Unforgiven

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

Yea, and I did note that too - in that the characters, all of them, seem to be given that depth.  The evil cruel sheriff has some noble goals (to retire in peace, to keep the city safe), for example.  Most characters have all these sides, and I think that is probably the best part of the writing in Unforgiven.  Nobody is one-dimensional.  However, I did feel like they were all still tropes, basically.  I do think The Searchers was a little subversive, esp. in making John Wayne unlikable and rude.  I guess though the question becomes why is 'subversive' always seen as a good thing?

Black Panther was indeed engaged on the topic of race, actually.  Very much so on the level of the others (I haven't seen them all, but from what I have).  I would say BP is quite subversive both on the micro level of its story (about an African race deciding how to best interact with the outer world) and the macro level of the film's existence.

[Daventhal 2]

3 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

I've only read (listened to audio book) of The Odyssey.  My knowledge of The Iliad is more "vague idea, well more, I just know it's about the Trojan War."  So I can't weigh in on the accuracy of the reading.  My best follow up question though is, so, how would the relation of the two inform what you take away from the latter (Unforgiven)?

 

Apologies for just quoting someone else instead of typing up my own thoughts, but it's late and I can't say it better than this. Here's the abstract from that essay I mentioned and it gives at least a cursory answer to your question:

"We explore Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven as a reading of the Iliad. Significant parallels link the two works in terms of genre, plot structure, and ideology, especially the ideology of manhood. The Western is, in fact, the modern American epic, and as such performs an equivalent cultural role to that of the Iliad in Classical Greece: It defines the qualities necessary for those heroes who will build civilization out of wilderness. In both works, the protagonists-Achilles and William Munny-are self-questioning warriors who temporarily reject the culture of violence only to return to it after the death of their closest male friend, in which they are implicated. Yet the film departs markedly from the Greek epic in its self-consciousness, not only about the nature of heroism but also about the nature and function of epic itself. Despite the film's metafictional interventions, however, Unforgiven ultimately reinscribes rather than repudiates Munny/Eastwood's heroic mythopoeisis. Eastwood, as well as Munny, is thus able to posit himself as an Achillean hero and thereby justifies his role in the myth of a civilizing Western violence."

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

19 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea, and I did note that too - in that the characters, all of them, seem to be given that depth.  The evil cruel sheriff has some noble goals (to retire in peace, to keep the city safe), for example.  Most characters have all these sides, and I think that is probably the best part of the writing in Unforgiven.  Nobody is one-dimensional.  However, I did feel like they were all still tropes, basically.  I do think The Searchers was a little subversive, esp. in making John Wayne unlikable and rude.  I guess though the question becomes why is 'subversive' always seen as a good thing?

Well, it isn't inherently.  Subversion is often a type of criticism or re-evaluation, but that doesn't preclude it from being lazy or inaccurate in its own right.  It might be a bit like satire in that sense.  I think with westerns, just the common notion of clear-cut good guys and bad guys (and the general representation of Native Americans), that it's not very accurate in its representation of history or human interactions gives large room for people to criticize, revisit, and/or reconsider these myths.  And one of the ways it's done is through subversion.  We're just focusing on these movies because we (or rather, people who make up the AFI) think they did it well.

Once Upon a Time in the West made the BFI lists (unclear if it's eligble for the AFI) and I recall nothing subversive about that (at least compared to the rest of the 70s and spaghetti westerns).

Btw, my read on the sheriff - and I can't separate this from the knowledge of Eastwood being a mayor of a nearby town back around when Unforgiven came out (at least same era) and was a self-identified libertarian - was the consequence of the state trying to exercise its monopoly on violence and the potential abuses of power that comes with it.  Something, something, second amendment.  Though that reading doesn't give enough weight to the detail the script was mostly untouched from the 70s.

Though, again, he isn't wrong about people showing up to be assassins.  I mean, justice wasn't served to the prostitutes (who he ultimately viewed as property), but vigilante justice for hire (in the form of capital punishment) is problematic.  

