Clint Eastwood

Watching Dirty Harry on cable right now. Such a great movie...

i've just watched all five this week (got the box set for xmas).

first three- great. dead pool- fun.

i can't believe someone up there repping for sudden impact, which we watched for twenty minutes then had to turn off.

ha i bought that box for my brother for his birthday

tcm were showing them all a few weeks back and it was the first time i'd seen sudden impact, and yeah agreed wtf? that film is just rong

dead pool also gets a wtf for the rc car chase

yeah, but a fun wtf.

main difference in cool btwn first three and the last two- terrific seventies jazzy music vs awful eighties synth shite.

i'm not usually so tuned in to soundtrack but it really stood out watching them all in a row.

he has ahnold's terminator sunglasses in the last two though

i'm not usually so tuned in to soundtrack but it really stood out watching them all in a row.

Schifrin's soundtrack is pretty essential

Ultimate Dirty Harry box set on the way

way to make my christmas present obselete :(

anyway, the ultimate box set would leave out the one made just to keep his lame girlfriend happy, no?

Missed this, but I don't agree that Million Dollar Baby, True Crime, or The Bridges of Madison County suck badly--quite the contrary, even if you feel that the difference between good people and bad people is drawn too starkly in Million, and if True Crime feels improbable (it's supposed to), and if Bridges of Madison County worships Meryl Streep (I thought the ending particularly was beautifully played). Space Cowboys and Blood Work are harmlessly fun bad movies, and A Perfect World and In the Line of Fire don't suck as badly as most films of their respective genres, FWIW. My personal favorite is True Crime, but I'm a sucker for so much of that movie: The interview with the prisoner where he takes one-word notes for his "color piece," the fact that he's just the worst father in the world, the performance of the wrongfully accused, etc...

I like In the Line of Fire a lot too.

I would have voted Magnum Force, had I voted. I love the Dirty Harry movies. May not get the box set though, a man's gotta know his limitations.

this would have been a hard poll for me. i love Magnum Force, High Plains Drifter, and Unforgiven, in such different ways.

Clint on politics, Spike Lee, Harry Callahan, and everything

shame on a nigga who try to run game on a nigga

http://www.thebadandugly.com/2009/03/14/first-look-the-human-factor/

watched "heartbreak ridge" today & it was fuckin awesome

i'm STILL surprised that every which way but loose got ANY votes, much less three -- the monkey movies are clint's nadir.

watched "heartbreak ridge" today & it was fuckin awesome

fuckin awesomely terrible

xpost. I know! What a film. He has so many quotable bad-ass put downs in that film!

"Sergeant, you get that contraband stogie out of my face, before I shove it so far up your ass you'll have to set fire to your nose to light it."

describing a "dusky girl" from hong kong (?) as "a real crossway breezer".

When the cop says to him when he gets out of the court, "You're gonna pay full price rummy. I don't believe in no serviceman's discounts" and he replies "Too bad, your old lady does".

xxp u mad ~maaaybe it dragged a little & final battle stuff isnt v. interesting but eastwood was so damn funny and there were so many good scenes

yeah there was so much quotable shit no way i could keep up but was constantly loling

Trying to get in touch with his feminine side by reading women's magazines while stalking his ex-wife by waiting outside her place of work in his car.

PLAY MISTY FOR ME

Highway: I been pumping pussy since Christ was a corporal. I can tell you, the best damned poontang I ever paid for was in Da Nang. The girls were checked out daily. And we got ourself laid in a safe, orderly, proficient, military manner. That is until some suckhead writes home mama and says he dipped his wick in the Republic of South Vietnam. Then the shit hits the fan. A committee of congressmen who asshole to asshole who couldn't make a beer fart in a whirlwind, start telling your basic-ass-in-the-grass, Marine " No more shore time ". We responded in true Marine Corps fashion. We salute, do an about face, double time back to the boom-boom garbage dump where we get the clap, and the drip, and the crabs and a generally poor attitude towards the female of the species. War is hell, boy. That's a fact!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090601/gottlieb/single?rel=nofollow

Though he was born in San Francisco, he missed the summer of love, LSD, the sexual revolution and all the spoils of American bohemia because he was too busy combating evil and moral relativism in the name of justice. Sacrifice demands recognition. In contemporary American cinema, Clint Eastwood is our perennial Last Man Standing. But what is he standing on, or for, and why is he so eager to hide it? ....

The traditional Eastwood hero--and Clint, for all his bluster, has never played a villain--spends an inordinate amount of time pushing other people away, only to grudgingly accept the perseverant embrace of the outside world, as long as the world is defined exclusively in terms of his suffering. If Eastwood is to be credited for artistic and emotional growth, his mythic doppelgängers must learn to accept a love that asserts itself without conditions. He has publicly reduced his political credo to "everyone leaves everyone else alone." That philosophy is a reason to become a hermit. It's a reason to vote for regressive taxation and Second Amendment rights. It's not a reason to make movies.

1967 interview...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDVzK8IthCs

J.Ro on White Hunter Black Heart:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/a-free-man-20091201

was 80 yesterday.

Paint Your Wagon! Ah, yes! Where you may see Clint Eastwood & Lee Marvin in their most cringeworthy roles ever. Rent it today, as a tribute to his 80th birthday. Crank up the DVR and die a little inside.

Watched the last 40 minutes of Where Eagles Dare on TCM yesterday and was a little surprised how boring it was. I think they were going for terse and understated, but even the guy falling 1000 feet from the gondola was like "YAAAAAAAHHHHHH...eh, whatever."

Recently saw The Beguiled. A haunting and interesting film. What are peoples' takes on the gender politics of the thing? I can see it having both feminist and misogynist readings.

Watched the last 40 minutes of Where Eagles Dare on TCM yesterday and was a little surprised how boring it was.

whaaaaaat

Leo's J Edgar may have his Clyde Tolson:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2010/12/08/armie-hammer-leonardo-dicaprio-clint-eastwood-hoover/

wdn't have predicted this in the Every Which Way But Loose days:

http://www.towleroad.com/2011/03/leonardo-dicaprio-and-armie-hammer-film-very-passionate-kiss.html

http://kristinburns.com/WordPressPhotos/PJ/DuranDuran_mg_4011.jpg

weird.

was hereafter any good at all?

will return to acting as a baseball scout going blind:

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Matthew-Lillard-Joining-Clint-Eastwood-Trouble-With-Curve-28893.html

Dude kinda just won the Super Bowl ad derby.

