the groundhog day project

OVERTURE Multiple directors and several parts, How the West Was Won is a big movie. So big it was filmed and projected in Cinerama, three projectors running simultaneously with one giant curved screen. I've read that eyelines and whatnot may be a little weird watching this on a flat screen... I'm sure I've seen this movie before, more than once, but that wasn't something I would have been paying much attention to, I'm guessing. Anyway, on to the movie. Oh, the music. Classic stuff, sampled or copied in many a film since. Not too long ago I watched Romancing the Stone (because I was considering it for this blog), and I swear the music over the opening novel sequence is just this music straight, no copy, no reference, just plugged in as is. (If it wasn't it might as well have been.) But, for good reason. This music is Western music. This and that theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly --as iconic, or moreso than, some John Williams stuff for Star Wars ...

( Yesterday 's entry was quite short, missing a whole middle and barely having an introduction or conclusion. The basic explanation is a) I had no idea how mentally exhausted I was as the spring quarter came to an end yesterday evening and b) add to that a night out with some fellow grad students, some drinks and a 2+ hour movie to watch at about half past midnight. I managed, but only barely. The copy of The Magnificent Seven that I've got turned out to be a rather bad copy, with a stretched image and messed up sound, so put all that together and while I've seen the film before, probably seen the sequels, and watched the tv series back in 1998, not to mention having seen The Seven Samurai --I know what the film is about but I was not following it too well last night. It was all I could do to stay awake. The good news: spring quarter ended--even turned in today the grades for the classes I was teaching, and that means I have completed all of my coursework for grad school...

I really should just be doing multiple entries rather than these extra long double movie ones. But I like them being numbered nicely. Today: The Searchers and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral . The opening of The Searchers offers us one of the structural oppositions that Henderson (1985) and Wright (1975) discuss--wilderness/civilization. Also inside/outside society. The door opens to the outside wilderness and Ethan (John Wayne) arrives, not unlike Shane yesterday . Henderson's focus is this very film and he offers up an important summary of one of the major themes: The Searchers is explicitly concerned with a number of anthropological issues. On its surface it treats questions of kinship, race, marriage, and the relations between tribes. These questions also have to do with the identity, status, and responsibilities of individuals: who is responsible for the retrieval and burial of the dead, for the search and recovery of captives, for vengeance? Who can marry whom? Which marri...