the groundhog day project

I decided on my titles for writing about The Villain on day one. For this one, I was going to, with tongue somewhat in cheek, talk about how this film portrays women, or wom a n. No, wom e n. There is, beside Charming, also the old woman that Handsome helps across the street. And, while Charming is rather idiotic in choosing to help her (with a bit of force) across the street simply because she's standing nearby, she is presented as a bit shrill. Handsome deserves her ire, but I can't help but point out that her ire is still presented as an overreaction. And, Charming--both oversexualized and cartoonishly demure. (It occurred to me last night, by the way, that when Cactus Jack asks Nervous Elk what he does with the white women after he captures them, it feels a little like maybe Cactus Jack doesn't know what men do with women any more than Handsome does. And, I'll return to that conversation later.) The film sends up the usual and has Charming be the one who want...

I paid little attention to the news today. Got up, watched a recording on the DVR, went to play D&D, learned of yet another mass shooting--this one in a church in Texas--just before I was heading home. That was a few hours ago now. I've been avoiding news a little more, watched a few more shows waiting on the DVR. My privilege. I can afford to ignore the horrible parts of this world when it's convenient. And, now I'm watching a live-action cartoon; back to The Villain . And, I remember watching this when I was younger, when it didn't matter that Cactus Jack Slade is an awful man, a criminal, a thief, a murderer (at least he's making an effort to be, and it's probably safe to assume he has killed before). But he falls on his face and there's a funny splat sound. He rides a horse that is smarter than he is. It's funny. It's safe, despite the awfulness. It occurs to me that all those Road Runner cartoons that this film quite explicitly apes were ...

You probably haven't seen The Villain . It was apparently a box office bomb in 1979 (though I cannot find specific figures-- box office mojo starts having clear figures in 1982-- Alt Film Guide cites its failure in a piece about Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand failing at the box office back in 2013. For whatever reason, we had it on one of our VHS tapes. It's a western by way of (and very much so) a Road Runner cartoon. Cactus Jack Slade (Kirk Douglas) is the black hat out to rob and ravish Charming Jones (Ann Margret) who is being escorted by Handsome Stranger (Schwarzenegger). It starts like a typical western film. Shots of Monument Valley, a lone cowboy (Cactus Jack) on horseback, an almost cliched score. Then, Slade tries to jump onto the top of a passing train and misses, and it becomes immediately clear that this is not really a western as such. Also, Cactus Jack's horse Whiskey might actually be smarter than he is. Cactus Jack is Wile E. Coyote in the equati...

Reported in 1987 (so, in regards to Rambo III ) in Forbes : Stallone was so shocked by the negative critical and listless box office reception for his latest movie, Over the Top, that he is rewriting the next Rambo to be more philosophical, in the vein of Oscar winner Platoon. Such talk elicits quick denials from Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar, the industry veterans who own 87% of Carolco. They insist that Stallone cannot turn the movie into a talky-thinky film punctuated with a little machine gun fire. "Rambo is an action/adventure film, so if you take out the action," says Vajna, "you don't have a film." (p. 88) Reading this now, I find it actually more interesting than when I referenced this passage in one of my Rambo speeches back in 2009. See, now I've seen some of James Cameron's comments on the script for the second film. I haven't seen the draft [edit: just as I was about to post this entry, I found Cameron's draft online, so I will re...