KrisCowboy's Journal: Once upon a time...

Having 20GB for a windows partition is a real waste. Suddenly felt that I could put that space to a better use. So, I take a deep drag of my Marlboro and delete the whole partition. Copied all my music over there, thus freeing up around 15GB for movies. Not that I'm getting any new stuff these days. God bless Azazel for those movies. I've been looking for Unforgiven, Once Upon a Time in West and Last Tempatation of Jesus Christ for quite sometime now. And after finishing Unforgiven and Once Upon a Time in West back-to-back, I'm not really sure if I still want to watch those Terence Hill westerns. What's about to follow is highly biased. Don't go any further if you don't really like Clint and/or Sergio Leone.

The first thing I got to say is that the quality of the movies Azazel gave me is not as good as I expected. The clarity of the film is good, but poor resolution - it could be better. Sorry bro, I'm a bit fussy when it comes to the quality of movies. It's just not good enough for me. Anyway, after Nipun and Naresh told me that they've already finished Unforgiven and OUTW (don't worry, it's for Once Upon a Time in West), I suddenly found myself the lone Westerns fan to miss those two movies. Being a huge Clint fan than a Leone fan, I start with Unforgiven. The one thing you got to admire about Eastwood's direction is his want for originality. Unlike the Dollars Trilogy where the hero (villain???) is super-dynamic. The lead actor of Unforgiven is this out-of-touch, out-of-luck, aged cowboy Clint really is. The scenes where he falls down unable to climb his horse and that really awesome scene where Clint dreams of dying are the proofs for what I'm saying. Rest of the movie is a typical Eastwood western except for some quality action from Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman. I still can't image both of them dressed up in cowboy gear. When you are watching out for cowboys, you are watching out for Clint Eastwood. Not even John "Duke" Wayne is a match for Clint in cowboy gear. Back to topic, if you've watched Hang 'em High, Josey Wales and High Plains Drifter, you can tell what's going to happen next in Unforgiven. "Yeah. When you kill a man, you take away all he has and all he's ever gonna have".

After a boring hour writing the end-sem of "Philosophical Discussions on Human Desires", I really desired for a good ol' spaghetti western. Let's kick-in Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. One thing about Bronson - he's no Clint Eastwood. He's short, not a good build, no squinty look and damn, this guy doesn't even smoke a cigarillo. Stetson, spurs, poncho and a cigarillo - that's MY version of *basic* gear must for a Cowboy. A typical Sergio Leone film - music by Ennio Morricone. Man, Morricone is really a great composer. Do you know that Metallica plays his "Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad and They Ugly, before most of their live concerts? Bronson's introduction is too damn good. Three gunmen wait for him to get off a train. One of them says "Looks like we are short of one horse". Bronson gives his wide grin and says "You brought two too many". What follows is naturally expected - Bronson shooting the bad guys. Now, hold on. Bronson takes a shot. THAT never happened to Clint. He always shoots all the dudes before they can pull out their Colts. May be Clint is faster than Harmonica. There are some good dialogues in the movie like "Can you sing or you can cut too?". I think I had too many expectations about Fonda and Bronson. Surely, this movie didn't live upto it. But the bottom-line is, when it comes to Westerns, Leone is the man.

I've read a comment for an anonymous reader on IMDB that Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven "blurs the line between heroism and villainy; between man and myth". Absolutely.