The above program's still provisional. Date, timing and venue have not yet been finalised. Core members (those who've taken on the responsibility of regular attendance, and you know who you are...) are requested to take part in taking further decisions.
Clint EASTWOOD – PALE RIDER
Post-Sergio Leone, Eastwood made four great revisionist-westerns, starting with The Outlaw Josey Wales and peaking off with Unforgiven, with High Plains Drifter and this film here tucked in between. Pale Rider is morally and stylistically far more traditional than the rest, perhaps because it’s a remake of the sentimental 1953 hit Shane. But to that, Eastwood adds the baggage of his mythological status, back from his Leone-days, as “The Man with No Name” (this time as The Preacher, bringing an additional layer of biblical allegories not there in the original).
NOTE: Unforgiven is on HBO this month, as a part of their OSCAR SPEACIALS package.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Review Selections:
1. Roger Ebert
2. Peter Reiher
3. Heumann and Murray
George Roy HILL – BUTCH CASSIDY and THE SUNDANCE KID
If Robert Redford starts off as Sundance in the traditional guise of a lightning-quick sharp-shooter, his pal Paul Newman has this almost hippy feel to his Butch. In the company of the young schoolteacher whose bed the two friends share, their exploits start with the 60s free-love-it’s-a-free-world feel, but end up with a miraculously nagging posse of lawmen at their tail, which turns the climax into an existential nightmare. With a decidedly 60s folk-pop soundtrack, and brilliant cinematography to boot, it’s an entertaining joyride that ends up with a premonition of the lost-70s. Trivia: The final shot of this film was last copied in recent memory, and quite effectively, in Rang De Basanti.
Wikipedia
IMDB
The Real Butch
Review Selections:
1. Christopher Null
2. James Berardinelli
3. Eric Enders
Jim JARMUSCH – DEAD MAN
Johnny Depp plays William Blake, an unheroic northerner who ends up in a Southern hicktown having been promised a job by a mining company that runs the town under the quasi-feudal leadership of its owner. Not only is he refused the job, Depp also ends up by mistake with a bullet in his chest and two dead bodies to his count. He’s saved by a lonely Indian with a history of being a circus exhibit and a school-student in England, who revives him and sees in him a reincarnation of Blake the poet. Depp is forced to live up to his mythological status, speaking with bullets what Blake Sr. did through words, as he’s chased by three mercenaries on the payroll of the company. The tagline runs: “It’s dangerous to travel with a dead man.” Who’s dead?
Wikipedia
IMDB
About Neil Young's Score
Review Selections:
1. Gino Moliterno at Senses of Cinema
2. Greil Marcus at Salon
3. Leo Goldsmith
Clint EASTWOOD – PALE RIDER
Post-Sergio Leone, Eastwood made four great revisionist-westerns, starting with The Outlaw Josey Wales and peaking off with Unforgiven, with High Plains Drifter and this film here tucked in between. Pale Rider is morally and stylistically far more traditional than the rest, perhaps because it’s a remake of the sentimental 1953 hit Shane. But to that, Eastwood adds the baggage of his mythological status, back from his Leone-days, as “The Man with No Name” (this time as The Preacher, bringing an additional layer of biblical allegories not there in the original).
NOTE: Unforgiven is on HBO this month, as a part of their OSCAR SPEACIALS package.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Review Selections:
1. Roger Ebert
2. Peter Reiher
3. Heumann and Murray
George Roy HILL – BUTCH CASSIDY and THE SUNDANCE KID
If Robert Redford starts off as Sundance in the traditional guise of a lightning-quick sharp-shooter, his pal Paul Newman has this almost hippy feel to his Butch. In the company of the young schoolteacher whose bed the two friends share, their exploits start with the 60s free-love-it’s-a-free-world feel, but end up with a miraculously nagging posse of lawmen at their tail, which turns the climax into an existential nightmare. With a decidedly 60s folk-pop soundtrack, and brilliant cinematography to boot, it’s an entertaining joyride that ends up with a premonition of the lost-70s. Trivia: The final shot of this film was last copied in recent memory, and quite effectively, in Rang De Basanti.