Quote

Black Panther was indeed engaged on the topic of race, actually.  Very much so on the level of the others (I haven't seen them all, but from what I have).  I would say BP is quite subversive both on the micro level of its story (about an African race deciding how to best interact with the outer world) and the macro level of the film's existence.

I guess the example may not have been the thought experiment or case study to analyze I was hoping for.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

17 hours ago, Daventhal said:

Despite the film's metafictional interventions, however, Unforgiven ultimately reinscribes rather than repudiates Munny/Eastwood's heroic mythopoeisis

It's interesting seeing how people are splitting on the take away of the ending (see upthread discussion).

[DannytheWall 196]

Hmm. About a quarter into the movie, I'm realizing my memories of this film are way off. Then I have to take way too long to realize I somehow blended it in my mind together with 2010's True Grit. 

Which reminds me, I really like True Grit far better than this.   

[gloriacassidy1999 6]

This movie is mostly well done, but I wasn't entirely sure how to take it. At first "Unforgiven" seemed as if it were meant to be an anti-hero post-western flick, then it just wound up supporting Eastwood's murder of the men for the sake of those prostitutes. But is the death penalty really appropriate in this case? Oddly, the idea that it might not be is never full-throatedly stated even by sheriff Hackman, who refuses to kill the men responsible for mutilating the pathetic prostitute. This seems especially important as one of the guys didn't even do anything, yet the whores want him dead too. Plus, the actual victim herself never says what exactly she'd like to have happen. She passively lets her comrades in whoredom get revenge for her. I think the biggest problems derive from a couple weird script holes. For instance, it's insane that when Clint meets the woman whose face was cut he doesn't mention that she isn't actually blind and still has her breasts, acts of violence noted over and over that were supposed to be part of his self-justification for the killing. Secondly, amidst the incoherent weather, Eastwood, as director, has Morgan Freeman's character kidnapped by the sheriff's men off-screen, and then actually killed off-screen! Why does he do this? Both incidents are lynch pins of the plot; the effect is clumsily anti-climactic. It's almost as if Eastwood had got cold feet at the last second about doing a real anti-hero western, so then went back and added in Freeman's death to make sure  the audience would feel satisfied that Eastwood's killing was basically just. Yet this ultimately scrambles the themes and confuses one about how one is supposed to evaluate the characters, turning us against Hackman's sheriff who genuinely seems to be trying to keep the peace in his town, whether or not one agrees with the way he punished the men involved in the prostitute's maiming. Morally and rhetorically this represents something of a head scratcher since it undoes all the hand wringing about murderousness the film pretends to worry over. It's a dramatic cheat. The effect is to make Eastwood even more mythically heroic somehow, which is truly nuts. 

[bleary 333]

2 hours ago, gloriacassidy1999 said:

For instance, it's insane that when Clint meets the woman whose face was cut he doesn't mention that she isn't actually blind and still has her breasts, acts of violence noted over and over that were supposed to be part of his self-justification for the killing. 

So you're suggesting that when Munny sees Delilah for the first time, he should say that he thought she was supposed to be more disfigured?  I think this is partially handled by Munny complimenting her and telling her she looks better than he does.  But if you're saying that Munny would see this girl with major permanent facial scars and feel manipulated into helping a not-that-badly-disfigured person, I don't quite understand that.  I never got the feeling that the exact extent of the injuries were a crucial selling point in getting Munny involved.

To the question of why are Ned's kidnapping and death both done off-screen, I see different reasons for each.  My guess is that the kidnapping didn't seem like it needed to be shown, since Ned was unarmed, having given his rifle to Munny and the Kid, so it doesn't seem absurd that he could be captured by a half-dozen armed men.  And secondly, it gives the audience a small shock to see that Little Bill has him.  But again, my overall feeling is that it's not a hugely necessary scene.  However, the reason they don't show the death is to put the audience in the same state of disbelief as Munny when he's told about it.  Particularly after the extent of the injuries to Delilah got exaggerated, both Munny and the audience have to think that maybe this is an exaggeration too, and that Ned may be just very badly injured.  Secondly, both Munny and the audience are drawing on their history: Munny has gotten into and out of scrapes with Ned for decades, so he has a hard time believing Ned could be dead.  Meanwhile, the audience has seen Westerns for decades and has the instinct that the narrative should be that Munny has to have someone to save, so Ned must be alive for Munny to save.  In telling and not showing, both the audience and Munny are made to think that this is not the way that this is supposed to go, and it must be a lie.

