Westerns, the ultimate let-down

So for the last couple of weeks we have been watching westerns in class, and I have to say that I have not been very impressed. Well, impressed may not be the correct term here, actually a better way to say it would be that they did not live up to my expectations. When you think of the stereotypical western, you think of tons of gunplay and the scenes of bar-scenes and shootouts, at least that's what I think of. Instead, I was stunned by the amount of frill that some of the movies exhibited. For example, the scene at the train station in Once Upon a Time in the West, the scene dragged on for a completely unnecessary amount of time, I mean come on, I don't wanna watch some dude swat at a fly for what seemed like 5 minutes. That movie was full of ridiculously long scenes, Jill arriving, the auction scene, I could go on and on.

After going through all this filler we get to the shootout scene, the big attraction where all of my gripes will be wiped away after the greatness of this scene, right?. Wrong, My Darling Clementine is a prime example of the shootout, the main feature being a complete let-down. First of all, practically every shootout is over in less than 15 seconds. and secondly it is ridiculously unrealistic. Men are shot through the heart every single time with some fairly crude handguns and then fall over in the most awkward fashion imaginable. The only redeeming factor in all of this is the story, which many times follows a fairly intriguing plot, such as Once Upon a Time in the West. But in other westerns, see My Darling Clementine, the plot comes out to be utterly predictable and dull, making for an overall disappointing film.

First Art of Film post

Recently I watched the film Four Brothers directed by John Singleton and was released in 2005. I have been itching to see this movie since it was released and I was really excited once I finally got to see it the other day. The film's plot revolves around the 4 adopted Mercer brothers whose mother, who lives in Detroit, is ed in an apparent story robbery and the brothers return to Detroit for the funeral and vengeance. While all the brothers come from the same adoptive family, they all set out on vastly different lives for example, the main character Bobby (Mark Wahlberg) is a hot-head who has just gotten out of jail and leads a very different life than his brother Angel (Tyrese Gibson) who just returned from a stint with the Marine Corp. Bobby leads the brothers on a quest for vengeance, and soon learns that the neighborhood has changed a lot since he left it and his mother's was much more than a simple robbery gone wrong. The film continues on after this discovery with twists at every turn and the truth is not fully understood until the end. This type of story-telling is one of my favorite types in movies because you can develop an idea of where the story will go and you get to find out if your suspicions about things are true in the end.

The movie is also appealing to me for a bit more obvious reason, as it centers a lot of the film around intense action scenes, with car-chases and shoot-outs galore. The movie also taught me a couple of tricks when dealing with police, for example, never confess to the police on the grounds that they supposedly found one of your hairs at the crime scene, and if being interrogated about what you were doing, make sure to use the alibi, "having sex with your wife". Overall this movie appeals to just about every type of film I enjoy, including the thinker, comedy and action genres at one point or another. One of the other things I just happened to notice off-hand during the movie was that Mark Wahlberg's character looked a lot like James Hetfield, the singer from Metallica, which happens to be my favorite band, just a random thing that went through my head while watching the movie. You can judge for yourself...

Mark Wahlberg













James Hetfield































But if you look back....




















...maybe not.