Definitely.

http://www.youtube.com/chrysler

Most effective moment of this for me is the split-second of the African-American kid as he's stepped out of his dad's car, and in that split second the two other kids (white) are walking to him--a moment literally under a second.

Also, Clint's "Yeah" near the end is great and/or terrible.

meh, Clint knows a brass-balls Nixonian president when he sees one.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/06/clint_eastwoods_super_bowl_obama_endorsement/

Some are insisting its just an endorsement of Detroit and Karl Rove is whining about it for various reasons

No votes for Paint your Wagon??

"This is just halftime for American musicals."

It's funny that it gets parsed as political when it's a car commercial using the rhetoric of a political ad, and working really hard not to be political. But, of course, the stuff it's advertising isn't removed from politics, which is what the right is jumping on.

Chrysler wiped union signs off the footage, literally nothing to see here folks

Woah, David Gordon Green directed the ad, and Matthew Dickman (one of the twin poets profiled in the New Yorker a few years ago) was one of the writers.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-28200-see_that_wieden%2Bkennedy_super_bowl_ad_with_clint_eastwood_it_was_directed_by_david_gordon_green.html

bouncing back from your highness

just watched this, anyone who sees anything truly political in it is insane.

Off-topic from Clint, but the similar 2011 Super Bowl spot was good, directed by Samuel Bayer ("Smells Like Teen Spirit"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc

sigh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoqKdWY692k

does this damage his reputation at all? Or it he so old and such a revered hollywood figure that it doesn't matter?

Yes.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-did-great-terrified-personal-assistant-tells-c,29393/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmratV9kac0&hd=1

also: http://www.theonion.com/articles/breaking-john-mccain-just-blew-his-brains-out-duri,29369/

Can only presume everyone pretending to be shocked or disappointed in this is doing so to draw attention away from Mittens.

Does this mean that we can look forward to other Republican leaning actors coming on and saying their best known lines?
Arnie: "RUN TO DA PRESIDENTIAL CHOPPAH!"

New movie in three weeks, start your political based jokes/Photoshopping now:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2083383/

What does invisibama want Clint to tell Romney to do to himself at 6:15?

xp Trouble With The Laffer Curve

What does invisibama want Clint to tell Romney to do to himself at 6:15?

Go fuck yourself

v v classy joke

NYT: "Aides said Mr. Eastwood does not like teleprompters and was trusted to deliver an on-message endorsement."

oh he was ad-libbing up there? you don't say

"I know what you're thinkin'. 'Does he have Barack Obama in that chair or doesn't he?' Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself."

Far from my favourite director--except for Blood Work, don't know that I've ever liked anything, and J. Edgar especially seemed like a waste. I didn't mind Hereafter, though, improbabilities and all. (By which I don't mean the hereafter stuff, which you just have to go with; more like, now I'm mailing off my manuscript, now I'm speaking at a book fair...) Matt Damon is fine in the dropping-out-of-life role. Did not feel like a Clint Eastwood film at all. I wish Arte Johnson had showed up on a park bench at some point, otherwise not bad.

I don't dislike Hereafter (or Blood Work or J Edgar either, for that matter) but I'm still puzzled as to why it turned into a romcom in its last 10 minutes.

you liked Blood Work

True about the last 10 minutes--the rom part, anyway. I don't know if it was more or less preferable to what I expected, some mystical mumbo-jumbo, but it definitely wasn't very convincing.

The first hour or so, though, I was impressed with how even the pacing was, and even found both Damon's and the kid's stories somewhat moving.

I recently tried to rewatch The Unforgiven and found I could not stomach it.

I don't mean the violent ending. I quit watching about 50 minutes in because the dialogue was horrible and the way the characters and plot were being set up were as artificial as the flavor of a watermelon Jolly Rancher, but all the while it was pretending it was the juiciest, ripest watermelon you ever laid a lip to. Nothing about that movie came within sight of any reality that ever was or will be. It even sucked as a pure myth.

i like it

the two iwo jima movies are probably the most interesting of his recent work to me

the unforgiven is hard for me to watch b/c of all the people who don't like or know westerns who claimed it was "revisionist" and "the best western ever" and i'm conscious of that inflated sense of importance that both eminates from it and was accorded it

but all told it is hardly a bad movie

emanates?

it's Unforgiven, guys. The Unforgiven is another western.

I admire the crispness of its dialogue without ever -- then and now -- buying William Munny's rediscovery of his inner T-1000; and, boy, do the Richard Harris scenes drag.

Also...not once was Ned's race mentioned? And he's lynched?

i think i have picked up my mom's old habit (which at one time was very frustrating to me) of adding an article or title to everything.

fast food chains, per my mom: the subway, the burger king, mr. wizard's...

god bless her :)

I found it so ordinary and so plodding, I've never seen it a second time. Was furthermore bothered by what amateurist brings up: the reverential treatment it received, when directors had been killing off and de-mythologizing the Western for 40+ years at that point--at least going back to High Noon and The Gunfighter--and usually in much better films.

Was furthermore bothered by what amateurist brings up: the reverential treatment it received, when directors had been killing off and de-mythologizing the Western for 40+ years at that point

yes indeed. Same year Eric Clapton won Album of the Year: mythologizing a mythology that didn't and could never exist.

There were so many such films in the late '60s and through the '70s, I suppose enough time had lapsed that it seemed new again (helped by the fact it was Eastwood directing).

Also strange that the Academy coronated a comeback when Eastwood's movies, with exceptions, had been modest to huge profit makers for years.

plus the likes of High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider got respectful press (and made money).

I recently tried to rewatch The Unforgiven and found I could not stomach it.

I don't mean the violent ending. I quit watching about 50 minutes in because the dialogue was horrible and the way the characters and plot were being set up were as artificial as the flavor of a watermelon Jolly Rancher, but all the while it was pretending it was the juiciest, ripest watermelon you ever laid a lip to.

Aww, I liked it. My grandfather was in it. He is dead now.

Also, to state the obvious, they never really stop making such films, they just take different shapes in different decades. Right now it's a world-weary Batman, and Scar wears a mask and speaks through a vocoder.

That's a great story about your grandfather.

he had a couple lines, i think he was "man on train" or something.

