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(13,957 posts)Since childhood, I've sympathetically remembered "main stim stop wow."
Mendocino
(7,480 posts)was nominated for the Academy Award for his role as Po-han.
James48
(4,426 posts)N/t
Paladin
(28,243 posts)Excellent western. Brian Keith---as the gun dealer---steals the show, as usual.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,283 posts)Trying to upstage
The Magnificent Seven, er, shot Steve McQueen to fame and marked him out immediately as a Western actor of note. It is in some ways surprising that he didnt do more in the genre, although of course Westerns were becoming less frequent and McQueens tough-guy persona could appear instead driving race cars or as a hard-bitten cop (or in the case of Bullitt, both). Steve was all for doing the sequel Return of the Seven but it is said that Brynner vetoed the idea.
Nevada Smith (Paramount, 1966), which was produced and directed by Henry Hathaway and photographed by the great Lucien Ballard, ought to have been better than it was. A straight revenge Western, it suffers from implausibility and wooden acting. McQueen was 35 and blond yet trying to play a sixteen-year-old half-breed Kiowa. The movie has a ponderous plot. It was written by John Michael Hayes based on the character in the extraordinarily popular Harold Robbins novel (not to say potboiler) The Carpetbaggers. Brian Keith is solid if uninspiring as the traveling gunsmith who befriends McQueen and teaches him to shoot after Karl Malden, Arthur Kennedy and Martin Landau have brutally killed the boys parents. But the rest of the acting is pretty dire. Of course, the cast are not helped by the corny dialogue. The worst is Karl Malden, never a good Western actor, who hams it up embarrassingly badly. He is last seen screaming hysterically at the top of his voice, a typical mode for Malden.
....
Nevada
Wounded Bear
(58,584 posts)Trend setting cop flick from '68. Set a high bar for car chases that has seldom been met.
McQueen nailed that character.
Paladin
(28,243 posts)Funny how as time goes on and your "Bullitt" viewings increase, that car chase becomes less and less a factor. It's the little things that get to me now: McQueen nearly getting his eye put out by the careless waiter at that restaurant, with the jazz quartet playing in the background; the exchange on the street between McQueen and the big-sideburned character about the guy McQueen is after; McQueen sitting miserably on his bed in the morning, waiting for the instant coffee to perk, while his sharp partner deliberately gets him pissed by mouthing off the newspaper headlines.
Great, great movie. McQueen's cool masculinity was such a big factor in shaping guys like me, back in the 60's.
Mendocino
(7,480 posts)and turtleneck. The brown suede ghurka boots. The frozen food from the bodega. The texture of a film adds so much.
Paladin
(28,243 posts)Yeah, I've seen "Bullitt" a few times. And I'm guessing you have, as well. Good stuff.
Mendocino
(7,480 posts)Paladin
(28,243 posts)Mendocino
(7,480 posts)the Sundance Kid until top-billing negotiations with Paul Newman broke down. Jack Lemon and Warren Beatty were also considered.