Friends, the WaddyIsRight movie club is still going strong, and yesterday I watched True Grit. It was another superb choice. Here's what I learned:
1. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. A girl scorned is almost as bad.
2. In the Wild West, a "waddy" was slang for a cowboy! How about that? This must explain why I'm so rough-and-tough and fond of denim.
3. If you take a switch to the behind of someone else's teenage daughter, you're apt to get your head caved in with a rock. Don't do it!!!
4. Rooster Cogburn is one of the toughest hombres around. He may not be easy to get along with, but he gets the job done!
5. Revenge is sweet.
6. Don't take a rifle to a poker game. A pistol, maybe.
7. Women aren't prone to violence, but they sure are the reason for a lot of it!
8. Even a fat old man has his moments.
And there you have it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a lot of your other top picks online, so keep those movie recommendations coming.
Also, I've penned another exquisite op-ed, which you can anticipate here on the blog tomorrow.
I'm back because I can't resist your film reviews. I believe there was a remake of "True Grit" a few years ago, but I did not care for it much. Somehow, remakes (and there seems to be a lot of them) just don't make it, in my opinion of course. I recall some satire publication making fun of John Wayne when this movie came out because Wayne was putting on a bit of weight, and they referred to the movie as "True Fat."
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy and Ray: I worked with a Corrections Officer who was just like Cogburn. The inmates loved him; they knew they couldn't game him so they didn't try.
ReplyDeleteBy 1969 the hip were full of disdain for Wayne but even they could not gainsay him the acclaim his acting earned in that film. I liked some things about the new version; Haylee Steinfeld did very well as Matty Ross and the guy that played Chaney was appropriately menacing. They made some interesting changes and additions. I would not recommend the feckless sequel to the 1969 film - Rooster Cogburn.
Jack
DeleteBut also in 1969 there was a movie "The Wild Bunch" which is my favorite "Western" although I don't really look at it as being in that genre. Most, if not all, of the main actors in it are dead now. Best openings and endings I have ever seen in any movie. I didn't see any politically correct b. s. in it, although there may have been some.
What we need now is a politically correct remake of "True Grit" with lots of gays and transgender types, to include "intellectually challenged" people. Of course white people would be in totally subordinate roles, with lots of blacks, hispanics, asians and so on. My God! Anything but white! Also, I see where Hunter Biden lives in the Hollywood area now, so perhaps he could star in some sort of a remake. How about another remake of "Ben Hur" with Hunter Biden in the lead role, Brad Pitt as Jesus, and Tm Hanks as the Roman Emperor?
ReplyDeleteNo matter what, it is time for a totally left wing Western. I want you guys to come up with some ideas on this. In fact, I think it is time for the central character in such a movie to be a Muslim, and in fact a female Muslim. She could be quoting the Koran to the bad guys, and all the bad guys would be lily white of course. I can see her riding across the plains stopping at least five time a day to pray towards Mecca. Come on people, let's come up with some ideas now!
ReplyDeleteSorry but I am on a roll thinking up stuff. How about a movie where all the good guys are gays, and at the end of the movie (and this is a take off on a Clint Eastwood Western) there are a pile of dead bodies, all white, straight, males who would not desist from making snide remarks about gays? They refused to "see the light" about the benefits of gay life and in the end had to die. Of course as the gay guys were loading them in the cart they would all be crying and looking real sad because they had to kill those naughty boys. Better yet the timeframe could be in California during the building of the Central Pacific, and the gay good guys would all be Chinese, and the straight, white males were unrepentant racists who had to die. Maybe the title could be "The Revenge of the Chinese Choo Choo Boys." In fact the actors could be imported directly from Wuhan China, even if they tested positive for Corona Virus.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Cogburn was tough and was the manifestation of common sense. Why of course its his approach that works with criminals and all the academic touchy feelies and their disciples in the judiciary, the legislatures and the liberal bureaucracies and sadly some even in law enforcement and corrections , almost none of whom have been victimized by the low lifes for whom they keen, have gone nowhere toward gainsaying the Cogburns (including Wayne in 1969) in all their dreamy, elitist and disdainful (of the law abiding that is) rejection of everyday common sense.