Clint been overrated after White Hunter, Black Heart

(I still need to see the Streep chick flick)

When I was a kid, my grandparents owned exactly four movies on VHS: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, True Grit, Ruthless People and, inexplicably, The Name of the Rose. In part because I wasn't allowed to play Ruthless People when my younger cousins were around (which was most of the time), TGTB&TU easily became my favourite and most watched of the bunch. Unforgiven was a couple of years later, the first new Eastwood western since my discovery of that film. Going to the movies with a bunch of friends one night, it took quite a bit of encouraging to get some of my friends to see it with me (the group actually ended up dividing up, with the remainder splitting off to see the John Ritter comedy Stay Tuned), Clint apparently not holding much currency among 13 year olds in 1992. I was pleased with myself for having (partially, at least) won my battle and convinced that we were all about to see something awesome.

Then the movie started and...it was quite the bummer. More so than even Batman Returns, which had already significantly bummed us out earlier that summer. Murky, slow moving and talky, what was most disappointing was how sullen and weak Clint's character was. Even the climatic shootout lacked any electricity, as if Clint was merely going through the motions, the film ending not with a ride off into the sunset but a scene of Clint returning home to his pathetic little farm, presumably not far away from death. The film felt so lacking in sensation that by the time its awards season blitz came around, I felt like those awards may as well have been going to Howard's End.

Naturally, I love it now. Gene Hackman's final scene ("I was building a house!") destroys me every time; only Joe Pesci's horrifying death scene in Casino has ever had anywhere near its effect of making me feel so sorry for such an otherwise loathsome character. The film's distinctly literary and nuanced qualities, attributes now routinely credited to Eastwood's far less subtle and definitely inferior recent output, still feel unique and even radical to me (the critic Alex Jackson once explained the difference between the first and second volumes of Kill Bill as the difference between a film and a novel, a distinction that I think even more neatly fits TGTB&TU vs. Unforgiven). The "revisionist western" business is lazy critical shorthand, of course; this is still a genre work, though one that is somewhat unusually concerned with subtext more so than text. It makes perfect sense to me that it shares a screenwriter with Blade Runner.

The film's distinctly literary and nuanced qualities...

I know from literary and nuanced, and wherever Unforgiven strives for these qualities what it delivers is ersatz. It hammers its points home, one by one, with the finesse of a cobbler pounding hobnails in a boot sole. If you want literary and nuanced, watch John Sayles' Lone Star.

y'all know there was a japanese remake of unforgiven in the works? starring ken watanabe? do they transpose it to early meiji period japan?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347134/

i feel like japanese remakes of recent american films is an underappreciated phenomenon. for example, there's a remake of "sideways," but almost nobody outside of japan seems to be aware of it.

Would so watch both of these. Is the Sideways remake widely available?

no, not at all. you can get a japanese dvd w/o subtitles.

the unforgiven is hard for me to watch b/c of all the people who don't like or know westerns who claimed it was "revisionist" and "the best western ever" and i'm conscious of that inflated sense of importance that both eminates from it and was accorded it

but all told it is hardly a bad movie

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, August 30, 2013 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

but it is revisionist... that's just a description of its genre, not its quality...

i think it's a really impressive movie tho... including the dialogue. "deserve's got nothin to do with it," c'mon, thats freakin great. little bill has to be hackmans best character. love the way the interiors are shot, inky black rooms lit only by oil lamps, even when its daytime its dark. i really love that all these wild west badasses were stinkin drunk when they did all their killing and that the guys who lasted were just the dudes who had the nerve to keep their guns steady and not rush their shots. i dig morgan freeman having shitty eyes and not being able to kill anyone when it comes down to it... same w/the scofield kid, blubberin about ned while clint is takin swigs and staring off in the distance. watched it again not long ago and i hadnt forgotten these details, their meaning registered with me when i was a kid, but it hadnt struck me before how right they were. also its badass that munny "prospers in dried fruit" or w/e at the end. i guess yeah everything the film's "saying" had already been covered way before it came along, but that doesnt make it inapt

i feel like japanese remakes of recent american films is an underappreciated phenomenon. for example, there's a remake of "sideways," but almost nobody outside of japan seems to be aware of it.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, August 31, 2013 8:38 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

is it really a phenomenon? i cant name any examples other than those two

how can it be "revisionist" of the western genre when so is like every "A" western made after (and some before) 1950?

what do you think a revisionist western is?

Does revisionist western mean anti singing cowboy stereotype or more anti the stereotype where good guy wears white with ten gallon hat/bad guy wears black dude outfits?
So everything post the mid 50s for the most part could fall into the genre? Sorry taht is probably a bit of an exaggeration and I'm not sure where the recent Lone Ranger falls into that. Maybe The Lone Ranger was the archetype image of what was being revised?

After the early 1960s, many American film-makers began to question and change many traditional elements of Westerns. One major change was in the increasingly positive representation of Native Americans who had been treated as "savages" in earlier films. Audiences were encouraged to question the simple hero-versus-villain dualism and the morality of using violence to test one's character or to prove oneself right.

as pointed out above, this had been happening prior to the 60s.

as i've said before, Clint's mentor Don Siegel did the whole "violence is bad" thing much less pretentiously with John Wayne's swan song The Shootist.

imo its any western that deliberately subverts the conventions of the studio-era western; and specifically if it challenges the heroic myth that the western was created around, that of the right to expansion and primacy of the American settler (who always embodies the best qualities of americans, puritan work ethic etc). The Lone Ranger (2012) is pretty aggressive about evoking the 70s new hollywood westerns that did this.

but the self-consciously "revisionist" western started in the studio era.

some 1950s (and even 1940s) "adult" westerns already less-than-subtly (which is to say, quite obviously) playing with the heroic mythology of the cowboy, the frontiersman, etc. and lots of 1950s and later westerns were fairly obviously allegorical, dealing w/ civil rights movement, southeast asia, etc. "new hollywood" westerns just took this to greater levels of explicitness (see e.g. "soldier blue"). there are some comic westerns from that era that fuck with the genre's conventions pretty fulsomely ("kid blue") and others that just kind of tear it apart ("the last movie"). but mostly there's just a continuum of self-consciously "revisionist," let's-call-white-supremacy-and-manifest-destiny-into-question from early 1950s onward.

btw wrt native americans both western films and lit were depicting them "positively" (if cliché) since forever. there was never a time when the western genre _only_ depicted indians as bloodthirsty savages. not even at its origins in the memoirs of first encounters etc.

which is not to say that unforgiven sucks b/c it isn't "original," just that it's in a long tradition. unfortunately by the early 1990s i guess a lot of folks had forgotten that tradition and greeted the film like it was utterly sui generis (clint eastwood would not have been one to make this mistake btw). i like the movie i just have a hard time forgetting this critical context, not least since the film has some elements of bombast that almost seek to invoke it. i prefer clint's earlier westerns (though not his comic "western," bronco billy, which I think was just limp).

