I was just thinking about The Outlaw Josey Wales and thinking it was a great western, maybe even the best; like this guy does, and then I find out Sam Bottoms has died. He was the young, outlaw-struck kid and the surfin' dude in Apocalypse Now. Bye Sam. That makes me feel old.

And if you want to saddle up your horse you can follow on with more westerns @ , keep clicking on the links and you'll end up with a whole herd of links for cowboy films.

RIP

From @, there's more.

Assorted quotes:

Billy Wilder says, "This is the most wonderful claptrap that was ever put on the screen ... Claptrap that you can't get out of your mind. The set was crummy. By God, I've seen Mr. Greenstreet sit in that same wicker chair in fifty pictures before and after, and I knew the parrots that were there. But it worked. It worked absolutely divinely. No matter how sophisticated you are and it's on television and you've seen it 500 times, you turn it on."


Sociologist Todd Gitlin writes:

Casablanca dramatizes archetypes. The main one is the imperative to move from disengagement and cynicism to commitment. The question is why Casablanca does this more effectively than other films. Several other Bogart films of the same period -- Passage to Marseilles, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo -- enact exactly the same conversation. But the Rick character does not simply go from disengagement to engagement but from bitter and truculent denial of his past to a recovery and reignotion of the past. And that is very moving, particularly because it is also associated with Oedipal drama. But there is also a third myth narrative, a story about coming to terms with the past. Rick had this wonderful romance; he also had his passionate commitment. It seems gone forever. But you can get it back. That is a very powerful mythic story, because everybody has lost something, and the past it, by definition, something people have lost. This film enables people to feel that they have redeemed the past and recovered it, and yet without nostalgia. Rick doesn't want to be back in Paris. And the plot is brilliantly constructed so that these three myths are not three separate tales, but one story with three myths rushing down the same channel.

Aljean Harmetz, author of The Making of Casablanca writes:

I was in elementary school during World War II; I did my part in the war by rolling tinfoil and rubber bands into balls and bringing them to the Warners Beverly Theatre on Saturday mornings. World War II had receded with all its certainties and moral imperatives, leaving muddy flats behind. The world is a cornucopia of grays. I believed the romantic interpretation of Casablanca then -- love lost for the good of the world -- and believe it now. But it is the very ambiguity of Casablanca that keeps it current. Part of what draws moviegoers to the movie again and again is their uncertainty about what the movie is saying at the end ...

Check out the review @ and @

I've already posted on this so check out the label.

thanks Arthur C Clarke

I've never been to a baseball game but this always gets me tearing up, James Earl hey.

TURNER Do we have plans to invade the Middle East ?
HIGGINS Are you crazy ?
TURNER Am I ?
HIGGINS Look, Turner…
TURNER Do we have plans ?

HIGGINS No. Absolutely not.(then)We have games. That’s all. We play games.

“What if ?”,

“How many men ?”,

“What would it take ?”,

“Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime ?”

(quieter) That’s what we’re paid to do.

TURNER So…Atwood just took the games too seriously.

He was really going to do it…wasn’t he?...

HIGGINS The fact is, it wasn’t a bad plan.

It could’ve worked.
TURNER Boy, what is it with you people?

You think not getting caught in a lie

is the same thing as telling the truth?
HIGGINS It’s simple economics, Turner.

Today it’s oil. In 10 or 15 years it’ll be food, or plutonium.

Maybe sooner than that.

What do you think the people will want us to do then?

TURNER Ask them!
HIGGINS Not now. Then.
Ask them when they’re running out.

Ask them when there’s no heat and they’re cold.

Ask them when their engines stop.

Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.
Want to know something?

They won’t want us to ask them.

They’ll want us to get it for them.

TURNER Boy, have you found a home.(then)

There were seven people killed, Higgins.

HIGGINS The company didn’t order it. Atwood did.
TURNER Atwood did. And who the hell is Atwood!

He’s you. He’s all you guys.

Seven people killed, and you play games!
HIGGINS Right. And the other side does, too.

That’s why we can’t let you stay outside.

TURNER Well, go on home, Higgins.

Go on.

They’ve got it.

HIGGINS What?

TURNER You know where we are.

Just look around.

They’ve got it.

That’s where they ship from.

They’ve got all of it.

Higgins’ head darts up and he reads the legend above Turner’s head.

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

He is stunned.

HIGGINS What ?

What did you do?

TURNER I told them a story.

You play games,

I told them a story.

HIGGINS Oh, you — You poor, dumb son of a bitch.

You’ve done more damage than you know.
TURNERI hope so....

HIGGINS How do you know they’ll print it?

You can take a walk,

but how far if they don’t print it?

TURNER They’ll print it.
HIGGINS How do you know?

check out

and

this

Richard Elms, ex CIA, with Robert Redford

check out the casablanca poster

not a film though, an airline

I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. Nigger Hoskins over in Bastrop County knowed everbody's phone number off by heart. You can't help but compare yourself gainst the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would've operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the gas chamber at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. Be there in about fifteen minutes. I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it, but I don't know what it is anymore. More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

a totally misleading poster, see @

watch the film

watch the film

watch the film

cool post about walkabout