TheSearchers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you're like me, then you have no shortage of classic films to catch up on, and if you're like me, you can't exactly fork the dough over for every special edition issued for said films (and if you're like me, then you abuse parallel sentence structure like nobody's business). Thankfully, Turner Classic Movies and Warner Bros. have teamed up to offer a good fifteen discs with four movies on each of them for about twenty to twenty-five bucks apiece.

Casablanca, Gigi, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Philadelphia Story, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Searchers, Singin' in the Rain, The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, The Maltese Falcon and much more -- not too shabby, huh? And here I used to think that Warner Home Video was handiest for Stallone-themed packs (because some of us haven't seen Over the Top, okay?).

Between this and their recent initiative to provide custom-burned copies of archival titles, Warners seems to be doing the most of any studio to preserve their library and make it widely available. For about $20, you could get a movie that few people have, or four movies that you ought to own anyway -- or you could just get several copies of Demolition Man. Priorities, people.

Summertime seems to be movie list-making time in just about every publication. I imagine it's because once you slap Chris Pine or Christian Bale onto a summer magazine cover, you're stuck waiting for the fall buzz to kick up ... or anxious film writers out there are hoping to remind audiences that they can ease the pain of mindless blockbusters with meat-and-potato classics. Either way, we get a lot of lists.

Esquire has a particularly interesting one up, though. They've compiled a collection of 75 movies they feel every man should see in his lifetime, and go so far as to suggest they've all shaped American manhood in some fashion. Some of the choices are obvious classics: In the Heat of the Night, 12 Angry Men, Chinatown, The Godfather, North by Northwest, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The French Connection. Some are a little more on the forgotten side, like Fitzcarraldo and Run Silent, Run Deep.

But some of the choices are a little questionable. Iron Man? Three Kings? Runaway Train? Lone Star? Enjoyable sure, but are they must watch classics? Did Lone Star really shape modern manhood? I'm pretty sure Iron Man didn't considering it came out oh, exactly one year ago. Surely Easy Rider or Death Wish should have two of those spots. Doesn't John McClane deserve a rank above Johnny Dangerously? No Goodfellas? Why only one John Wayne (The Searchers) and no Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck?

Check out the list and ponder whether you think watching all 75 of these makes (or has made) a true man, as Esquire's version has me a little worried. Then come back and tell us what films you think are more essential than these.

*And no, clearly no one thinks there's an essential list for women. We may have to put that one together here on Cinematical.

There are a few classic films that I simply refused to rent while growing up, specifically for the reason that I knew I should see them for the first time on a big screen. Of these, I managed to see both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner in a theater, while others, such as Lawrence of Arabia and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, were on television too often to ignore them on the small screen first. One film that I'm still dying to see in a theater is Terrence Malick's Badlands. A few years ago I actually went to a special screening of the film in Connecticut, but it was disappointingly (understatement) projected from a DVD copy. Then two months ago it played one show at NYC's IFC Center, but I had to miss it for another engagement.

Last week Entertainment Weekly presented an article/photo gallery titled "23 Movies You'd Like to See on the Big Screen," which lists these kinds of films (there's actually many more than 23 cited), most of which should ONLY be seen on the big screen, as they were originally meant to be. The list includes obvious epic choices like 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments, as well as other classics, like Malick's Days of Heaven, Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West, Star Wars, High Society, Halloween, Singin' in the Rain, To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Searchers, Stagecoach and The French Connection.

Today we salute the military veterans who have either served in wartime or in peace. I think technically Veteran's Day specifically honors war veterans, but I don't see why the non-combat military personnel needs to be excluded. Still, in the movies, it's the war vets that are most memorable, and on this holiday, I'd like to present my list of seven favorites.

Obviously this list isn't comprehensive -- in fact, I don't feature any examples of the now-stereotypical Vietnam vet character, which would include Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July or Gary Senise in Forrest Gump. This is just a list of characters, positive and negative, that I prefer and which I think somewhat represents the wide and diverse scope of war vets.


"Homer Parrish" from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

About fifty years before Robert Zemeckis was digitally removing Gary Senise's legs to make him the disabled vet Lt. Dan of Forrest Gump, William Wyler directed a real amputee veteran named Harold Russell as the handicapped character Homer Parrish in this movie about the difficulty of coming home following World War II. Russell actually won an Oscar for his performance as Parrish, a former high school quarterback who returns to his childhood sweetheart, with whom he's engaged and for whom he no longer feels good enough. The actor/character has hooks for hands and appears in some sappy, obligatory scenes where he has trouble with them, but he ends up a guy that is beloved more than pitied, and it's almost easy to forget he has the handicap, especially after hearing him play piano with the false limbs.