As far as everything else in your post, you're mostly hitting on the reasons why I really like this film.  As to what the film is saying about the death penalty, I would say it's pretty definitively against it, but that's just another question about this film that's in the eye of the beholder.  Sure, the "protagonists" do successfully murder the two perpetrators, but there's no glory in it whatsoever, as one guy slowly bleeds to death so awfully that even Munny asks for mercy on his behalf, and the other guy is killed while taking a crap.  While it is technically what they set out to do, there's absolutely no victory in it.  So does it wind up supporting the murder of those men?  I would say no.

To your point about whether the bounty was justified and Delilah's feelings about it, I think the film comes down pretty harshly on Strawberry Alice.  She and brothel owner Skinny are shown as two sides of the same coin.  While convention would prime us to think that Strawberry Alice is being a better advocate on Delilah's behalf than Skinny, the reality is that they both disregard Delilah's feelings the same amount.  I don't know if this is meant to be seen as political commentary, but certainly one could see Skinny as the pro-corporation point of view, with Alice representing the type of union leader who fights for personal victories instead of for the actual members.  (So then is Unforgiven anti-union? Again, eye of the beholder!)

3 hours ago, gloriacassidy1999 said:

Yet this ultimately scrambles the themes and confuses one about how one is supposed to evaluate the characters

I think this is what makes the film so great!  How are we supposed to feel about these characters?  Is there a single character that is all good?  How many are all bad?  The fact that it so thoroughly eschews the white hats and black hats of classic Westerns is what makes it such a prime example of the Revisionist Western.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

6 hours ago, gloriacassidy1999 said:

This seems especially important as one of the guys didn't even do anything

Whoa there, Nelly! Actively holding someone down while they get their face cut up isn't exactly nothing.

In terms of a full-throated denial of the death penalty by Little Bill, in the beginning Alice (I'd say, depicted with what seems like a blood-lust), asks if he's going to hang them.  And that's when he says he's going to whip them, which isn't no small thing.  And, as what would have been called in more stereotypical westerns, bounty hunters show up for the reward, Little Bill keeps calling them the much less dignified term, "assassins".

2 hours ago, bleary said:

To the question of why are Ned's kidnapping and death both done off-screen, I see different reasons for each.  My guess is that the kidnapping didn't seem like it needed to be shown, since Ned was unarmed, having given his rifle to Munny and the Kid, so it doesn't seem absurd that he could be captured by a half-dozen armed men.  And secondly, it gives the audience a small shock to see that Little Bill has him.  But again, my overall feeling is that it's not a hugely necessary scene.  However, the reason they don't show the death is to put the audience in the same state of disbelief as Munny when he's told about it.  Particularly after the extent of the injuries to Delilah got exaggerated, both Munny and the audience have to think that maybe this is an exaggeration too, and that Ned may be just very badly injured.  Secondly, both Munny and the audience are drawing on their history: Munny has gotten into and out of scrapes with Ned for decades, so he has a hard time believing Ned could be dead.  Meanwhile, the audience has seen Westerns for decades and has the instinct that the narrative should be that Munny has to have someone to save, so Ned must be alive for Munny to save.  In telling and not showing, both the audience and Munny are made to think that this is not the way that this is supposed to go, and it must be a lie.

This seems a lot more complex in deconstructing why it's offscreen than I would have gone.  The important part of Ned's death is Will's reaction shot to it.  And the slow drawn out, starting to drink shot requires a somewhat lengthy delivery.  If they were to show Ned's death, they'd be showing and the recapping what you just saw.  Something about that redundancy doesn't play well in my mind.

