Rolling Stones No Filter Tour 10/4/21 Pittsburgh Pa

Great Performances: Peter O'Toole in The Stunt Man

Peter O'Toole is brilliant in writer/director Richard Rush's cult classic The Stunt Man, adapted by Lawrence B. Marcus and Rush from the 1970 novel of the same name by Paul Brodeur. It was nominated for three Oscars; including Best Actor (O'Toole), Best Director (Rush), and Best Screenplay Based on Material From Another Medium. O'Toole won Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics. The Leeds born Irish actor plays maniacal movie director "Eli Cross" who takes a fugitive Vietnam veteran played by Steve Railsback on the run who stumbles onto the film's set and makes him a stunt man on location for his epic shielding him from the police. The fugitive gets more than he bargains for as "Eli" uses him for many death defying stunts and assorted mind games including the big final stunt that proved fatal for a previous stunt man. O'Toole has said that he based his character on David Lean who directed him in his star making turn as "Lawrence of Arabia" and the diabolical rascal and fellow hellraiser John Huston who directed him in his epic mess The Bible. He also cribbed a little watching Richard Rush too when creating the character. When you hear O'Toole shout from his helicopter "I want that shot!" and or swoop in from his crain saying "If God could do the tricks that we could do, he'd be a happy man..." From the film's excellent opening sequence on, the viewer gets sucked into this crazy ride where nothing is what it seems and wants to be on that film's location. 

When Peter O'Toole read the script for the first time, he contacted Richard Rush in Hollywood from England and declared, "I am an articulate, intelligent man. I read the screenplay and if you don't give me the part I will kill you."  

Here's clip from The Stunt Man directed by Richard Rush 

Starring Peter O'Toole, Barbara Hershey and Steve Railsback

The supporting cast is also quite good with Barbara Hershey as the film's leading lady, Alex Rocco as the local cop looking for Railsback, Allen Garfield fine as always playing the nebbishy screenwriter who takes "Eli's" abuse and recognizes his brilliance. Legendary stuntman Chuck Bail playing a version of himself is terrific as the film's stunt coordinator. Perennial bad guy Steve Railsback, best known for playing "Charles Manson" in the epic 70's TV movie Helter Skelter and serial killer "Ed Gein" In The Light of the Moon is competent in a rare romantic lead as fugitive "Cameron, The Stunt Man" but he like everyone else is blown off the screen by the charismatic bigness of O'Toole's "Eli." 

The Stunt Man is one of the very best movies about making movies along with Vincente Minnelli's excellent duo The Bad and The Beautiful and Two Weeks in Another Town, Clint Eastwood's excellent White Hunter, Black Heart (a roman a clef about making The African Queen with John Huston) and Francois Truffaut's wonderful Day For Night. The Stunt Man is a favorite of mine, I watched it repeatedly when it was on The Movie Channel in the early 80's and they'd only show a handful of movies a month! It was one of the films that cemented my love of films and filmmaking. Rush's film has achieved quite a following and mystique over time and its chaotic development and slap dash release was the subject of the documentary The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man. O'Toole has publicly said that "the film wasn't released, it escaped..."

Trailer for The Stunt Man 

Starring Peter O'Toole, Directed & Co-Written by Richard Rush

If you love movies, movies about movies, great acting and Peter O'Toole, please do yourself a favor and watch The Stunt Man which plays on some of the premium cable channels like Cinemax, Turner Movie Classics and streaming on Amazon and Hulu. 

Some other films starring Peter O'Toole that you might want to check out: The Lion in Winter and Becket where he plays "King Henry II" in both films and the only time that an actor playing the same character in different films was nominated for Oscars. Other films include Mel Brooks's funny memoir film My Favorite Year, The Ruling Class, Lord Jim, How to Steal a Million, Under Milk Wood, What's New Pussycat?, Night of the Generals, Man of La Mancha, Rogue Male, Great Catherine, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Murphy's War, Brotherly Love, The Last Emperor, My Talks with Dean Spanley, The Final Curtain, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, Masada, and the 2006 release Venus for which he was the sentimental favorite to win the Oscar but lost to Forrest Whittaker. O'Toole was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award a record 8 times without winning, however was given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2002. Then there is of course his signature title role in David Lean's masterful Lawrence of Arabia, that performance was ranked number one in Premiere Magazine's list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in 2006. Not all of these films are great but most are worth seeing and O'Toole performances are always entertaining. 