Clint on Jersey Boys and American Sniper:

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/clint-eastwood-jersey-boys-american-sniper-1201216714/

Never realised Gran Torino was a such a massive worldwide $270m grossing hit, can't even remember if it was any good.

It was too bad, but I got the feeling that a few too many people liked it cause it featured a "hero" who got to regularly spew racial epithets.

One of the co-writers of Jersey Boys on stage and screen is a former co-worker of mine. (Not the one who co-wrote Annie Hall.)

can't get down with few dollars more receiving 1/3 votes of fistful

just thinking the same thing!

might argue it's the "best" of the 3

I think so

caught them all at the local indie cinema last summer along with a few other leones, there's an argument for each I think

no once upon a time in the west obv

early Sniper reactions

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-clint-eastwoods-american-sniper

Is Sully too boring to get its own thread? This negative review, from an Eastwood-defender, summarizes it thusly:

Just like its subject, it's workmanlike and boring. And just like its subject, it will be celebrated widely and in full throat in conflict with its desire to be a working-class martyr. The most iconoclastic thing about it is that it clocks in at 90 minutes and change when Awards Season wisdom suggests it needed to be around 135 minutes. Brave.

I thought this asshole said he would stop making movies at least 10 years ago

No way in hell they could've stretched this to 135 minutes without sending people out the door. The whole water landing sequence is shown TWICE (same shots, takes, everything), the pacing makes no sense, and all the NTSB villain stuff is just patently untrue and obvious to anyone that was watching the news in 2009. None of that shit happened, and everyone remembers how it went down: Sully was rightfully called a hero, did some press, then hang on bit too long and it was like we get it guy, go away. I found the two plane crash nightmares really offensive and unnecessary, especially with the movie opening on the same weekend as the anniversary of 9/11. It's so padded even at 96 minutes, I mean there just isn't any story there - they had to invent a conflict with the NTSB and show multiple sequences twice, all for some stiff American-Hero-is-challenged-by-the-govt angle. And seriously fuck off with planes plowing into buildings in Manhattan.

hes a backwards old dude who doesn't care about stuff, why would you have high expectations

Remember when they called that second lord of the rings movie the twin towers as a cash in

Maybe Clint just slapped his name on it. I agree that a
Robert Rodriguez interpretation would be more awesome

I skipped the screening.

Movies don't need to be judged on accuracy. But why would Eastwood go out and say “The investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he had done the wrong thing,” when that is a complete lie? And why would the producer say: “It’s not a documentary. But at the same time it needs to be an authentic view of what Sully and Jeff experienced, and this was what they faced. This was what they went through.” When it's factually, provably not?

Well, at least Sully isn't introduced raping a woman 'til she likes it, so it's definitely one of Eastwood's lesser offences.

"Until I read the script, I didn't know the investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he (Sullenberger) had done the wrong thing. They were kind of railroading him into 'it was his fault,'" Eastwood said in a publicity video for the Warner Bros. film.

Idiot...

Saw this over the weekend, thought it was a pretty solid late Eastwood film. The first crash sequence is strong Fordian "community comes together" stuff, and felt really well put-together to me. The interplay between the strange, blaring media hype and the bland, anonymous spaces (hotels and conference rooms) where the characters were forced to dwell felt interesting to me, ymmv of course.

also, this from earlier in the thread:

The whole water landing sequence is shown TWICE (same shots, takes, everything)

is just not at all true, the first sequence only shows a couple glimpses of the cockpit, while the second one takes place almost entirely inside the cockpit. And though there's a lot of talk of the movie being workmanlike, I think the pacing is fairly strange, because the entirely film is basically the subjective post-trauma experience of Sully.

The NTSB stuff is obviously not accurate, but the NTSB investigators are all basically the externalized surrogates of Sully's own self-doubt. I can appreciate that within the context of the movie while also knowing that it's a crock.

Is there another director in American history with Eastwood's box office at his age? I'm amazed that has streak continues.

His

i doubt it, the only Hollywood equivalents I can even think of are Sidney Lumet and Robert Altman, and they were still younger than Eastwood is now when they made their last films. And of course those films were not box office successes on the level of Eastwood's recent work. Maybe John Huston was close? Most of the incredibly successful classical hollywood directors (hitchcock, hawks, ford) were all in their 70s when they made their last movies.

My review.

oops sorry -- wrong thread

Wrong thread but awesome anyway

lol thanks

Sully is pretty good! Funny despite the attempt at unorthodox structure, the crisis scenes are the highlight.

I wonder if Laura Linney will get any more exclusively-on-the-phone roles.

In the Line of Fire plays really well as a spoof

Aww, I remember it being quite good as an action flick. Maybe I shouldn't ever bother revisiting it?

Just through a different lens

Tightrope is a pretty daring investigation/indictment of the Clint the Cop icon -- also, Genevieve Bujold -- but also has some hokey touches I hadn't remembered from '84.

Any hints on the gauntlet?

Anyone rewatch the original The Beguiled after seeing the remake?

directing himself again

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5911117/Clint-Eastwood-88-paces-set-Mule-returns-acting-six-year-hiatus.html

Who is the oldest actor to get lead billing in a studio movie? My best guess is George Burns in 18 Again!, when he was 92. So Clint is only four years shy.

watched 'the gauntlet' today, not bad tho its a little crazy/excessive how overdone the gunfire scenes are

For the house scene, it was built at a cost of $250,000 and included 7,000 drilled holes that would include explosive squibs for its demolition. To simulate the gunshots from the gauntlet of officers at the end of the film, the bus was blasted with 8,000 squibs.[2]

Dead? No.

xp never previously knew stuff abt his relationship w sondra locke either

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondra_Locke#Personal_life

The Gauntlet represents the only time I've ever contributed anything to a Wikipedia entry--a quip related to the film by AP Mike on The Best Show that I didn't want lost to history--but I see now that it has been removed.

do not withhold quips

Can't seem to pull it up now, not even on archive.org

The story was about Mike and his friends overhearing an older gentleman saying to his wife "I do believe that is the best film I have ever seen" as they let the theatre. If that's not a "Critical response," I don't know what is.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/12/the-mule-review-clint-eastwoods-drug-running-drama-is-a-slow-misfire

Female characters are either shrill shrews or bikini-clad hussies desperate to sleep with an 88-year-old man (Earl manages two threesomes with attractive young women in the film) and an odd, leering montage of asses grinding to music feels like an uncomfortable and unnecessary deviation into soft porn.

lol two threesomes

i watched the 15:17 to paris tonight and... kinda liked it. idk there's something really humanist about the backpacking scenes that caught me.

