Clint Eastwood the director, appreciation thread
Reply to Topic
I still haven't seen Changeling, but one of my wife's best friends loved it and said she even liked the boy playing the son more than Angelina.
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
I still haven't seen Changeling, but one of my wife's best friends loved it and said she even liked the boy playing the son more than Angelina.
Yeah, he's very good. I assume she probably means Devon Conti, the boy who plays her son's impostor. He's quite creepy, actually. It's almost like a ghost story at some points with the boy who isn't Walter, whose real name was later revealed to be Arthur Hutchins. He only has one brief scene before he is "returned" to Christine and one brief bit of his eventual confession to the Police, but you definitely understand his motivations. What he did was pretty unforgivable, except given his circumstance you can at least see why he went along with the elaborate and cruel ruse.
Gattlin Griffith, who plays the real Walter, is very good as well. To me the best kid actor in the flick is Eddie Alderson who plays Sanford Clark, a slightly older boy who figures prominently in the last section of the movie. He has a scene where he confesses to a Cop, the scene that really changes the direction of the story towards its darkest conclusions, and he is brilliant. It's a scene that would have a seasoned actor nervous about how to pull it off, but this fourteen-year-old kid does a masterful job.
Eastwood has always been great at eliciting great, naturalistic performances out of children, whether they have extensive training or not. Eddie Alderson has been on a soap opera for a bunch of years, but the other two boys are virtual newcomers, as far as I can tell. So was T.J. Lowther, who played the co-lead in A Perfect World. Clint seems able to bring out performances that are free of any of the kinds of tricks and cutesy shortcuts kid actors learn for commercials and sitcoms that come off as so completely fake, especially on the big screen in a drama. You don't see any such bad habits or mugging from the kids in a Clint Eastwood movie.
.
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 06-03-14 at 08:49 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
I have to admit that this is hearsay. My daughter heard it from Colleen while she was getting her hair done, and then she related it to me. I'm not sure which "boy" she meant, but I believe he's the first one you mentioned. Colleen's a hairstylist when she isn't watching 50-100 movies at the theatre each year. Yes, she's a "senior citizen", so there are lots of movies she won't watch nowadays. 
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
My Mother and Grandmother can't sit still for ten minutes but they went to see this film, which is a rather long one and loved it. What a surprise!
I'm going to have to see it sometime.
I'm going to have to see it sometime.
__________________
Bleacheddecay
Bleacheddecay
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
He rocks, at least from the films I've seen - Mystic River and Changeling. They are both amazing flicks, and Changeling, to me, is the epitome of film-making. Some of his other movies don't seem that great, but there are a few I want to check out.
Here is the piece from yesterday's New York Times, which is a profile and also contains a non-spoilery overview of Gran Torino...
-------------------------------------------
The Films Are for Him. Got That?
By BRUCE HEADLAM
December 10, 2008
BEING introduced to Clint Eastwood is something like seeing a California redwood for the first time. The difference is that this redwood, even at the age of seventy-eight, reaches out to shake your hand with a firmness that still intimidates no matter how much time you spent preparing your grip (for the record: three days).
He arrived for the interview at the Mission Ranch restaurant here as if he owned the place, and it didn't make any difference that, in this case, he does. He had his first legal drink in the bar while he was stationed at the nearby Army base in the late 1940s. In 1986 he bought the property and rebuilt it to his taste, with a piano bar, heart-stopping views of the ocean spray on Point Lobos and plenty of meat on the menu. Despite what you might have read on Wikipedia, Mr. Eastwood is not a vegan, and he looked slightly aghast when told exactly what a vegan is. "I never look at the Internet for just that reason," he said.
It's been twenty years since Mr. Eastwood was mayor of Carmel, but clearly he's still the king around here. Unlike the taciturn characters he plays on screen, he's voluble, chatting and laughing with his staff with a sharpness and enthusiasm that make him seem far younger than his age. After showing me around the property, he insisted I come back that evening for a steak dinner. "We've got good chow," he said. Go on: you tell him you've made other plans.