2 hours ago, bleary said:

To your point about whether the bounty was justified and Delilah's feelings about it, I think the film comes down pretty harshly on Strawberry Alice.  She and brothel owner Skinny are shown as two sides of the same coin.  While convention would prime us to think that Strawberry Alice is being a better advocate on Delilah's behalf than Skinny, the reality is that they both disregard Delilah's feelings the same amount.  I don't know if this is meant to be seen as political commentary, but certainly one could see Skinny as the pro-corporation point of view, with Alice representing the type of union leader who fights for personal victories instead of for the actual members.  (So then is Unforgiven anti-union? Again, eye of the beholder!)

My take on that feels like a much darker one - change brothel to a frat house, cowboys to frat bro's, and the slicing, well, to a frat-party rape.  I feel like the film does come down hard on Alice, but in the sense of someone taking someone else's tragedy and making it their cause, despite the victim's wishes.  Hence above, me wondering if the movie intended for us to infer Alice exaggerated the wounds when telling patrons about the reward or if it purely magnified on its own in retelling.  Which, given the analogy (which I think was supposed to be present, at least by the 1990's filming, if not the original 1970's script), is... well, it's something.

Though, in what happened in the film, it does seem like a very direct line between, not having a deterrence in physical punishment does not really discourage something like that happening again in the town, which does put all prostitutes at risk (i.e. Alice, though not a direct victim, is hurt by it.)

If asked what I think happen based on what the film provides, both happened (she exaggerated and then it was exaggerated in retelling).  I could go into why, but the short version is the parallel with how the stories of the shoot-outs got mythologized (and also the sense of desperation to get outside help by lying about how much money they have for the reward).  Exaggerated after it happened, and then exaggerated even more in later re-tellings.

The issue the analogy does highlight that does give the greatest flaw in the premise of the script is Delilah.  I can see her wanting to be done with the whole thing and wanting to move on from it.  I have a hard time with how the movie made it feel like she basically forgave the holder and just came across so much of a naif.  But admittedly, I don't have a lot of first or second hand accounts on the matter to draw from to know how far-fetched that is or not.

 

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On the tonal reverse of the ending of the movie, I'll throw out another example of media of that did something similar (spoilers ahead for the third season of The Wire - apologies, I've seen people do hidden blocks of text on these forums, but I can't figure out where in the UI, how you do it).

In the third season of The Wire, up through the end of the season (and the two seasons prior), you get the theme of how the war on drugs has effectively become a war on the lower class.  Continuing it is blocking any chance to really address the issues that come with drugs and destroying communities in the process.  One of the plot points of the season is a police chief actually covertly halting the war and the consequences that come from it (good and bad).

At the end of the season that whole experiment comes crashing down in front of a news crew and you get this political speech from Carcetti that he is not going to give up on the poor communities of the city, that he will fight the scourge of drugs regardless of who is afflicted.  It is all very rousing and moving and plays that way.  It is totally "just more of the same."  And David Simon said in the commentary on the DVD that people reacted to the finale with, "so, I guess The Wire now pro-drug war now." And his response was, "Only if you haven't been paying attention to everything up until this point.  I guess that's the power of media, to make you empathize with the person who's perspective you're following."

I would say artistically, by making it feel like the show was believing in what Carcetti was saying, in the moment, it makes the viewer realize accurately how drug war is presented and why people continue to believe in it.  And if they get moved by Carcetti's speech, they could be moved by it in real life, by real politicians.

That said, I still can't get myself on board with wholly believing the film did that on purpose, and it wasn't Eastwood just reverting to basic instincts of presenting himself as the hero.  I think it might just be, I didn't feel on board watching the movie in general up until that point, and didn't care for Eastwood's handling of the material.  The over-acting (and the poor acting) and over-directing, made so much of the points feel heavy-handed up until that point, so doing the tonal shift feels more clever than the truthy part of my gut wants to give credit to, even if so many signs point to that I should.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

13 hours ago, DannytheWall said:

Hmm. About a quarter into the movie, I'm realizing my memories of this film are way off. Then I have to take way too long to realize I somehow blended it in my mind together with 2010's True Grit. 

