palahniuk's rant (a gift from my kid brother), but i've sorta lost my erstwhile passion for print. was a voracious reader in my youth; kept loosely in touchd during the marriage years; renewed the affair a few years back, but my enthusiasm was has waned again. don't pester me about. it's complicated.
KEvron
1) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (slow and plodding, Tommy Lee Jones stars/directs)
2) um, who is bette davis? (does that show my age?)
3)How to win the Oil End Game (an online book, great look at just how easy we can kick the oil habit with today's technologies, and save money)
it's complicated.
Poor KEv ... I must admit I've been in love with the written word since I taught myself how to read at the tender age of 3 1/2 (I was, and still am, a precocious brat).
It was Green Eggs and Ham - a timeless classic.
Oooooh! I loves me some Christopher Moore. Try "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" or "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal"
1)Butch and Sundance is a nearly perfect film, and I loved Unforgiven. I love the westerns adapted from Japanese films too, like Fistful of Dollars and the Magnificent Seven, but as a fan of the old school Western - the Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance ranks as my favorite. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and a scenery-chewing Lee Marvin. Though I also have a major soft spot for both "Destry Rides Again" and "True Grit" as well a fondness for "Red River" and "The Searchers" and then there's the more modern classics like "the Outlaw Josey Wales" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and .....aw shoot. I dunno, I like a lot of westerns. How about I pick "Blazing Saddles" and leave it at that.
2)Whatever happened to Baby Jane.
3.I always have a few books on the go. Right now I'm reading Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" Greg Palast's "Armed Madhouse" and rereading Patrick O'Brian " Mauritius Command," the fourth in the Aubery-Maturin series that starts with "Master and Commander" which I pretty much read non-stop. I'm on my third time through the 20 books now and they keep getting better --yes, I know, I probably ought to join a 12-step program.
Read 'em both already. Hands down, Lamb is my favourite Chris Moore book. I'm also reading Coyote Blue - should have it finished by tomorrow.
As a serial re-reader, I totally get where you're coming from, rev, but I'd have to say no to a 12-step program.
1) cat ballou with the inimitable lee marvin not just chewing the scenery but devouring it. co-starring the loverly jane fonda, pre-barbarella and pre-viet nam protest. just a really super, fun little movie.
2) hush... hush, sweet charlotte. again in the baby jane mode of creepy bette.
3) inversions by iain m. banks - palace intrigue, machinations and mystery in an off world medieval culture. imperial politics, war and betrayal and 2/3s of the way in, still not quite sure who is the protagonist or the antagonist. although the likeliest culprits are a woman with the strength and temerity to serve as a doctor in the patriarchal culture or the king's concubine. banks is just a unique writer, so many twists and turns that the story almost writhes on the page.
the harlequin by laurell k. hamilton - cheesy ghoulish fun starring anita blake as an ass kicking, vampire hunter. an interesting take on the vampire mythos. more grown up than buffy, not so pretentious as the ann rice stuff. it was a gift that sat here for ages and i am enjoying it so far, pure escapist fare is good sometimes.
adolph hitler: my part in his downfall by spike milligan - war as seen through the eyes of a complete loon. milligan tells the timeless story of the soldier throughout history. trying not to get killed while thinking of ways to have a lark, engage in carnality and manage a decent cup of tea.
screenplay for jacob's ladder by bruce joel rubin - disturbing films start as disturbing scripts. just an eerie and brilliant piece of work. the film languished in development for years as nobody could quite figure out how to put it together. a nightmarish indictment of the mindset of the war mongers and the result of their handiwork. if you're a big enough nerd to read produced screenplays, this is an excellent choice and the movie is an absolute must see.
i can't just read one book at a time either. usually have about six on the go at any given time. keeps the brain from getting dusty.
I don't care for westerns as a rule, and I haven't seen enough of Ms. Davis' repetoire to judge, but at least I can supply the book.
Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth, one of the more essential books if you're planning to get serious about the figure. He provides a great system for keeping forms in proportion in three-dimensional space, which is invaluable with something as complex as the human body. Heavily illustrated with examples of all sorts of concepts. Highly recommended.
1) Cowboy movies? Can't pick just one I'm afraid. Silverado, already mentioned (and you didn't mention Danny Glover or John Cleese?). Unforgiven, an excellent choice. I'm with the Rev. on the western adaptations of the samurai genre. Any western with Eastwood. Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West and My Name is Nobody. High Noon. The Wild Bunch. Liberty Vallance. And for fun, Blazing Saddles and Evil Roy Slade.
2) Bette Davis? Sorry, never really paid much attention to most movies in which she appeared. Kid Galahad?
