Write about whatever you like in the comments. I really missed comments yesterday! So glad to have them back. I know readers are still there, but it really means something to me to see your words.
September 5, 2026
Sunrise.
Write about whatever you like in the comments. I really missed comments yesterday! So glad to have them back. I know readers are still there, but it really means something to me to see your words.
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54 comments:
That downed tree -- here in the Ann Arbor area, there are a mess of them from storms that came thru the area yesterday mid-day. Power still out in many places.
We've still got a lot of fallen timber lining the streets here from the nasty storm a few weeks ago, and some side streets blocked by downed wires.
Re comments, it's funny how much their absence, and my inability to make them, affect my mood.
Taking our Labor Day week in Santa Fe, off to the desert tomorrow. Even drove by the Santa Fe burning man, Zozobra. Lots of people and alcohol. Like Madison. Now they project faces on him as he screams in agony as he burns. I guess a Spanish thing. The Name means Mr. Gloom.
I’m three miles north of the Detroit city limit. The weather was scary for about two days but it’s perfect now.
In Santa Fe there is a Loretta Chapel where some nuns prayed a Novia in 1877 and an unknown man came and built a spiral staircase to the choir with pegs and no nails and left without payment, and they assumed he was St Joseph the Carpenter. This leads to Sidney Poitier and the Lillies of the Field movie which was filmed in Tucson at a ranch owned by Linda Rhondstadt’s father in 1963. Her grandfather Federico Ronstadt had a huge ranch in the area.
Greatest Western? Shane followed by The Outlaw Josey Wales
Linda Ronstadt and Jerry Brown had a well-known romantic relationship in the late 1970s, when Brown was governor of California and Ronstadt was one of the biggest singers in the country. They dated for several years but never married.
Jerry Browns Great Grandfather had a 4 square mile ranch 75 miles north of Sacramento in 1877. So old ranch money gets you somewhere.
Do you remember when Althouse deliberately turned off comments? Pepperidge Farms does.
One of the best movie lines ever. Captain Terrell referring to Josey Wales: “Not a hard man to track. Leaves dead men wherever he goes.”
“Political Junkie said...
Greatest Western? Shane followed by The Outlaw Josey Wales“
You have to do that by categories, there is no best. Overall I think “The Searchers” does it all, but there are epics, “How the West Was Won.” For modern ones, “The Magnificent Seven”. And of course “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” Wales was good for the poor grittiness. There was a lot of good tv, Bonanza, Rawhide, Paladin, Maverick.
"Greatest Western? Shane followed by The Outlaw Josey Wales"
I agree 100% with Shane, a beautiful, meaningful film. The next greatest would be The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Clint, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in an epic with so many great lines and quips.
"When it's time to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
"There are two kinds of spurs in the world: Those that come in through the door, and those that come in through the window."
"Sorry, Shorty."
I have my eye on the pacific ocean .
https://zoom.earth/maps/satellite/
I"m enjoying another blog discussing how pickup truck drivers give the "truck wave" to other pickup trucks, but over the road drivers with serious trucks only acknowledge certain types of trucks.
Seems a little cloudy - a little dreary. But then summer is gone in a couple weeks. And then its hello fall. or "Autumn" to pompous assholes.
Greatest Western? You make the call. But I can tell two that aren't. McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Searchers. One is a Western for people who don't like westerns. And the other - the Searchers - is hyped because its about "Racism".
If I had to choose, maybe "My darling Clementine" by Ford. Or the "the far country" with jimmy stewart. Or...the Good bad the ugly. Or... I could name 10 others.
Rio.Bravo, Near the climax, Stumpy brings the dynamite. Wayne has Martin’s Dude throw the sticks while Wayne shoots them in midair. The exchange is:
Chance: “Can you throw?”
Dude: “Near as far as you can shoot.”
Chance: “We’ll find out.”
Best western? My favorites are "High Noon" and "Stagecoach".
Since I enjoyed "Thin Red Line" and "From here to eternity" by James Jones, I'm currently reading "Some came running". Like "Eternity" its a monster of a novel. Jones really loved to sling the words. I don't could've gotten through "Eternity" without listening to it on audio. And the same is true of "Some came running".
Jones was a bit of a tragic figure. "The greatest generation ever". In the army in 39 and wounded on Guadacanal and also where he caught malaria. Best selling author in 52, then dead in 1977 after a battle with heart disease. Too many cigs, cigars, and booze.
Unlike "Hem" he wasn't a alcoholic, just a heavy drinker. A victim of the glamorization of smoking and booze. And bad medical advice. When his french doctor first diagnoised (sic) heart disase he recommened Jones cut back his drinking and smoking to a "healthy level" aka 1 bottle of wine at lunch and dinner and 6 cigars a day!