Which reminds me, I really like True Grit far better than this.   

Coincidentally, the first person to recommend I go back and give Unforgiven a watch was in response to me talking about No Country for Old Men.  There were things about True Grit that I didn't like, but lots of things I did.  I enjoyed them both a lot more than Unforgiven.

Though I do want to toss this out there for everyone, because I'm now wondering after a few comments.

1. If there was a Western you'd like to see on the AFI (or whatever list), what would it be?  (If it's already on there, e.g. we have to cull the number of westerns on the list, which one would you really want to keep).
2. As part of that question, vaguely (detailed if you like), what's your take on the genre as a whole?  i.e. Do you watch a lot of it?  Which subgenres (classic vs. spaghetti vs. modern ones vs. indie/etc)

 

My answer:

I've mentioned it a couple of times, and mentioned it upthread, McCabe & Mrs. Miller.  It's more of a historical drama revisionist take on a western, though at a high level, it is still a western (though, very much, an anti-western). And as I said upthread, I have historically not been big on the genre and didn't even watch spaghetti westerns until late in life.  I've come around a bit on them more recently, but that's mainly recent ones and spaghetti westerns.  I still have seen very few classic westerns (I think only: The Searchers, The Oxbow Incident - over 25 years ago, and now High Noon).

 

[gloriacassidy1999 6]

I don't about that stuff.

[grudlian. 4725]

15 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

Whoa there, Nelly! Actively holding someone down while they get their face cut up isn't exactly nothing.

In terms of a full-throated denial of the death penalty by Little Bill, in the beginning Alice (I'd say, depicted with what seems like a blood-lust), asks if he's going to hang them.  And that's when he says he's going to whip them, which isn't no small thing.  And, as what would have been called in more stereotypical westerns, bounty hunters show up for the reward, Little Bill keeps calling them the much less dignified term, "assassins".

I think Bill is right to call them assassins in this case.

I might be wrong but bounty hunting is within the law. I also understand that bounty hunting typically wanted the subjects alive (While we hear about "wanted dead or alive" sometimes, I assume "wanted dead" wasn't a thing). Here, the law decided a punishment; Alice and co. decided death was a more fitting punishment.

Offering money for dead bodies outside the law, especially if you know it's just citizens offering the money, is assassination.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

On 1/13/2019 at 6:42 PM, ol' eddy wrecks said:

It's interesting seeing how people are splitting on the take away of the ending (see upthread discussion).

I find that this has been the case with other Eastwood-directed stuff too.  For example, with Million Dollar Baby there were a lot of people who saw the ending and took it as a "pro-euthanasia" movie and all that that entails.  I didn't see it that way; I saw it as a movie about a boxer and a coach who become a surrogate father-daughter pair, and have their love for each other challenged in the most difficult way possible, a way that had no "good" answer. That was the point: the morals were too murky to easily judge his actions.

Eastwood seems to want his movies to live in that unsettled, in-between space. Sometimes that results in a movie that feels too weightless and "about nothing" (Changeling would be one of my go-to examples of this), but this is where I think some of the obvious and on-the-nose metaphors in the Unforgiven script are helped by Eastwood presenting them in such a flat and unfussy way (IMO, an unsubtle writer like Paul Haggis was also helped by having the Eastwood approach laid on top of his script). He just lets it all sit out there, so you can make of it what you will. I guess you can also wonder about how much of this is intentional (it could just be laziness), but I see the approach repeated a lot in Eastwood's work so I think it probably is intentional.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

So I've been avoiding the Unspooled forums because I'm very behind on the podcast, but I just have to say that I joined the Facebook page and... wow do a lot of people hate Amy over there...

It seems like weekly there's a thread that gets started because Amy is too "lazy" to use different terms to describe things or how dare she not notice such and such metaphor about such and such thing in such and such movie. Literally no one ever mentions Paul... Also I'll give y'all two guesses to who keeps starting said threads...

