Jason's Blog, page 122

Stagecoach

Apaches attack a stagecoach. Luckily, John Wayne is there to shoot most of them. Directed by John Ford.

This is one of those Westerns where the Indians are just a faceless horde to be shot down, with no background for why they attack. At one moment a passenger on the stagecoach, with one bullett left in his gun, directs it at the head of a female passenger, the idea being that death is better for her than to be captured by Indians. Only at the end of his career, with Cheyenne Autumn, did Ford try to see the situation from the Indians' point of view.

Anyway... this was the breakthrough film for John Wayne, but his persona isn't quite there yet, so it's rather Thomas Mitchell, as a drunk doctor, that steals the film. It's a sound film, but still often has the feel of a silent. John Carradine plays a Doc Holiday type character. There's the scene of the bartender removing the mirror before a duel - always a classic.

Linda & Valentin

Have started re-reading my Linda and Valentin albums, the Danish translation of French album series Valérian by Mézières and Christin, bought thirty years ago.

The Searchers

After reading the book about this film, I re-watched it. John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter spend years trying to find Natalie Wood that has been kidnapped by Commanches, directed by John Ford.

The film has scenes that today might seem corny, the Indian chief is played by a white man, and there are lots of outdoor scenes that clearly are filmed in a studio, but the film still feels more real and lived in than most modern Westerns. There are lots of little details that ring true, like the fact that the character Lars Jorgensen, who speaks with a Scandinavian accent, is the one who uses American expressions like By golly, or By jiminy. At the same time, Ford came from silent films, and a lot of the story is told visually, with room for ambiguity.

Indians in Westerns is a tricky thing. Will they be faceless hordes to be shot down or noble, wise treehuggers? Is it a racist film? Well, John Wayne's character is clearly a racist. But it was a racist period. Indians raped and tortured. The whites weren't any better, attacking Indian camps and killing women and children. There's a real darkness in the film, closer to McCarthy's Blood Meridian than to the ordinary 50s Western, balanced with some of Ford's usual comedic elements.

Visually the film is amazing, the Monument Valley backgrounds giving it almost a biblical feel. And then there's the famous ending, with Wayne framed by the doorway, a scene just as iconic and mythic as Bogart and Bergman at the end of Casablanca.

Lost Cat thumbnails

Some books I've read 10

The Art of Denis McLoughlin by David Ashford
Amazing book, with lots of bookcovers by McLoughlin. Mostly crime novels, but also some Westerns. Even some of his comics.

Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
Some sort of mad, poetic masterpiece, more experimental than The Favourite Game.

Kissing The Beehive by Jonathan Carroll
Carroll's attempt at the mainstream? It's disappointingly uncarrollian - a tug of war between a writer and a -yawn- serial killer, with no fantastical elements.

White Appels by Jonathan Carroll
Glass Soup by Jonathan Carroll
Glass Soup is a continuation of White Apples. Carroll's best books are a mix of the every day and the imaginative. These books takes place almost exclusivly in the latter. I enjoyed the books more than Kissing The Beehive, but there is a lot of exposition - rules about going back and forth between life and death.

Secrecy by Rupert Thomson
A tale from 1690's Florence, it's beautifully written, as always with Thomson, but somehow I was less engaged in this book.

The Searchers - The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel
Very interesting book, not only about the film, but also the novel it was based on and the real case, the kidnapping of Cynthia Ann Parker by Commanches and the son she had, Quanah Parker. It's a pretty bloody story, with scalping and torture on both sides. Nobody comes away innocent, except maybe Cynthia Ann herself.

Hergé - Son of Tintin by Benoît Peeters
Good, solid biography of Hergé. There are some mix-ups in the translation, though. A page is often called a panel and a panel is called a frame.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
I gave up on page 59. Does it get better? I found both the voices of the husband and wife kind of annoying.

Currently reading:
The Lonely Hunter - A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr

Wise man 3

-I'm getting older and need someone to take my place -So I've been looking for a disciple, and... -No! -All life is holy! -Follow the words of Confusius -Never lay your hand on a creature made by... -OUCH! -Creep!

Oh, no!

Lost Highway

Bill Pullman is sent to jail for killing Patricia Arquette and then turns into Balthazar Getty, directed by David Lynch.

This is some spooky shit we got here. The first 45 minutes of the film are great - pure Lynch, with a creepy, dreamlike quality. Then it seems like co-author Barry Gifford takes over and turns it into a clunky film noir fantasy, with Arquette as a femme fatale and a porn film subplot. But the dream logic is gone, and none of the different pieces really fit together. Getty is a less talented Charlie Sheen, putting Marilyn Manson in the film dates it pretty badly - maybe not as much as putting Frankie Goes to Hollywood in Body Double, but still - and worst of all, Lynch himself seems to go missing, only turning up occasionally, like in the coffee table scene. Some ideas in the film reappear in Mulholland Drive, with a much better result.

John Irving

Top 5 John Irving books:

1. The Cider House Rules
2. The World According to Garp
3. The Hotel New Hampshire
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany
5. Not sure... A Widow for One Year? There's a gap between those four books and the ones that came after and that never quite reach the same heights.

David Lynch

Top 5 David Lynch films:

1. Blue Velvet
2. Mulholland Drive
3. Elephant Man
4. The Straight Story
5. Eraserhead