"Some came running" is good novel but its nothing like the movie. And God do the characters drink. Even the women who are supposed to be the "sober" "responsible" ones are tossing back 3 martinis or 3 beers every meal.
“the Searchers - is hyped because its about "Racism".”
According to a film site:
“ Lucy Edwards, the older sister, is abducted during the Comanche raid and later killed. The film strongly implies she was sexually assaulted, though it is not shown or stated explicitly.
Debbie Edwards, the younger girl, is taken alive and kept for years among the Comanche. When Ethan finally finds her, she is living with Scar’s band and is presented as one of Scar’s wives/captives.”
I don’t know if the racism is to Amerinds or against.
Once you know anything about 19th century weaponry then “The Searchers”’ is a non-starter. The fight at the river takes place not long after the Civil War. The ranchers should be using cap and ball revolvers, Spencer carbines, Henry rifles, Winchester model 1866 rifles (which use brass receivers and.not the blued steel of the 1873 model), and breech loading cavalry carbines like the Smith or the Sharps. In the River fight Jeffrey Hunter uses a revolver not commercially available until after 1873., and John Wayne uses a Winchester model 1894 which was not commercially available until — I’ll let you guess.
Well if the left can't kill children, they can always return to the usual party platform of abusing them for kinks:
https://roanoke.com/news/state-regional/crime-courts/article_3f6392f7-639a-50a8-9fd8-5e7d09ea99e4.html
Hey KKKakkk- is there anyone on your side who ISN'T a child molester/rapist/terrorist/(child)murder/pedophile/grifter???
The Searchers is all about John Wayne wanting to kill "Debbie" at the end because she'd become "an Injun" and then changing his mind. Racism is why the elite are always "hyping it".
Its why it was made in the late 50s. Its all part of Hollywoods desire to attack racism and push for civil rights. First it was "Why are we against those nice Hispanics?" then it was "Why are we against those nice Asians?" and finally "What about the blacks?"
Nothing wrong with attacking racism. But it doesn't make it a great western - let alone the best one.
“ Once you know anything about 19th century weaponry then “The Searchers”’ is a non-starter.”
Yes, true, and Clint Eastwood put .45 long cartridges in an 1851 colt navy revolver in his movie, which was a powder and ball pistol. So movie prop men are not smart, meh.
At the heart of "The Searchers" is race war. Comanche v. Whites. That's only part of the Western story. A small part.
Pretty much every good western had Walter Brennan in it.
Ok RC apply your filters, but the Searchers was a great movie.
I enjoy High Noon. Coop and Grace Kelly. But complete crap as history. No western town would've cowered behind closed doors to let some thugs kill the sherrif and take over the town. All those guy back then were Civil war vets, or they'd fought the Indians.
When Jesse James and the Younger Gang tried to rob a bank in some small town they got shot to hell by the locals.
I think the author of the screenplay was thinking of Joe McCarthy and Brooklyn.
"Do you remember when Althouse deliberately turned off comments? Pepperidge Farms does."
Have to admit, crossed my mind.
I have come to respect and admire John Ford movies a great deal more in my old age. One of his underknown westerns is a movie called Wagon Master.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_Master
It's about a couple of cowhands hired to lead a wagon train of Mormons to Utah. An excellent movie with all the elements of Ford's best films.
My favorite role for Walter Brennan was “Sgt. York” where he was the TN preacher who sang “Old Time Religon” and guided York to Gods.
"Do you remember when Althouse deliberately turned off comments? Pepperidge Farms does."
A soul who has been in crisis does not benefit from torment.
Favorite Westerns:
Tombstone
For a Few Dollars More
Favorite westerns: duel in the sun and the big country. Gregory peck in Both— the baddie in duel, but back to his usual honorable persona in the big country.
I also love any Jimmy stewart western, with his horse Pie. The man who shot liberty valence is stupendous.
Shout out to whichever commenter recommended That Thing You Do the other night. Great movie! Thanks !
Walter Brennan's squeaky voice came from a dose of mustard gas he received in France, WWI. He dabbled in real estate before turning to acting.
For more modern ones, The Unforgiven. Any top 5 list has to have at least 3 Eastwood movies.
Favorite Josey Wales lines:
'...Josey Wales: That's how it goes. When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long.
Chief Lone Watie: I notice when you get to DIS-likin' someone they ain't around for long, neither.
James Jones spent at least some time recovering at the Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis, which he called Luxor in his fiction.
Some of the redneck bars he drank in were still around in the early ;70s I think.
A good movie tells a story you want to hear of a few people in an arc of time and place.
Yeah, movies rarely use the correct weapons in Westerns. Its just six guns with mettalic bullets and winchesters - shootin the same. And of course, its all smokeless powder. 1855, 1865, 1875, 1885 - it was all the same to Hollywood.