A clip with O'Toole, Allen Garfield and Steve Railsback as they watch the film within a film's footage. 

O'Toole interviewed by Robert Osborne for a special on Turner Classic Movies

Here's a 2 part interview with Writer/Director Richard Rush and actor Steve Railsback being interviewed about the film

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IL SORPASSO - Movies - Film Forum

IL SORPASSO - Movies - Film Forum  

I cant wait to see this film.  One of the quintessential road trip movies!  Several of my friends from Italy have told me that it's really great and that Vittorio Gasman gives a legendary performance.  Also with Jean Louis-Trintignant who was so great in last year's "Amour," and one of my favorite films "The Great Silence."   Now at the Film Forum! 

Peter O'Toole: As Good as it Gets

Terribly saddened by the passing of the great Peter O'Toole, a truly brilliant actor and man.  His work affected me greatly and he's left us an amazing body of work and some memorable appearances on talk shows.  Here are a few clips that I want to share.  I will be doing a full tribute shortly.

Here's my second exposure to Peter O'Toole after of course "Lawrence of Arabia," Richard Rush's great, enigmatic, "The Stunt Man."  O'Toole is wonderful in a bravura performance as a diabolical movie director who will do anything to get his shot.  It has been said that O'Toole based his character on John Huston and David Lean, however I think he had just finished working for Otto Preminger before the this film and might have added a few touches of the mad Austrian to his characterization too.  This is a wildly entertaining film about the magic and insanity of movies and one of my favorites.  Steve Railsback gives an intense performance as the escaped convict who O'Toole hides on his set, making him a stunt man replacing one who died doing a difficult car crash.  Barbara Hershey as his leading lady who he manipulates into a performance.  Alex Rocco as the local cop fed up with the movie people and Alan Garfield in a nice part as the nebbishy screenwriter trying to please O'Toole.  A fine work and one must watch the documentary about the rough road this film had to take to even get made and distributed. 

 

Peter O'Toole playing "King Henry II" for the second time after "Becket," in James Goldman's wonderful historical drama of family intrigue "The Lion in Winter."  O'Toole gives a dynamic performance as the rogue King who must choose his successor and his three very different and conniving sons all vying for it.  Anthony Hopkins in his first film as the young, mama's boy "Richard The Lionhearted," is good and Katherine Hepburn won Best Actress Oscar for her role as the Queen, the legendary "Eleanor of Acquitaine" who is imprisoned by "Henry" but gets to come to the court for Christmas.  Her best line is "what family doesn't have its ups and downs...."   Great film! 

I promise there will be much more to come regarding the great Peter O'Toole.  Here's O'Toole on Johnny Carson in a funny appearance.

My Film, "3 Teams: A Youth Sports Story" World Premiere Set!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“3 TEAMS:  A YOUTH SPORTS STORY” TO HAVE PREMIERE ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 2^ND AT CLEARVIEW THEATER IN PORT WASHINGTON AT 7PM.

Checkout our website at www.3teamsmovie.com, Follow us on Twitter @3_teams and/or like us on Facebook at 3 Teams: A Youth Sports Story 

 

Long Island based documentary film shows a Dad, Coach and former Hofstra Player’s journey through the crazy world of Youth Sports while coaching each of his three kids’ basketball teams.