Wikipedia
IMDB
The Real Butch
Review Selections:
1. Christopher Null
2. James Berardinelli
3. Eric Enders
Jim JARMUSCH – DEAD MAN
Johnny Depp plays William Blake, an unheroic northerner who ends up in a Southern hicktown having been promised a job by a mining company that runs the town under the quasi-feudal leadership of its owner. Not only is he refused the job, Depp also ends up by mistake with a bullet in his chest and two dead bodies to his count. He’s saved by a lonely Indian with a history of being a circus exhibit and a school-student in England, who revives him and sees in him a reincarnation of Blake the poet. Depp is forced to live up to his mythological status, speaking with bullets what Blake Sr. did through words, as he’s chased by three mercenaries on the payroll of the company. The tagline runs: “It’s dangerous to travel with a dead man.” Who’s dead?
Wikipedia
IMDB
About Neil Young's Score
Review Selections:
1. Gino Moliterno at Senses of Cinema
2. Greil Marcus at Salon
3. Leo Goldsmith
4. Dan Jardine
5. Emanuel LevyRobert ALTMAN – McCABE & MRS. MILLER
With typically Altmanesque multiple speech tracks and overlapping dialogues, the hypnotic dirges of Leonard Cohen in the background, the washed-out and painting-like palette of overexposed pastels by Vilmos Zsigmond, and the rugged rocks and vast vistas of the mythical West replaced by a shabbily growing mining town on the bleak, soggy slopes of the northwestern frontier -- this film looks, talks or sounds nothing like a Western. Yet, with all the type figures of the mythical west – the small-time hustler-cum-saloon-owner, the whore-with-the-correct-intentions, the big-bad-mining-company eating up the small entrepreneurs, and three mercenaries, a giant, a half-breed and a kid - the formulaic plot was what Altman wanted, so it left his audience time enough to notice the games he plays with this traditional material. Shot in sequence in a town actually built by the crew in Vancouver with the help of young Americans fleeing the Vietnam conscriptions, this is possibly the greatest iconoclastic Western of all time.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Original Script
Review Selections:
1. Roger Ebert - original review
2. Roger Ebert - great movies
3. Ed Gonzalez at Slant
4. Charles Taylor at Salon
5. Adrian Danks at Senses of Cinema
6. Weepingsam at The Listening Ear
7. John Puccio
8. Mike Ruderman
9. Christopher Moyer
10.Jared Sapolin
11. Sapolin Post-script
12.Robert Hayward at Kinocite
13.J.T.Ramsay at Stylus
14.Mark Asch
15.M.I.Kim at TheJujube
Next month’s genre: FILM-NOIR
With typically Altmanesque multiple speech tracks and overlapping dialogues, the hypnotic dirges of Leonard Cohen in the background, the washed-out and painting-like palette of overexposed pastels by Vilmos Zsigmond, and the rugged rocks and vast vistas of the mythical West replaced by a shabbily growing mining town on the bleak, soggy slopes of the northwestern frontier -- this film looks, talks or sounds nothing like a Western. Yet, with all the type figures of the mythical west – the small-time hustler-cum-saloon-owner, the whore-with-the-correct-intentions, the big-bad-mining-company eating up the small entrepreneurs, and three mercenaries, a giant, a half-breed and a kid - the formulaic plot was what Altman wanted, so it left his audience time enough to notice the games he plays with this traditional material. Shot in sequence in a town actually built by the crew in Vancouver with the help of young Americans fleeing the Vietnam conscriptions, this is possibly the greatest iconoclastic Western of all time.
Wikipedia
IMDB
Original Script
Review Selections:
1. Roger Ebert - original review
2. Roger Ebert - great movies
3. Ed Gonzalez at Slant
4. Charles Taylor at Salon
5. Adrian Danks at Senses of Cinema
6. Weepingsam at The Listening Ear
7. John Puccio
8. Mike Ruderman
9. Christopher Moyer
10.Jared Sapolin
11. Sapolin Post-script
12.Robert Hayward at Kinocite
13.J.T.Ramsay at Stylus
14.Mark Asch
15.M.I.Kim at TheJujube
Next month’s genre: FILM-NOIR
21 comments:
1. can anyone watch? and what/how is membership, anyway?
2. where are these to be screened? and when?
Possibly this Thursday at the AV room, since thats the day Prof. Lal doesn't have his music class.
Anyone can walk in. But we're looking for core members who'll take it upon themselves to be present at each and every screening, so as to ensure a minimum level of attendance. that's the basic problem why our previous JUDE film clubs have fizzled out twice over the last three yrs. It'd be nice to see that tradition broken.
hopefully, you're on?
:)
soumik, if it's thursday, i doubt that i can attend. i know i'm supposed to be a core member, but i also happen to have editpub. but maybe if u guys finish the screening before 6...
basicaly, lemme know the time, ok?
