Bite the Bullet -1975 (Brooks)

Plot:  In 1908 Colorado, nine adventurers enter a long-distance, 700 mile horse race.
Stars: Gene Hackman, Candice Bergan, James Coburn, and Ben Johnson

Pros:  Scenery, Ben Johnson, a few good scenes, excellent finish, Horses

Cons: Sluggish pace, sparse dialog, choppy editing, Candice Bergan

Best Quote: A big, expensive Western that doesn't contain one moment that might be called genuine. The movie looks prefabricated - New York Times

An enjoyable movie that ambles along for too long at too slow a pace.  Except for Ben Johnson (a real joy) the excellent cast doesn't have much to work with. Candice Bergan, in particular, is given an unbelievable character ( a whore, striking a blow for feminism) and forced to engage in too many tedious "We can't let a female...." discussions. And while the scenery is great, the film often looks cheap - like many 70s films.

The dialog not only is sparse, but too cynical and downbeat. Typical 1970s, of course. At one point, Hackman (our Hero) actually offers a prostitute Heroin! And we get the usual, in this case untrue, historical revisionism.  Former Rough-rider Hackman declares they didn't "charge up San Juan Hill"  they "crawled up the Hill on our scared bellies".  Of course, they ran/walked up the Hill - had they "crawled" - they would have all been shot before they got to the top.  

Why the sparse dialog and underdeveloped story?  Brooks started with an unfinished script - and wrote most of it while filming. The actors would get a page of dialog every morning. The ending wasn't written till the night before.

Summary:  A good cast and story idea that comes up lame, due to a 2nd rate script. The producer should have hired a writer with more talent and less chutzpah.  But Hackman and Ben Johnson are always fun to watch. Rating **1/2

Road to Rio (1947)

Stars: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Wiere Brothers

Plot: Who Cares?

The 5th and the last of the truly funny Road pictures. Highlights include an appearance by the "Andrews Sisters" , the Wiere Brothers, and some great one-liners by Hope. No doubt Hope and Crosby wanted to do something different and Rio is less zany and slower-paced, more "mainstream", than the previous Road pictures. "Rio" clocks in at 100 minutes compared to the 82 minutes of "Road to Morocco" and 90 minutes for "Road to Utopia" and there are fewer fast-paced gags/inside jokes and by-ply between the boys.

I'd place it below those two films, but its still pretty good. And being able to see it in a theater full of classical films fans who "got the jokes" added to the pleasure.

Also, two things struck me, watching it in on a big screen. First, what a truly great physical comedian Bob Hope was. He always had great timing and could tell a joke, but when he was young -that is under 50 - he could complement that with some truly funny facial expressions. The other is how great Crosby sounds in a theater. What a great baritone voice he had - beautiful and manly. Sinatra was probably the better singer of Popular music (whether upbeat or cynical) but when it comes to crooning a love ballet or a more old-fashioned song Crosby couldn't be beat.

Altman - What I always Suspected

Per Richard Schickel's review of "Robert Altman: The Oral Biography" :

"It appears that from the beginning of his career until almost its end (when illness slowed him), Robert Altman never passed an entirely sober day in his life. When he was not drinking heavily, he was smoking dope -- often doing both simultaneously. When he screened dailies on location, he insisted the cast and crew gather to view them in a party atmosphere, with the merriment rolling on into the night.

His ability to ingest industrial-strength quantities of stuff that was bad for him fills one with shock, awe and questions. Yet Mitchell Zuckoff, who interviewed 145 people for the long, insanely admiring "Robert Altman: The Oral Biography," never comes to grips with the effect this had on his films."

"This was another sore point with Altman, who didn't like writers, either. He was always telling his actors to say whatever came into their heads. Anyone attempting to hold him to account, whether for budget or story, was his enemy."

"He said he was uninterested in the essentials of moviemaking: narrative or character development. What he cared for was behavior, especially of the spur of the moment variety. Since most actors -- especially the bad ones -- prefer to be left to their own devices, this made him wildly popular with them.

To make sure the audience never quite understood what was going on, he overlapped dialogue -- no wait, that's not quite right -- he layered multiple conversations into his dialogue tracks and then turned the volume down, so that much of the time you couldn't hear what anyone was saying."

1001 movies I must see before I die - an analysis

Book title - 1001 movies you must see before you die

Editor - Steven Jay Schneider

Summary: This is probably a good book for those who want to start viewing some classic films. The selection is OK but the film write-ups are rather weak, for film write-ups I'd recommend "Kael's 5001 nights at the movies".

And as shown by the analysis below, the book has 4 flaws. First, they try to diversify film selections by time, so each decade gets more or less the same number of films - even though quality films aren't spread evenly out over time. Second, they pick a little bit of everything from every genre and every country. Thirdly, the authors prefer "serious" and "edgy" dramas to entertainment. So, Comedy/Musicals/Adventure/Westerns get short shrift.

Finally, too many "Milestone" pictures are selected. Yes, its nice that picture "Y" knocked their socks off in 1962, or that picture "X" - was the first to do blah blah, but so what?

Analysis:

Pages by Decade:

1920s: 56

1930s: 82

1940s: 91

1950s: 122

1960s: 145

1970s: 143

1980s: 125

1990s: 108

2000s: 53

Films by category (Labels not exclusive):

Comedy -250

Musical - 60

Westerns - 40

Noir - 50

Horror -120

Drama -600

Films by Director:

Bunuel - 9

Hitchcock -18

Ford - 8

Godard - 8

Altman - 6

Kubrick - 10

Cassevetes - 4

Woody Allen - 6

Speilberg - 8

Top 20 - 2002 to 2007

1. The Two Towers
2. The Return of the King
3. Kill Bill, Part I
4. Catch me if you can
5. Chicago
6. Bin-Jip
7. Der Untergang
8. Apocalypto
9. The Lives of Others
10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
11. Pirates of the Caribbean
12. 2046
13. Infernal Affairs
14. Lust, Caution
15. Team America, World Police