3:10 to Awesometown

I hit a personal pothole in the road of life this week and it sorta stopped me cold in my blogging tracks. But I'm back now and more bloggy than ever.

I want to point out that I know there are people in my personal circle who have been aware of and appreciated classic films long before me. Tawnya Mosier was telling me to see Danny Kaye films when we were in high school and I was like, "But there's no color! Where's Bruce Willis?" So, I recognize that my current glee at discovering the performance of a classic actor or coming across a little-known (to me) gem of a movie just makes me seem like a bit of a dilatentte. I'm not denying it at all. I'm just giving credit where credit is due - to Paul and Linda, my in-laws who often recommend good classic films, to Tawnya and Tracy, of course, who had crushes on random people from old movies long before I thought it was cool to do so, and to everyone else who reads this blog and thinks, "He's only seeing that movie now? Way to come late to the classical Hollywood party, loser."



Having said that, allow me to move on to 3:10 to Yuma with Glen Ford and Van Heflin. Some critics have said that Ford's performance as the outlaw Ben Wade is a little too light and not dangerous enough but I disagree. I think his sly, slightly Mephistophelean performance is just right and easily the best thing about the whole show. Heflin is a lumbering cipher but Ford's Wade is engaging, fun, and menacing.

Admittedly, the climax is unrealistic and far too tidy and happy to be believed. But everything leading up to it is enjoyable

In the comments to my last post, my mother-in-law pointed out that All The King's Men had been remade, poorly, with Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins and others. The reviews of the remake almost universally panned it as a plodding attempt at Oscar bait so I never saw it.

The remake of 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale (who is a genre machine lately - western, superhero, sci-fi) got much better reviews and is really interesting to me because I like both the leads a lot. I've read that it's definitely a contemporary take on the western (more gunplay, explosions, overall grittiness)- but I love remakes so I'm tempted. Even if I don't like the movie itself, I like the mental friction caused by thinking about the old version versus the new.



Jennifer V. also mentioned the 1990 remake of Stella Dallas with Bette Midler. The 1937 version I wrote about was actually a remake of a 1925 film based on a novel. We're a remake hungry culture. Did I mention there's talk of a Magnum P.I. movie remake?



(My mom had a big crush on Tom Selleck from these days. Can you blame her? I wish I had that kind of mustache power.)