Precious Bodily Fluids

Tag: Clint Eastwood

  • For A Few Dollars More: Form, at all costs

    Like any other trilogy, the Dollars trilogy shouldn’t have to be viewed chronologically if it’s worth its salt. So, after A Fistful of Dollars and then The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, finally sat down to the oft-neglected middle one. Everything active in the other two is happening here, without a doubt. The absence…

  • The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Genre Over Text

    When in doubt as to where to begin, defer to your local online academic database; in this case, William McClain’s essay, “Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the ‘Death of the Western’ in American Film Criticism” (Journal of Film and Video, 62:1, Spring 2010). It’s an interesting look at Leone’s Dollars Trilogy through the lens…

  • Quickies, Vol. XII

    Unfaithfully Yours (dir. Preston Sturges, 1948) – Another Stanford Theatre gem. Sturges tops the  So-Embarrassed-I-Don’t-Know-Their-Stuff List. This was a fortuitous screening, since after viewing The Hudsucker Proxy, with all its Capra influences, I was reminded that Capra is dwarfed in the Coens’ oeuvre by the influence of Sturges, who is far more grotesque, straight-up morbid.…

  • Who’s Cheating? Mystic River, The Sixth Sense, and North By Northwest

    It’s been suggested over here that Mystic River employs a sort of narrative “cheat” not unlike the oft-repeated one in The Sixth Sense. It’s often true that movie watchers don’t like being fooled, but it should be acknowledged that some of the greats (e.g. Hitchcock) were masters at doing this in just the right way…

  • Quickies, Vol. I

    When there’s no time for thinking, let alone writing, time will be made for quickies. Gran Torino (dir. Clint Eastwood): Great, small movie. Eastwood is a competent director and as an actor, no one plays him better than himself. Has been called everything between “a sleeper hit” and “Dirty Old Man Harry.” Anyone remotely attached…

  • A Fistful of Dollars

    For being based on (and according to Akira Kurosawa, the same movie as) Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars contrasts with Kurosawa’s film in important ways. It is no The Magnificent Seven, thankfully. Fistful can be lauded for at least “doing its own thing” in a respectable way instead of simply catering to the Hollywood formula…