| Support Your Local Sheriff | | Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 7:52:24 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | While hardly the first Western spoof to ride out of Hollywood, Support Your Local Sheriff is easily one of the best. James Garner plays the confident, cool-headed cowboy who strolls into a wild gold rush town on the way to Australia and takes the job as sheriff. Like a parody of My Darling Clementine by way of Rio Bravo, he arrests the hotheaded but hopelessly confused son (Bruce Dern) of a ruthless ranching magnate (Walter Brennan). Stuck with a half-built jail (where he keeps his prisoner penned up with pure psychology and a few spatters of red paint), a rummy sidekick (google-eyed Jack Elam in one of his first comic turns), and a disaster-prone tomboy (Joan Hackett), he takes on a succession of gunfighters with increasing exasperation. "Sure is a childish way for a grown man to make a living," he laments before chasing one gunman out of Dodge by pelting him with rocks. Directed with laconic ease by veteran Western director Burt Kennedy, it's a clever spoof of familiar conventions in a lighthearted vein, more understated and affectionate than Mel Brooks's outrageous farce Blazing Saddles. It inspired a slew of imitators, including a decade of silly Disney Westerns that sank the genre in slapstick shenanigans, and was followed in 1971 by Kennedy's pseudosequel Support Your Local Gunfighter, which reteamed Garner and Elam in a more mercenary story of con artists and gunslingers. --Sean Axmaker ... | |
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| | | High Noon | | Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 11:52:13 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | One of the greatest Westerns ever made gets the deluxe treatment on this superior disc from Republic Home Video's Silver Screen Classics line of special-edition DVDs. Written by Carl Foreman (who was later blacklisted during the anticommunist hearings of the '50s) and superbly directed by Fred Zinnemann, this 1952 classic stars Gary Cooper as just-married lawman Will Kane, who is about to retire as a small-town sheriff and begin a new life with his bride (Grace Kelly) when he learns that gunslinger Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is due to arrive at high noon to settle an old score. Kane seeks assistance from deputies and townsfolk, but soon realizes he'll have to stand alone in his showdown with Miller and his henchmen. Innovative for its time, the suspenseful story unfolds in approximate real time (from 10:40 a.m. to high noon in an 84-minute film), and many interpreted Foreman's drama as an allegorical reflection of apathy and passive acceptance of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaign. Political underpinnings aside, this remains a milestone of its genre (often referred to as the first "adult" Western), and Cooper is flawless in his Oscar-winning role. The first-rate DVD gives this landmark film all the respect it deserves, beginning with a digitally remastered transfer from the original film negative. Additional features include the exclusive documentary The Making of High Noon, hosted by film historian Leonard Maltin and featuring interviews with the late Lloyd Bridges (who played Cooper's rival ex-deputy), director Fred Zinnemann, and producer Stanley Kramer. Also included is the original theatrical trailer and a special chapter stop highlighting the Oscar-winning song "Do Not Forsake Me." Offered in English and dubbed French and Spanish, with English closed-captioning or Spanish and French subtitles. --Jeff Shannon... | |
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| | | Jubal | | Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 3:58:27 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Despite incorporating elements of Shakespeare's Othello, Delmer Daves's CinemaScope Jubal is the first and least of three Westerns the director made with star Glenn Ford. Although not up to the measure of 3:10 to Yuma and the boldly original (and sadly neglected) Cowboy, it's still a well-above-average Western by a man whose sturdy sense of drama and pictorial ecstasies qualify him as a solid genre filmmaker. Ford plays a drifter who is rescued, then hired as ramrod, by rancher Ernest Borgnine, thereby stimulating the erotic interest of Borgnine's sexy young wife (Valerie French) and the Iago-like resentment of the former top hand (Rod Steiger). A range war and the persecution of a religious sect whose wagon train is camped on Borgnine's land complicate matters beyond the Shakespearean premise. The solid supporting cast includes Noah Beery Jr., Charles Bronson, and Felicia Farr, who would contribute a memorable interlude to 3:10 to Yuma. --Richard T. Jameson... | |