I have a DVD of Unforgiven. I basically watch Richard Harris and Gene hackman and skip the rest. I wish guys like Hackman and McQueen had done more westerns. Now, i understand why Steve McQueen didn't do more Westerns, he'd already done a TV Western and wanted to branch out. But those two guy were naturals.
Old Rivers
Walter Brennan
How old was I when I first seen Old Rivers?
I can't remember when he weren't around
Well, that old fella did a heap of work
Spent his whole life walking plowed ground
He had a one-room shack not far from us and
Well, we was about as poor as him
He had one old mule he called Midnight
And I'd trailed along after them
He used to plow them rows
Straight and deep
And I'd come along there behind
A-bustin' up clods with my own bare feet
Old Rivers was a friend of mine
The sun'd get high and
That mule would work
And Old Rivers'd finally say, "Whoa!"
He'd wipe his brow
And lean back on the reins
And talk about a place he was gonna go
He'd say, one of these days
I'm gonna climb that mountain
Walk up there among them clouds
Where the cotton's high
And the corn's a-growin'
And there ain't no fields to plow
I got a letter today from the folks back home and
They all find crops is dry
Down at the end mom said, "Son
You know Old Rivers died."
Sittin' here now in this new-plowed earth
Trying to find me a little shade
With the sun beatin' down
'Cross the fields I see
That mule, old Rivers and me
Now, one of these days
I'm gonna climb that mountain
Walk up there among them clouds
Where the cotton's high
And the corn's a-growin'
And there ain't no fields to plow
With the sun beating down
Across the fields I see
That mule
Old Rivers
And me
Western Michigan was robbed!
That was disappointing.
It's going to be a long season for Big Blue if they're storming the field after beating a MAC opponent. By one point.
On a play they never should've had.
Ride the high country and the wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah.
Anything titled "Once Upon A Time in __________" is usually pretty good.
Boise state gave Oregon a scare. Pretty good for playing No. 2 in their house.
Don’t know how the question came up, but the answer is Once Upon a Time in the West. Henry Fonda plays against type as the most sinister baddie ever, with Charles Bronson and Jason Robards as the (sort of) good guys, and Claudia Cardinale for decoration.
My Top 10 westerns
Stagecoach (1939)
The Gold Rush (1925)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Fort Apache (1948)
Unforgiven (1992)
Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)
Dead Man (1995)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
High Noon (1952)
Donovan’s Reef (1963) I've just realized recently that this is my favorite John Ford movie. It's an idiosyncratic pick to be sure, but I actually think this movie (the last he did in collaboration with John Wayne) is the sum of his art. It continues and deepens and expounds many of the themes and ideas Ford has always been interested in. It is, I think, the happiest John Ford movie, a movie that was released in 1963, which of course is the year Kennedy was shot, and American innocence was lost. Obviously Ford created this film before that event, and so it is Ford at his most optimistic and hopeful. It is, I think, the gentlest, and most subtle, of all the Ford works. I've watched it four times now, and it improves upon each watching. Knowing what is coming up just deepens my enjoyment for when the moment happens. "Here it comes," I say to myself, and then I enjoy the moment all over again. It's a childish pleasure to be sure, but I find as I get older these are the movies I like the most, the ones I can return to and relive. I watch Donovan's Reef and I feel this is the way life should be.
Ford often gets credit for creating a genre of cinema that is unique to America and our history. A "John Ford western," we say. Westerns were around way before Ford, of course, going back to the silent era, but Ford makes us see them and appreciate them in a new way. Ford inspired Japanese filmmakers to make samurai films, to speak about what it means to be a samurai. What Ford is interested in, it seems to me, is what it means to be a man--specifically, a man who goes to war. Ford made his cavalry trilogy because he was interested in the idea of using war to civilize the wild west. He was interested in the idea of men civilizing other dangerous men by force, to make the world safe for women.
Donovan's Reef is Ford's peace movie. It's set in "the wild" (Tahiti), but here people are much more peaceful and happy then they are in "civilization" (Boston). Ford has flipped everything around. John Wayne has gone native, and he's happy.
This movie is so peaceful and happy, it seems to me to be an American version of an Ozu movie. In fact I do not think it is stretching things too far to suggest that this movie was inspired by Ozu, specifically his last movie, An Autumn Afternoon, released in 1962. There is a bit in that movie about old Japanese soldiers reminiscing about the war. That would be, of course, the war with us. They are remembering it rather wistfully, but you can tell that they are enjoying peace. And Ford in turn reminisces about the war, too, and he too enjoys the peace. So this may be a homage to Ozu (the simple island music of Donovan's Reef reminds me of Ozu, too). Ford even throws in a couple of Japanese women dressed in kimonos.
