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Oh yeah, who got a perfect score on the GRE verbal? *does the dance of standardised testing joy* now let's just hope that UVA's English department is impressed enough by that to overlook the deeply mediocre 510 math score.
I should be working on my theses, especially the history one, or at least writing up my Sharpe & Harper essay for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ship_manifesto, (or writing one of those three--no, four--in-progress fanfics), but instead I'm killing time in the Pleasants computer lab because I'm, like, one of three people left on campus, everyone else but the RAs having already left for Thanksgiving break. Therefore, I give y'all the product of my boredom: some ramble-y fangirl movie recs. Iv'e actually been keeping a list of my favourite movies for a couple of years now, but I feel the time has come to inflict my squee-filled reviews upon others.
Tonight's Genre of Choice:
Great Westerns:
(And by “great” I mean long, filled with violent shoot-outs, and preferably featuring sexy actors.)
Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy:
A Fistful of Dollars
For A Few Dollars More
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
All of the above star a fairly young and ruggedly handsome Clint Eastwood, have good guys that are only marginally more moral than the bad guys, and end with shoot-outs filmed under a blazing hot sun. Also, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef both make appearances as villains. Best scenes: The torture sequence in Fistful (um, but only if you’re every bit as twisted as I am), Eastwood tallying his bounty at the end of A few Dollars More, the bounty/hanging scam at the beginning of TGtBatU, and the bridge sequence, also in TGtBatU. The shoot-outs at the ends of all three are also pretty good (get the widescreen versions if possible so that none of the gunfighters disappear of the edges of the scene). Slash quotient: practically nil.
The Magnificent Seven
(not the television series, alas, though that does deserve a spot on the list)
The only film ever to feature Yul Brynner as a western gunslinger. Based on the Japanese classic, the Seven Samurai, it tells the story of seven gunfighters who band together to save a town from Mexican bandits. Steve McQueen and Robert Vaugn both show up as not-quite-as-sexy-as-Clint-Eastwood-but-still-not-bad-looking gunslingers, and Eli Wallach makes another great appearance as a villain. Slash quotient: two stars for Brynner and McQueen’s characters’ ability to seemingly read one another’s minds.
Tombstone
The best western ever. Hands down. TGtBatU comes close, but Tombstone beats it out by virtue of the fact that it contains Val Kilmer’s awesome performance as Doc Holliday. Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp isn’t exactly hard on the eyes either. Sadly, this one doesn’t have Eli Wallach in it, but it does have shoot outs galore. It is also, like every other film, novel, or piece of historical nonfiction I have ever encountered containing Holliday and Earp, chock full of lovely, angsty slash vibes. Be warned, if you’re a history geek, this pairing can be the gateway drug to RPS. Best scene: every scene with Kilmer in it, but especially the piano playing scene and the badge scene. The shot of Wyatt, Doc, & co. walking menacingly down the street toward the OK Corral is also pretty memorable, and worth renting the widescreen version for. Slash quotient: five stars for massive Doc/Wyatt vibes, as well as the obvious slashy love shared by minor characters PrettyActor!Boy and LittleGay!Deputy. The het love triangle involving Wyatt, Mattie, and sultry dance hall singer Josephine is pretty interesting as well, and Kate Elder literally crawling all over Doc is a sight not to be missed.
Gunfight at the OK Corral
This one is not a great western, but it’s worth watching so that you can compare it to Tombstone. Both are full of little and not-so-little historical inaccuracies, but Tombstone has a better script and hotter actors. Gunfight, on the other hand, starts earlier and gives you more of the story (by which I mean more interaction between Doc and Wyatt), albeit while polishing things up considerably. Be warned, though, you will want to shoot the random guy who keeps singing in the background before the movie is through. On the plus side, the film makes up for the historical inaccuracies and horrid background singing by being up there with Lawrence of Arabia, Starsky & Hutch, and Tombstone as one of the slashiest movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding. The Doc/Wyatt vibes will literally crawl off the screen and suck your brains out through your eyeballs. Best scene: Doc’s girlfriend Kate pitching a screaming fit because she’s jealous of Wyatt (again, no, I’m not kidding). Slash quotient: five stars.
