3 westerns in as many days.

"They'll be waitin' for us."
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
-Ernest Borgnine, and William Holden, in The Wild Bunch

Tonight I watched The Wild Bunch, which is one crazy-ass movie, y'all. It is about what happens to outlaws when they fail to plan for retirement. I still find the violence abrasive... I can't imagine how it must have seemed in 1969. Robert Rodriguez needs to watch this movie, and then GET OVER HIMSELF. Sam Peckinpah pwns these contemporary stylish-blood-and-gore filmmakers. I love the hippie-ness of this movie, how it's so obviously of the 60s even though it's set just before the First World War. And I love the aging cowboys of the 1960s and 70s Westerns. After this one ended, I ziplisted a bunch of Randolph Scott (the quintessential aging cowboy) movies, so I have those to look forward to.

Yesterday I watched The Searchers, which is almost as good as I remember. It's such a weird movie--the usual Western foofaraw (a square-dancing scene, a crazy guy talking crazy, wooden acting, and TAKING. IT. PERSONALLY) interspersed with the odd moment of transcendence. I'm not a fan of John Wayne westerns; I find them too John-Wayne-y. What he does barely qualifies as acting. And yet his presence in the movie, that very John-Wayne-y-ness he represents, might be enough to accomplish the same aims as acting. He already means enough, just standing there, 6'4". Anyway, just as Randolph Scott follows naturally on the trail of The Wild Bunch, The Searchers prompted me to ziplist Cheyenne Autumn, which I've never seen but feel ready, at last, to take on. I've heard it's John Ford's longest and most boring film, but I am ready for boring, and I am ready for repentance.

And on Sunday I watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which I rented primarily because its title sounds like an unpublished book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and that is good enough for me, actually. It wasn't bad, though, as modern Westerns go. (I mean, it was no Bandidas, but if wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak.) It's hard to make westerns these days. I think that language is mostly lost to us. Except to Tommy Lee Jones, apparently.

But speaking of modern westerns, 3:10 to Yuma is being re-made. I've never seen the original, although I plan to rent it, but as far as I understand it doesn't have Christian Bale, so I don't see how I could like it too well. Westerns with Batman are far better than Westerns without Batman!

I'm not sure what brought all this on. Fall is coming, and it seems to prompt nostalgia of the cinematic variety, among other varieties. There is something about westerns that I find very comforting in times of personal unrest, as well--they're staid, formal, and sad. They are maybe the most pessimistic of films, which is funny, because they're also the most mythological, at this point--they could mean anything we wanted them to mean, and yet, to me they continue to mean what they have always meant: that we cannot have what we most want, cannot live with what we've fought for, that the way we need to live cannot be sustained.

And yes, I looked up how to spell foofaraw.

I'm going to bed, I've been exhausted since about 5 oclock.

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Currently listening to: Neko Case - Wayfaring Stranger
via FoxyTunes