Shaw Brothers marathon: Have Sword Will Travel

Have Sword Will Travel (1969, Chang Cheh)

Have Sword Will Travel. That title has a strange ring to it. It does not sound quite right. ‘Have a sword and you will travel?’ ‘Have a sword and your will shall help you travel?’ It is the kind of title that hopes to be catchy and succinctly express something noteworthy but is unsure how to go about it. There are movies like that as well. Movies that, upon watching them, one knows where the story wants to go, what it wants to do with its characters, but is faulty in how it utilizes the tools at its disposal. By the end, the film is not as good as it really should have been, which is all the more disappointing, since the greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment. I estimate that the readers can guess in which direction this review is headed. Oh, dear.

Definitive Bond Marathon: Dr. No (1962)

Dr. No (1962, Terence Young)

And so the official cannon begins with this outing. A interesting choice in that the film seems divided into two clear halves. The first has our hero perform his duties like any simple detective would. The importance to infuse the film with constant action, a strategy that would play a greater role in future instalments, was not felt as heavily, at least not in the early going of the movie. Bond is essentially talking to a bunch of people, trying to figure out what exactly is going on. This certainly makes for a ‘different’ kind of Bond, even this is actually the first one.

Shootout at High Noon: Open Range

Open Range (2003, Kevin Costner)

After the arid deserts of The Good, the Bad, the Weird and The Proposition, the mountainous mining regions of Pale Rider, the crooked and quaint towns of The Quick and the Dead and The Shootist, we finally get the beautiful plains, where the herders roam as peacefully as they can, going from plain to plain, guiding cattle to wherever they need be. Kevin Costner’s 2003 surprise hit Open Range is the seventh film to be evaluated in our Shootout at High Noon Marathon, but the first in which the protagonists appear to have a real, regular job. The author has no clue what it must truly be like to herd cattle, but the images provided in the opening scenes of Costner’s film, romanticised as they may be, certainly make it out to be a pleasantly quaint way to make a living. Without realizing it, I was in fact eager to witness characters performing actual tasks that may be deemed normal. These people are not gunmen, they are not thieves, they are not sheriffs, there are not escaped criminals. Rather, they are ordinary cattlemen. Of course, they are as ordinary as can be when played by mega stars Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall. 

Definitive Bond Marathon: Casino Royale (1967)

** special note to Between the Seats readers:  The Definitive marathon will contain two things that either do not appear in our typical reviews, or that have been forsaken since late last year.

The first: spoilers. We are going to dig pretty deep into most of these films. That is not to say that every single review will feature an abundance of spoilers, but readers should be aware that certain specific pot points may be discussed at any time in the reviews.

The second: grades. We have not issued grades to films since December of 2010. I figured that thorough analysis carried more weight than grades, and while I still do believe such, grades will be issued to each individual film for the sake of continuity. That is how I proceeded last summer at Filmspotting, and so the practice will continue, if solely for the films reviewed within the Definitive Bond Marathon

Marathon fever: The Definitive Bond marathon arrives!

Hello readers!

As most of you know already, Between the Seats is driven primarily by marathons on specific genres, directors and franchises. We already have two marathons cooking some serious heat right now (Shootout at High Noon and Shaw Brothers), but I think we can fit in a third.

Shaw Brothers marathon: The One Armed Swordsman

The One Armed Swordsman (1967, Chang Che)

One knows exactly when it has happened. Any movie aficionado is familiar with that odd feeling which takes over when one has watched a film that manages to overcome its flaws and provide some solid entertainment despite it all. There is no hiding that the film is imperfect. Some of the flaws may be glaring, but what it does well, it does so marvellously. This sentiment fell upon the author while watching this second entry in the Shaw Brothers Marathon, The One Armed Swordsman, from 1967. More than once a sense of exhilaration washed over me like a tidal wave, which thankfully made up for the moments when I could no believe the ridiculousness of what transpired on screen. For this reason, I salute director Chang Che, who pulls off quite the job even though his film is hampered by at times a strange script and really bogus storytelling methods. Enough with the intro, let us get into the juicy details.

Parting Shot: The Shootist

For a better appreciation of the article that follows, a proper reading of Bill's review for The Shootist over at his Movie Emporium is in order.

How ironic that you and I have rebuttal articles to write and publish in the aftermath of our respective reviews for Don Siegal's The Shootist. I frequently liken these 'parting shots', as I jocularly refer to them as, to the 'aftermath' of our reviews. They consist of what we have we left to say about our individual thoughts after all the cards are left on the table. In the case of this week's rebuttal post, I it feels more like a post-mortem. Not only have our reviews clearly expressed our positions on this important film, but, as everyone familiar with the movie knows, the greatest icon of the western genre, John Wayne, fires his final bullet in the story as well. In that respect, one could almost say that today were are publishing our 'post mortems.' Eerie.

Blogging Around for June 16th 2011

Capsule reviews: Cabin Fever, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip

Shootout at High Noon: The Shootist

The Shootist (1976, Don Siegal)

Some things happen for a reason and others at random. Having not been around in 1979, one can only assume what the reactions were among film buffs and in particular great admirers of the western genre when the one and only John Wayne passed away. I wonder if on that day people considered that a piece of the western genre died along with him, for he was so iconic a figure for a number of decades. It seems eerily ironic that not only was the famous actor’s final performance in Don Siegal’s The Shootist only from a few years prior in 1976, but that in the film he portrayed an aging U.S. Marshall whose days of ambitious heroics are long behind once he learns that he is dying of cancer. It feels wrong to say that all these little puzzle pieces, both real and fictional, feel into place, and so let us merely come to agree that fate has a strange way of pulling the strings.