Recent Viewings of my own.

[daveblackeye15]

The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Re-watched this one and liked it more than the first time. I appreciate the scenary and paid closer attention to it. What can I say? I haven't watched many westerns and I consider this to be one of the best, as do many others. Tuco more or less steals the show but Blondie makes up for it by being a badass, and Angle Eyes makes up for it by being totally cruel. My favorite scenes were:  Blondie giving the dying soldier a few puffs of his cigar, the final stand off, and the music playing during Tuco's beating. I wish Angle Eyes got a little bit more screen time, and he does in a scene cut from the American version.

5/5

Back to the Future. For years I've watched Part II without seeing I and III. I finally got around to part I and I enjoyed it a lot. It's cool seeing all of these "Marty" things first appearing in this. Though I was surprised that his "Chicken" weakness that appeared in part II wasn't in this. A really fun movie from the eighties.

4.5/5

(oh yeah and Marty's mom was quite a looker back in her days, yowza!)

[peter johnson]

Wait until you've seen Good/Bad/Ugly for the 15th or 17th time -- It starts to become like Grand Opera -- you start to notice tiny bits of detail & they get larger, like the missing section in the stretcher they use to carry the dynamite to below the bridge & the strangely configured cannon with the sloping wood "armor" on the back of the train --
Just an amazingly strange picture in every respect --
Be sure to also check out Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, as they add to the whole ouvre of Good/Bad/Ugly --
AH YAH YAH AYA YAH!!! . . . waa waa waaaah . . . .
peter johnson/cenny drane

[daveblackeye15]

I noticed the 'armor' cannon on the train.

And I have rented Fistful of Dollars just today.

[Neville]

daveblackeye15 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I noticed the 'armor' cannon on the train.
>
> And I have rented Fistful of Dollars just today.

Then you're welcome to pay your respects to that movie in its own topic. TGBY is my favourite in the "Dollar" trilogy, I love how Leone uses such a grandiose style to essentially tell the story of three crooks in the Old West, and how round the three main characters are when you reach the end. The more I see it the more I appreciate Eli Wallach's Tucco. His manierisms are unique, whatever he does, and gotta love how the words rush out of his mouth. My favourite Tucco bit is when he starts caring about Blondie in those Hospital scenes, or when he takes a bath.

[Yaddo 42]

I love the little scene while Tuco is tormenting Blondie in the desert. Backlit by the sun cresting the berm he throws him a water bottle as Blondie lies sprawled across the bottom of the screen, the bottle rolls across the other side of the screen. Near perfect use of the widescreen frame with visual details and empty space.

Also always get a kick out of Tuco assembling his gun, testing it, and then robbing the gun shop. Unlikely but like everything else in the film it all works as part of the greater epic scope of the story.

Plus the way Leone tells so much story at his own pace with so little dialogue. I once told a guy who complained about the "lousy" sound of these films that they were closer to silent films than to the surround sound eopics he liked so much. They worked on their own terms and didn't need "great sound". The music and and sound effects (the gunshots resonate more in Leone films because they jump out of the calm and silences) tell as much of the story as any dialogue. It seemed pointless to point out that the sound and dialogue were usually dubbed in later due the the way European films like Leone's filmed at the time.

[Shadowphile]

I've been told that High Plains Drifter is a fourth movie in the 'Man With No Name' story, despite the fact that it is not part of the Leone 'trilogy'....

[Yaddo 42]

Never heard that before, have a hard time seeing it that way. HPD is more of a ghost story rather than another chapter in the Blondie/Eastwood character's story, plus some say it is a total rip off of a genuine spaghetti western whose name escapes me at the moment. I'ver read that "Once Upon a Time in the West" was supposed to be a fourth "Man with No Name" film early on before Eastwood parted ways with Leone, but I've also read that once Bronson was cast, Leone wanted Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef to play the three killers waiting for him at the train station rather than Woody Strode, Jack Elam, and....the other guy. May be just an untrue tale now part of a part of film legend, but it would have made a hell of an inside joke if it had happened.

For you Tuco fans seek out some of Eli Wallach's other spaghetti westerns like "Ace High (only a so-so film) or Long Live Your Death (underrated IMO), he's in full Tuco mode in both of those.

[Scott]

yea, ACE HIGH isn't that good, but Eli Wallach must be sought out at all cost.

[peter johnson]

Tuco only "cares" about Blondie at that point because he thinks Blondie has a better line on the hidden gold than he does, but Wallach still shows compassion --
Wallach was one of the foremost practitioners of the Strasberg Method, along with Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.  He apparently didn't bathe or brush his teeth when on set, so I'm sure the bath sequence was welcomed by his fellow cast and crew!!
Yeah, I love both those scenes too . . . If people have never seen the whole film, I usually show them the gun-buying scene as introductory to the tone of the whole picture.
In the other ones, my favorite has to be Eastwood striking a match on the FACE OF KLAUS KINSKI!!   Now, how many other films can say that?
I can see High Plains Drifter as being an extention of The Man With No Name -- The Man With No Life!
peter johnson/denny crane