Time is a Flat Circle or: Haven't I Seen True Detective Before?

by Tony Dayoub

When True Detective promos started popping up on HBO months ahead of its debut, it was difficult to figure what it was all going to be about. About all one could dig up was that it was an 8-episode series, shot in Louisiana (employing a few of the actors of HBO's just-cancelled Treme), starring two well-established stars, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson—neither of whom were on the usual descending trajectory movie stars travel when they decide to move to television—with a title that evoked the pulpy aesthetic of the mystery magazine that ran for decades.

The Late Show - The Late Movies Blogathon: Giant (1956)

by Tony Dayoub

This post is a contribution to The Late Show - The Late Movies Blogathon running through December 7th and hosted by David Cairns of Shadowplay.

I'm sure it's been written about, but personally, I'm just speculating when I say that a classicist like George Stevens (Shane) probably had his hands full tamping down the Method-y exuberance of rising star James Dean when they collaborated on what would be the doomed actor's final film, Giant (1956). But why guess, when you can see the lengths Stevens went to in order to keep Dean from running away with Giant in the movie itself? Let's look at some screen grabs (off the new Giant Blu-ray and which can all be enlarged if you click on them) of three key scenes featuring Dean.

Rehabbing Tonto

The Lone Ranger as Picaresque Tale

by Tony Dayoub

As The Lone Ranger shifts from the point of view of its hero, John Reid (Armie Hammer), to the first-person narrative of his Indian sidekick Tonto (Johnny Depp), the tired pulp story becomes a postmodern picaresque. A type of story with a long literary tradition but seldom seen on film, a picaresque is usually episodic in nature, a fact that contributes to what many perceive is the messiness of The Lone Ranger. Tonto exemplifies the typical picaresque hero (or picaro), noble in intentions but misguided and perhaps even unreliable in his perception of the events in which he is usually at the center. Like Arthur Penn's Little Big Man, this film begins with a rather decrepit Indian as a dubious storyteller, spinning a yarn full of non-sequiturs and magical realism that both uncomfortably overlap with heinous atrocities in order to subvert the typical white victor's perspective of the American western. The first appearance of Depp, made up to look a hundred-odd years old, is itself a metatextual reference to Little Big Man’s protagonist, Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman). Crabb is a white man raised by the Cheyenne who encounters famous figures like Wild Bill Hickok and George Armstrong Custer (who, in The Lone Ranger, finds his own visual parallel in a cavalry officer played by Barry Pepper), just before their grand, untimely ends...

CONTINUE READING AT PRESS PLAY

Blu-ray Review: Criterion's Jubal (1956) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

by Tony Dayoub

Criterion's release of two Delmer Daves westerns, both sporting crisp 4K digital transfers if a bit lean on the frills, offer two of the finest catalogue Blu-rays of 2013 thus far. Taken together, both showcase the true range of their underrated star, Glenn Ford. The better known of the two is 3:10 to Yuma. The first screen adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story, it's about what you'd expect from the author, by turns brutal and quite funny, and it features Ford as a rather generously spirited outlaw. But more on that one later. Instead, can we talk about the underappreciated Jubal?

The Shackling of Django Unchained (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

The last time I discussed Quentin Tarantino's films at length here was a little over 3 years ago when I got into it with critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, defending Inglourious Basterds (20009) as more than just a "film that seems morally akin to Holocaust denial." Frankly, I didn't find the revisionism in Basterds—particularly the blatant recasting of Hitler's death as part of a gory massacre in a locked theater auditorium—to be offensive or even problematic. Basterds' climax was characteristic of the propaganda-like take on the American war films of the 40s that Tarantino was riffing on, movies in which Americans were clearly the "white hats" and the Axis were not only their opposite number; they were racially stereotypical, incompetent goons. Besides which, the violent death of Hitler, and not by his own hand, seemed like the kind of wish-fulfillment narrative few would admit finding unsatisfying on at least a primal level. Django Unchained is more of a mixed bag, another revisionist take on history by Tarantino, one that finds the director losing the thread of the conversation he himself instigates. And in this case, it's difficult to ignore his inclination to overindulge.

Nicholas Ray's Other Western

Run for Cover (1954) Finally Arrives on Blu-ray

by Tony Dayoub

Following on the heels of Nicholas Ray's notable Western Johnny Guitar (1954) and released just before his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Ray's other Western, Run for Cover, fits rather nicely between the two from a historical perspective, refining some of the tangential themes of Johnny Guitar (including the growing influence of McCarthyism) while also serving as a transition to the "troubled youth" subject matter explored in Rebel.