Mr. Eastwood's on familiar ground in another way. It's coming up on the Oscars, and he has two films in contention, Changeling, with Angelina Jolie, and his newest, Gran Torino, which he finished shooting only this summer and which began appearing in theaters on Friday.
In Gran Torino Mr. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran, retired Ford line worker and full-time bigot who stews on his porch in Detroit watching his block being taken over by Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. When a gang pressures a teenager living next door (played by Bee Vang) into trying to steal Walt's vintage Gran Torino, the aging veteran gets pulled reluctantly, then violently, into the lives of his neighbors.
Mr. Eastwood has already won the best actor prize for Gran Torino from the National Board of Review, and the Oscar talk he has never won as an actor is running high. He claims not to care deeply about awards. When asked whom he makes films for, Mr. Eastwood said, "You're looking at him." Calculated or not those films do have a habit of showing up (sometimes unexpectedly) in prime Oscar campaigning season that stance seems to charm the voters some three hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles, who have rewarded his movies richly in the past fifteen years, including two Best Picture awards. Mr. Eastwood has become the George Washington of the awards season: if called, he will serve. But he doesnt seem to believe in term limits.
Gran Torino is the twenty-ninth full-length movie Mr. Eastwood has directed more than Scorsese, more even than Spielberg so perhaps it's an accident of memory that his name first conjures up the impression of the squinty guy on a horse. Starting in the mid-1980s he began to change some minds by pushing the boundaries of his cowboys-and-cops image with films like Honkytonk Man and Tightrope, but he said about his reputation, "If that's how people want to pigeonhole me, that's fine."
If anything, his directing pace has picked up in the past five years.
The script for Gran Torino had been kicking around Hollywood for a while before Mr. Eastwood read it. The writer, Nick Schenk, who worked in a Ford plant years ago, based the character of Walt on the men he met there, many of them Korean War veterans. "I'd talk a lot to these guys, and they'd tell me stuff they wouldn't tell their wife and kids," Mr. Schenk said.
Some directors are known as an actor's best friend. Mr. Eastwood may be the writer's. "He didn't change a word," Mr. Schenk said. "That never happens."
Mr. Eastwood said he learned his lesson after making extensive revisions on the script for Unforgiven, then calling up the writer, David Peoples, and announcing he was returning to the first draft. "I'm emasculating this thing," he told Mr. Peoples.
There was one major disappointment for Mr. Schenk: the setting of Gran Torino was shifted from Minneapolis to Detroit, the original home of Ford and, not coincidentally, the home of 42% tax credits for films made there (that helped make it easy for Warner Brothers to sign off on bankrolling the movie, something that hasn't always been a given in the studio's relationship with the director).
Mr. Eastwood bought the script in February, then shot the movie over the summer at a guerrilla filmmaker's pace, finishing in thirty-two days. The fast clip, Mr. Eastwood said, helped him with the Hmong members of the cast, most of whom had never acted and many of whom didn't speak English. "I'd give them little pointers along the way, Acting 101," he said. "And I move along at a rate that doesn't give them too much of a chance to think."
It also doesn't give Mr. Eastwood too much time to worry about Hollywood. After shooting, he returned to Carmel, where he lives with his wife, Dina Ruiz, and manages his investments, including an ownership stake in the Pebble Beach golf course company. He set up a bay and worked with his two film editors in an 1862 farmhouse on the Mission property for a week or so. Between sessions he sat at the piano and picked out a score: he has written music, including full scores, for many of his films. He even sings one of his own melodies over the film's final credits, his voice burned down to a whisper. Eastwood himself refuses to call it singing because that conjures up memories of Paint Your Wagon, the misbegotten 1969 musical. "I vowed Id never do that again," he said.
Like Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River before it, Gran Torino is a modern story that feels anachronistic. Walt's neighborhood is every bit as bounded and knowable as the town of Lago in High Plains Drifter, and the confrontations with the Hmong gang members build methodically, as if in a town square. But when the film threatens to descend into a vigilante picture the last guy who actually thought he could solve Detroit's problems with his fists was Gordie Howe Gran Torino takes some unexpected turns.