Great Films That Aren’t Exactly Westerns, But Feel Like They Are:
Ned Kelly
Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins), this 19th century costume epic stars Heath Ledger as Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, Orlando Bloom as his sidekick The Fabulous Joe Byrnes, and Geoffrey Rush as the police commission out to catch them. Still need a reason to go see it? Well, the shots of the Australian outback are lovely, the shoot-out at the end is violent enough to fit in a Robert Rodriguez movie, and it has the added historical interest factor of being based (at least partly) on a true story. Best scene: The Fabulous Joe Byrnes and his Amazing Talking Mouse Skull, the Kelly Gang committing the lamest bank robbery ever, and one of the best trying-not-to-die-of-thirst-in-the-desert scenes I’ve ever seen. Slash quotient: two stars for Ned & Joe interaction, as well as the slashy-feeling vibes between the two other outlaws.
Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi trilogy:
El Mariachi
Desperado
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Partially inspired by Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, these three films star Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi, the nameless musician-turned-vigilante who hides his guns inside a guitar case. I have not seen the first one yet, but Desperado and Mexico are some of the finest examples of the “pretty people who shoot things repeatedly” genre around. El kills lots of evil drug cartel members. Things blow up. Repeatedly. Lots of people are shot, often in numbers that approach massacre levels. Selma Hayek appears in Desperado and is nearly naked for several scenes. Johnny Depp delivers a typically brilliant performance in Mexico as the most obnoxiously corrupt CIA agent ever. Best scene: Carolina (Selma Hayek) patching up a wounded El on the counter of her bookstore in Desperado, The shoot-outs near the end of both Desperado and Mexico featuring El and the rest of the Secret Underground Brotherhood of Mariachi Pistoleros™, every scene with Depp in it, but especially Agent Sands (Depp)’s final shoot-out with the drug cartel members at the end of Mexico. Slash quotient: one star because Depp and Banderas are both really, really sexy and appear onscreen together in several shots. The real vibes here are between El and Caroline in Desperado. (That doesn’t, however, mean that El/Sands isn’t a phenomenally sexy concept. Hit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
guede_mazaka, hippediva, pinkdormouse, and permetaform for Sanzelle goodness and more bizarre injokes than you can shake a jingly mariachi at).
I should be working on my theses, especially the history one, or at least writing up my Sharpe & Harper essay for
ship_manifesto, (or writing one of those three--no, four--in-progress fanfics), but instead I'm killing time in the Pleasants computer lab because I'm, like, one of three people left on campus, everyone else but the RAs having already left for Thanksgiving break. Therefore, I give y'all the product of my boredom: some ramble-y fangirl movie recs. Iv'e actually been keeping a list of my favourite movies for a couple of years now, but I feel the time has come to inflict my squee-filled reviews upon others.Tonight's Genre of Choice:
Great Westerns:
(And by “great” I mean long, filled with violent shoot-outs, and preferably featuring sexy actors.)
Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy:
A Fistful of Dollars
For A Few Dollars More
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
All of the above star a fairly young and ruggedly handsome Clint Eastwood, have good guys that are only marginally more moral than the bad guys, and end with shoot-outs filmed under a blazing hot sun. Also, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef both make appearances as villains. Best scenes: The torture sequence in Fistful (um, but only if you’re every bit as twisted as I am), Eastwood tallying his bounty at the end of A few Dollars More, the bounty/hanging scam at the beginning of TGtBatU, and the bridge sequence, also in TGtBatU. The shoot-outs at the ends of all three are also pretty good (get the widescreen versions if possible so that none of the gunfighters disappear of the edges of the scene). Slash quotient: practically nil.
The Magnificent Seven
(not the television series, alas, though that does deserve a spot on the list)
The only film ever to feature Yul Brynner as a western gunslinger. Based on the Japanese classic, the Seven Samurai, it tells the story of seven gunfighters who band together to save a town from Mexican bandits. Steve McQueen and Robert Vaugn both show up as not-quite-as-sexy-as-Clint-Eastwood-but-still-not-bad-looking gunslingers, and Eli Wallach makes another great appearance as a villain. Slash quotient: two stars for Brynner and McQueen’s characters’ ability to seemingly read one another’s minds.
Tombstone
The best western ever. Hands down. TGtBatU comes close, but Tombstone beats it out by virtue of the fact that it contains Val Kilmer’s awesome performance as Doc Holliday. Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp isn’t exactly hard on the eyes either. Sadly, this one doesn’t have Eli Wallach in it, but it does have shoot outs galore. It is also, like every other film, novel, or piece of historical nonfiction I have ever encountered containing Holliday and Earp, chock full of lovely, angsty slash vibes. Be warned, if you’re a history geek, this pairing can be the gateway drug to RPS. Best scene: every scene with Kilmer in it, but especially the piano playing scene and the badge scene. The shot of Wyatt, Doc, & co. walking menacingly down the street toward the OK Corral is also pretty memorable, and worth renting the widescreen version for. Slash quotient: five stars for massive Doc/Wyatt vibes, as well as the obvious slashy love shared by minor characters PrettyActor!Boy and LittleGay!Deputy. The het love triangle involving Wyatt, Mattie, and sultry dance hall singer Josephine is pretty interesting as well, and Kate Elder literally crawling all over Doc is a sight not to be missed.
