It’s once again time for me to shamelessly pimp some of the pop culture media that have grabbed my attention lately. (Because I am a sucker of the pop culture.) Plus, it’s hard to attract groupies if they don’t know the sorts of things they should be glomming upon. The last thing I need is groupies sending me Yanni mix tapes as an expression of their undying devotion. (You know who you are. Stop it. We mean it. — Ed.)
Realize, of course, that I’m also always running at least six months behind what’s current. What can I say? I really am that lazy.
I finally saw the Christian Bale/Russell Crowe remake of 3:10 to Yuma this weekend. I’m not a big Western guy unless Clint Eastwood is prominently involved, so I almost passed on this one. Alas, I have a raging man-crush on Christian Bale because of The Prestige (which I initially intended to watch only because it had Scarlett in it, but then was further predisposed to adore once I discovered it prominently featured Nicola Tesla…which reminds me that at some point, I need to publish the secret dossier on Tesla’s work that through various mysterious means has somehow come into my possession…but that is completely beside the point here.) and Equilibrium (which is a stunning, overlooked, dystopian-future film in the mold of Aeon Flux and Ultraviolet…with the exception that it doesn’t suck enormous, hairy dingo balls.)
Anyway, irregardless of how you might feel about Westerns, what I loved 3:10 to Yuma because it was gritty in the way that Eastwood’s Unforgiven was gritty. Gritty violence, gritty characters, gritty moral questions. Bale plays a down-on-his-luck rancher on the verge of losing his homestead. Crowe plays notorious outlaw Ben Wade. Their lives intersect when Wade/Crowe is captured after heisting a stagecoach. Desperate for the $200 that will save his farm, Bale agrees to escort Crowe to the prison train in Yuma. Wade’s gang, of course, stands in the way. Bang, bang. You get the idea. Crowe’s character is an articulate, Bible-quoting, sketch-scribbling charmer. Bale’s Dan Evans is flint-edged, gruff, and initially seems to have no motivation outside of collecting his $200.
I knew this movie was asking tough questions of the audience when my 13 year old son looked at me and said, “He’s going to end up letting Wade go, right? He’s not really that bad of a guy.”
Which seemed true…until you realized that he’d murdered dozens and dozens of innocent people.
(It turns out to be a line echoed later in the film, the same question asked by Evans’s son. Wade answers, more or less, “No, I really am a bad guy. If I had a gun right now, I’d kill you all and not look back.)
This is a movie where you desperately want to see the Bad Guy find a redemption he doesn’t really want. It’s also a movie where you desperately want the protagonist to have a higher motivation than $200, than just a man doing what needs to be done, than someone doing the right and decent thing just because the thing is, well, right and decent — which is the way Elmore Leonard wrote the original story. You want Evans to be a hero in the typical Hollywood hero, when he isn’t. Not at all. He’s a small man doing a small job in the grand scheme of things. Doing it for his own selfish motives. And yet he still is heroic in his own way.
Enough blatheration on my part. Watch the movie.
I also picked up the double CD Foiled for the Last Time by Blue October. I have absolutely no history with this band. I bought the CD because I heard the song “Hate Me” on Slacker and dug it. I’m still not sure how to describe this album. I’m not sure I even have the musical vocabulary to do it justice. (Realize, this is a post by the same guy who spent 500 words extolling the virtue of the Warrant single “Cherry Pie”. Snooty rock afficianado, I am not.) It’s sort of rock-ish, sort of industrial. It reminds me of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd more than anything else. Just deeply poetic, lyrical, introspective, brilliant stuff.
Ask me to borrow it if you’re within shouting distance. You won’t be disappointed.
Finally, my buddy TRO (from the FOBL) shared this link with me. Though it frequently goes unmentioned, Nicole is always at the top of the list of my favorite things. Always. There’s no other explanation for having sat through the remake of The Stepford Wives or the absolutely mind-numbingly horrible Bewitched.
The fact that I have watched Bewitched more than a dozen times doesn’t mean that it isn’t awful. It only means that I will endure previously unthinkable torments just to hear Nicole say my name.
Filed under: Miscellany Tagged: | 3:10 to Yuma, Blue October, Nicole Kidman
I think the link to Blue October is a link to the wrong band. There are, strangely enough, two bands with the same name – one British, one American.
The American band (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_October) is the one who sings Hate Me. I actually have their Foiled album and absolutely love “Into the Ocean” and “Overweight”. I need to pick up some of their older stuff.
Yikes! You’re right, Andy.
I’ve updated the link to their MySpace page.
I’m glad someone else actually knows about this band. I was starting to wonder if they were just one of the voices in my head.
Which would have been okay, because it’s a nice voice as voices go.