Before filming there had been gossip (again, the Internet) that Mr. Eastwood was making another Dirty Harry sequel. What Gran Torino does share with the Harry Callahan movies is the sheer force of its incorrectness. Walt, who stokes his resentment with cigarettes, beef jerky and Pabst Blue Ribbon, expresses his disgust for the Hmong and just about every other racial group in a steady stream of obscenities. Robert Lorenz, Eastwood's frequent producing partner, said that what he appreciated about Mr. Schenk's dialogue was that "he didn't hold back."
"It was left really raw," he said. "It sounded like those people you know, or your uncle saying something really bad at a wedding."
Brian Grazer, a producer of Changeling, sees this kind of directness as a strength. "What most interested me about Clint Eastwood as a director is the honesty and intensity he injects into the movies that he directs," he said. "He is so confident as a director that he will allow the sometimes ugliness of life to live inside the scenes of his movies."
For Mr. Eastwood the raw language is central to Walt's story. "If he comes in and just befriends these people and doesnt have any hurdles any personal hurdles to overcome that doesn't make for a very interesting character," he said. But Mr. Eastwood, who last spring had a verbal run-in with Spike Lee over the lack of black soldiers in the Eastwood film Flags of Our Fathers, also confesses to some sympathy for Walt's choice of words in a way sure to irk the Hollywood types who have finally embraced him despite his libertarian politics.
"A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness," he said. "You're showing a guy from a different generation. Show the way he talks. The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so" here he paused and narrowed his eyes, like Dirty Harry drawing a bead on a perp "sensitive".
What we admire about heroes (and villains) like the ones Mr. Eastwood used to play isn't their sensitivity, it's their single-mindedness: they say what they're going to do, then do it. Whether in Spain or in San Francisco, Mr. Eastwood's heroes were never given the "kill one to save a thousand" liberal trapdoor of other Hollywood films. The violence of the Dirty Harry movies seems almost quaint now, but what Harry says "Ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?" still has the power to shock.
But if Mr. Eastwood shoulders some blame for every Rambo and Die Hard that followed, he should be given credit for looking at a more complicated transaction in the films he directs, one where people's actions are at odds with their beliefs. What helps sell the contradiction in Gran Torino is Mr. Eastwood's own physical presence. More so than any other leading man, he has been willing to play his real age. At seventy-eight he is perhaps thinner than he once was, but in that sinewy way that reveals strength as much as diminishes it. After Walt beats up one gang member hey, he's still Clint Eastwood the next scene shows him out of breath, struggling to open his front door.
To Mr. Eastwood being able to play seventy-eight is just one of the benefits of a long career. "It's ridiculous when you won't play your own age," he said. "You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around."
The other benefit is that, even after a great career in the movies, you can fashion another. "After The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I walk down the street and everybody would whistle out" here he sang the movie's famous theme. "Then it became 'Do I feel lucky?' and 'Make my day.' But it's progressed along. Whether it's taken this turn on purpose, I can't say."
Walt Kowalski has a catchphrase too in Gran Torino. "This is what I do," he tells the Hmong teenager before the film's final act. "I finish things." So does Mr. Eastwood, just not in the way anybody would have expected.
And he may not be done. There were reports again on the Internet that this would be his last role, a rumor he helped fuel but now says is not necessarily true.
"Somebody asked what I'd do next, and I said I didn't know how many roles there are for seventy-eight-year-old guys," he said. "There's nothing wrong with coming in to play the butler. But unless there's a hurdle to get over, I'd rather just stay behind the camera."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/mo...er=rss&emc=rss
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
The Films Are for Him. Got That?
By BRUCE HEADLAM
December 10, 2008
BEING introduced to Clint Eastwood is something like seeing a California redwood for the first time. The difference is that this redwood, even at the age of seventy-eight, reaches out to shake your hand with a firmness that still intimidates no matter how much time you spent preparing your grip (for the record: three days).