Gunfight at the OK Corral
This one is not a great western, but it’s worth watching so that you can compare it to Tombstone. Both are full of little and not-so-little historical inaccuracies, but Tombstone has a better script and hotter actors. Gunfight, on the other hand, starts earlier and gives you more of the story (by which I mean more interaction between Doc and Wyatt), albeit while polishing things up considerably. Be warned, though, you will want to shoot the random guy who keeps singing in the background before the movie is through. On the plus side, the film makes up for the historical inaccuracies and horrid background singing by being up there with Lawrence of Arabia, Starsky & Hutch, and Tombstone as one of the slashiest movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding. The Doc/Wyatt vibes will literally crawl off the screen and suck your brains out through your eyeballs. Best scene: Doc’s girlfriend Kate pitching a screaming fit because she’s jealous of Wyatt (again, no, I’m not kidding). Slash quotient: five stars.
Great Films That Aren’t Exactly Westerns, But Feel Like They Are:
Ned Kelly
Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins), this 19th century costume epic stars Heath Ledger as Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, Orlando Bloom as his sidekick The Fabulous Joe Byrnes, and Geoffrey Rush as the police commission out to catch them. Still need a reason to go see it? Well, the shots of the Australian outback are lovely, the shoot-out at the end is violent enough to fit in a Robert Rodriguez movie, and it has the added historical interest factor of being based (at least partly) on a true story. Best scene: The Fabulous Joe Byrnes and his Amazing Talking Mouse Skull, the Kelly Gang committing the lamest bank robbery ever, and one of the best trying-not-to-die-of-thirst-in-the-desert scenes I’ve ever seen. Slash quotient: two stars for Ned & Joe interaction, as well as the slashy-feeling vibes between the two other outlaws.
Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi trilogy:
El Mariachi
Desperado
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Partially inspired by Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, these three films star Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi, the nameless musician-turned-vigilante who hides his guns inside a guitar case. I have not seen the first one yet, but Desperado and Mexico are some of the finest examples of the “pretty people who shoot things repeatedly” genre around. El kills lots of evil drug cartel members. Things blow up. Repeatedly. Lots of people are shot, often in numbers that approach massacre levels. Selma Hayek appears in Desperado and is nearly naked for several scenes. Johnny Depp delivers a typically brilliant performance in Mexico as the most obnoxiously corrupt CIA agent ever. Best scene: Carolina (Selma Hayek) patching up a wounded El on the counter of her bookstore in Desperado, The shoot-outs near the end of both Desperado and Mexico featuring El and the rest of the Secret Underground Brotherhood of Mariachi Pistoleros™, every scene with Depp in it, but especially Agent Sands (Depp)’s final shoot-out with the drug cartel members at the end of Mexico. Slash quotient: one star because Depp and Banderas are both really, really sexy and appear onscreen together in several shots. The real vibes here are between El and Caroline in Desperado. (That doesn’t, however, mean that El/Sands isn’t a phenomenally sexy concept. Hit
guede_mazaka, hippediva, pinkdormouse, and permetaform for Sanzelle goodness and more bizarre injokes than you can shake a jingly mariachi at).
From:
no subject
Of course 'El Mariachi' lacks Banderas, but is still worth seeing.
Gina
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And whee! Cool reviews. Though you forgot to mention that Iglesias can't really act, but still manages to make Lorenzo the uber-slut sidekick. Can be straight, bi or gay without needing any set-up.
From:
Congratulations
From:
Re: Congratulations
From:
no subject
Thank you for the rec :::blush, stammer::::
And massive congrats on the verbals.
From:
Hello Sweetie
Kate: Doc, honey, I know you didn't just run off without me now, did you? How can I congradulate you on your win, if you keep celebrating with that man?
Kate: Trust me I'm a professional, if we have a question about teeth we'll ask you, but this is my expertise.
From:
Re: Hello Sweetie
Why thank you, Kate darlin'.
From:
no subject
And thank you for those reviews -- I'm not fond of westerns, so the only reason to watch them is slashy moments. This will be very helpful.