PAINT YOUR WAGON was next on my Clint Eastwood list. Holy shit, you’re telling me Clint and Lee Marvin did a western together? How did I never see this one before?
The music on the credits is pretty corny, but I forgive it. Right off the bat you got Lee as a drunk old hustler in a top hat, he meets young Clint and declares him his partner. This is good shit.
Wait, what is Clint doing with that guitar? Hold on, is he crooning? Wait a– is this–
Holy shit, this is a musical! (read the rest of this shit…)
In ’75, six years after John Wayne won his Oscar playing Rooster Cogburn in TRUE GRIT, they figured on bringing the character back. Not a bad idea, actually. Maybe not as good as my idea of spinning off his cat, but still, it works. He’s a marshall who goes after outlaws, obviously he’s gonna have other adventures. That’s what this is, this ROOSTER COGBURN, it’s not a stripped down drama about him getting old like ROCKY BALBOA was. (And if you’re looking at that picture thinking man, Mattie Ross got old fast, don’t worry, it’s a different character.)
This movie’s gettin a squeeze of the ol’ limelight again on account of the Minnesota Coens are doing another version of the same book.
FLAMING STAR is a Don Siegel western about a mixed-race family – a white man, his white son, his Native American wife, and their son together, Pacer. They all get it from both sides but especially Pacer, who has one foot in each world. The whites won’t even speak to him after a Kiowa massacre of a white family, and at the same time he’s being pressured by the new chief to turn his back on the white man and become a Kiowa warrior. Not like the chief gives two shits about him, he just wants him for the propaganda value, to be able to show somebody who turned their back on the white man. But Pacer doesn’t want to do it and thinks they’ll kill him when he says no.
Recently I made a list of all Clint Eastwood’s movies (as an actor) that I haven’t seen or don’t remember. The list is surprisingly long, and I carry it in my wallet now in case I’m at the video store and don’t know what to rent. So hopefully this will be the first of many upcoming doses of Eastwood medicine. (pun)
Kris Kristofferson is… THE TRACKER. He’s like Tommy Lee Jones in THE HUNTED, except this is the Old West so it’s probly both a more common skill set and a more useful one. He’s a guy who can glance at some footprints in the dirt and tell you how many people were there, their size, what kind of horses they had, how long ago it was, possibly their political beliefs and religious backgrounds. There’s a part where he points out where a horse is leaning to the right on every fourth step and that means the rider is holding his gun a certain way which means he’s left handed. (Which I don’t think turned out to be important, it was just showing off I guess.) Man, I couldn’t even tell which one was the fourth step, but this guy’s so used to knowing this shit he thinks it’s easy to explain. His name is Noble Adams and he’s famous enough that the guy he’s after is honored and almost star struck when he finds out who’s tracking him. 
APPALOOSA does have a little post 9-11 political relevance, but for the most part it’s a straight ahead western. I’ve talked to some people who thought it was too slow or needed more gunfights, so if that’s what you’re looking for, beware. It’s a character piece about two gunmen who’ve gotten real good at dealing with assholes and cleaning up small towns overrun with bandits and bullies.
I saw this movie years ago and like anybody I loved it. But watching it again recently I was surprised to find that it was better than I remembered. UNFORGIVEN is a GFM (Great Fucking Movie) for many different reasons, most of them you know, but I’ll try to point out a few of them.
The Burns Gang, three brothers, recently attacked some family, raped and killed a pregnant woman. I don’t know about you but I’m against it and in fact so is middle brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) who was so offended he decided to take little brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) and run off. But of course it’s those two remorseful brothers that have been captured by Ray Winstone now, not the ringleader Arthur (Danny Huston). Since we didn’t see the attack we don’t know for sure how guilty they are or how much of a chance they had to stop it, but Winstone seems to believe this Arthur is the guy to get. So he takes Mikey, lets Charlie go, says I’m gonna kill little brother on Christmas Day unless you kill older brother. That’s the proposition.
Recently a reader named David Lambert sent me a very accurate email:
