If you ever get a chance to see The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck, you should do so.

It’s based loosely on the career of John (Johnny) Ringo, who was allied with the Clantons and McLaurys at the OK Corral. He was not a nice person, but neither was he the psycho preternatural super-killer so wonderfully depicted by Michael Biehn in 1993’s Tombstone. He was something in-between, an acquaintance of the “bad guys,” a gun hand who happened to be there and managed to survive.

The movie imagines an archetypal gunfighter only loosely based on the historical Ringo (in fact, the name John is changed to Jim, apparently to emphasize the fictional liberties).

Everything about this movie works. It’s a sterling example of perfect plotting, perfect character development, perfect staging, perfect black and white cinematography — whatever you can think of, this movie does it perfectly.

I would say it’s one of the three best things Peck ever did. The other two would be To Kill a Mockingbird and Twelve O’Clock High. The latter movie was directed by Henry King, who also did this one. Twelve O’Clock High is probably the most perfect World War II movie ever made, so Henry King is a genius in my book.

Long story short: see this somehow. It’s as good as movies get.

I just got to see the movie Spy on HBO. I was afraid it was going to be a fluffy “overweight ladies are beautiful too” romance pockmarked with an occasional joke or two. Happily, I was wrong.

I won’t go into the plot, as it doesn’t merit much attention. It’s a little reminiscent of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, only instead of working for a bank, the main character is barely tolerated by the CIA as an improbable techno-guide for downrange agents. Various silly circumstances put her in the field. It’s a comic fantasy with very few pretensions about being realistic, so you go in suspending your disbelief with a giant crane.

The cast is outstanding. Jason Statham is a loud, bumbling agent who exaggerates his exploits and has way, way too much testosterone.  Jude Law is the handsome spy who can really do all the things Statham yells about. McCarthy is the competent but always-apologetic “computer fatty” nobody appreciates, and this is where the jokes really take off. You’d think the script would eventually fizzle out by emphasizing how everyone tramples all over this character, but this never happens. Instead, the jokes get funnier, even as she develops wildly unrealistic spy skills. The bad guys are funny. The tech gadgets are funny. Even the ultimate boss baddie is funny.

This last role is pulled off very skillfully by Rose Byrne, who puts as much energy into getting laughs as McCarthy. The only problem I saw was that Byrne looks too much like Salma Hayek. I spent half the movie convincing myself that Salma Hayek was an underappreciated comedienne (which she is, but that’s neither here nor there).

Right. Separated at birth, etc.

If you need a Melissa McCarthy scale, the movie is not as funny as The Heat but slightly funnier than Tammy.

You should see it just so you know what it’s like to convince yourself that Salma Hayek is in a movie when she’s not.

I’m really looking forward to being called a sexist on all my social media for saying that I’m totally uninspired by this movie. The prop design sucks, the all female cast is transparently pandering, the sassy black stereotype is tedious, the comedic timing is bad in the trailer, which one would assume is their best shot at representing the thing… Ugh. This is all marketing. Pandering and marketing and none of the soul of the original is apparent here whatsoever.

The effects are pretty, though.

This is why Bill Murray never wanted to do GB 3. He knew the formula had played out. GB 2 proved that, and even GB 2 had some charm. This is just a trope-fest laid over with embarrassing stereotypes and a bad new gen SNL routine. 🙁

Has anyone here NOT seen the Thin Man series of movies?

I just wondered because if you haven’t, you’re missing out on one of the best excuses for Hollywood’s existence.

I won’t go into how William Powell manages to make his character, Nick Charles, so appealing. How do you get an audience to like a drunk? You’ll have to watch the movies.

Nor will I carry on about how charming and funny Myrna Loy is and how she has an even harder job than Powell. I will merely note that Loy’s Nora Charles is always just as drunk as Nick, but you really don’t think about it. Why would you when Nora is so endearing?

If you think I’m going to natter on about how comical the Charles’ pet dog Asta is, you’re mistaken. You’ll also be disappointed when I omit how bizarre the whole milieu of the Charles’ world is. You don’t want to hear about how they’re friends with practically every criminal Nick has sent to jail, or how they have parties where the criminals and police mingle on very cordial terms, or how one of the main gags of the series is how the police and criminals always want Nick to investigate a murder and how he always refuses but somehow slips into the stream of mayhem with everyone else.

Finally, I won’t bore you with how the dialogue in this series is some of the funniest ever written.

I hope you’ll check this out on whatever market you use for old movies so I won’t be the only fan.

His coloration looks so much better in these than in the video. I don’t know why.

He also looks way less fat. I don’t know why that is, either. None of these have been retouched.

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Anything OMD on Steam is 90% off, and they have announced that Open Beta for OMD:U will be on Steam:

YouTube link doesn’t work

Feel free to fix the embedded video if you want.

To simplify things, I will only briefly discuss the long-acknowledged epicenter of redneck cinema, to wit: Smokey and the Bandit.

One would imagine that this picture positions itself squarely in the camp of the German proto-Romantic resistance to eighteenth-century classicism with all of its rational trappings. After all, the film is about flagrantly rebellious disregard for law and order, beginning with its main plot problem: how to transport a truckload of Coors beer to Atlanta when it is illegal do any such thing east of Oklahoma. During this harrowing journey, practically every law enforcement officer in every state is ignored, abused, accosted, wrecked, or disgraced. Our heroes — Bandit, Frog (Sally Field), Cledus (Jerry Reed), and Cledus’s dog Fred — break every imaginable law in order to fulfill their mission.

Yet I would submit that the heroes never truly aggravate the dominant class ideology of reason and mistrust of enthusiasm. Examples abound of their cool heads in the face of certain capture or death, their stiff upper lips as set against the wild outbursts and flailings of their antagonists (epitomized by Jackie Gleason’s Buford T. Justice), and their refusal to engage in activities requiring excessive energy or volume. They are the very image of eighteenth-century restraint, bringing reason to bear on every situation and repudiating every temptation to give in to easy emotion or passion.

In truth, Smokey and the Bandit is a cinematic realization of Wordsworth’s charge to poets in his famous preface to Lyrical Ballads: art should be policed by restraint and the rational; moreover, the best poetry is both prosaic and disciplined, subsuming emotion under the influence of our better faculty.

Therefore, go to, ye misunderstanders. Say not that Burt flies in the face of rational imperatives (or even Larry the Cable Guy). Learn from what is set before you. See what is as plain as the nose on your face. Never again accuse redneck cinema of promoting either the sturm or the drang.

I took even more photos, but his feet aren’t right so I’ll have to do another shoot tomorrow with Sarah’s help. 😛