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| | | There Was a Crooked Man... | | Posted Saturday, September 09, 2006 7:54:35 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Shelved for more than a year and released as an un-holiday-like afterthought at Christmas 1970, this sardonic comedy-cum-Western-cum-prison movie immediately dropped off the radar and has scarcely been heard of since. We can understand that. By their own admission, hotshot screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton (just off Bonnie and Clyde) and veteran director Joe Mankiewicz (more typically associated with the likes of All About Eve) never found the right focus for their mix of sociopolitical satire, frontier bawdiness, and brutal Western action. Still, the very unevenness makes for fascinating tensions, and the myriad insights and moods created by a cast comprising Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, John Randolph, Warren Oates, and Burgess Meredith more than repay a visit. Douglas plays one of those charming bastards at which he excelled--here, Paris Pittman Jr., a bandit capable of seducing virtually anyone into doing his will. Pittman has a fortune in gold stashed somewhere. Inconveniently, he himself has been stashed in the territorial penitentiary in the middle of the desert, so he begins conniving to escape. This means betraying everyone in range, including the liberal-minded warden (Fonda) who's determined to redeem him. The stellar adversaries are ideally cast, with Fonda cannily subverting his own image (as he recently had in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West). Cronyn and Randolph are priceless as "an old married couple," and Oates is heartbreaking as a congenital loner who thinks that, in Paris Pittman, he has at last found a friend. --Richard T. Jameson... | |
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| | | Colt .45 / Tall Man Riding / Fort Worth | | Posted Friday, September 08, 2006 11:52:14 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Lanky icon Randolph Scott saddles up for three Westerns making their home video debut. He buckles up a brace of six-shooter "hand cannons" in Colt .45 (Side A) to chase a desperado who uses similar weapons to terrorize locals. No one messes with Texas - not in Fort Worth (Side B). Gunsmoke and glory combine as newspaperman Scott backs up his fiery editorials with a blaze of bullets when lawlessness threatens. Finally, Scott is a Tall Man Riding (Side B) - and brawling and shooting - as he rights an injustice involving a gambler's attempted land grab. The well-worn Stetson Scott wears is his "lucky" hat, and Tall Man Riding marked the 27th time Scott wore it in a movie. We tip our hats to one of the genre's all-time greats!... | |
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| | | Badlands | | Posted Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:52:01 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring filmmaking debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-lam flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the strange James Dean-like social outcast who falls in love with the naïve Sissy Spacek--and then kills her father when he comes between them. The two flee like animals to the wilderness, until the police arrive and the killing spree begins. What sets the film apart from others of its genre is Malick's complicated approach. Gorgeous, impenetrable images contrast sharply with Spacek's nostalgically artless narration, serving as ironic counterpoints, blurring concrete meaning, and stressing that nothing this horrific is simple. Malick observes, rather than analyzes, the couple in a manner as detached and apathetic as the couple's shocking actions. No judgment or definitive motivations are offered, though Malick's empathy often leans toward his senseless protagonists, rather than the star-struck society that makes killers famous. Compared with the interchangeable uniform cops who hunt them and the film's other nameless characters stuck in suburban banality, the couple are presented like tarnished, warped and frustrated results of squelched individuality. Badlands, on one level, views America's suffocating homogeneity and, conversely, its continued obsession with celebrities (individuals considered different but adored) as hypocritical. Ambiguous and bold, the movie hints that society may be as guilty as the killers. --Dave McCoy... | |
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| | | Little House on the Prairie - Special Edition Movie Boxed Set (Look Back to Yesterday / Bless All the Dear Children / The Last Farewell) | | Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 3:54:37 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | "Little House on The Prairie - Special Edition Movie Box Set A collector's must-have edition, this extraordinary 5-DVD box set picks up where the Emmy Award-winning series ended. Featuring three 84-minute never-before-released to DVD movies: Look Back to Yesterday Directed by Victor French - Bless All the Dear Children Directed by Victor French - The Last Farewell Directed by Michael Landon Plus bonuses: Melissa Gilbert Interview - a very personal, revealing conversation with Melissa Gilbert about her life-shaping Little House Experience - Casting Little House - conversation with Little House on the Prairie casting director, Susan Sukman McCray. Farewell to Walnut Grove - documentary providing background on the making of the final Little House movies and why The Last Farewell marked such a dramatic and irreversible ending to the series. DVD Features: Dolby Stereo Sound 4:3 ratio Over 7 hours of programming"... | |
