TS (Taylor-Burton ed.): Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf vs. Boom

to refresh the memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppeMfoKdbAY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrlmAKKEIlg

Weird, we watched WAOVW the other night. It was great. Can't imagine how Boom lives up to it

Woolf is the true classic here, but every time I see Boom! I'm impressed by how entertaining it is. The clothes and sets are certainly more interesting in the latter, and the cinematography in general is amazing - done by the same guy who shot Raiders of the Lost Ark among many other films of note. Of course Woolf had Haskell Wexler, so…

Another way to look at this is, I think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is actually the best English-language film of 1966 (Oscar fucked that one up) whereas I wouldn't rate Boom! even in the top ten best of 1968

I'd go with The Fortune Cookie or Chelsea Girls for '66.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Boom is tot garbage except to John Waters and his acolytes

i guess i shd see the Liz-Dick Taming of the Shrew at some point

obv wd've voted Va Woolf, but i'm p sure depending on what you allow the best Eng-lang film of '66 is either Chelsea Girls or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I wouldn't argue too hard with the above opinion, but as far as the Academy goes, no one in Hollywood would have seen those two movies in '66 - Chelsea Girls hit LA in Spring of '67 and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly finally arrived from Italy in '68. Of course had Academy voters seen them they probably would have hated them both. Fortunately we have better perspective than they did.

Taming of the Shrew is surprisingly good, it's kind of like Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet but with celebrities

well that make sense as it's directed by FZ

knew that, just worded the comment poorly

FZ=Zappa?

Franko Zapparilli

Lol

still have never seen a Leone film; my deep, deep hatred of John Wayne and glorified machismo paired w/ blatant sexism keep me so far away from Westerns. Should I give one a chance?

Yes. Red River.

ew no i meant a Leone film!!!

I actually didn't hate Stagecoach though

but I've had to watch screenings of The Searchers for two diff film classes and bailed within 15 min both times.

What you don't get in the spaghettis that you do get in John Wayne films is sanctimoniousness. Spaghettis tend toward a sort of ironic amorality.

Btw not *all* John Wayne films

ya the utter lack of like playfulness or not-taking-ones-self-super-seriously-at-all-times is so rmde imo

there are plenty of Wayne westerns in which he's relaxed and playful (anything with O'Hara, Rio Bravo).

Red River is rather critical of his machismo iirc

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance may or may not be critical of Wayne's image, but it does play with it in an interesting way. That said, if Stevie hates Wayne, we should probably stop recommending Wayne flicks to him. As for Leone, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (one of my favourite films) and Once Upon a Time in the West are aesthetically beautiful enough as films that it is possible to watch and enjoy them simply as experiences instead of getting caught up in the politics of the Western and all that.

I've only seen 3 of the 5, but I'd say give Anthony Mann's westerns with James Stewart a shot.

tsk tsk Stevie, don't buy the received horseshit liberal pansy CW about westerns :)

opposed to the inertia of war

fort apache - sentimentality about The Cavalry complicated, like genuinely troubled, by the uses to which that sentimentality is bent

red river - there will be blood

the two dollars trilogy movies i have seen were absolutely infantile in comparison

idk what happened there

wayne movies are good

v laid-back and often funny in she wore a yellow ribbon (this was the one that got cut off in last post) and rio bravo

Before we return to our regular scheduled programming would like to say: the recent Wayne bio is really, really good.

Rio Grande too.

It's not a western obv but In Harm's Way is typically complex late Preminger w/a laidback and coquettish Wayne.

xpost

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

To bring this full circle, John Wayne's all-time favorite film was A Man for All Seasons (1966), therefore we can assume he was pleased Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? didn't win the '66 Oscar

Don't believe Wayne was a big fan of "New Hollywood."