Let's have a word with Tintin Da as soon as possible and get the schedule fixed and finalized, coz if You are planning to screen a Film this Thursday, then I guess You should let Others know about it atleast by Tomorrow.
yeah, thursday is Prof Lal'soff-day, so we can screen the movie from 3:45 onwards, so it shud be over by 6. anyway, tintinda's told me taht most probab.y editpub's gonna be upstairs.
thanks for the info. will definitely try to make it. but u know it's dicey. i will keep checking here, though, so i can keep in the know:)
accha... soumik, jijo whoever... eta kobe theke shuru korchis tora? and how the hell am i supposed to join this blog? send me the link one of u...
Surojoy, jijo is antoreep.
Thursday screening is not aprob as far as timings go, but we have jus tomorrow to publicise, and pg1 has 2 exams on friday and monday. will there be ppl? do you think the first screening shud be well-attended, and we shud push it back to next week? then we can also publicise it better...
waiting for more thoughts from others...
I think the screening oughtta be pushed back to next week, primarily because of the Pig 1 exam, and the lack of publicity.
Uh, so since Soumik was monetarily challenged and could not attend today, are we still seeing Pale Ride next week? Or is it Butch Casidy then?
Soumik used his 2 bucks to coax a bus ride out of a perplexed ocnductor n made it to coll. so it shall be butch cassidy next week :)
Are suggestions allowed?
Also, by 'anyone can walk in' - would that be 'anyone that is a JU student' or 'anyone'?
anyone. not jus students. unless u have been banned from the campus that is :D
suggestions welcome.
Not been banned quite yet, no :D
And it's just that I thought no series of revisionist westerns would be complete without The Proposition (2005 d. John Hillcoat). One of my favourite movies of that year and most definitely one of the best westerns I've ever seen.
Also, surely there should be some Peckinpah? The Wild Bunch springs to mind as THE revisionist western.
I guess you guys don't really have enough timeslots, though :(
u cant have a definitive collection of revisionist westerns in five slots, like you said. whether wild bunch is all that great can also be open to debate, tho it is definitely influential. but then, i dont see peckinpah replacing altman or jarmusch.
aa for the proposition, i'd also have liked to screen the claim, but then its not bout personal favourites. i think we shall alott the fifth slot to blazing saddles as the definitive western spoof. but then, thanks for the suggestions. keep dropping by.
Fair enough. Still, I think the debate over whether or not THe Wild Bunch is a great movie would be an interesting one. I'd certain fall in the pro-Peckinpah camp. I'd still say that just owing to its significance, it should probably surpass Blazing Saddles on the list but you're the boss.
The Claim is rather good, isnt it? Didn't think it was as good as The Proposition but still.
Will definitely drop by once in a while.
no. i wouldnt say blazing saddles is a better movie than the wild bunch. definitely not in my book at least. but its a different kind of movie from the rest, i cant think of any other good western spoof. the wild bunch, on the other hand, is not that remarkable, except for the violence and the existential angst which has become a common trope in revisionist westerns since.
and anyway, i'm not the boss :) decisions are taken by all those members who regularly attend screenings, help out with the organisational stuff, n keep the thing alive.
p.s. : what we have tried to do here is to focus not on typically revisionist stuff, which is why i'd ignored peckinpah altogether. the more interestin peckinpah entry here could have been Junior Bonner with Steve McQueen as the slipping rodeo-star, or even McQueen's own pet project as Tom Horn the legal gunslinger hired and then killed by his own employer ranchers in a rapidly changing American South gradually leaving behind its wild days and accepting the laws of the North. but then neither of them are as great cinematically as the wild bunch.
the focus has been on counter-generic revisions, like the biblical baggage in pale rider, the hippy feel to newman's butch, and of course jarmusch and altman - the two great american auteurs - to top the bill.
I see what you're going for. That does narrow down the list. Until you mentioned those specific aims I was thinking about how agonizing the decision mustve been to eliminate The Dollars Trilogy, Peckinpah movies, The Professionals et al. If only everyone had the time to watch movies every day one could toss in stuff like From Dusk Till Dawn, Tombstone or even The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in there!
Ah well. Too little time, too many movies.
yeah i know. i wish we had interested ppl enuff to have four month long focus periods on genres, but then thats daydreaming. so one has to cut down n be brutal to ones likes n dislikes at times. ah well.
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