Not available for screenings so uh

Clint dancin' with them who brung him

He pronounces “pecans” two different ways in the trailer. Is that a thing people do?

nick pinkerton's review

Racist grandpa phase is retroactively ruining the good stuff.

(Earl manages two threesomes with attractive young women in the film)

!? lmao

The Mule does kinda feel like a perfect Pinkerton storm.

no one named Earl has ever had a threesome, c'mon

Earl ‘The Pearl’ Monroe disagrees.

I doubt the Sweatshirt's had one either

You can't say Warren wasn't warnin' y'all.

The Mule features what is perhaps the leakiest, most poorly run cartel in cinema history

Alm0nd calls it Eastwood's best movie ever: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/movie-review-the-mule-clint-eastwood-honest-classic/

well, yeah

It also improved its box office this weekend

A long way to go to match Gran Torino's $148M but I have faith in that section of America.

it was a fairly stupid movie overall. naturally Eastwood's character redeems himself with his family in the end just by being a decent human being for one night, nevermind the fact that he causes his family a shit ton more pain in the end due to his job with the cartel.

also he like disobeys the cartel over and over again and they keep threatening him if he doesn't fall in line but they never do anything about it, also they use the same drivers on the same routes every single run making it criminally easy for law enforcement (who still need a tip from an informant anyway).

also we're to believe he kills two ripped, young cartel people who had him at gunpoint moments earlier. it's off-screen, but....I was lolling imagining how his frail ass could have pulled that off.

nevermind the last part, the internet seems to confirm the judge just made an awkwardly worded comment and wasn't actually saying Earl killed anybody.

Clint's performance in The Mule is near-great.

Try to understand what's actually happening in the film, Nee.

Ok

White Hunter Black Heart is underrated I think. Unusual and interesting film.

White Hunter Black Heart is just a lightly fictionalized compilation of various lurid John Huston legends into a coherent script. The legends are courtesy of Huston and are more to be credited for the interest you see there than anything Eastwood contributed.

You're wrong on that last.

It's based on a novel by Peter Viertel, who was working with JH on African Queen.

Getting back to The Mule, Clint's character is driven out of his horticulture business by the internet and complains loudly about cellphones in a couple scenes, so that softens his character for me... Anyway it's the latest in a series of "mea culpa" protagonists he's played (Unforgiven, MDB, Gran Torino).

It's based on a novel by Peter Viertel

Which was a lightly fictionalized compilation of various lurid John Huston legends. Huston's character was the focal point both of the book and the resulting movie. Had he not been such an interesting character, the novel and movie would not exist.

A movie was based om a book

It's not easy to make a good film given those circumstances! (Don't) see W.C. Fields and Me.

I don't like the 'mea culpa' films he has made, and he never seems to apologize for the really bad stuff. So much awful stuff in his relationship to Sondra Locke, and he makes a film about being too occupied with work, and everyone is falling over themselves to give him praise?

I don't like White Hunter, Black Heart, Africa and Africans just seems like a stage for John Huston to live out his morality play. The really great Eastwood films are Sudden Impact, Pale Rider and A Perfect World, imo. And it annoys me that he has actually made a few great films, would be much easier if he was only a villain. I'd rather be a bit annoyed and have Pale Rider, though.

yeah review via the life, fits you

ppl gen mean 'mea culpa' for some of the earlier work

I've never seen anyone say The Mule is about his earlier work?

It doesn't have to be specifically, but the estrangement from family expands upon a similar trope in Million Dollar Baby, to name one.

Edelstein:

For nearly half a century, his alter-egos did not take emasculation lightly: He’d rasp some variation of, “You don’t listen, do ya’ asshole?” and pull back his fist or pull out his big gun. But the nonagenarian Earl Stone isn’t Harry Callahan or Bill Munny or even the once-militant Walt Kowalski of Gran Torino. Early on, before he understands how easily they could kill him, Earl sasses his Mexican handlers. He says, “Ya vol, mein herr,” with a silly German accent. But when they start to rough him up and hiss cabron in his face, he does nothing, nada. He’s not a fighter. He only wants to sniff flowers. Clint Eastwood has aged into Ferdinand the Bull.

https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/the-mule-is-a-modest-twist-on-the-clint-eastwood-myth.html

kinda want to see Clint do a series of True Detective

he's mighty elderly

Yes, was just thinking he's now moving into the oldest-people-to-have-ever-directed-a-movie zone, if not quite Manoel de Oliveira just yet.

oh i was just thinking in terms of acting in it

I had to look up the last time that Clint had acted in something he didn't direct - turns out to be this, which I'd never even heard of before (don't think it got a UK release):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_with_the_Curve

My guess also is that Clint probably swore to himself long ago to never ever return to TV.

unless he talks to a chair

Eastwood's box office record is startling. I might be wrong, but he's quite along among filmmakers approaching 90 whose movies still make a tidy proit.

*profit

his return to TV for the RNC was a good appearance

in what sense are you using "good"?

yeah, but it's not tv, tho, it's HBO?

Had somehow not seen this playful image of birthday boy Clintus Eastwood until today! pic.twitter.com/gkwdoWFuAN

— 𝖇𝖚𝖒𝖕 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖈𝖐 1776 (@NickPinkerton) May 31, 2019

Doug McClure?

yes it is! wow, "The Virginian" ran for 9 years.

I watched "Coogan's Bluff" a few weeks back. I know I had seen it a couple of times as a kid as it is a classic Eastwood marathon afternoon movie.

Coogan's Bluff has some interesting how things change scenes dealing with the police therapist character that caught my attention. The whole sequence with her starting in the squad room with the perp on to when she goes on a date with Coogan is darkly hilarious to watch with modern eyes as it is so sexist.

well this could be innnnteresting

https://collider.com/richard-jewell-trailer-new-clint-eastwood-movie/

Hmm. Wrongfully accused middle aged white dude vs. the government *and* the lying media. Seems likely to make everyone mad.