ReplyDeleteWe have made a choice in this country and it has been PROVEN wrong. I emphasize "proven" because it has received a thorough historical test in America and has been found wanting. Our founding fathers were rightfully fearful of the rack and debtor's prison and the "insolence of office" and understandably established protections in their new country against these terrors. They could not have known of "unintended consequences" as these rights were seized upon by the cynical, the venal and the sociopathic. As these rights evolved, as they do in our English Common Law inherited legal system, yes they protected the accused but they did NOT protect the innocent from consummate victimizers. The results? Untouchable thoroughly known gang bosses; Dukakis's furloughs for mass murderers, Cuomo's embrace of the inmate population (or what remains of it after his lugubrious reforms (free, of course of any hazard to him , protected as he is by the firepower he would deny to the lawful) but contemptuous of our increased vulnerability, of endlessly excused offenders avoiding, ad nauseum, their just deserts. To the elect, we, the lawful, are simply and idly lucky and privileged, not to be credited for our painfully our honest lives..
Our country must at some point face the fact that the liberal criminal outlook is an outrageous injustice to the vast majority which lives positive, constructive and lawful lives. We cannot persuade its sneering progenitors; they must be politically overpowered and marginalized into the tender embraces of the criminals they so laud.
Its time to clear our Penal Laws of the dead wood, i.e. victimless crimes which burden law enforcement. Let common sense define these. Then turn our police loose on the real bad asses; the police know who they are and I'm certain they are eager to confront them. Let them have at them !
Too harsh? Just try being a crime victim in this tragically apologetic for thugs society. Cogburn knew what to do.
Dr. Waddy: What of the innocently convicted and punished? This is unspeakably terrible. But so is the death in battle of those who fight evil in our country's causes. We mourn it, we do not purpose it but we do not turn from its possibility because we know it to be tragically unavoidable. Would I like to face such hazard? Of course not but then I do not indulge in the continuous,prolix criminal behavior I know to be characteristic of most convicts; I've seen their rap sheets.
ReplyDeleteRay: Plenty of extant examples of disdainful leftist "artistic" pontification already. Anything with Jane Fonda in it is a gesture of support for that execrable woman and all she stood for. How about the TV series MASH. That was Vietnam they were disingenuously depicting in this contempt filled trashing of our Vietnam effort and of our military.Norman Lear's vicious portrayal of WWII vet Archie Bunker?Lots more out there; lets not give them any new ideas (not that they attend to what we say in any case).
ReplyDeleteWelcome back, Ray! The internet was a desert without you.
ReplyDeleteIt's true -- John Wayne was a bit chunky in "True Grit," but that seemed apropos for the part. He made it work! I hear he made "The Shootist" while he was practically on his death bed. Clearly he had an excellent work ethic.
Ray, I would like very much to see "The Wild Bunch", but didn't find it online where I usually look. If you know of any sites that have it, please let me know.
Ray, you're forgetting that Brad Pitt could never play Jesus, because Brad Pitt is white, and Jesus was black (or at least Jesus 2.0 is). Funnily enough, though, Hollywood still manages to find roles for white dudes. Usually they're rescuing minorities from their "plight" in some form -- which is the only redeeming activity a white person can engage in.
Ray, your ideas for the ultimate PC Western carry much weight! You have a future in Hollywood. Suggestion: the anti-gay white guys should probably die of gruesome impalement (which the lefties would get a good chuckle out of, and would no doubt seem like "just desserts").
Jack, you make a good point that Cogburn was a no-nonsense warrior for justice and had no mercy on evildoers. Interestingly, Hollywood in that era, and even up to now, makes plenty of movies about white knights who pursue and bring to justice criminals, and such movies even implicitly praise such heroes for using what, in any court, would be deemed "excessive force". Perhaps even Hollywood realizes that the bad guys just can't be spun into anything else, at least for an audience of normal human beings? Justice sells?
Dr. Waddy: I dunno; I think Hollywood at heart is sympathetic to criminal America and its far reaching "values". And I think when they patronize the economic "bottom line" they do so with contempt and consummate venality only. If they saw profit thereby, they would gladly glorify sociopaths.
ReplyDeleteHey, watch it buddy! (in reference to #7) (((grin)))
ReplyDeleteAnd...it is very true, there is nothing like a scorned woman.
Linda, I have a healthy and prodigious fear of womankind -- which is, I assume, what you've all been shooting for since the dawn of time... :)
ReplyDeleteJack, true -- Hollywood celebrates sociopathy just as often as it celebrates law and order. Sometimes it even manages to conflate the two!