Port Washington, NY.  November 13, 2013- Introducing the upcoming documentary film "3 Teams: A Youth Sports Story."   Over 40 million kids play Youth Sports in America and One Man--Rob, a Dad, a Son of a coach, a former NCAA Division 1 player and Youth Basketball coach thinks the way we approach Youth Sports today has gone terribly wrong.  This year he's coaching his three kids' (8, 11 & 13 years old) basketball teams.  He's trying to do Youth Sports the right way and make some positive changes in the way we teach our kids how to play, 

Like millions of parents Rob Weingard coaches Youth Sports in his hometown.  His father was a college coach and athletic director and he played division 1 college basketball at Hofstra University, leading the nation is assists in 1985.  Now he coaches his three children:  Crew in the seventh grade, daughter Stevie in sixth grade and third grader Jensen.  The basketball season’s schedule is hectic, but for many families the sports seasons never end… Over the past twenty years there has been a transformation in Youth Sports.  What was once a community oriented activity, stressing fundamentals and teamwork has now become an industry based on individual competition and advancement.  Parents pit children against each other scrambling for an unrealistic dream of college scholarships.  How did this become the new normal?  And how will it affect our children as they grow into adults?  To find answers Rob went on a journey seeking out other programs and experts in the Youth Sports field like former NBA player and author of the book Just Let The Kids Play, Bob Bigelow, psychologist Dr. Rhonda Yoss-Kaplan, camp director and former director of admissions of C.W. Post University Steve Nisenson and author and host of “The Sports Edge” on WFAN, Rick Wolff.   

On his journey Rob goes into the highly controversial world of AAU Basketball and travel teams which according to many has become a for profit way for kids to play sports and be noticed by college coaches with hopes of landing that scholarship.  Fueled by the notion that the more that one plays, the better player that they’ll become, kids spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars playing on travel teams and teams governed by the AAU in the same season.  The core concept is simple pay to play and travel with “top” athletes from other communities in hopes of getting college exposure.  But is all of that extra activity worth it and at what cost?  How much commitment is left for a young athlete to invest to any one team? 

The myriad of issues of Youth Sports are addressed in this documentary from the overloading of kids’ schedules, the actual odds of an athlete receiving a scholarship and the lack of free play for today’s kids in the super structured world of today.  Rob also visits two programs that “do it the right way,” West Islip Lacrosse a perennial state and national level contender and the legendary Bridgehampton Killer Bees basketball program that has more NY state basketball championships that any other school and yet has less than 20 boys in their whole high school. 

Rob meanwhile is coaching his three children’s basketball teams and we follow these very unique squads as they progress through their seasons.  Crew’s seventh grade team consists of youngsters on the verge of playing for their high school teams.  Stevie’s sixth grade girl’s team is a fun group of girls who make every practice seem like a sleepover party and yet they learn to play the game and become teammates.  Jensen travels from his hometown to nearby Hempstead to play in a much different community than his own and in his first basketball league season run by an unforgettable lady coach/police detective.

“3 Teams: A Youth Sports Story” hopes to shed some light on the issues that face parents and coaches of Youth Sports and hopefully provide some answers and ways for the kids to have fun and take home some lessons for life. 

Halloween Horror Film Tribute to My Favorite Horror Star Christopher Lee!

It's Halloween and I salute my favorite horror movie star, the eternally cool Christopher Lee. Lee was cousins and spied in WW2 with OO7 creator Ian Fleming. He holds the Guinness Book of World Records for Actor With Most Film Credits. He's been in some of the greatest movies of all-time and some of the worst, however he always makes them better. He was the definitive "Dracula," "Mummy," & "Frankenstein Monster" in the Hammer Horror films and was a Bond villain in "The Man With The Golden Gun," and audiences today know him from the "Star Wars" and "Lord of The Rings" sagas and Tim Burton's films. He also records Heavy Metal and Opera records. Still going strong at 90! Cheers! Here's a look at 10 of his best! 