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| | | Have Gun Will Travel - The Complete Second Season | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 9:53:32 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | Episode for episode, the second season of Have Gun, Will Travel (1958-59) is even better than the first. With a bona fide hit on their hands, CBS didn't mess with success, and these 39 episodes pushed ratings even higher with sharp direction (mostly by first-season veteran Andrew V. McLaglen), a wide variety of attention-grabbing plots, and intelligent, sensible dialogue. All of the first season's strengths are carried over, and while 41-year-old star Richard Boone (as the refined gunslinger-for-hire Paladin) is rarely given a serious test of his talents, he commands his role with depth, humor, and impressive displays of physical agility. (By comparison, series regular Kam Tong had almost nothing to do this season; he's relegated to routine duty as Paladin's Chinese hotel valet "Hey Boy.") Future Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hit his stride this season, writing nearly a dozen episodes including the playfully spooky "The Monster of Moon Ridge," and other contributors included novelist Irving Wallace and Bruce Geller, who would later create Mission: Impossible! And while McLaglen helmed the vast majority of episodes, Have Gun set a TV milestone when Ida Lupino (with "The Man Who Lost," featuring Jack Elam) became the first woman to direct for a TV Western series. The "Wire Paladin" production notes provided with each episode are thoroughly researched, providing extensive guest-star credits and making wide-ranging connections between Have Gun and many other TV series, films, and serials of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, especially Roddenberry's Star Trek. Among the noteworthy guest stars are Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bronson, Harry Morgan, Joseph Calleia, Harry Carey Jr., Suzanne Pleshette, Morey Amsterdam, Vincent Price, Edward Platt, and many stalwart character players from TV's golden age. The season starts well with "The Manhunter" (in which Paladin is forced to kill a young gunman and faces the wrath of his vengeful family), and Paladin's unique brand of frontier justice is memorably dispensed (along with generous quotes from Shakespeare, Milton, etc.) in such highlights as "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" (with Bronson), "The Ballad of Oscar Wilde," "The Moor's Revenge" (with Price), "The Scorched Feather" (with Chaney) and several others. The opening credits are slightly modified as the season progresses, and Paladin's travels take him into the mountains (for some outdoor adventures late in the season) and even to Alaska, the series' most distant destination. Image quality suffers in later episodes (some mastered from vintage kinescopes or murky syndication prints), but the fact that all 39 episodes are fully intact is a blessing to anyone with fond recollections of this superior TV Western. --Jeff Shannon... | |
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| | | The Proposition | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 1:52:16 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | A savage Western set in Australia's Outback, The Proposition is relentless in its intensity and bloody imagery. Set in the late 19th century, the film tells the brutal story of a gang of brothers that kills not out of desperation, but because they can. Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) is the mastermind who shares little in common (other than total disregard for human life) with his younger brother Charlie (Guy Pearce, L.A. Confidential, Memento). When Charlie and their baby brother Mike (Richard Wilson) are captured, Charlie is offered a proposition to save their necks from the gallows. "Suppose, Mr. Burns, I was to give both you and your young brother Mikey, here, a pardon," offers Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone). "Suppose I said that I could give you the chance to expunge the guilt beneath which you so clearly labor.... Now, suppose you tell me what it is I want from you." Without blinking, Charlie says, "You want me to kill my brother." For most people, this would be an unthinkable proposition. For Charlie, the answer's obvious. He'll do whatever he has to spare his own life, even if that means trading his for Arthur's. The Proposition at times is a difficult film to watch. But thanks to a compelling story by rocker Nick Cave and a supporting cast (including Emily Watson as the Captain's gentle wife), the film is a classic in the making. --Jae-Ha Kim... | |
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| | | The True Story of Jesse James | | Posted Saturday, September 02, 2006 5:52:15 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Legendary fifties director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause) retells the Jesse James saga, starring Robert Wagner as the legendary bank robber. As Jesse James attempts to evade the law, those who know him best -- his brother Frank (Jeffrey Hunter), wife (Hope Lange) and mother (Agnes Moorehead) -- ponder the question, "What turned this simple farmboy to a life of lawlessness?" And as Jesse continues his ride into notoriety, the key events in his life are scrutinized in a desperate attempt to close in on him for good.... | |
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