Ford thinks violence is fun. Not killing, Ford is never light on the subject of killing. But he is always light on the subject of fistfights. "Fistfights good, killing bad," is, I think, Ford's worldview. Donovan's Reef, Ford's peace movie, has two rather massive fistfight scenes. Fistfights in Ford movies almost always take place among allies. You fight and then you are friends again. And you enjoy the fight. This is an entirely romanticized view of fistfights. I don't know if you've ever been in a fistfight. I have, I got two black eyes one time, looked like a damn raccoon. And I can tell you that Ford's view on fistfights is rather ridiculous. In fact, the first time I saw Donovan's Reef, I was rather confused about Lee Marvin's character, who I thought was the antagonist. They set him up as the antagonist, and then he's the buddy. Confused me.
The antagonist is a woman (Elizabeth Allen). Ford tried this once before, in The Quiet Man. It's okay in that movie. It’s brilliant here. Allen is wonderful opposite Wayne. She holds her own, and she's a good sport. She suffers a lot of ass jokes. Wayne puts a hand on her ass to put her in a canoe, she falls out of a car onto her ass, and then Wayne spanks her on the ass. Watching her lose her dignity over and over is amusing. Their love affair seems full of awareness and interest in one another. It's believable. You can even argue that she is the protagonist, because it is Allen's character who has the greatest arc in the film. Wayne doesn't change at all. The Wayne-Allen conflict is our main interest in the film, and it is through this conflict that Ford gets into all the things he wants to talk about, which is race and class and sex and religion. But all of it is indirect, you can enjoy the movie as a light romantic diversion, with slapstick comedy thrown in.
One thing Ford is brilliant at doing is casting small comic roles in his movies. In his cavalry movies he uses Victor McLaglen, this big Irish bruiser who looks like he's been in some fights. He's so perfect I thought Ford must have found him in a bar somewhere. Ford is a genius at this. In Donovan's Reef, the character I love the most is probably the Boston lawyer. "As usual, when there's some dirt to be done you hire me." That guy kills me.
The "dirt," in this case, is proving that a man is getting it on with a native girl. Ford's brilliance lies in his indirectness. This is subtle because Donovan's Reef, on the surface, appears very simple and direct (like John Wayne himself). But when Ford wants to make a movie about Nazis, he makes it about Indians (Stagecoach). And when he wants to make a movie about racism, he uses Indians, too (The Searchers). Or in this case, Polynesian Indians.
Ford tackles the race issue more subtly and more beautifully than he has done before. It's not just interracial sex, but interracial kids. They are, of course, cute as hell. And Ford does a marvelous thing, I think, with a subtle moment. Elizabeth Allen says, "I met the cutest little half-castes" and Jack Warden (who is the father) does not say anything, but you know it hits him. Anyway, you can watch this movie and not even get that Ford is speaking volumes about race, that's how subtle and indirect he is. But the upshot is this movie is deeper and far more interesting than, say, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Another character, cartoonish, maybe offensive to many people, I was offended once but now I like the guy, is a Chinese man who was educated at Amherst, and is proud of it, and proud of the English he speaks. There is a joke that the Chinese on the island love to play the slot machine in John Wayne's bar, a slot machine that has never worked. Wayne's got signs up (in Chinese, upside-down) saying the damn thing doesn't work, and they keep playing anyway. So the Chinese man says, "I will speak to them in their barbaric tongue." This is over-broad, I think, but Ford is saying something interesting here about how our culture is not that great (he is often critical of the American obsession with money), and he reserves his respect for other, simpler cultures. So he lightly mocks this guy for wanting to be American and high-class. It's a movie, I think, about knowing your own culture, or perhaps finding your own culture, your own place.
Ford makes warrior movies but he prefers, I think, the idea of peace. Peace with your family, and respecting the tradition of your people. Specifically Ford is big on the idea of religion and following its path. Wayne asks one of the French nuns, "Would you accept some fish from a sinner?" Yet Ford is amused by men who go off the path. One of the things that irks John Wayne about Lee Marvin's character is that he's not just a bigamist, he's a quadramist, got four wives in various ports, and he adds a fifth one before the movie's over. Wayne's also irked that Marvin's character got him engaged to a hootchie-cootchie girl. I'm not sure what that means exactly but it's a nice way to put it. And I like the Christmas celebration in the church with the leaky roof and the rain is just pouring down on Lee Marvin's head, punishing him for all those wives, and he just stands there and takes it.
It's a low-key movie, humorous and gentle, and beautiful, really. You might enjoy it. I liked it a lot the first time I saw it, and now I love the darn thing.
"Greatest Western" and nobody's mentioned Blazing Saddles?
Sad.
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