 

On the cover of the great Paul McCartney album "Band on the Run." Also on the cover is the equally cool James Coburn

 

 

Here's the trailer for a true gem of a film that Christopher Lee did for the great Billy Wilder, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes."  This is a wonderful film and its failure at the box office severely affected the masterful Wilder.  Lee plays "Mycroft," Holmes' older and smarter brother.  If you ever get the chance to watch this film, please do!  Here it is!  A wonderful, original story by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond based on the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here is a full movie that is one of Christopher Lee's best, "Horror Hotel" aka "The City of The Dead." Co-starring Venetia Stevenson who would marry one of the great Everly Brothers. It's a bout a curse put on a small New England town by a witch. Very moody and scary film.  

Lee as the Bond villain "Francisco Scaramanga" in the underrated "The Man With The Golden Gun.     

Here's Lee co-starring with fellow Horror Icons Boris Karloff and Barbara Steele in the very stylish film "The Crimson Cult." One of the better Devil worshipper movies. Complete film here  

This is Lee in a scary "Alfred Hitchcock Hour" episode where he is a real ghoul recruited by Hollywood types to be in a horror movie. Very good!  

Gotta include one of these, here's Lee in his signature role as "Count Dracula" with his longtime co-star and good friend Peter Cushing in "The Satanic Rites of Dracula."   

Last but not least is a public domain gem made in Spain with the leftover model trains from "Dr. Zhivago" produced by the great and notorious producer/writer Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon for their Scotia Films is the wonderful Euro Horror film "Horror Express."  This film has a great cast starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas along with some familiar Euro Horror faces.  It's a really wild mishmosh of genres and is terribly entertaining and gained a real cult following through its many tv showings in the 70's and 80's.  Enjoy!  

 Here is Lee receiving his Fellowship Award from BAFTA in 2011 presented by Tim Burton and given a loving reception by the star studded crowd.   

 

American Legacy Magazine: A Moment's Gesture

Here's the cover story that I wrote for the Spring 2008 issue for the excellent magazine devoted to the African-American Historical experience, American Legacy.  The article was about the tumultuous events that took place leading up to and during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics culminating in the now iconic photo of Gold and Bronze Medal winners in the Men's 200 Meter Dash, Tommie Smith and John Carlos.  These two young athletes took a stand and it affects them to this day.  I was very proud of this piece and it marked my first foray into magazine writing.  Special thanks to the wonderful Audrey Peterson the editor of this magazine and who took a chance on me.  For more information about Amercian Legacy Magazine, visit their website: http://www.americanlegacymag.com/. 

 

Excellent essay by Christopher Buckley on the eternal question about writers and writing, on drinking and booze and writing and inspiration.  From the NY Times Sunday June 30, 2013 edition. 

From the essay:  

In his memoir, “Hitch-22,” Buckley's friend Christopher Hitchens made a solid case for liquidity.

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing.”

 

 

 

Booze as Muse

By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

MY first real job in journalism was as a junior editor at Esquire, a magazine with a venerable literary pedigree. I imagined myself having three-martini lunches with Tom Wolfe, and explaining to “Tom” (surely we would be on a first-name basis by the third martini) that his latest 25,000-word article was not bad, exactly, but needed another run through the typewriter before we could even think of publishing it.

Andrea Tsurumi

This absurd, callow reverie was summarily dashed by my first assignment. I was told to call up someone famous — “anyone famous” — and get his or her favorite Bloody Mary recipe for the summer issue. I called an old girlfriend who had married a certifiably famous movie director.

“He only drinks Scotch neat,” she said. “But we’ll just make something up.” The ghost of Esquire’s founder, Arnold Gingrich, winced over my shoulder as she and I went to work devising her famous husband’s fictional Bloody Mary. It ended up consisting of 20 or so ingredients, 15 of which contained toxic levels of capsaicin. For months after it was published, I lived in fear that we’d be sued for immolating some poor reader’s esophagus.

I think back on my first shameful venture in “legitimate journalism” every time I come across the latest improbable recipe for some new cocktail. I don’t mean to imply that their creators are as spurious as I was; they’re fun to read, and the more improbable the better.