I miss out on a lot of the movie talk but I still listen to the shows and I don't find either of the hosts lacking in any department, in fact I feel like they've both found their stride as co-hosts and have only become more in tune with each other. It just seems bonkers to me that Amy would get nitpicked to literal death and it's making me severely re-think being part of that group over there.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

10 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

So I've been avoiding the Unspooled forums because I'm very behind on the podcast, but I just have to say that I joined the Facebook page and... wow do a lot of people hate Amy over there...

It seems like weekly there's a thread that gets started because Amy is too "lazy" to use different terms to describe things or how dare she not notice such and such metaphor about such and such thing in such and such movie. Literally no one ever mentions Paul... Also I'll give y'all two guesses to who keeps starting said threads...

I miss out on a lot of the movie talk but I still listen to the shows and I don't find either of the hosts lacking in any department, in fact I feel like they've both found their stride as co-hosts and have only become more in tune with each other. It just seems bonkers to me that Amy would get nitpicked to literal death and it's making me severely re-think being part of that group over there.

Honestly, I think MOST of that group is in your corner here . . . but the thing about Facebook is that it's hard to stop anyone from just starting up their own new topic, even if it's about something that's already been talked to death.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

7 minutes ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

Honestly, I think MOST of that group is in your corner here . . . but the thing about Facebook is that it's hard to stop anyone from just starting up their own new topic, even if it's about something that's already been talked to death.

Literally the amount of threads started because Amy used the word "incel" again is making me get a stomach ulcer.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

9 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

Literally the amount of threads started because Amy used the word "incel" again is making me get a stomach ulcer.

The thing that is baffling me is that in this week's podcast she even said she probably hasn't been using the right word and explained herself . . . yet we keep seeing these threads.

[Cameron H. 23786]

1 hour ago, taylorannephoto said:

So I've been avoiding the Unspooled forums because I'm very behind on the podcast, but I just have to say that I joined the Facebook page and... wow do a lot of people hate Amy over there...

It seems like weekly there's a thread that gets started because Amy is too "lazy" to use different terms to describe things or how dare she not notice such and such metaphor about such and such thing in such and such movie. Literally no one ever mentions Paul... Also I'll give y'all two guesses to who keeps starting said threads...

I miss out on a lot of the movie talk but I still listen to the shows and I don't find either of the hosts lacking in any department, in fact I feel like they've both found their stride as co-hosts and have only become more in tune with each other. It just seems bonkers to me that Amy would get nitpicked to literal death and it's making me severely re-think being part of that group over there.

This is why I’m not on Facebook, and I am seriously thinking of dropping Twitter altogether. It’s all so toxic. I like my Earwolf forums where the only people who sign up (or at least stick around) are chill, intelligent, non-racist/sexist/bigoted/etc people.

@DanEngler and @Shannon make this the best place on the Internet.  

 

[taylor anne photo 11311]

4 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

This is why I’m not on Facebook, and I am seriously thinking of dropping Twitter altogether. It’s all so toxic. I like my Earwolf forums where the only people who sign up (or at least stick around) are chill, intelligent, non-racist/sexist/bigoted/etc people.

@DanEngler and @Shannon make this the best place on the Internet.  

 

Kate Littleton over on Facebook is truly a really great moderator and I give her props for having to deal with all of that shit in the most professional of ways, cause she's really just a fan like the rest of us and started that whole page on her own.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Just now, taylorannephoto said:

Kate Littleton over on Facebook is truly a really great moderator and I give her props for having to deal with all of that shit in the most professional of ways, cause she's really just a fan like the rest of us and started that whole page on her own.

It's actually a very well-moderated Facebook group . . . which tells you just how hard it is to moderate on Facebook.

[DanEngler 5249]

On 1/14/2019 at 6:05 PM, ol' eddy wrecks said:

If there was a Western you'd like to see on the AFI (or whatever list), what would it be?  (If it's already on there, e.g. we have to cull the number of westerns on the list, which one would you really want to keep).