Thankful it's not a McVeigh movie

How did Magnum Force get a vote in this poll, but not Sudden Impact?

I wondered why Jewell was trending.

It gets a little sappy near the end, and the big interrogation scene where Jewell pushes back isn't really credible, but I thought this was pretty absorbing for the first hour-plus. I say that as a non-fan--first Eastwood film I've seen since J. Edgar, which was a complete waste. I see Kathy Bates got an AA nomination...as such things go, surprised Rockwell and/or Paul Walter Hauser (Jewell) didn't get one. Liked John Hamm, too, even if (or maybe because, I don't know) he turns into Don Draper now and again, especially when he asserts control right after the bombing.

Certainly could have done without all the Confederate flags, a reminder that this is chair guy, after all.

The level to which Eastwood clearly believes the script's worst tendencies is properly balanced by just how far Hauser goes toward making Jewell a credibly unlikable, suspicious person. This is likely Eastwood's best since Iwo Jima.

Not surprised or even particularly disappointed it went nowhere at the b.o. tho.

Finally watching The Mule, enjoying myself more than anticipated.

Hmm. Keeping us on our toes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRFKdLZ0e8

Macho!
Macho!

*Waits*

I hope the real score is less overbearing than the trailer music.

I hope Clint does a duet on the soundtrack with Yoakam like he did with Merle back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPvfQukNgx8

Parents making me watch Space Cowboys rn. Very silly.

It’s a real “validate the oldies” trip that I imagine was meant to make lots of aging boomers feel better about the advent of their later years.

Macho, what did you do with my Gran Torino this time?

have been watching some of the early films he directed and starred in - Play Misty For Me, High Plains Drifter, The Gauntlet. They had a very 70s macho mindset, but he was hot

Play Misty is hilarious and Jessica Walter just does that performance for the next 40 years (and it rules)

I really liked Richard Jewell

pretty impressive he directed and starred in a movie at age 90 something

Paint Your Wagon must be the most embarrassing Hollywood movie of the 1960s.

I liked The Outlaw Josie Wales

pretty impressive he directed and starred in a movie at age 90 something

― treeship.

American Soldier made $547 million. I mean:

American Sniper grossed $350.1 million in North America and $197 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $547.1 million, against a budget of around $58 million.[4] Calculating in all expenses and revenues, Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film made a profit of $243 million, making it the second-most profitable film of 2014 only behind Paramount's Transformers: Age of Extinction.[37] Worldwide, it is the highest-grossing war film of all time (breaking Saving Private Ryan's record)[38] and Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date.

people like sniping

https://tenor.com/view/stinky-clint-eastwood-coffee-gif-4550317

Breihan's piece on the film in his Popcorn Champs series is worth a read:

https://www.avclub.com/american-sniper-fought-a-culture-war-on-the-box-office-1847138948

(Said film is also the last non-franchise number one of the year in the US; ever since then it's been Star Wars or Marvel or -- per his next entry -- Bad Boys, thanks to last year's, how to put it, abbreviated schedule.)

Indeed. This is otm:

I don’t think American Sniper glamorizes Chris Kyle, but it definitely valorizes him, which isn’t quite the same thing. The movie’s depiction of Iraqis is deeply fucked. The enemy sniper, for instance, gets action-movie gun-preparation scenes, with ominous supervillain music. Another Iraqi figure, a made-up character known as The Butcher (Mido Hamada), uses a power drill to torture a little kid to death in front of his family. When Kyle says, “They’re fucking savages,” the movie seems to agree. That could just be the nature of its subjective approach, but it’s those moments where American Sniper feels most consciously political. Maybe Eastwood is making a point about how war flattens things out and forces people to force each other into clear-cut friend-or-enemy categories. Or maybe Eastwood really is depicting Iraqis as savages. He never makes this stuff easy to figure out.

Eastwood, like John Milius or early Oliver Stone, dresses liberal empathy in right wing drag.

the Cry Macho trailer had my gf and me rofling p hard yesterday when we went to see Pig (which was also very funny—some parts intentionally, some almost certainly not)

anybody have any strong opinions whether A Perfect World holds up? I think I liked it at the time but haven’t seen or even really thought about it since its late 90s frequency (iirc?) on basic cable

I saw it again a couple years ago. Poky in places. The interplay with Laura Dern's a bit tired in its Eastwoodisms (In the Line of Fire, by contrast, remains fresh).

Watched Unforgiven for 1st time this weekend. Hackman was great, Eastwood was just sorta…there. I'd heard his performance was well-regarded but don't know why. And I kept expecting his character arc to be something other than the very predictable one it wound up taking. It's more than 2 hours long but not much happens. A decent western overall but not one of my favorites.

The Richard Harris section is dead. And loooooong.

I'd heard his performance was well-regarded

probably a halo effect from his also being the director and the film being a critical success. I thought the production design was the star of that movie and the script was pretty poor stuff.

xpost It's not terribly necessary, but I didn't mind it that much on recent rewatch, and it's an important way to underscore the different degrees of ruthlessness the movie depicts.

Clint himself has gotten lots of mileage out of depicting himself as vulnerable, or incapacitated, from the spaghetti westerns on up. Unforgiven was one of a few more obvious apotheosises (is this a word?) of this.

Yes. I liked his performance as well, but kept waiting for a payoff or twist that never came. Meanwhile the transformation of Schofield Kid (also very predictable) occurs in like one shot of his face and one line.
It's pretty fucked up that the only westerns to win best picture are Cimarron, Dances With Wolves, and Unforgiven.

Xp to Alfred

I also found it deeply weird that neither Eastwood nor writer David Webb Peoples once mentioned Ned's race aloud, nor was it commented on when the sheriff and his people lynched him.

xps some also count No Country among the westerns that won BP but I'd beg to differ

and fwiw the Academy doesn't have a much better track record when it comes to nominating the best westerns either...

In Old Arizona (1929)
Viva Villa! (1934)
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Stagecoach (1939)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
High Noon (1952)
Shane (1953)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
The Alamo (1960)
How the West Was Won (1963)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
True Grit (2010)
Django Unchained (2012)
The Revenant (2016)

Solid stretch:

Stagecoach (1939)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Ox-Bow Incident was the last movie to be nominated for best picture and nothing else, I believe.

That's the one of those 3 I haven't seen. Should I?