Kingsley Amis, author of the indispensable “Everyday Drinking,” referred to the genre as “dipsography, the alcoholic equivalent of pornography.” Dipsography is continuing ed of the highest order. How satisfying and knowing it is to drop savvy remarks like “Did you winterize your margarita this year?”

At the same time, it’s best not to overdo the dipsography, at the risk of getting yourself a rep as a “cocktail bore,” “beer bore,” “aquavit bore,” etc.

Who among us has not been held captive by a wine, single malt or vodka bore? Thanks to the recent proliferation of boutique vodkas, it is now possible, indeed likely, to have your eyes as frosted as a Grey Goose bottle while someone holds forth at Homeric length on potato versus grain versus molasses versus organic wheat versus Australian sugar cane. My eyes glazed over just typing that sentence.

Booze — for present purposes, let us include in this category wine, beer, eau de vie, moonshine, the blushful Hippocrene and all varieties of intoxicating liquid refreshment — is a compelling subject. And dipsography has evolved pari passu with the progress of the Internet.

Surfing a large wave of ethyl alcohol recently, I came ashore on the Web site of the Museum of the American Cocktail. The home page noted that it was World Cocktail Week. Beneath that was a notice: “There are no seminars or events scheduled at the current time. Please check back later.” Had I possessed hacking skills, I’d have been tempted to insert a “ — hic — ” somewhere in the last sentence.

For classic literary dipsography — and counter-dipsography — log off from the Internet and turn to the bookshelf. Roald Dahl’s short story “Taste” is the ultimate takedown of the wine bore. A rather sinister dinner guest proposes to his host a contest: if he identifies the wine the host is pouring, he wins the hand of the host’s daughter. If he fails, then the host gets both his houses.

I won’t ruin it for you; it’s white-knuckle reading all the way to the finish. When Alfred A. Knopf read the story in The New Yorker in 1951, he signed Dahl to write a collection, and a brilliant career was born. Come to think of it, surely the magazine’s most celebrated cartoon remains James Thurber’s: “It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”

Benjamin Disraeli is not principally known as a maker of bons mots, but in his 1845 novel “Sybil,” he gives us Mr. Mountchesney’s unimprovable remark: “I rather like bad wine. One gets so bored with good wine.”

Continuing on the prime ministerial theme, Amis’s “Everyday Drinking” provides the recipe for Queen Victoria’s Tipple: 1/2 tumbler red wine and — brace yourself — Scotch. 

“I have it on the authority of Colm Brogan,” he writes, “that the Great Queen was ‘violently opposed to teetotalism, consenting to have one cleric promoted to a deanery only if he promised to stop advocating the pernicious heresy.’ ”

Elsewhere, the “Muse of Booze,” as Christopher Hitchens calls Mr. Amis in his introduction to the reissue of “Everyday Drinking,” gives us recipes for Paul Fussell’s Milk Punch (“to be drunk immediately on rising, in lieu of eating breakfast”) and Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver (“1 hefty shot gin, 1 bottle Guinness, ginger beer ... I should think two doses is the limit”).

Amis was author of probably the most immortal hangover scene in all literature. (The one suffered by Tom Wolfe’s louche British journalist Peter Fallow in “Bonfire of the Vanities” is up there.) Amis demurely refrains from mention of his own masterpiece moment in “Lucky Jim,” though one of his cocktail recipes is named after the title. He does however give us three “infallible” hangover cures, adding “though I have not tried any of the three.” The first two are: “Go down the mine on the early-morning shift at the coal-face” and “Go up for half an hour in an open aeroplane, needless to say with a non-hungover person at the controls.”

I mentioned Christopher Hitchens a moment ago. It seems fitting that he should provide our nightcap. He and I once had a weekday lunch that began at 1 p.m. and ended at 11:30 p.m. I spent the next three weeks begging to be euthanized; he went home and wrote a dissertation on Orwell. Christopher himself was a muse of booze, though dipsography and fancy cocktails were not his thing. Christopher was a straightforward whiskey and martini man. In his memoir, “Hitch-22,” he made a solid case for liquidity.

