3:10 to Yuma/ Stardust

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Wierd and Gilly,
The Spiders from Mars.
He played it left hand, but made it too far,
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's Band.

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'me to hang
Came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.

So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls
Just the beer light to guide us,
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands ?

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were Voodoo
The kids was just crass, he was the naz
With God given ass
He took it all too far but boy could he play guitar.

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

3:10 to Yuma

So I'm not the biggest western fan. I do enjoy some of Eastwood's early stuff (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More) where he's just a bad-ass motherfucker blowing people away, but for the most part I can't really watch any of those old John Wayne or Gary Cooper flicks. They're too derivative and predictable and bore me to death. When I saw the preview for 3:10 to Yuma, though, it looked like something I might wanna watch. Russell Crowe doesn't just do any movie, and seeing him as the 'bad guy' proved too irresistible for the cinephile within me. So on a lazy Saturday afternoon i went to check out 3:10 to Yuma (with fairly high expectations may I add).
The movies was good. Very good in fact. An excellent story with an equally good script. Not sure where they shot the damn thing, but the backgrounds are mesmerizing, helping to portray the bleak landscape of the 'old west'. Russell Crowe is frickin good (as usual) but it was Christian Bale who, with his performance in 3:10 to Yuma, has shown that he must be taken seriously as an actor. Ben Foster and Peter Fonda add to the excellent supporting cast. Though the style of the movie is definitely a western, complete with the distinctive facial close-ups, it has been modernized, with more blood and violence then you'd ever find in a 50s western.
What makes 3:10 to Yuma different from every other western is Crowe's character, the notorious outlaw Ben Wade. With his gang of bandits, Wade roams the country-side taking what he pleases with an utter ruthlessness. Wade is captured, though, and Bale's Dan Evans, a broke rancher, joins the crew assigned to escort Wade to his train to jail in hopes of a rich reward. It is here that we see the ambiguity in Crowe's character and we face the problem with the movie. For the movie to work you must see Wade as a conflicted outlaw with a good heart that really wants nothing more than to settle down with a woman, and retains his humanity when he sees that Evans would willingly sacrifice his life to give his family a better one. Looking at the movie from this perspective is the ONLY way to explain Crowe's actions. Otherwise you will be left asking yourself 'why the fuck is he doing this?' throughout the movie. And even then, it's hard to comprehend some of Wade's actions. He runs away, he comes back. What the fuck does he want? Is it all some sort of way to test Evans? The beauty of the movie lies in that we are never told Wade's intentions. We are left to ponder them ourselves. Even the very end of the movie leaves us wondering what will happen next. Crowe's Ben Wade may be one of the most complex characters to ever grace the silver screen; a western version of Hamlet if you will. On the other hand, if you don't recognize this complexity in Wade, then the movie is simply disjointed and the actions of Wade are merely nonsenscal and ultimately make no fucking sense. I prefer to think of him as complex. It makes for a more enjoyable film.


Stardust

Stardust was another movie I went into with high expectations. A great cast (DeNiro, Claire Danes, Ricky Gervais, Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ian McKellan as narrator) made the movie a must see. After I left the theater, I couldn't help but smile on the drive back home. Just an astounding movie. Pure fun. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (who also directed the excellent Layer Cake), the movie is a fantasy/comedy, like The Princess Bride for a whole new generation. Vaughn does an outstanding job of combining action and suspense with timely comedy, and I can't wait to see what he does with the upcoming Thor movie (it can't be any worse than Ang Lee's Hulk!). The movie is fairly cliche and anyone with a brain can figure out the ending, but who the fuck cares? Maybe I just saw the movie at the right place, at the right time, but I couldn't have been more thrilled with how it finished up. If the movie didn't turn out happy the way I wanted it too, I would've been fucking pissed (and I must explain that I generally hate generic Hollywood endings). Claire Danes is absolutely adorable in the film. I want on you now Claire. And DeNiro playing a cross-dressing pirate is a role for the ages. The special effects abound, and create an air of fantasy that makes one embrace the very essence of the film. The casting and costumes were impeccable. Michelle Pfeiffer as the bad witch helped me to remember that she was still alive. Just an exceptional movie all the way through. A kid movie for adults, if that makes any sense. Well written, well thought out and well acted. Stardust has forced me to move Neil Gaiman's book of the same name to the top of my reading list (though undoubtedly Gaiman's version will be much darker, only hints of which could be seen in the movie). Could the movie have been edgier? Sure. But the campiness was half the fun. Escaping into a pure fantasy-land for an hour and a half was the point, and it certainly did not disappoint. The only problem with the film was in the way it was marketed as a 'date movie.' Fuck that. It should have been marketed to all the comic and sci-fans out there; the movie is a fanboy's dream. Yeah, you could say the movie's about love, but it's also about hope, growing-up, and the utter un-expectedness of life. Word of mouth will spread the excellence of the movie and I would not be surprised to see it gain cult status. But if you were smart, you'd watch it now. More likely than not you'll find yourself jumping aboad the Stardust bandwagon.