movies/tv

Waylon’s “Luchenbach, Texas” was, I’m pretty sure, the first song I ever learned all the words to. Or, most of the words. I never knew “marquee” until years and years later. Somewhere around high school, I’d guess, if not undergrad. When I was five, though, and then when I was ten, and fifteen, it was

Very much digging it. Not at all an easy adaptation. Dug the comic, of course. And really digging his supercab Ford in the television version: I’ve watched so many shows just to get to look at the ride. This may be another, in a very long line.

Not going to try to claim When Harry Met Sally and Alien are the EXACT same movie, don’t get me wrong. But, I DID watch them back-to-back last night, and found what might be a secret code or symbol or key to the universe—both feature this mesmerizing drinky bird:  

Yeah, Deadwood and Hannibal and Breaking Bad, and STNG and X-Files and Twin Peaks, and Brisco Co., Jr and The Good Guys and Newsradio and Happy Valley and Monk and Northern Exposure and Psych and all the rest—all my favorite television stuff. Still, none of them have ever been quite this cool:

What I think about after peeling back through all those years of the Western movie, it’s the western now. As in, why was all the cool stuff back when? Is the myth of the Old West not as vital anymore? Are we telling ourselves different stories today? And how has the Western movie changed? Did

So important, I made a little movie of it:

I think I fell into a tailspin of rewatching—and watching for the first time, in some cases—Westerns over August because of a couple of things, that happened right close to each other: I read Joe R. Lansdale’s Paradise Sky, which was and is amazing, and I rented Forsaken, which is also really, really good. Anyway,

if you’re just super cool, and have been hired on this movie (3:10 to Yuma, 1957) probably expressly for some trick-riding. But, man: this is something you don’t see anymore, right? I mean, both that running mount followed by just beating it across the road and the needless showmanship—the kind of celebration of an art

Dug it, of course. How not to? Just done with it a couple nights ago, I guess (binge-watching: not for me), and am now peeling through all the links I’d saved back for when spoilers didn’t matter. Was going to write something about what worked, what didn’t—very little didn’t—but then Chuck Wendig did hisTerrible Minds

Thanks to Xach Fromson for the headsup on this: [ link ] Was just tweeting about it a few weeks ago, with even the same pic: Y’know, all these years and films later, Flatliners is still one of the scarier moviegoing nights I’ve had pic.twitter.com/2SdAHdGjXF — Stephen Graham Jones (@SGJ72) June 23, 2016 Thinking now

Oh, man, don’t have time really even to mini-review all of these (edit: that’s a lie. I couldn’t help it). But they’re far and away the best stuff I’ve seen lately: This one—wow. Halfway between Tombstone and Unforgiven, and kind of built on the dramatic backbone of Shane. Doc rides again. Unlike most westerns, though,

And, two that “finished,” but maybe didn’t get to quite go their intended distance: Uncoincidentally? Deadwood and Hannibal are my two favorite things to ever happen to television. So it probably stands to reason that I’m A) going to want more, and B) going to suspect they didn’t get a fair shake.