He arrived for the interview at the Mission Ranch restaurant here as if he owned the place, and it didn't make any difference that, in this case, he does. He had his first legal drink in the bar while he was stationed at the nearby Army base in the late 1940s. In 1986 he bought the property and rebuilt it to his taste, with a piano bar, heart-stopping views of the ocean spray on Point Lobos and plenty of meat on the menu. Despite what you might have read on Wikipedia, Mr. Eastwood is not a vegan, and he looked slightly aghast when told exactly what a vegan is. "I never look at the Internet for just that reason," he said.
It's been twenty years since Mr. Eastwood was mayor of Carmel, but clearly he's still the king around here. Unlike the taciturn characters he plays on screen, he's voluble, chatting and laughing with his staff with a sharpness and enthusiasm that make him seem far younger than his age. After showing me around the property, he insisted I come back that evening for a steak dinner. "We've got good chow," he said. Go on: you tell him you've made other plans.
Mr. Eastwood's on familiar ground in another way. It's coming up on the Oscars, and he has two films in contention, Changeling, with Angelina Jolie, and his newest, Gran Torino, which he finished shooting only this summer and which began appearing in theaters on Friday.
In Gran Torino Mr. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran, retired Ford line worker and full-time bigot who stews on his porch in Detroit watching his block being taken over by Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. When a gang pressures a teenager living next door (played by Bee Vang) into trying to steal Walt's vintage Gran Torino, the aging veteran gets pulled reluctantly, then violently, into the lives of his neighbors.
Mr. Eastwood has already won the best actor prize for Gran Torino from the National Board of Review, and the Oscar talk he has never won as an actor is running high. He claims not to care deeply about awards. When asked whom he makes films for, Mr. Eastwood said, "You're looking at him." Calculated or not those films do have a habit of showing up (sometimes unexpectedly) in prime Oscar campaigning season that stance seems to charm the voters some three hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles, who have rewarded his movies richly in the past fifteen years, including two Best Picture awards. Mr. Eastwood has become the George Washington of the awards season: if called, he will serve. But he doesnt seem to believe in term limits.
Gran Torino is the twenty-ninth full-length movie Mr. Eastwood has directed more than Scorsese, more even than Spielberg so perhaps it's an accident of memory that his name first conjures up the impression of the squinty guy on a horse. Starting in the mid-1980s he began to change some minds by pushing the boundaries of his cowboys-and-cops image with films like Honkytonk Man and Tightrope, but he said about his reputation, "If that's how people want to pigeonhole me, that's fine."
If anything, his directing pace has picked up in the past five years.
The script for Gran Torino had been kicking around Hollywood for a while before Mr. Eastwood read it. The writer, Nick Schenk, who worked in a Ford plant years ago, based the character of Walt on the men he met there, many of them Korean War veterans. "I'd talk a lot to these guys, and they'd tell me stuff they wouldn't tell their wife and kids," Mr. Schenk said.
Some directors are known as an actor's best friend. Mr. Eastwood may be the writer's. "He didn't change a word," Mr. Schenk said. "That never happens."
Mr. Eastwood said he learned his lesson after making extensive revisions on the script for Unforgiven, then calling up the writer, David Peoples, and announcing he was returning to the first draft. "I'm emasculating this thing," he told Mr. Peoples.
There was one major disappointment for Mr. Schenk: the setting of Gran Torino was shifted from Minneapolis to Detroit, the original home of Ford and, not coincidentally, the home of 42% tax credits for films made there (that helped make it easy for Warner Brothers to sign off on bankrolling the movie, something that hasn't always been a given in the studio's relationship with the director).
Mr. Eastwood bought the script in February, then shot the movie over the summer at a guerrilla filmmaker's pace, finishing in thirty-two days. The fast clip, Mr. Eastwood said, helped him with the Hmong members of the cast, most of whom had never acted and many of whom didn't speak English. "I'd give them little pointers along the way, Acting 101," he said. "And I move along at a rate that doesn't give them too much of a chance to think."