Yes. A clumsily powerful anti-lynching picture. Dana Andrews and Jane Darnell like you'd never seen them or would again.

Generally well regarded, then and now:

https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/film/the-ox-bow-incident/

A Western set in Nevada in 1885 that is also an attempt at a poetic tragedy about mob violence. Two cowboys (Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan) ride into a small, lonely cattle town and become involved in the hysteria of a lynch mob. Three innocent men (Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, and Francis Ford) are hanged, while we see not only their fear and despair, but the varied motives of the members of the posse who take justice into their own hands. It's easy to be put off by the studio sets and lighting and by the 40s approach to a "serious" subject, but the director, William Wellman, has made the characters so vivid that after many years people may still recall Frank Conroy as the sadistic Southern major, and the rapid changes of expression of William Eythe, as his son. With Harry Davenport as Mr. Davies, Leigh Whipper as Sparks, and Jane Darwell as the cackling, lewd old woman who enjoys the excitement--a much better performance than her Ma Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. From the very fine novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark--it has ambiguities that Lamar Trotti's script couldn't encompass; reading the book expands the movie.

SPOILERS above, technically.

god, I forgot Anthony Quinn was in it.

Good cast! Thanks y'all, putting it on my list.

I just started to watch "Unforgiven" and thought it was the worst movie in the world

as an actor his "just sorta...there" persona has been his essence

Firefox wasn't very good

Or late '90s/early'00s dreck like True Crime and Blood Work.

xpost there was a movie about a web browser?

You're right Dan, which is why the "mysterious stranger" character is his best. Once you try fleshing it out or just giving him more dialogue, it falls apart.

I thought Firefox ruled when it came out, but haven't seen it since

I didn't see it until now, wonder what I would have thought of it then

Iirc I definitely slotted it as a kid along with the other military assault aircraft projects, like Blue Thunder and Airwolf.

The film was shot on a $21 million budget, the largest production budget ever for Malpaso.[2] Of that amount, over $20 million was spent on special effects.[3]

Firefox did rule if, like me, you were 12 or so and watched it a lot on HBO. Very much proto-Tom Clancy, or at least the novel it was based on was (was a sequel too, IIRC)

anybody have any strong opinions whether A Perfect World holds up?

I've been watching some of his more recent movies lately, and A Perfect World might have been the best of them. The ending is way drawn out and some of the scenes with the man himself and Laura Dern and Bradley Whitford are superfluous, but pretty much every scene between Costner and the kid is great

I also really liked Changeling. Mystic River was ok, Gran Torino pretty bad. No desire to see American Sniper

'Must think in Russian...Russian...Russian...Russian'

"Heartbreak Ridge" was another 80s 'boy we Americans got a spoilin' for war and get that big L in Vietnam off the books' setup. It's also the beginning of many roles for Clint as the old haggard hard ass.

Like Firefox, I have not seen either one since I was a teenager but I liked them both back then.

Heartbreak Ridge was ... Grenada? Iirc it was one of those more "prestige" riffs on "Rambo," along with "Uncommon Valor" a few years earlier. Man, Ted Kotcheff (90! Still alive!) had a weird career.

It's funny to think of "A Perfect World" as one of his more recent films. Almost 30 years ago! He's had an impressive run, or really, more accurately, several of them.

I mean, for him it is recent but it probably reflects on my age too. I referred to Bruno Mars as a "newer" artist in my class one time a few years ago and my students all laughed at me

Hah, yeah, I think my point was that as far as Clint is concerned, "A Perfect World" was at one point a late career peak, but now it's more like a mid-career peak and the beginning of another imperial phase. Unforgiven, A Perfect World, In the Line of Fire, Madison County (take a breath for a couple of years), Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, the WW2 films, etc. He's been totally hit or miss for many years, but that's largely because he keeps cranking them out. Around 20 films in the last 20 years, half of which he stars in *and* directs!

Actually, ITLOF aside, he only stars in movies he directs.

Yeah, but not every movie he directs. Just about half, I think.

oh I meant after Unforgiven, sorry. I remember an interview then where he made it clear it was his future.

You mean if he acts he only acts in movies he directs, you mean?

He only has threesomes in movies he directs.

by "Eastwood" Eric of course means "Scott."

Whoa Clint's a big fan of Christopher Guest movies and The Hangover pic.twitter.com/224ixkQjMz

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) September 8, 2021

White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) was not as great as some of his earlier films like The Outlaw Josie Wales or High Plains Drifter, but it was a pretty good pre-Unforgiven film.

I kind of enjoyed the incessant gay panic humor from the super-straight military guys in Heartbreak Ridge (1986)

Pale Rider (1985) was another great one

I’ve been using my netflix dvd subscription to watch various directors’ films in order, to get a sense of the progression of their style and aesthetic


Eastwood has directed an amazing number of films! Unforgiven (1992) was a pinnacle obviously.

For the most part, I would have been fine with him stopping there.

One of his films that was not on my radar was A Perfect World. I don’t remember reading or hearing about it when it was released in 1993

thought it was a good film about the cinematic past, how law enforcement was irrelevant, how a boy was treated at the hands of a killer

I haven't seen it since it was in theatres. Given how its reputation has grown in recent years, I should probably give it a fresh look; I remember liking it just fine, though I did snicker along with the rest of the sparse matinee crowd at Costner complimenting the boy's penis.

I think I was going and seeing about 4 films a week when Perfect World came out. Most of the new ones in Dublin . Both mainstream and what was showing at the IFC.
So caught that and think I have the end scene in my head. Or definitely one major still.

Think he's been quite good as a director.

Shame about the politics. I just heard he had an immediate reaction to the speech made by Marlon Brandos guest at the Oscars. Cropped up in the Behind The Bastards on John Wayne. I guess he's likely to support the cowboys but did seem a little cynical.
& him funding searches for still captive Vietnam soldiers which I think was fruitless.

Feel like a lot of the talk about him as a director - "in the Hawks school", "the last classicist" - is trying to get a positive spin on him just not making many interesting choices.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sW-PoPy6TAo/TWXFr0f-9lI/AAAAAAAAC5s/4ScDuUZz-gA/s1600/Any+Which+Way+But+Loose+%252763+Chevy-01.jpg

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhkkBFhW-MM

^^New directorial effort Juror #2 trailer

I’m a little surprised no one here was talking about juror #2. I guess I am part of the problem considering I just watched it for the first time now

I thought it was fantastic. aside from the indelicate racial politics in the jury room, I thought it was a really piercing study of morality and the nature of redemption, and, with the caveat that I’ve never served on one, likely a very realistic depiction of the grasp an average jury has of their instructions, which is horrifying obviously.

really powerful final scene!

