In 2015, comedian Doug Benson issued himself a mission of watching 365 movies in 365 days. An avid moviegoer and host of a popular podcast entitled, "Doug Loves Movies", watching so many movies should come easy, but given all of his duties of constantly traveling the continent from one ocean to the other and back, in addition to two or three podcasts, achieving this lofty goal was tough, and he came close to failure, squeaking in the last film on the last day of the year. For 2016, he's not trying this feat, but challenged his fans to the challenge. I'm not nearly as busy as Doug, not by a long shot, but I figured I'd give myself a goal of 250 movies to watch in 2016. I figured I could swing four movies a week, for fifty-two weeks, which totaled 208, which I rounded up to an even 250. As of this date, I've managed 53 movies, the last being "The Magnificent Seven", the poster pictured above.
The Magnificent Seven was rated FOUR STARS out of four and starred major Hollywood stars of the day, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn, with an additional two nobodies to round out the seven. Eli Wallach co-starred as the main villain. The film was produced in 1960 and was an updated old-west remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samarai", which was filmed in Japanese.
In comparison to the films being produced in that era, I do suppose the movie deserved the high ratings, but as I've been watching a wide variety of films in an effort to achieve my own movie challenge in 2015, I've found that many of the movies of the era, which received high praise, really aren't that good. Quite dreadful, in fact. "Lawrence of Arabia" is one such movie, receiver of many Oscar nominations and awards, also considered to be a FOUR STAR movie, was really really bad. At just short of four hours in length, I believe a good hour to an hour-and-a-half could have been shaved off the film, which would make it better. The movie spent about 45 minutes establishing the back story of why the titular character, British Lieutenant T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole) was sent to Arabia. It was quite boring, wasteful and elaborate in it's telling of who he pissed off enough to send him to the desert. Who gives a shit?!? The same information could have been translated in a five minute flashback as Lawrence was roasting his ass in the hot desert heat.
Another film that I wasted my time watching, was the original Ocean's Eleven, which starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billy Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr., to name a few. The film was rated as FOUR STARS but never addressed the big heist until after an hour into the film. Then the whole caper took less than the remaining sixty minutes. Absolutely dreadful. The 2001 remake, which starred the likes of Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts and many more, scored only a measly TWO out of FOUR stars, but was a kick ass movie.
Some of the old classics, really aren't so classic.
As I stated, I watched "The Magnificent Seven" Thursday afternoon and I'm thinking that the word MAGNIFICENT must have had an alternate meaning in 1960, because the movie was anything but magnificent. It seemed like the first half of the movie was Yul Brynner's character roaming about town looking for six or seven men willing to fend off evil marauders in a small Mexican town for the whopping sum of $20 for six weeks work. I'm not certain when the film supposedly takes place, but $20 seems a very peckish price for putting one's life on the line for helpless villagers.
There was a remake made in 1998 which starred Ron Pearlman, Eric Close, and Michael Biehn which did so well, nobody remembers it. There's also another remake scheduled for a September 2016 release, directed by Antoine Fuqua (known for Training Day, Shooter, & most recently Southpaw), and starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio. I don't know if it'll be better, but given who's in it and the man in the director's chair, I'd say it has a really good chance of being good. ...And likely, violent as a motherf*cker. I've got my fingers crossed that this updated version will earn the title of "magnificent".
The Magnificent Seven was rated FOUR STARS out of four and starred major Hollywood stars of the day, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn, with an additional two nobodies to round out the seven. Eli Wallach co-starred as the main villain. The film was produced in 1960 and was an updated old-west remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samarai", which was filmed in Japanese.
In comparison to the films being produced in that era, I do suppose the movie deserved the high ratings, but as I've been watching a wide variety of films in an effort to achieve my own movie challenge in 2015, I've found that many of the movies of the era, which received high praise, really aren't that good. Quite dreadful, in fact. "Lawrence of Arabia" is one such movie, receiver of many Oscar nominations and awards, also considered to be a FOUR STAR movie, was really really bad. At just short of four hours in length, I believe a good hour to an hour-and-a-half could have been shaved off the film, which would make it better. The movie spent about 45 minutes establishing the back story of why the titular character, British Lieutenant T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole) was sent to Arabia. It was quite boring, wasteful and elaborate in it's telling of who he pissed off enough to send him to the desert. Who gives a shit?!? The same information could have been translated in a five minute flashback as Lawrence was roasting his ass in the hot desert heat.
Another film that I wasted my time watching, was the original Ocean's Eleven, which starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billy Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr., to name a few. The film was rated as FOUR STARS but never addressed the big heist until after an hour into the film. Then the whole caper took less than the remaining sixty minutes. Absolutely dreadful. The 2001 remake, which starred the likes of Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts and many more, scored only a measly TWO out of FOUR stars, but was a kick ass movie.
Some of the old classics, really aren't so classic.
As I stated, I watched "The Magnificent Seven" Thursday afternoon and I'm thinking that the word MAGNIFICENT must have had an alternate meaning in 1960, because the movie was anything but magnificent. It seemed like the first half of the movie was Yul Brynner's character roaming about town looking for six or seven men willing to fend off evil marauders in a small Mexican town for the whopping sum of $20 for six weeks work. I'm not certain when the film supposedly takes place, but $20 seems a very peckish price for putting one's life on the line for helpless villagers.
There was a remake made in 1998 which starred Ron Pearlman, Eric Close, and Michael Biehn which did so well, nobody remembers it. There's also another remake scheduled for a September 2016 release, directed by Antoine Fuqua (known for Training Day, Shooter, & most recently Southpaw), and starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio. I don't know if it'll be better, but given who's in it and the man in the director's chair, I'd say it has a really good chance of being good. ...And likely, violent as a motherf*cker. I've got my fingers crossed that this updated version will earn the title of "magnificent".
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