3) The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins; Doghouse Roses - a short story anthology by singer/songwriter Steve Earle; My Apprenticeships - Colette; Cats I Have Known and Loved - Pierre Berton; The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band - Motley Crue
Eyes take in all the words, brain selectively processes them...
Re: Silverado. My apologies. You did mention that it even has John Cleese.
1.) Near Dark. The perfect synthesis of Cowboys & Vampires. "Nuff said.
2.) Dark Victory.
3.) Tom Strong book 6: Tom finds out that his late mortal enemy, Paul Saveen, was actually his brother.
1) Favourite cowboy films
- Unforgiven, because it painstakingly deconstructs the entire mythos that its creator helped to establish, piece by piece.
- Ride the High Country, Sam Peckinpah's sweet, sad, funny elegy to honour, getting old, and doing the right thing. Same theme as "The Wild Bunch", but not as overwrought.
- The Seven Samurai. It may have been shot in Japan, but it begat the entire "Oddly Assorted Group Of Loner/Losere Band Together to Protect the Farmers/the Rancher/the Town from Maurauders" theme.
2) Favourite Bette Davis film and why.
Ouch. That;s tough. The nasty, campy side of me always enjoyed the later, self-parodying stuff - but I guess Dark Victory is probably a fair combination of good film/good performance.
3) And just to change things up, name one book you’re reading right now.
"Afterlands", by Steven Heighton. I have fondness for historical accounts of Arctic exploration, and this is a novel based on one of my favourite expeditions gone wrong - the Hall/Polaris voyage, an extraordinary, true story involving a megalomaniacal explorer poisoned by his crew, a ship crushed in ice, and a group of survivors who spent six months (!!!) on an ice floe drifting south. The novel, however, is mostly about what happens to the survivors after their return south. It's brilliant.
Love Christopher Moore. He's just too fun not to read. "Lamb" is also my favorite by him. Also suggest "Fluke".
Fluke was great. I've read all of his books except The Stupidest Angel ... that's next in my to-be-read pile.
1) Westerns...difficult to choose.
Classics: The Searchers; The Good, the bad and the ugly; Blazing Saddles; Butch and Sundance
Contemporary: Cold Mountain; The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; The Missing
2) Can't comment - not that familiar.
3) Julie Cruikshank "Do glaciers listen: local knowledge, colonial encounters, & social imagination"
Contains some fascinating descriptions of historical non-Aborigina/Aborginal characters/situations in the Alaska,YK,BC region and how they've produced contemporary knowledge.
Babulican,
Maybe you've seen it but Robert McGhee's "The last imaginary place: a human history of the arctic world" is something you should definitely look up.
Hmmm. Not a big fan of westerns. Probably “The Wild Bunch” if forced to choose because it just looks/feels so realistic. Speaking of "wild", although not a film, I used to absolutely love the old TV series “Wild Wild West”. Too bad the movie was such an abysmal mess.
Not much of a fan of Bette Davis either, but “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” is absolutely captivating and never seems to get tired.
Currently reading “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs about a man’s quest to live according to the Bible for a year as literally as possible. I can’t wait to see how he deals with some of the more objectionable (not to mention illegal) demands of The Good Book.
1. "Little Big Man","Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "There Will Be Blood"
2. "Jezebel", "All About Eve", "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" and "The Nanny"
3. "The Englishman's Boy" and "Travels through the Paintbox: Colour"
1. I just don't see many cowboy movies, I guess. I saw 3:10 to Yuma recently and liked it though.
2. I've never seen a Bette Davis film.
3. I've been reading Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters lately. I've kind of given fiction a miss because I'm working on my next novel at the moment. Available eventually at bookstores somewhere!
Btw, on Moore, I thought A Dirty Job was one of his best recently. Fluke is my favourite. He's significant in being such a good stylist -- his language is perfect through the whole book. Rare, especially for an American writer. And he's funny too, also rare for American writers. (Pynchon is an exception: Rev paperboy, what do you think of Against so far?)
1) Favorite cowboy film: Tie between Bandolero and Cheyenne Social Club. Why? Jimmy Stewart is in both of them, and also-there are Henry Fonda, Will Geer, George Kennedy, Raquel Welch, Andrew Prine, Dean Martin, Clint Ritchie, and too many other to list. Running a close second is Rough Night In Jericho, adding Jean Simmons and George Peppard to the talent list. All three films had superb scripts and excellent plots (and no, historical accuracy is not a requirement for me. Not in a cowboy movie.
2) Favorite Bette Davis movie: All About Eve. Why? Script, plot, and talent, talent, talent!
3) One book I'm reading right now: Magickal Self Defense by Kerr Cuhulain.
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