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I'm not actually on a train anymore
[I wrote most of it on the train, though.]
So Amtrak has wifi now, and I still don't have a car at the moment due to the Thanksgiving Car Accident Adventure stretching on basically FOREVER (though hopefully ending tomorrow when I am at last reunited with my car, with the assistance of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iulia). So I am on a train! Reading fic and requesting stuff from the library! And since one of the things I'm requesting is my next-but-one Robert Redford movie, I thought I'd say a bit about the two I've watched since last posting.
(For those playing along at home: due to the ongoing collective Robert Redford breakdown afflicting the #hydratrashparty chat room, I'm catching up on a lot of Robert Redford movies I'd for some reason never seen. Before embarking on the plan, I'd seen Butch & Sundance, The Great Gatsby (in high school--I really only remember how much I hated everyone), Up Close & Personal, Spy Game (♥♥♥♥♥) and of course Cap 2. I've now also watched--in approximate chronological order, because I'm a nerd--Barefoot in the Park, Jeremiah Johnson, and The Candidate, plus the two below, so my remaining list is:
The Sting
Three Days of the Condor
All the President's Men
Brubaker
The Natural
Out of Africa
Havana
Sneakers
Indecent Proposal
The Horse Whisperer
An Unfinished Life)
The Hot Rock (1972) - I watched this entirely because...someone (LJ won't let me see comments, grr) told me to in the comments to my last post, and I was still on 1972 so I could squeeze it in without messing up my loosely chronological viewing order. The movie is based on a novel, which I suspect is the source of some of the really endearing character bits that don't otherwise seem like they belong in a caper movie--Dortmunder cuddling his nephew, and getting treated for his incipient ulcer, which I suspect becomes a supporting character in subsequent novels.
(This is also me doing that thing I've been noticing a lot lately that I do--extrapolating the source material from the transformative work. I did a whole bunch of it a few months, pretty accurately, when reading Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, which is a sequel to The Time Machine, and then wound up expouding to my book group how and why it is clearly lovingly written fixit fic for all the things that aggravated the fuck out of Stephen Baxter when he read The Time Machine. So I'm curious to read the Donald Westlake novel to see if my guesses were right, although I kind of fear it will have aged less well than the movie.)
That said, the movie aged preeeeetty decently. One of the characters--the guy bankrolling the diamond heist--is a diplomat from a fictitious small African nation, and at one point one of Dortmunder's gang says he doesn't want to double-cross Amusa because the whole country will come after him with spears and blowguns, and just as I was facepalming a the old-time racism, Dortmunder raised an eyebrow and said, "I'm pretty sure they're more modern than that," and from that point on no one treats Amusa as anything but the rich guy running the job.
Also the movie opens with Dortmunder--Robert Redford--taking his shirt off, changing into civvies upon his release from prison, and shortly thereafter, cuddling a baby while showing off his forearms like he knows we like, so: sastisfying on all the usual shallow levels. And then it was just a fun caper movie, with Dortmunder wearily and exasperatedly trying to herd his gang through the succession of thefts necessary to secure the diamond.
My main disappointment was that the last third of the movie did something terrible to Paul Sand's delightful cloud of curly hair. Other than that, a good time had by all.
The Way We Were (1973) - Oh man. Not such a good time had by all. I knew, going into this, that it was going to have a sad ending, just by vague cultural osmosis and the Barbra Streisand song. And I was sort of pleasantly surprised on that score, because the ending was really rather gentle and positive--the characters don't belong together, but both of them accept that and move on.
I spent the whole flashback-to-college section of the movie mentally recasting it as a Steve/Bucky AU (Steve as the outspoken Communist organizer! Bucky as the cheerful jock to whom things come easy! Bucky trying to coax angry Steve into making friends while Steve stares warily at him and is unwillingly charmed!) and, you know, Bucky in navy whites = yes please.
But the embarrassment squick kicked in pretty hard as Katie's dogged determination for her causes collapsed into fawning desperation to keep Hubbell around. I was genuinely surprised when they stayed together after their fight in the middle of the movie (and I think if they'd broken up again, and met again in California having grown up a little more, those crazy kids might have made it), and after that I could, you know, see the grim march to the end written on the wall. So ultimately I was glad for them by the end, because I spent the whole second half of the movie just wincing in anticipation of the breakup. I do wish they'd broken up cleanly, over their actual differences, instead of over him cheating on her. I mean, I also wish he hadn't cheated on her, but, sigh, OTT romance movie.