It also doesn't give Mr. Eastwood too much time to worry about Hollywood. After shooting, he returned to Carmel, where he lives with his wife, Dina Ruiz, and manages his investments, including an ownership stake in the Pebble Beach golf course company. He set up a bay and worked with his two film editors in an 1862 farmhouse on the Mission property for a week or so. Between sessions he sat at the piano and picked out a score: he has written music, including full scores, for many of his films. He even sings one of his own melodies over the film's final credits, his voice burned down to a whisper. Eastwood himself refuses to call it singing because that conjures up memories of Paint Your Wagon, the misbegotten 1969 musical. "I vowed Id never do that again," he said.
Like Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River before it, Gran Torino is a modern story that feels anachronistic. Walt's neighborhood is every bit as bounded and knowable as the town of Lago in High Plains Drifter, and the confrontations with the Hmong gang members build methodically, as if in a town square. But when the film threatens to descend into a vigilante picture the last guy who actually thought he could solve Detroit's problems with his fists was Gordie Howe Gran Torino takes some unexpected turns.
Before filming there had been gossip (again, the Internet) that Mr. Eastwood was making another Dirty Harry sequel. What Gran Torino does share with the Harry Callahan movies is the sheer force of its incorrectness. Walt, who stokes his resentment with cigarettes, beef jerky and Pabst Blue Ribbon, expresses his disgust for the Hmong and just about every other racial group in a steady stream of obscenities. Robert Lorenz, Eastwood's frequent producing partner, said that what he appreciated about Mr. Schenk's dialogue was that "he didn't hold back."
"It was left really raw," he said. "It sounded like those people you know, or your uncle saying something really bad at a wedding."
Brian Grazer, a producer of Changeling, sees this kind of directness as a strength. "What most interested me about Clint Eastwood as a director is the honesty and intensity he injects into the movies that he directs," he said. "He is so confident as a director that he will allow the sometimes ugliness of life to live inside the scenes of his movies."
For Mr. Eastwood the raw language is central to Walt's story. "If he comes in and just befriends these people and doesnt have any hurdles any personal hurdles to overcome that doesn't make for a very interesting character," he said. But Mr. Eastwood, who last spring had a verbal run-in with Spike Lee over the lack of black soldiers in the Eastwood film Flags of Our Fathers, also confesses to some sympathy for Walt's choice of words in a way sure to irk the Hollywood types who have finally embraced him despite his libertarian politics.
"A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness," he said. "You're showing a guy from a different generation. Show the way he talks. The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so" here he paused and narrowed his eyes, like Dirty Harry drawing a bead on a perp "sensitive".
What we admire about heroes (and villains) like the ones Mr. Eastwood used to play isn't their sensitivity, it's their single-mindedness: they say what they're going to do, then do it. Whether in Spain or in San Francisco, Mr. Eastwood's heroes were never given the "kill one to save a thousand" liberal trapdoor of other Hollywood films. The violence of the Dirty Harry movies seems almost quaint now, but what Harry says "Ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?" still has the power to shock.
But if Mr. Eastwood shoulders some blame for every Rambo and Die Hard that followed, he should be given credit for looking at a more complicated transaction in the films he directs, one where people's actions are at odds with their beliefs. What helps sell the contradiction in Gran Torino is Mr. Eastwood's own physical presence. More so than any other leading man, he has been willing to play his real age. At seventy-eight he is perhaps thinner than he once was, but in that sinewy way that reveals strength as much as diminishes it. After Walt beats up one gang member hey, he's still Clint Eastwood the next scene shows him out of breath, struggling to open his front door.
To Mr. Eastwood being able to play seventy-eight is just one of the benefits of a long career. "It's ridiculous when you won't play your own age," he said. "You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around."
The other benefit is that, even after a great career in the movies, you can fashion another. "After The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I walk down the street and everybody would whistle out" here he sang the movie's famous theme. "Then it became 'Do I feel lucky?' and 'Make my day.' But it's progressed along. Whether it's taken this turn on purpose, I can't say."
Walt Kowalski has a catchphrase too in Gran Torino. "This is what I do," he tells the Hmong teenager before the film's final act. "I finish things." So does Mr. Eastwood, just not in the way anybody would have expected.
And he may not be done. There were reports again on the Internet that this would be his last role, a rumor he helped fuel but now says is not necessarily true.