Any Ranch That You Can See on Foot Just Isn’t Worth Looking At

by Tony Dayoub

When discussing movies that must be seen on a big screen, old standbys that usually come to mind are Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, just released on Blu-ray. One that you rarely hear about is William Wyler’s 1958 epic, The Big Country. Shot in Technirama, Technicolor’s higher-resolution alternative to the CinemaScope process, The Big Country really pushes the limits of pioneer cinematographer Franz F. Planer’s expansive photography. Characters are often dwarfed by the California locations, which are as vast as the film’s title and storyline.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Knock on Any Door (1949) and Run for Cover (1955)

by Tony Dayoub

Two of the harder to find films to watch in Nicholas Ray's oeuvre both star future svengali to statuesque blonde starlets, John Derek (The Ten Commandments): the social conscience/proto-youth film Knock on Any Door, and the Western Run for Cover (now easy to view on Netflix streaming, albeit in the wrong aspect ratio). Knock on Any Door is both a precursor to Rebel Without a Cause and its opposite number. Its misguided juveniles are from the bad part of town and far enough down the road of delinquency as to be considered hopeless. Run for Cover is the last of Ray's Western trilogy which began with The Lusty Men (1952). (Ray's The True Story of Jesse James would come later and is quite different from his previous oaters). But as different as each sounds from the other, the fact that the two are tied together by Derek's casting is just one indication of how close Knock on Any Door and Run for Cover are thematically.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Johnny Guitar (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

To say that Johnny Guitar is simply a Western is to ignore its quite substantial and not overly implicit meaning. Indeed much of what is going on in Nicholas Ray's film is happening underneath its shallow—and by this, I don't mean banal—surface. But to read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of May 28, 1954, one would expect this film to be just another horse opera, and a rather weak one at that.

...Joan Crawford plays essentially the role that Van Heflin played in Shane...The only big difference in the character, as plainly rewritten for her, is that now it falls in love with the ex-gunfighter, whom Sterling Hayden here plays.

But this condescension to Miss Crawford and her technically recognized sex does nothing more for the picture than give it some academic aspects of romance. No more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.

Ouch, I think I cut myself with one of Crowther's metaphorical shavers.

I Told You When I Came I Was a Stranger

McCabe & Mrs. Miller at 40

By Tony Dayoub

I’d be hard pressed to find a more evocative opening credit sequence than that of the 1971 Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller. First, we hear the wind blowing over the WB shield logo that precedes the film. As the movie fades up, so do the plaintive guitar strings of Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song,” rising along with the soft light of Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography. In a tracking shot, a lonely figure — his body enveloped in brown-orange fur so as to render him faceless — meanders down a winding dirt road on his horse. The fluid camera seemingly drags the film titles into view from screen right at the same deliberate pace that the rider’s horse tows a second beast of burden. The horses stroll past a half-built church sitting in the cold drizzle. The man jumps off the horse when he arrives at the ramshackle mining settlement we’ll come to know as Presbyterian Church. He doffs his fur coat, and big reveal: It is pretty-boy Warren Beatty, bearded and looking as run-down in his tight-fitting dark suit and bowler hat as the rest of the camp. The local saloon’s proprietor, Paddy Sheehan (Rene Auberjonois) soon susses out the stranger’s name from his customers: McCabe...

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Invoking the Spirit of the West

How DVD extras enhance the experience of viewing the animated Rango

By Tony Dayoub

It’s unusual to see my annual list of best movies and not find some animated piece by either Pixar or Disney or both in a prominent position. Stranger still is finding that slot occupied by a first-time offering from an upstart animation company. But 2011’s offerings from the House of Mouse are weaker than in years past. Cars 2 is a hackneyed attempt to capitalize on the franchise’s licensing longevity, repositioning an annoying secondary character — popular with kids — as the new star of the series while jettisoning any of the emotional content that made the first film palatable to adults. And though the new Winnie the Pooh redo is an earnest stab at satisfying adults’ appetite for nostalgia, it adheres a little too closely to tradition to have the broad appeal of most recent Disney/Pixar movies: You’re not going to see Junior shutting down the PlayStation to go check out the cool, new animated designs of Tigger, Eeyore, or Piglet at the multiplex with his friends. No, for that there’s Rango (Paramount Home Video), just out on Blu-ray and DVD...