(Further adventures in Things I Blame 1973 For: oh my god the whole element of the ending where they've evidently never communicated regarding their mutual child. o.O)
So Amtrak has wifi now, and I still don't have a car at the moment due to the Thanksgiving Car Accident Adventure stretching on basically FOREVER (though hopefully ending tomorrow when I am at last reunited with my car, with the assistance of
iulia). So I am on a train! Reading fic and requesting stuff from the library! And since one of the things I'm requesting is my next-but-one Robert Redford movie, I thought I'd say a bit about the two I've watched since last posting.(For those playing along at home: due to the ongoing collective Robert Redford breakdown afflicting the #hydratrashparty chat room, I'm catching up on a lot of Robert Redford movies I'd for some reason never seen. Before embarking on the plan, I'd seen Butch & Sundance, The Great Gatsby (in high school--I really only remember how much I hated everyone), Up Close & Personal, Spy Game (♥♥♥♥♥) and of course Cap 2. I've now also watched--in approximate chronological order, because I'm a nerd--Barefoot in the Park, Jeremiah Johnson, and The Candidate, plus the two below, so my remaining list is:
The Sting
Three Days of the Condor
All the President's Men
Brubaker
The Natural
Out of Africa
Havana
Sneakers
Indecent Proposal
The Horse Whisperer
An Unfinished Life)
The Hot Rock (1972) - I watched this entirely because...someone (LJ won't let me see comments, grr) told me to in the comments to my last post, and I was still on 1972 so I could squeeze it in without messing up my loosely chronological viewing order. The movie is based on a novel, which I suspect is the source of some of the really endearing character bits that don't otherwise seem like they belong in a caper movie--Dortmunder cuddling his nephew, and getting treated for his incipient ulcer, which I suspect becomes a supporting character in subsequent novels.
(This is also me doing that thing I've been noticing a lot lately that I do--extrapolating the source material from the transformative work. I did a whole bunch of it a few months, pretty accurately, when reading Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, which is a sequel to The Time Machine, and then wound up expouding to my book group how and why it is clearly lovingly written fixit fic for all the things that aggravated the fuck out of Stephen Baxter when he read The Time Machine. So I'm curious to read the Donald Westlake novel to see if my guesses were right, although I kind of fear it will have aged less well than the movie.)
That said, the movie aged preeeeetty decently. One of the characters--the guy bankrolling the diamond heist--is a diplomat from a fictitious small African nation, and at one point one of Dortmunder's gang says he doesn't want to double-cross Amusa because the whole country will come after him with spears and blowguns, and just as I was facepalming a the old-time racism, Dortmunder raised an eyebrow and said, "I'm pretty sure they're more modern than that," and from that point on no one treats Amusa as anything but the rich guy running the job.
Also the movie opens with Dortmunder--Robert Redford--taking his shirt off, changing into civvies upon his release from prison, and shortly thereafter, cuddling a baby while showing off his forearms like he knows we like, so: sastisfying on all the usual shallow levels. And then it was just a fun caper movie, with Dortmunder wearily and exasperatedly trying to herd his gang through the succession of thefts necessary to secure the diamond.
My main disappointment was that the last third of the movie did something terrible to Paul Sand's delightful cloud of curly hair. Other than that, a good time had by all.
The Way We Were (1973) - Oh man. Not such a good time had by all. I knew, going into this, that it was going to have a sad ending, just by vague cultural osmosis and the Barbra Streisand song. And I was sort of pleasantly surprised on that score, because the ending was really rather gentle and positive--the characters don't belong together, but both of them accept that and move on.
I spent the whole flashback-to-college section of the movie mentally recasting it as a Steve/Bucky AU (Steve as the outspoken Communist organizer! Bucky as the cheerful jock to whom things come easy! Bucky trying to coax angry Steve into making friends while Steve stares warily at him and is unwillingly charmed!) and, you know, Bucky in navy whites = yes please.
But the embarrassment squick kicked in pretty hard as Katie's dogged determination for her causes collapsed into fawning desperation to keep Hubbell around. I was genuinely surprised when they stayed together after their fight in the middle of the movie (and I think if they'd broken up again, and met again in California having grown up a little more, those crazy kids might have made it), and after that I could, you know, see the grim march to the end written on the wall. So ultimately I was glad for them by the end, because I spent the whole second half of the movie just wincing in anticipation of the breakup. I do wish they'd broken up cleanly, over their actual differences, instead of over him cheating on her. I mean, I also wish he hadn't cheated on her, but, sigh, OTT romance movie.
(Further adventures in Things I Blame 1973 For: oh my god the whole element of the ending where they've evidently never communicated regarding their mutual child. o.O)
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You made me laugh out loud. This could totally, totally work. As far as I'm concerned, anyway.
Man, I wish I could dig up my Three Days of the Condor post. I will be interested to hear what you have to say about it and look forward to talking about it with you.
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Redford is _wildly_ miscast as Dortmunder! I also don't remember any babies but I do remember the endless "hey, look, we got a helicopter!" shot.
I suspect Dortmunder is intrinsically unfilmable, but I treasure the books. "John Dortmunder was a man on whom the sun shone only when he needed darkness."
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I'm also interested in what you will think of Sneakers. I was working in security and hanging out with a bunch of security hackers when it came out, and I spent a lot of the movie saying "I got paid to do that", and "that is not how it works" and "I don't think that word means what you think it means." So I had a blast with the movie, and it is slashy as all get out, but I don't know what you will think of it.
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