"Somebody asked what I'd do next, and I said I didn't know how many roles there are for seventy-eight-year-old guys," he said. "There's nothing wrong with coming in to play the butler. But unless there's a hurdle to get over, I'd rather just stay behind the camera."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/mo...er=rss&emc=rss
-------------------------------------------------------
X
Favorite Movies
Thanks Pikey interesting 
__________________
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
I so can't wait to see Gran Torino, I'm really hyping myself up to see it. I hope it lives up to my expectations.
X
User Lists
As far as films that's he's directed,
these are my personal fave:
5. Space Cowboys
A movie with formula written all over it. Which, though usually that tends to be a bad thing, when done correctly, as this movie does, can act as a reminder of why the formula became a formula in the first place. A non-guilty guilty pleasure for me.
In space, no one can hear an old man fart.
Punk.
4. Letters from Iwo Jima
Mr. Eastwood excellently directs this tale of the pacific war from the view of a band Japanese.
A country in which the war is not just against the the Allies, but also in a war within intself between the new methods & technology of the new age against it's revered ancient traditions of honor for one's native land & emperor, not to mention against the obligational feelings towards own family.
Who new that a tale about the "other side" would make such a great American movie?
3. The Bridges of Madison County
A truly romantic story of how the escapist fantasy high/feeling that initially results with falling in love must eventually be realistically dealt with, as the conditions & responsibilities of one's current situation come quickly creeping back in. This movie always reminds of something I heard once: that couples pairing up for the sake of true love is still a relatively young concept in the context of human history. That we as both a society & a species over-all, have not evolved enough yet to be able to deal & accept each other in a manner that would be considered as total unconditonal love (which is the only real love). And it is because of this that the world population has yet been unable to formulate an effective means of discussion that would truly begin a process of unity between it's racial, social & in this case, gender factions. Maybe, like this film depicts, this is why so many make decisions more for the sake of a security based on social & financial reasons than what is right for us on an emotional level. And as they impeded on Robert Kincaid (Eastwood) & Francesca Johnson (Streep), decisions which may impede on our ability to follow our hearts & therefore sway us, individually and socially, from a path that would lead to true love before it's too late.
Punk.
2. Million Dollar Baby
The chemistry that results from Clint Eastwood's & Morgan Freeman's presence in this movie epitomizes the main thing I like about Million Dollar Baby. These are two seasoned actors so comfortable in their craft, that they both simply move in this film with a flowing ease of two veterans of their field (fictionally & non) who are just willing to allow the emotion of the story & the naturalness & trust of each other's acting ability to drive this movie. And as cliche as it sounds, it truly belies on the phase as something almost indescribable but so tangible that the much younger yet equally talented Hilary Swank can't help but to follow suit in doing. It all leads to an overall performance from the trio that makes this a film whose power stems not from the boxing themes that one would usually expect from a boxing flick, but more from the emotions that weave & tie the characters together & allows a story to unfold at it's own volition. In the end, it seems almost overkill to decribe Million Dollar Baby as anything other than an Eastwood directed film about boxing that focuses on the female contingent of the sport & stars Eastwood himself, Swank & Freeman.
Or more simply, a film that had me at "Mo Cuishle".
1. Unforgiven
"I'm Will Munny and I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill......"
The manner in which the icon of the ol' western gunslinger is depicted here,
as a man with a mysterious past, one which he would preferred forgotten, yet ultimately, comes to rely on for the survival of the redemptive life he has built since, shows how this film could've also been called "The Final Chapter Of The Man With No Name, But Now We've Given Him A Name.... Punk".
And yeah, I know, I know ..... it's not fashionable for those who study Western films to like this movie. Luckily, for me, I'm one of those who never studied.
these are my personal fave:
5. Space Cowboys
A movie with formula written all over it. Which, though usually that tends to be a bad thing, when done correctly, as this movie does, can act as a reminder of why the formula became a formula in the first place. A non-guilty guilty pleasure for me.
In space, no one can hear an old man fart.
Punk.
4. Letters from Iwo Jima
Mr. Eastwood excellently directs this tale of the pacific war from the view of a band Japanese.