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious,” he writes, “and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing.”

Tempted as I am, I won’t close by saying, “I’ll drink to that,” because I just found this recipe for a kumquat and clove gin and tonic, and I’m thinking it might be more fun to drink to that.

Christopher Buckley is the author of a forthcoming book of essays, “But Enough About You.”

Happy Birthday Frank Sinatra!

12/12 is the Birthday of one of the world's greatest entertainers/icons/singers/bon vivants, Mr. Frank Sinatra, a true hero of mine and many others.  Here are 3 clips that sum up for me some of what made him great.  As Louis Armstrong once said about jazz and I think life itself, "If you don't get it, then you never will...."    Cheers Baby!

Here's Howard Cosell's brilliant ad-lib introduction of Sinatra from his Main Event Live Concert from Madison Square Garden.

This is Sinatra in 1965 with the mighty Count Basie Orchestra performing one of his greatest song with the furious Quincy Jones arrangement of "You Make Me Feel So Young."  If you're not familiar with Sinatra here he is at his swinging best. 

Pete Hamil in his great book Why Sinatra Matters, writes that the greatness of Sinatra's singing was how he projected the heartbreaking sadness of lost love or the euphoric joy of a love that is found.  Here he is performing the epic torch song by Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer;  "One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)."  Quite possibly my favorite song.  A Hemingway short story as song.  Sinatra truly owns it and performs it brilliantly.  As one musician said during a recording session of Sinatra's genius for torch songs, "he really believes this shit..."   Radio personality Sid Mark had a Sinatra radio program throughout the 50's until the 90's would devote an hour every week to just Sinatra doing torch songs and it became nicknamed famously, "the suicide hour..."  

Enjoy, you if you don't get why Sinatra is great or matters after seeing these clips amongst hundreds of other, then you never will.   Cheers Baby! 

Below is an extra that I added to this post with the wonderful NYC writer and acquaintance of mine Pete Hamill discussing Sinatra and his excellent book Why Sinatra Matters.

Andrew Sarris: A Touchstone, America's Greatest Film Critic

RIP Andrew Sarris. America's finest film critic and theorist. A man who changed the face of how films are made and seen. He was a lovely and gracious gentleman whose brilliantly written books taught me more about film and how to think than anyone else. Reading his books and watching the films that he wrote about by the directors he championed were the best film school anyone could want. I used to sit in on his classes at Columbia and they were days that I'll always remember. It was a real highlight. He was very nice to this interloper. I told him that if movies are my religion, he's the pope.... 

Andrew Sarris and I when I used to sit in on his classes at Columbia for a few years back in the 90's. 

"I consider Andrew Sarris to be one of the most fundamental and valued teachers," writes Martin Scorsese. "His writings led me to see the genius in American movies at a time when the cinema was considered a mindless form of entertainment, worthy of serious attention only if it came from Europe or Asia."

I will be doing a long form piece about this great man in the near future, there were tributes from all over today to this man.  Below are some links to some of the very good ones that I read.  A very nice piece ran in the Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy was posted today.  

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/andrew-sarris-tribute-todd-mccarthy-american-cinema-340334  

Roger Ebert wrote a nice piece also: 

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120620/PEOPLE/120629992  

A nice piece from Richard Brody in The New Yorker: 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/06/andrew-sarris-postscript.html 

This is a very good post on Fandor's site with lots of quotes from several top film writers:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-andrew-sarris-1928-2012/ 

Lastly there's a link from 2001 from the Columbia News celebrating the collection of essays by various writers including Martin Scorsese and 39 other contributors, Citizen Sarris:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/08/andrewSarris.html  

As I remember upon meeting the excellent director Sam Fuller once, I asked him to autograph "the bible" Sarris's seminal book The American Cinema, and Fuller said "sure, this is a very good book..."  