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Contender for 2011's Best Looking Blu-ray Is Also the Year's Best Kept Secret

by Tony Dayoub

Besides running my review of the new indie, Beginners, a film I'm sure will end up on my year-end top 10 list, this issue of Nomad Editions Wide Screen also contains my weekly column, DVDs of the Moment. This week, I have the pleasure of discussing the new Blu-ray release of an epic western that has quickly become one of my all-time favorite movies, William Wyler's The Big Country (1958).

Featuring an all-star cast that includes Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connors, this shot-in Technirama film is made for high definition, as Jeffrey Wells rather dramatically discusses in his post today at Hollywood Elsewhere. Some may find the fact that it is currently only available online through Wal-Mart, a drawback. But, at just under $10, it is a steal, especially considering that it is a remarkable upgrade from its 2001 DVD release. Though light on extras, there are a few new special features included in the Blu-ray release. More importantly, though, is the fact that the disc's gorgeous transfer is off of the 2007 Academy Restoration.

I've been watching many a classic Blu-ray since I began writing the DVD column, more so because 2011 has turned out to be a watershed year in terms of the number of Blu-ray catalog releases. And I can safely say that along with Paramount's The Ten Commandments (1956) and Warner Archive's remastered The Boy Friend (1971), Fox/MGM's The Big Country is a strong contender for best looking DVD of the year. Sure, the movie rehashes some elements of Wyler's own 1938 "southern," Jezebel (haughty, self-involved heiress irritates her noble fiance enough for him to call their wedding off; climactic pistol duel), but between Franz F. Planer's cinematography, Jerome Moross's Oscar-nominated score, and Heston being Heston (Wyler directed him in Ben-Hur the following year), this movie has a lot to offer tastes both high and low. Why don't you read why I love this movie and its new Blu-ray release?

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Movie Review: Rango (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

You know what's the best feeling for a moviegoer? Going to the multiplex with average to low expectations about a movie only to be greatly surprised by how much you enjoyed it. Though the buzz was starting to get around that the animated western Rango was the first great film of 2011, I still went into it with some trepidation. Animated movies seem to touch the heart of even the most stone-faced critics who often seem to give such pictures a pass simply for displaying a modicum of visual originality (I'm thinking of such mediocrity as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Despicable Me, Megamind, etc.). But with a glut of animation beginning to hit theaters as each studio tries to get into the game, it is harder and harder to predict which will be memorable and which won't be. I'm happy to report Rango exceeds expectations.

Nicholas Ray's Run for Cover (1955) at Nomad Editions Wide Screen

by Tony Dayoub

Continuing my exploration of Nicholas Ray's films (which began last year), today I tackle the extremely hard-to-find Run for Cover, which stars James Cagney, John Derek, Viveca Lindfors, and he of the eponymous Academy Award for humanitarianism, Jean Hersholt. Peculiarly, I do this from my regular perch at Wide Screen's DVD column. I say "peculiarly" because this film is not yet available on DVD. But I hope to call attention to why it (as well as many other Ray movies I'll discuss here at Cinema Viewfinder in the future) deserves to be released on DVD.

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Movie Review: True Grit (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

Richard T. Jameson has an excellent piece up on his blog, Straight Shooting, entitled "also-true 'Grit'". You can (and most definitely should) read it for yourself, but in it he compares the new Coen Brothers film with Henry Hathaway's 1969 original. His conclusion:

So if I had to pick only one True Grit movie to take to the proverbial desert island, it'd be Hathaway's, Wayne's, Ballard's and, while we're at it, Elmer Bernstein's: that gentleman was Wayne's music scorer of choice in the Sixties, and the Bernstein sound laid over one of Lucien Ballard's high-country shots of quivering aspen and immeasurable, clear-air vastness imbues the moment with mystery. (The score of the 2010 version, by regular Coen collaborator Carter Burwell, runs variations on "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," a folk hymn best known from Night of the Hunter.)

The beauty of it is, though, that we don't have to pick one True Grit. Both are worth having. We take for granted that any Coen picture is going to be a work of impeccable craftsmanship, and yes, Roger Deakins is at the camera once again. The brothers' fidelity to [Charles] Portis' novel not only honors a great literary achievement but also makes for a narrative with fascinating interruptions, digressions and enigmatic encounters - in short, storytelling of a perversity the Coens usually have to generate on their own.