A country in which the war is not just against the the Allies, but also in a war within intself between the new methods & technology of the new age against it's revered ancient traditions of honor for one's native land & emperor, not to mention against the obligational feelings towards own family.
Who new that a tale about the "other side" would make such a great American movie?
3. The Bridges of Madison County
A truly romantic story of how the escapist fantasy high/feeling that initially results with falling in love must eventually be realistically dealt with, as the conditions & responsibilities of one's current situation come quickly creeping back in. This movie always reminds of something I heard once: that couples pairing up for the sake of true love is still a relatively young concept in the context of human history. That we as both a society & a species over-all, have not evolved enough yet to be able to deal & accept each other in a manner that would be considered as total unconditonal love (which is the only real love). And it is because of this that the world population has yet been unable to formulate an effective means of discussion that would truly begin a process of unity between it's racial, social & in this case, gender factions. Maybe, like this film depicts, this is why so many make decisions more for the sake of a security based on social & financial reasons than what is right for us on an emotional level. And as they impeded on Robert Kincaid (Eastwood) & Francesca Johnson (Streep), decisions which may impede on our ability to follow our hearts & therefore sway us, individually and socially, from a path that would lead to true love before it's too late.
Punk.
2. Million Dollar Baby
The chemistry that results from Clint Eastwood's & Morgan Freeman's presence in this movie epitomizes the main thing I like about Million Dollar Baby. These are two seasoned actors so comfortable in their craft, that they both simply move in this film with a flowing ease of two veterans of their field (fictionally & non) who are just willing to allow the emotion of the story & the naturalness & trust of each other's acting ability to drive this movie. And as cliche as it sounds, it truly belies on the phase as something almost indescribable but so tangible that the much younger yet equally talented Hilary Swank can't help but to follow suit in doing. It all leads to an overall performance from the trio that makes this a film whose power stems not from the boxing themes that one would usually expect from a boxing flick, but more from the emotions that weave & tie the characters together & allows a story to unfold at it's own volition. In the end, it seems almost overkill to decribe Million Dollar Baby as anything other than an Eastwood directed film about boxing that focuses on the female contingent of the sport & stars Eastwood himself, Swank & Freeman.
Or more simply, a film that had me at "Mo Cuishle".
1. Unforgiven
"I'm Will Munny and I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill......"
The manner in which the icon of the ol' western gunslinger is depicted here,
as a man with a mysterious past, one which he would preferred forgotten, yet ultimately, comes to rely on for the survival of the redemptive life he has built since, shows how this film could've also been called "The Final Chapter Of The Man With No Name, But Now We've Given Him A Name.... Punk".
And yeah, I know, I know ..... it's not fashionable for those who study Western films to like this movie. Luckily, for me, I'm one of those who never studied.
__________________
Right now, all I'm wearing is a mustard-stained wife-beater T-shirt, no pants & a massive sombrero.
Right now, all I'm wearing is a mustard-stained wife-beater T-shirt, no pants & a massive sombrero.
Last edited by TheMightyCelestial; 06-16-11 at 12:09 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
1. Unforgiven - The last chapter in the saga of the Man With No Name?
Whether it is or not, it's definitely my favorite western ever.
Whether it is or not, it's definitely my favorite western ever.
X
User Lists
Great thread, Holden.
I've always liked Eastwood, but hadn't really seen a great deal of his films (as director or actor). But it was reading about Gran Torino and essentially this thread that got me interested in seeking out his other work. I've always said I'd choose a director and try and go through their whole filmography - an idea that always sounded great but never actually happened. But this time I'm determined!
I mentioned in the Movie Tab that I've recently watched Play Misty For Me (), High Plains Drifter () and Breezy (). Well I followed that up by watching The Eiger Sanction and re-watching The Outlaw Josey Wales over the weekend.
Eiger Sanction () was a pretty average spy actioner that didn't have a great deal of depth. But as Holden said in his first post, it was probably just a commercial attempt to finance his more experimental projects. It wasn't all just average though. There was some beautiful landscape shots and some intense mountain climbing towards the end. But definitely not on par with his earlier films.