I'd rank Johnny Guitar (1954) above all of the Westerns we've covered so far, although I'm not sure fans of the genre would even consider it a Western. Yes, it features cowboys and horses and gorgeous vistas and stagecoach robberies and bar room brawls and crooked lawmen and tense showdowns with menacing villains, but the protagonist is played by Joan Crawford and its dialog is as snappy as the best film noir and its theme is a torch song performed by Peggy Lee.

All I know is, if Karina Longworth (host of You Must Remember This) and Millie De Chirico (TCM and FilmStruck programmer) and Fresh Air's Terry Gross have all independently recommended a film, it's a guaranteed classic.

Here's a trailer that arguably gives away too much of the plot:

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 1/15/2019 at 6:39 PM, DanEngler said:

I'd rank Johnny Guitar (1954) above all of the Westerns we've covered so far, although I'm not sure fans of the genre would even consider it a Western. Yes, it features cowboys and horses and gorgeous vistas and stagecoach robberies and bar room brawls and crooked lawmen and tense showdowns with menacing villains, but the protagonist is played by Joan Crawford and its dialog is as snappy as the best film noir and its theme is a torch song performed by Peggy Lee.

All I know is, if Karina Longworth (host of You Must Remember This) and Millie De Chirico (TCM and FilmStruck programmer) and Fresh Air's Terry Gross have all independently recommended a film, it's a guaranteed classic.

Here's a trailer that arguably gives away too much of the plot:

You had my curiosity at "not sure fans of the genre would even consider it a Western".  Adds to ever-increasing queue.

When I posed that question above, I think I forgot the HDTGM forum has a thread for January for people to talk about westerns.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 1/15/2019 at 5:36 PM, taylorannephoto said:

Literally the amount of threads started because Amy used the word "incel" again is making me get a stomach ulcer.

 

 

On 1/15/2019 at 5:47 PM, sycasey 2.0 said:

The thing that is baffling me is that in this week's podcast she even said she probably hasn't been using the right word and explained herself . . . yet we keep seeing these threads.

Weird - at least in the sense that speaking as someone who was starting to really find her loose usage becoming problematic, I just kind of sighed a breath of relief when she said she was using the term wrong.  Maybe not so much weird in the sense of... people.

I've been trying to cut back on facebook in general, but even before that, I found myself perusing the group less and less.  I suspected the disorganization of facebook's UX for the sake of ongoing discussions, as opposed to forum threads, contributed heavily to it.  Even for neutral topics, it started to get tedious.  I don't know if not being a member of the group and thus not interacting with the posts had a big impact, but after a while, I don't think it did. I do wonder (and suspect) that those UX shortcomings exasperate any underlying issues (in terms of quantity of nitpicking or vocal disagreements).

e.g. Every time someone wants to weigh in on something Amy said that they disagree with, FB basically encourages creating an entire new post on the matter (equivalent to a thread in a forum) - as opposed to a single post in an already existing thread about the week's movie/episode.  And the reply functionality doesn't really encourage multiple back & forths, so it has to just keep happening and isn't conducive to actually progress on the discussion - and that's the good faith take on the matter.

By the time I kind of stopped checking in on it, I was quite sick of the, "Hi, I just joined and am catching up on episodes.  I just got to episode __________ and boy, Amy was wrong about _________," post.  In a forum, they could at least reasonably find the existing thread, and see if someone else had already expressed their qualms (and if there was any further discussion).  I mean... they could.  With facebook, even if someone was trying to be reasonable, doing the equivalent of that wouldn't be realistic.  Especially with the high activity that group had.

 

[taylor anne photo 11311]

12 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

 

Weird - at least in the sense that speaking as someone who was starting to really find her loose usage becoming problematic, I just kind of sighed a breath of relief when she said she was using the term wrong.  Maybe not so much weird in the sense of... people.