Not your fault, because there's no way around it, but another one of those figures still worthy enough to warrant a thread bump but also old enough to make your heart skip a beat when you see it bumped.

His best since Sully, though some of the dialogue is straight outta Matlock. I wonder whether Eastwood’s TV-indebted blocking eulogizes an extinct era of competence or shows a reluctance to further murk the script.

He seems like a director who often embraces the "good enough" efficiency model of filmmaking, which indeed does owe a debt to television.

Straight outta Matlock, crazy motherfucker called Eastwood

Might be time for a re-poll. Dude was old when this thread started, but he's made dozens of films (well, at least 1.1 dozen) since, some of which might well make a run at the spaghetti westerns.

I would have voted for “White Hunter Black Heart”

A poll of films he's directed might be interesting. Or just post-Unforgiven films.

He was my favorite movie star when I was a kid -- I've seen pretty much everything up to the 90s but nothing since. I have no idea if any of his later films are at all worthwhile. He still often makes some box-office at least.

Worth watching: A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, American Sniper, Sully, Juror #2. I don't defend each item; Mystic River and American Sniper have developments and overtones that at times make me ill. But I can't think of another Hollywood director this century who'd try.

"Mystic River and American Sniper have developments and overtones that at times make me ill"

this times a thousand for American Sniper, which to me is indefensible garbage

What's defensible: Bradley Cooper, on the hunt for a subtler movie; his best work imo.

I'm kind of indifferent to him nowadays but when Lalo Schifrin died I watched some Dirty Harry clips which got me remembering some of the good stuff he'd done. Also talk of Escape from Alcatraz in the news, lol.

Also thanks Alfred that's a useful response.

i think mystic river is a good deal better than described there tbh

gran torino makes the list, but has a lot more asterisks against it- its a throwback to a classic 80s clint performance/movie archetype and so jarring in the ways in which aspects of that just cannot work now, and worth acknowledging that some of it nevertheless does work just as well as ever.

^^ exactly my response re Mystic River.

He also likes to cast non-professional actors and goes for a certain “naturalism” in terms of directing actors… which I think might have a tendency to result in work that is maybe unintentionally reflexive of other media? Like if the actors’ performances come out of their familiarity with related genres (e.g. Matlock in re Juror #2), then he just goes with that rather than be more authoritarian?

morgan freeman has some good video clips out there about how clint treats actors like horses (what it turns out to mean is rather more than clint directs his projects as if horses were on set which is either a post hoc rationalisation of his approach or fairly sensible depending on whether you prefer to print the legend or not,)

idk you gotta be gentle with horses

Tom Hanks talking about that.

Watched "Juror #2" on a plane not so long ago. The "dialogue is straight outta Matlock" thing is true (well I guess, I don't think I've ever actually watched a full episode of Matlock), it looks and feels very much like a TV movie, in that none of the characters feel even remotely like real people, but this weirdly makes the movie better I think? The whole movie just seems so efficient and straight to the point. I highly recommend it.

also watched on a plane!

I'd never seen "High Plains Drifter" before, but really liked it. It's a weird little movie, basically a parable that also works as a sly subversion.

I remember seeing it as part of a series of Clint Eastwood westerns on television, sandwiched between The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider. They were the slices of bread and Drifter was the filling. What kind of filling? Salami and Vegemite, microwaved for a few seconds. God, I love salt. Wales is more quotable. Rider is better-looking but I barely remember anything about it, although it feels like a different take on the same idea.

Drifter on the other hand is much more vivid. Although I was left wondering how audiences in the 1970s reacted to the sexual assault scene early in the film. It feels completely out of place in the film and also in Eastwood's filmography - as if he was trying to show that the character is a hard-ass, but he took it much too far. If it was supposed to make him come across as an arse the rest of the film undermines this by making him the star. It doesn't even fit into the "punishing the town" theme because it happens in private and the victim didn't appear to be part of the conspiracy against him.

I remember when the Star Wars prequels came out, if George Lucas was thinking of Drifter when he tried to tell the tale of how a little boy turned into Darth Vader. If he had modelled his storyline on that film the results would have been much better.

There are some takes that Pale Rider is a sequel to High Plains Drifter in the slight supernatural take on the stranger.

It's bizarre to find out that the scriptwriter of High Plains Drifter was inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. I'd have to watch the film again to see what the connection is.

I'm sure there is an Italian western with the same premise of High Plains Drifter that predates it, but I can't think of which one it is right now.

I think this is the connection (from wiki):

Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that thirty-seven witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid...The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome," a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in the presence of other people.

Anyway, the premise of "High Plains Drifter" is kind of ingenious. And it was neat to see Anthony James pop up. I mostly recognize him from a "Naked Gun" movie, but Clint drew him out of retirement and cast him in "Unforgiven" decades after this movie. Also, some fun trivia: "It is notable that Anthony James's first and last major film appearances were each in Academy Award-winning films for Best Picture."

There are some takes that Pale Rider is a sequel to High Plains Drifter in the slight supernatural take on the stranger.

Pale Rider felt creaky to me the one time I saw it (admittedly, on commercial TV) but this kinda makes me want to revisit it. And yeah, HPD rocks.

Pale Rider has some great location footage, nb this is going to be a huge image because I can't use Imgur:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjYzNWEyODEtNzMzMy00Y2VjLTk3YzAtZmExNDE0YzljZjY3XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews40/pale%20rider/large/large%20pale%20rider%20blu-ray12.jpg

It also has really subdued lighting - seemingly no lighting at all - which must have looked weird in the 1980s but feels refreshingly modern. In comparison Heaven's Gate looks nice but the use of fog filters and ND filters dates it to the 1970s.

There weren't very many mainstream Hollywood Westerns in the 1980s. Silverado, Young Guns, and that was about it until Dances with Wolves came along. It was one of those dead genres, like the sung-through musical or the World War Two film. It's just a shame that Pale Rider wasn't a better film.

I didn't dig Pale Rider the last time I saw it. Felt ... dull?

watched pale rider last night, was blindsided by just how good it looks (had not seen this thread until now). kind of the default clint eastwood western besides that but man the production design and landscape photography carries it. definitely adding it to my 'good movies to zone out to' list