And definitley not on par with his next film, The Outlaw Josey Wales (). One of the few Eastwood-directed films I had seen before I decided to watch them all (the others being Pale Rider, Unforgiven, A Perfect World and Million Dollar Baby). It must get better with repeat viewings because I don't remember it being as good as this. Not seen it for years so it was sort of like watching it for the first time. And because I've been watching his films chronologically I've really been watching Eastwood develop as a director. I could see the slick style present in his later films start to show with Josey. From watching this you get the sense that Clint firmly found his feet as a director, as it's a much more accomplished film than his previous four efforts. At least that's what I think.
I bought one of his boxsets to get me started, but it only features four films he directed. So my goal might start to slow down now as I'll probably get the rest from LOVEFiLM. Should be getting The Gaunlet soon though, which should be interesting as it sounds like a lot of fun.
I've always liked Eastwood, but hadn't really seen a great deal of his films (as director or actor). But it was reading about Gran Torino and essentially this thread that got me interested in seeking out his other work. I've always said I'd choose a director and try and go through their whole filmography - an idea that always sounded great but never actually happened. But this time I'm determined!
I mentioned in the Movie Tab that I've recently watched Play Misty For Me (), High Plains Drifter () and Breezy (). Well I followed that up by watching The Eiger Sanction and re-watching The Outlaw Josey Wales over the weekend.
Eiger Sanction () was a pretty average spy actioner that didn't have a great deal of depth. But as Holden said in his first post, it was probably just a commercial attempt to finance his more experimental projects. It wasn't all just average though. There was some beautiful landscape shots and some intense mountain climbing towards the end. But definitely not on par with his earlier films.
And definitley not on par with his next film, The Outlaw Josey Wales (). One of the few Eastwood-directed films I had seen before I decided to watch them all (the others being Pale Rider, Unforgiven, A Perfect World and Million Dollar Baby). It must get better with repeat viewings because I don't remember it being as good as this. Not seen it for years so it was sort of like watching it for the first time. And because I've been watching his films chronologically I've really been watching Eastwood develop as a director. I could see the slick style present in his later films start to show with Josey. From watching this you get the sense that Clint firmly found his feet as a director, as it's a much more accomplished film than his previous four efforts. At least that's what I think.
I bought one of his boxsets to get me started, but it only features four films he directed. So my goal might start to slow down now as I'll probably get the rest from LOVEFiLM. Should be getting The Gaunlet soon though, which should be interesting as it sounds like a lot of fun.
__________________
TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"
TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
I like The Gauntlet a lot and, though no masterpiece, think it's one of the most underrated of Eastwood's genre pictures. It's a very entertaining B-movie to be sure, but it also has real fun undermining Clint's already entrenched Callahan super-cop persona, especially in the first half of the picture. The officer he plays, Shockley, is a drunken loser who becomes stubbornly determined once he realizes he's been set-up as a disposable patsy. He's flawed, not terribly bright and a terrific character for Eastwood. Too often overlooked in his oveur, and one of the '70s entries where the subvbersions of the Eastwoodian image that were going on were largely ignored by the critics.
The Gauntlet can definitely be enjoyed as "just" an action adventure movie, but there's more than that going on.
my rating:
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Nice mate very muh enjoyed your review and I very much want to see this movie.
__________________
~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
I think Pikey needs to do a Gran Torino and an Invictus review. What's holding you up over there?
__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...
X
Favorite Movies
I think one of the best things about The Gauntlet is how it shows bullets do rip through materials. Whether it be a bus or a house.
"Does your wife know that you masturbate?"
"Does your wife know that you masturbate?"
__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below
http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below
http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Lets all be thankful Clint didnt take a stab at doing the Music full time
With Ray Charles, the opening of the lame sequel to Every Which Way but Loose :
&feature=related
With Ray Charles, the opening of the lame sequel to Every Which Way but Loose :
&feature=related
__________________
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Well...East wood is one of the senior director in hollywood.I love A Perfect world,Unforgiven,the bridges of madison county...
X
Favorite Movies
X