Like the book but unlike the 1969 movie, their True Grit has a narrator, Mattie, and keeps faith with her point of view. What she doesn't know, we don't know.

There are a few things I find particularly cogent about Jameson's review: his perceptive connecting of the Coens' True Grit to The Night of the Hunter; "What she doesn't know, we don't know..."; and, "The beauty of it is, though, that we don't have to pick one True Grit."

Movie Review: The Outrage (1964)

by Tony Dayoub

Martin Ritt's The Outrage is one of the more offbeat stabs Hollywood has taken at westernizing (both in the literal and the genre sense) a Kurosawa film. Like The Magnificent Seven (1960) before it, as well as the former's Italian contemporary, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), the change of setting from feudal Japan to the Old West may seem at first glance to be the only difference in this almost scene-for-scene translation of the Japanese director's Rashomon. But Rashomon's focus on the perception of moral responsibility subtly shifts to a study of class hierarchy in this ambitious, more deliberately-paced, dreamlike western.

Movie Review: Johnny Guitar (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

To say that Johnny Guitar is simply a western is to ignore its quite substantial and not overly implicit meaning. Indeed much of what is going on in Nicholas Ray's film is happening underneath its shallow— and by this, I don't mean banal—surface. But to read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of May 28, 1954, one would expect this film to be just another horse opera, and a rather weak one at that.

...Joan Crawford plays essentially the role that Van Heflin played in Shane...The only big difference in the character, as plainly rewritten for her, is that now it falls in love with the ex-gunfighter, whom Sterling Hayden here plays.

But this condescension to Miss Crawford and her technically recognized sex does nothing more for the picture than give it some academic aspects of romance. No more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.

Ouch, I think I cut myself with one of Crowther's metaphorical shavers.

To read the rest of review at Decisions at Sundown click here.

Movie Review: The Last Command (1955)

by Tony Dayoub



There is no way to describe The Last Command except as earnest in its inaccuracy. Still, this 1955 western, unavailable on DVD, is likely the most accurate and best depiction of the Battle of the Alamo as seen through the eyes of one of its heroes, Jim Bowie. In fact, the film begins with the song "Jim Bowie," lyrics by Sydney Clare ("On the Good Ship Lollipop") and music composed by the great Max Steiner. The Austrian Steiner was Warner Brothers go-to composer in the early days, responsible for the famous themes for Gone With the Wind (1939) and Casablanca (1942) among others (by the time he composed the score for this Republic film he was working freelance). As sung by Gordon MacRae—the very same year he hit his career peak in the movie Oklahoma!—"Jim Bowie" immediately sets the reverential tone for the picture.

Seventies Cinema Revival: McCabe & Mrs. Miller

by Tony Dayoub

Perhaps it was the disillusionment with Vietnam, or the revolutionary assault of American society by it's younger generation that led to the marked change in film from the sixties into the seventies. One thing is certain, westerns had up until then been the dominant genre in American film. And as the realities of the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, and feminism started encroaching on our lives, movie audiences started turning their back on these, and other "fantasies" that existed in American film.

Musicals were dying at the box office... just look at Doctor Dolittle (1967) as Mark Harris discusses in his excellent book, Pictures at a Revolution. War movies were becoming less Dmytryk's Back to Bataan (1945), and more Boorman's Hell in the Pacific (1968). Even John Ford was redefining his own depiction of Native Americans with the extremely sympathetic take in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), his last western. With Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah now becoming the torchbearers of the genre, cowboys were taking on a distinctly antiheroic role. The time had come for an outsider, like Robert Altman, to subvert the western, which he did in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

Altman was by no means a young novice when he hit it big with M*A*S*H (1970). Already well into his forties, he had made a few less than notable movies like Countdown (1968). And like Peckinpah, he had been a prolific TV director, having directed some of the popular shows of the day, like Route 66, Combat! and Bonanza. But M*A*S*H was the first indication that he was destined for more than the journeyman directing he had done thus far. Ostensibly about the Korean War, Altman admitted that the reason it was such a hit was because it really spoke of Vietnam at a time when few other films were. And while it had many of his hallmarks, like the overlapping dialogue, ensemble cast, and naturalistic approach to shooting, his unique style arguably didn't solidify until McCabe.