Upon reading the vast amounts of tributes today remembering this man's life and his contribution to movies as a serious art form, I can say that he was a true touchstone to mine and many other's lives.    

Spaghetti Westerns at Film Forum! Bravo!

When I was a kid and movies would come on TV some of the ones that always fascinated me were the weird, crazy movies that seemed and looked like westerns but were somehow much different.  Obviously they were dubbed into English, had really cool music soundtracks, were very violent, the women were really sexy and everybody was very sweaty and had lots of makeup and unique costumes on.  Yeah, these cowboy movies were different all right from lame "Bonanza," or "Gunsmoke," they were made in Spain and Italy financed by Germans, with an American star directed by Italians with Italian crews and using actors from all over Europe, these were Spaghetti Westerns.  Originally this term was derided by the craftsmen who made these films on shoestring budgets but the genre became such a hugely successful worldwide box office sensation, that they didn’t mind.  From the Mid-Sixties until the Mid-Seventies, these movies were very, very popular with worldwide audiences making international superstars out of some unlikely actors like Lee Van Cleef who spent years appearing in small parts in features and television and Clint Eastwood who co-starred on "Rawhide" for years, Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer and Charles Bronson. In the upcoming posts, I’ll be going through this wonderful genre of films.  Right now the great Film Forum will be showing a bunch of these films and if you get a chance to see these crazy movies on the big screen do yourself a favor and go see them. 

Here’s My Top 30 Spaghetti Westerns: 

For A Few Dollars More 

 Once Upon a Time in the West 

 The Great Silence 

 A Bullet For The General  

 Duck, You Sucker

 The Big Gundown 

 Death Rides a Horse 

 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 

 Django  

 Fistful of Dollars  

 The Hills Run Red  

 Companeros  

 Django Kill 

 Sabata

 Face to Face 

 The Hellbenders 

 Django The Bastard 

Day of Anger 

 Vengeance

Requiescant 

The Mercenary 

 

Navajo Joe 

 If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death 

 

Keoma 

 And God Said to Cain  

Return of Ringo

Any Gun Can Play

My Name is Nobody  

Adios Sabata 

The Ruthless Four

Alex Cox’s Top Twenty Spaghetti Westerns

1. For a Few Dollars More
2. Once Upon a Time in the West 
3. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 
4. Django 
5. The Great Silence 
6. Requiescant 
7. Johnny Hamlet 
8. Arizona Colt 
9. Django Kill 
10. A Bullet For the General 
11. Tepepa 
12. Cemetary Without Crosses 
13. California 
14. Today It's Me... Tomorrow You 
15. Black Jack 
16. The Ruthless Four 
17. $1,000 on the Black 
18. Bandidos 
19. And God Said to Cain 
20. Dont Touch the White Women 

Quentin Tarantino’s Top Twenty Spaghetti Westerns

1.    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2.    For a Few Dollars More

3.    Django

4.    The Mercenary

5.    Once Upon a Time in the West

6.    A Fistful of Dollars

7.    Day of Anger

8.    Death Rides a Horse

9.    Navajo Joe

10. Return of Ringo

11. The Big Gundown

12. A Pistol for Ringo

13. The Dirty Outlaws

14. The Great Silence

15. The Grand Duel

16. Shoot The Living, Pray For the Dead

17. Tepepa

18. The Ugly Ones

19. Viva Django

20. The Machine Gun Killers    

Sir Christopher Fraling's (genre expert) Top Ten Spaghetti Westerns

1. Once Upon a Time in the West 

2. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 

3. The Great Silence 

4. For a Few Dollars More 

5. Django Kill 

6. The Big Gundown 

7. Django 

8. My Name is Nobody 

9. The Mercenary 

10. A Bullet For the General 

Most of these movies will be playing at the Film Forum here in NYC for the next three weeks.  I hope that you might catch them there on the big screen or on DVD or streaming on Netflix or YouTube.  I sure that you will thoroughly enjoy them, they're a lot of fun. Feel free to comment.  Enjoy!