Obsession

[snousle]

I found this DVD last month while cleaning out the shack:



Ever fall in love with a photo? This has been obsessing me for a while now. I didn't know much about Lee Van Cleef, so I looked him up and have been unable to find any other pictures of him that turn me on like this one does (or at all for that matter). Which makes it kind of strange that this particular one pushes so many buttons. I think it has a lot to do with the stubble and bushy eyebrows. And the hint of fucked up teeth, and those fierce bedroom eyes... swoon! I just can't resist that steely tough-guy look.

Anyway, Bill said the film is "absolute crap" - he's a stickler for realism in military tales, and apparently on that count this fell on its face within the first five minutes. I skimmed through a few scenes, and it struck me as low-budget, high-camp brain candy, something hard to take with any seriousness.

Comments

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

All is not lost. Such bad filmage can be converted to 'pron' easily -- grab clips of Lee, slow them down. The result: totally hot pron that can be posted on the Youtubes! :)

To wit:

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

Interesting ....

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Realism in military movies? That made me stop and wonder - is that seeing someone blown apart in slow motion gore? Shell shock and everyone utterly depressed? People getting shot for desertion? I would have thought in that genre realism is not what you want - cos the real horrors of war are rarely entertaining. Odd.

Then again, military/war movies do leave me cold. I can understand (but not always like) westerns, sci-fi, most genre cinema...but name a war movie other than maybe Apocalypse Now,Empire of the Sun, Catch 22 and MASH (which aren't really war movies per se, they are anti-war movies? Or parodies or about stuff around the actual wars) and I'll probably either not seen it (intentionally) or have done and not liked it...

[snousle.livejournal.com]

All I mean by "realism" is a lack of things that are obviously implausible.

Saving Private Ryan (which I have not seen) and Full Metal Jacket (which I have) were two very successful movies which depicted war in a realistic and not very pleasant fashion. I'm not sure "entertaining" is the right word but I have a lot more respect for such films than ones full of sanitized cartoon violence.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

True; I was trying to remember the moving Australian film (with Mel Gibson) about 2 shellshocked deserters shot in 1915 before the understanding of what that was...moving and political, it highlighted the plight of those people, and the shame the families lived with for years.

I don't like cartoon violence either...just it must be an odd one to direct, cos if you show the real horror then people won't go to see it at all - entertaining might not be the right word; but then again I don't use the word to mean fluffy or happy - entertained can be thoroughly horrible, draining, depressing, but not gratuitously so. I like art films, which are usually of one of the latter - entertained in the Hollywood sense isn't the right word, but I watch them and enjoy them, even when they are harrowing if there is some essential truth or message to them. That's what I mean by 'entertained'.

I rarely watch Hollywood films either...

The films you mentioned, watched neither but I've seen bits of Full Metal jacket to know it's more like Starship Troopers in it's aim - like MASH to send up war and show it's horrible side. It's the movies that have patriotic messages encoded into them during the battle scenes and win/lose scenarious that I hate. This made me a little sceptical of Private Ryan, even given the apparently very accurate and gruelling opening scenes.

[gloeden.livejournal.com]

"Breaker Morant", I think.

[come-to-think.livejournal.com]

Paths of Glory. That, of course, is an antiwar movie; but then, antiwar movies are war movies.

There is an interesting article by Paul Goodman ("Designing Pacifist Films", 1960, http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman.htm) about the difficulty of making antiwar films that do not turn into pornography of violence.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

P.S. Mr Van Cleef is quite nice in Westerns, that grizzled 'Cheyenne' look is why I love Once Upon a Time in the West - which he's not in but I think he's in ..Dollars More or something - so much (as well as it being a great movie). Morricone seemed to have loads of beautifully grizzled men in his movies :-)

[p0lecat.livejournal.com]

Watched The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly last night.

[broduke2000.livejournal.com]

So you could say Lee has fallen off the Cleef.

*duke ducks*