The film opens to the haunting sound of Leonard Cohen singing "The Stranger Song" as a man enters frame left riding a mule in the constant drizzle of an unmistakeably northwestern town called Presbyterian Church. It is a mining town slowly drifting into modernity with the building of a church. The man enters Sheehan's, a bar where he sets up a game of poker, introducing himself as John McCabe (Warren Beatty). When the proprietor, Paddy Sheehan (Rene Auberjonois), asks him if he's "Pudgy" McCabe, the man who shot down Bill Roundtree with a Deringer, McCabe doesn't deny it. He just grins as Altman zooms into his gold-toothed smile.

As the myth of McCabe the gunfighter starts spreading, he starts to promote a new enterprise, a prostitution camp. Attracted to the new endeavor, Mrs. Constance Miller (Julie Christie), an opium-addicted madam, arrives in town. Mrs. Miller is the only one to see through McCabe's phony facade to the hard-drinking, charming con-man hidden beneath. She bids to go into business with McCabe to turn the camp into a luxurious brothel. The establishment of the brothel, and the church, accelerates the town's development, bringing both the God-fearing and the corrupt together to form a community.

Soon, the Harrison Shaugnessy Company, in the form of a man named Sears (Michael Murphy), comes calling on McCabe to buy his business. McCabe's response, "Well, Sears, I'm Roebuck. Who'd you leave minding the goddamn store?" McCabe's folksy humor falls on deaf ears, as does his haggling for a greater bid when Sears shows interest in buying McCabe out. Sears leaves, and his company sends out three hired gunmen, a British giant named Butler (Hugh Millais), a kid, and an Indian half-breed, to kill the brothel owner.

When Sheehan tells Butler how McCabe is really the outlaw "Pudgy" McCabe, Butler says, "That man never killed anyone in is life." But as he trudges through the snow, hunted by the gunmen, McCabe has an ace up his sleeve that brings that denial into question, a Deringer pistol.

Altman spends the first hour of the film setting up the house of cards on which McCabe, and Presbyterian Church, is built on. The legend of McCabe is given a lot of credence in the iconic style used to shoot his entry into town. Vilmos Zsigmond's then innovative soft focus cinematography creates a warm, nostalgic, almost historic mood. The haunting Cohen folk songs, heard throughout, serve the same mystical function as a Greek chorus, commenting on the tale and enhancing its archetypal relevance to traditional myths. The silence McCabe adopts when interrogated about Bill Roundtree plays into our expectations of western outlaws and their stoicism when referring to killing.


But once Sears and his company appear, the film shifts into a second hour where Altman explodes the western myth. The outlaw hero, McCabe, is visibly shaken by the quiet departure of Sears. The sun-dappled greenery of the northwest turns into a bleak snowy landscape. When questioned about a gun he carries, an innocent young cowboy (Keith Carradine) explains how he wears it mostly for show, and doesn't know how to shoot it. Goaded into unholstering the gun by one of the hired guns, he is brutally murdered while atop a bridge, falling into icy water, and demolishing the cliche of the honorable gunfight on a dusty street.

Altman's style is never more evident than in this film. His penchant for naturalism comes to the fore in this film, which was shot chronologically as the town was erected. The early scenes are abundant with overlapping dialogue, designed to confuse one's opinion of McCabe. But as his backstory becomes clear, so does the soundtrack, until almost the only sound heard in the climactic 20 minutes is that of snow falling. The cast consists of several actors that had been or would become part of his repertory, including Auberjonois, Murphy, Carradine, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, and Shelley Duvall. And like in M*A*S*H, he uses the setting to reflect his personal views, here the formation of a society.

Altman acknowledges the unimpressive plot in his commentary for the film's DVD. A stranger comes into town and gets together with the hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold to defend the town from a gunslinging kid, a giant, and a half-breed. But he isn't as interested in the cliche plot as he is in what fuels each character's motivation. He is cognizant that societys evolve much the same way the town does in this film, through the push and pull of conflicting moral extremes, as represented by the church and the brothel. Big business generally comes in once the pioneering has been done by the little man, and may sometimes use unethical means to push him out.

Despite just an average box office gross at the time of its release, McCabe & Mrs. Miller has become a cult favorite. It's influence can still be felt today in films as recent as Michael Winterbottom's The Claim (2000) and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007).

This entry first appeared on Blogcritics on 9/7/08.