I've been trying to cut back on facebook in general, but even before that, I found myself perusing the group less and less.  I suspected the disorganization of facebook's UX for the sake of ongoing discussions, as opposed to forum threads, contributed heavily to it.  Even for neutral topics, it started to get tedious.  I don't know if not being a member of the group and thus not interacting with the posts had a big impact, but after a while, I don't think it did. I do wonder (and suspect) that those UX shortcomings exasperate any underlying issues (in terms of quantity of nitpicking or vocal disagreements).

e.g. Every time someone wants to weigh in on something Amy said that they disagree with, FB basically encourages creating an entire new post on the matter (equivalent to a thread in a forum) - as opposed to a single post in an already existing thread about the week's movie/episode.  And the reply functionality doesn't really encourage multiple back & forths, so it has to just keep happening and isn't conducive to actually progress on the discussion - and that's the good faith take on the matter.

By the time I kind of stopped checking in on it, I was quite sick of the, "Hi, I just joined and am catching up on episodes.  I just got to episode __________ and boy, Amy was wrong about _________," post.  In a forum, they could at least reasonably find the existing thread, and see if someone else had already expressed their qualms (and if there was any further discussion).  I mean... they could.  With facebook, even if someone was trying to be reasonable, doing the equivalent of that wouldn't be realistic.  Especially with the high activity that group had.

 

Personally, even without the amount that I've seen, it's the people that think an opinion or a way someone (who am I kidding - Amy) sees the movie is wrong because that's not what they see or that's not the wording they would choose to describe the feeling. This indignation and justification that Amy is lazy and not up to par is fucking ridiculous and I'm so tired of seeing her every word nitpicked to death.

I said this in one of the "ZOMG SHE SAID INCEL AGAIN" threads that she is human like the rest of us and it's completely fascinating to see that Paul never gets even 1% of the shit that she does. Shit that neither one of them ever deserve. These are two friends having conversations together while trying to pull out research that they may not have known before, and I would even argue that the entire point of this show is to take a look at these movies in a modern lens to see if they even hold up and continue to deserve a place on this list once it gets updated. But somehow people have a fucking problem with Amy and the way she talks about male characters... shocker...

So while the layout of the group is in fact a problem and the amount of the same kind of posts does become the problem as well, my issue is completely with the content of these posts and how many people have an issue with Amy specifically.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 1/17/2019 at 9:14 PM, ol' eddy wrecks said:

exasperate

"exacerbate".  Egg on my face there.

 

On 1/18/2019 at 10:03 AM, taylorannephoto said:

Personally, even without the amount that I've seen, it's the people that think an opinion or a way someone (who am I kidding - Amy) sees the movie is wrong because that's not what they see or that's not the wording they would choose to describe the feeling. This indignation and justification that Amy is lazy and not up to par is fucking ridiculous and I'm so tired of seeing her every word nitpicked to death.

I said this in one of the "ZOMG SHE SAID INCEL AGAIN" threads that she is human like the rest of us and it's completely fascinating to see that Paul never gets even 1% of the shit that she does. Shit that neither one of them ever deserve. These are two friends having conversations together while trying to pull out research that they may not have known before, and I would even argue that the entire point of this show is to take a look at these movies in a modern lens to see if they even hold up and continue to deserve a place on this list once it gets updated. But somehow people have a fucking problem with Amy and the way she talks about male characters... shocker...

So while the layout of the group is in fact a problem and the amount of the same kind of posts does become the problem as well, my issue is completely with the content of these posts and how many people have an issue with Amy specifically.

Maybe the group has gotten more antagonistic in tone since I stopped reading (I don't recall ever seeing posts dedicated to Amy's use of the word "incel", so as a time reference, that means it's probably been a while) - or it was more antagonistic in tone than what I remember.  I recall there was brief spike in negativity of tone of the comments in the group at one point and Kate posted she got a complaint (concerns?) from someone involved with the podcast about it.  I recall the nature of the complaints were subtly less antagonistic in nature after that, but the quantity still kind of wore thin with me (hence my comment about FB's UX above).  Maybe it's gotten worse again.