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Showing posts from 2014

Brutality and Myth in Clint Eastwood’s "Unforgiven"

Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film Unforgiven is a very unique, nontraditional western. On its very surface it purports to be an action-revenge tale, where self-aggrandizing gunfighters attempt to collect a bounty on two men who have attacked a young girl, in a small Wyoming town in the late nineteenth century. But in the first five minutes of the film, Eastwood quickly whisks us deep beneath those conventions and gives us not an illustration of how good triumphs over evil but instead a demonstration of degrees of brutality and how they play against each other. Throughout the film, three of its five lead characters--William Munny, Little Bill Daggett, and English Bob--are presented to us, the viewer, as practicing violence for the sake of violence, they like the thrill of killing and brutality--it seems to be in their nature. We see the film’s main character, William Munny, ostensibly having some past experience as a very successful gunfighter, at the film’s outset, a pig farmer an

Film: The Unspoken Contract

I recently went to see a 70mm screening of Spartacus --for two reasons--I’d never seen it shown in a theater--in any film format--and since it was also photographed in 70mm, I couldn’t pass up the chance. The version they showed was in fact a 1991 print--the Robert Harris restoration. At this point, I could tell you that seeing this movie projected filmically vs. digitally made all the difference, made it the best experience I could have had. I would be lying, though. The fact is that I would have had no problem seeing Spartacus in a digital venue--in fact, I only just missed a chance to see a Fathom Events presentation of it at a chain cinema, a month earlier. So seeing Spartacus on film as opposed to off of a hard drive and through a Sony 4K DLP system was more a matter of convenience than choice. I have no problem with digital projection. Mainly because, as most spectators, whether they grew up with film, as I did, or not, would probably agree, digital cinema is perfect--no