Over the past few weeks while watching "My Darling Clementine" and "Once Upon A Time In The West", I now see why westerns were popular then and how they are still popular now. Of the two films, my favorite was "Once Upon A Time In The West" because of it's characters, acting, sound, and Leone's odd but effective way of telling the western. The use of sound in this film is the best I have ever seen. The score puts a different tune to each character that fits them perfectly. The use of diagetic sound in the first scene introduces the characters without them saying anything. Most movies would get really boring if a they had no dialogue, but this film keeps you interested because of its sound effects. Leone doesn't use alot dialogue in the whole film, but it doesn't take away from it in any way. The use of camera angles and shots tell the story better than through the use of words. Lastly, in this film the acting keeps you involved. These actors knew what they were doing and there wasn't anytime in the film where I thought they got out of character or too dull, like Mark Walhberg in Max Payne which I saw on opening night. Off topic, I still love Mark Walhberg because he created "Entourage", my favorite show. I hadn't seen many classic westerns before this unit, but now I like and understand them more.
I can't help but notice the similarities between the classic western and today's superhero movies. This random thought popped into my head while I was writing the in-class essay. I didn't feel that making this comment on the paper would be appropiate but I decided to state it on this post. In westerns there is a hero just like superheros, there are always bad guys that loose in the end, and women are in distress alot of the time. Westerns are the precurser to the super hero films of today like Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and Batman. This is just another example that shows us how popular westerns are because after a century of westerns we haven't lost the plot, we just integrated it into a new form.
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3 comments:
Swen dog,
I agree with you that once upon a time in the west was a great movie. The score and the colorful characters made it one of the best movies we have watched all year in my opinion
Great connection on westerns being the precursor to superhero movies.
Bro,
Your blogs are looking good, keep up the hard work. i love your blogs about westerns, you got some interesting stuff to say.
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