“Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.”

An interesting thing with the DVD of THE MIST is that it includes a black and white version of the movie, which is apparently the look the director prefers.

I think the only downer ending that pulled me up short was that of THE MIST, Frank Darabont’s adaptation of a Stephen King story. Without engaging in spoilers, suffice to say the ending gobsmacks you into thinking deep thoughts about a storyteller’s moral responsibilities and such. It so violates your expectations that you can’t help but wonder what the filmmaker wants you to take from the experience. I liked the film overall, but if all endings were as bleak as this one, I’d probably join Mike’s camp in a heartbeat.

Ah yes, Blake, I have watched 13 films by George Sherman over the last two weeks, it was my first experience of his work and I’m overwhelmed because they were so good! (The only one I didn’t care for was SOUTH OF THE BORDER.) His images of horsemen, still or moving, in vast landscapes were extraordinary. Some shots, some compositions, were among the best I’ve ever seen such as in THE BATTLE OF APACHE PASS and COMANCHE. The aborted lynching sequence in REPRISAL! was especially goose bumps inducing. Besides the visuals the politics were also interesting. In addition, the musical-comedy-western FEUDIN’, FUSSIN’ AND A-FIGHTIN’ was wonderful, and SWORD IN THE DESERT was great. I’m still bewildered by being completely unaware of him and his work until two weeks ago, and I call myself a film historian. I need to watch them again, and I want to watch the rest of his work as well. OK, maybe not the other two with Gene Autry.

Well, since we’ve entered the territory of cartoons, there’s a great one by Charles Addams on that theme:

http://www.cadavercafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/charles-addams1.jpg

Later, Daffy comes to a cabin where the occupying wolf and weasel take him in and feed him beans with the ultimate intention of cooking and eating him. The wolf rhapsodizes at the prospect of a duck dinner; “Oh, for that fowl taste in my mouth once again!”

I offer this in the hope of precluding any depressing thoughts from Fredrik about our work here. After all, he has enough to contend with as a Bergman scholar.

I have a handful of favourite directors, whose films I miss when I haven’t seen them for a while, that are part of me. One among them is Peckinpah. But it is also the case that he is the only one I can feel a bit uneasy about, where I wouldn’t say to an unsuspecting friend “Go and see his films, they’re great!” without some preparatory words first.

All films he made from RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY to BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA are fantastic if you ask me, and I couldn’t say which one I like best, even though JUNIOR BONNER is very special. I like the other films as well, but not as much. (Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of his TV work.)

We don’t quote enough about the Looney Tunes if you ask me, and that’s kind of depressing.

I have to say I love thinking of ole Screwy Godard, plotting how next to capsize, turn inside out or otherwise rearrange classical strictures and the laws of physics. But I find him inclusive instead of proscriptive. I would suggest taking another look at Valerie’s death scene. Sure, her nodding out foregrounds the fiction. But the camera is also patient for pathos to gather. Her dying is moving and bracketed as an illusion all at once. It’s like Godard wants seeing-in and seeing-as to take place exactly at the same time. Because settling for just one wouldn’t be good enough.

I perfectly agree with Gregg that Peckinpah is a transitional figure. This thread prompted me to finally catch up with NOON WINE, and what a fine balance between classical grace and his restless exploration it operates on. On the one side, the fine actors and script; on the other, his disquieting camerawork and churning editing. In a sense, this tension is still going on in THE WILD BUNCH between the older performers’ precision and the upturning montage opening up clusters of violence. I love both, but I think in PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, where Peckinpah draws back from scads of overt displays and resituates strife in the world and landscape itself by bleak staging and his sober, chilling draining of color, he goes deeper.