I'm partial to Wayne's 3 '60s-'70s Howard Hawks movies: Hatari!, Rio Lobo and El Dorado.
I love Boom--the John Barry soundtrack is just great, btw--and Taylor's other Joseph Losey movie, 1968's Secret Ceremony, with Robert Mitchum. Just as nuts as Boom.

"still have never seen a Leone film; my deep, deep hatred of John Wayne and glorified machismo paired w/ blatant sexism keep me so far away from Westerns. Should I give one a chance?"

--Yeah, Once Upon a Time in the West, in my opine the best Leone ever. Jason Robards is brilliant, Charles Bronson is bad-ass, Henry Fonda plays a bad guy, and Claudia Cardinale tames the west. Amazing set pieces, superb thematics--a real mix of humor and reverence for the west that you don't find in other Leone. I also like Duck, You Sucker, which is nutty and strangely moving, a kind of weird buddy picture set during the Mexican revolution.

imo clint eastwood's screen persona -- at least in the leone films -- is a lot more macho and obnoxious (and less complex and ambiguous and troubled) than john wayne's ever was. wayne often has a sort of sadness and melancholy about him, particularly in his later films, that i never feel w/ eastwood. so it's always been a little odd to me that ppl tend to unapologetically celebrate eastwood as this timeless cool icon but often feel the need to apologize for liking john wayne even a little bit. (obv wayne was a despicable right-winger in real life, but so was jimmy stewart and that doesn't seem to stop ppl from adoring him.) (nor should it!) greil marcus wrote something somewhere comparing wayne's character in red river to LBJ, which always stuck w/ me.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l_kSeFbJG0w/UiaKGbyzPfI/AAAAAAAAA5Y/uxqVqJLIt10/s1600/stewarts+with+reagan+1986.jpg

in our cataloguing of despicability let's not forget whom clint shills for nowadays

wish i could edit post, i can't bring myself to think of jimmy stewart as despicable even if he did campaign for nixon

edd hurt otm (i think) that once upon a time is the leone to watch, which is why i keep meaning to. the dollars movies (the ones people mean when they enthuse about leone/clint) seemed to me blankly untroubled by even distorted history -- dioramas about dick, automatically unproblematic compared to anything that tries to engage.

the good the bad and the ugly is great but i don't think of it as a "western," sort of feels like it could be happening on some alien landscape somewhere

yeah exactly, which is fine but also maybe why it goes down smooth

(would also like to see once upon a time in america, haha)

Not as good as reputation suggests, but it's regal or something

the good the bad and the ugly is great but i don't think of it as a "western," sort of feels like it could be happening on some alien landscape somewhere

i'm allergic to john wayne and love sergio leone fwiw. once upon a time in the west is great.

Once Upon a Time in the West is amazing in many ways, but it also strikes me as kind of a hybrid, like maybe the most American of all the Italian westerns. Henry Fonda is incredible in it and it's hard to believe he went back to doing crap westerns like The Cheyenne Social Club immediately thereafter.

people thinking movie stars are the ppl they play or v v: dud

also, who cares?

your mom

people thinking movie stars are the ppl they play or v v: dud

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 22, 2016 3:46 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree. the wayne persona has inspired and shaped the ethos of countless people in the actual west for the worse, where i live. it's totally dud. i'm glad you can retreat into your sacred sanctuary of canon where your favorite art is beyond reproach though.

i too long to return to the matriarchal idyll of western civilization's pre-stagecoach years

ad absurdum aside sorry john wayne's just not rly that john wayne in a lot of john wayne movies (and if he is the movie often regards him as an asshole -- cf not just obv the searchers but also red river and iirc rio grande, altho i get the lesser rios confused)

anyway. wish cleopatra was good, love me some antony+cleo

guys stop talking about dumb westerns on my Boom! thread

i agree. the wayne persona has inspired and shaped the ethos of countless people in the actual west for the worse, where i live. it's totally dud.

Wayne persona was fairly comples. Art is not responsible for stupid people.

*complex

could be good, the theatre company is reputable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8AwUXGd0g