Reviews for 3:10 to Yuma offer a lot of talk about the revivification of a dead genre. Stephen Hunter, the Washington Post critic (whose novel turned movie Shooter shows he knows a little about guns) comments that the success of the Russell Crowe/Christian Bale western will mean "there will be more westerns, and we old goats can die happy, with our boots on, our guns holstered, and the sun at our back, humming Ricky Nelson's 'My Rifle, My Pony and Me' as we go to Jesus." A slightly obscure sentence to those under 50, but I'll be clarifying this line in a minute.

I agree with Hunter that more westerns is a good thing, and if someone can make them without the elements with which James Mangold swamped his hit -- the ornamenting of a simple story with Iraq malaise, irresolute everybody-wins endings, and other add-ons -- so much the better. Stuff that mostly just expanded the running time and sold the story to people who prefer action/adventure films to westerns.

Some critics are claiming that Mangold has added complex morality to a genre that's mostly good guys v. bad guys. Such critics really need another look at My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, or better yet Howard Hawks' serio-comic western Rio Bravo. Here, a group of unsteady deputies, one of them one-legged, led by a slightly nervous sheriff, tough out the same situation as in 3:10 to Yuma: an army of mercenaries encircling a town where a jailed captive waits for his transfer to prison. That Hawks saw the comedy in the situation is no surprise. The director of His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby needed no schooling in the craft of comedy. And just as his The Big Sleep is the ultimate guide to how to be a private detective, he was able to make John Wayne's John T. Chance a light comic figure, even when facing possibility of certain death.

I know what you're probably thinking: "Geez Chris, enough with the technology stuff already." Even if you do think that, I just feel compelled to bring you these interesting tidbits about how technology helps, enhances or otherwise makes things better for films and filmmakers. This time around, it's not a technique or technology used during production or post-production. In this case, it's a technology used to help give older films the fantastic look of a newborn, just delivered to the theater.

What is this miraculous technology of which I speak? It's called Ultra Resolution and it's pretty exciting stuff. According to a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter, the technique, invented by some smart chaps at Warner Bros., has been nominated this year for a Scientific and Technical Academy Award and has helped in the restoration of several films in the studio's vast library -- including Singing In the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, and one of my personal favorites, The Searchers. According to the article, prints of these classic films exhibited blurring or "color fringing" as well as shrinkage, stretching and other damage. In case you can't tell, that's a bad thing.

These issues were made especially visible by the Ultra Resolution process that involves digitally realigning and sharpening the older film negatives of these classic movies shot on Technicolor three-strip film -- thus enabling a much better restoration than previously possible. Says Chris Cookson, president, Warner Bros. Technical Operations and chief technology officer, Warner Bros. Entertainment: "It not only benefits Warner Bros. and the industry at large, it benefits the movies themselves and the people who love them." Well, I'm one of those people so I say, "Keep up the good work, Chris." Films are an important part of our history and the more that can be done to preserve them, the better.

I love Westerns. They're such great stories full of symbolism and pathos, often with great performances and compelling characters facing life and death situations. Westerns explore what it means to face your fears, to carve out a life among the harsh wilderness -- to be an American. Cowboys, one of the most enduring and recognized symbols of America, are a part of our history and who we are as a nation.

I remember the first time I watched a Western. My father was a huge John Wayne fan (still is) and when I was pretty young, he took me to see "The Duke" in the movie The Shootist. Even as a young man I reacted to the story about the last days of a gunfighter who knows he's about to die from cancer but wants to go out on his feet, fighting, instead of on his back. After watching the movie, I was hooked. Of course, my experience was made even more special by the fact that The Shootist was John Wayne's last film. How fitting that it should be a Western.

From then on, I watched as many Westerns as I could. Over the years as I grew older, I came to appreciate Westerns not just for their stories, but because of what the stories, characters and situations represent. Over time, I made a list of the Westerns that typify the Western -- those films that would serve as an excellent introduction for anyone wishing to explore this genre. In truth, I could populate this list with films mostly from the same director -- John Ford. His westerns are among the best and most widely acclaimed of all time.

He's an icon of the genre whose best work featured the stalwart and similarly iconic John Wayne. But to be fair, there are many other Westerns that have come out in the history of Hollywood that deserve your attention. Even if you don't love the genre, these films are still an entertaining mix of action, suspense, drama, and romance. They also happen to have compelling characters, horses, fist fights and even the occasional gun fight. And yes, stuff even blows up once in awhile too.

So, settle in at the saloon, pour yourself a shot of rye, and let's take a look at some great Westerns.