It isn’t blog against racism month any longer,but–
I just watched an early Altman movie, “Mcabe and Mrs. Miller” a western. Settlers are beginning to fill a young town in Washington, and the mining company wants to buy the whole thing. There’s a whorehouse and a restaraunt, and a church, and the whorehouse madam builds a bathhouse as well. As all these things are gainging momentum, a young black couple takes up residence, and guess what– Neither of them die in the first violent scene! In fact, neither of them die at all.
I… don’t know what to think. 
Nice soundtrack, too.
This message brought to you on my new-to-me MACBOOK, yay! I’ve been flogging a G3 for five years– and I bought that used, too. This thing is so fast, and I can sit anywhere I want!
It’s like the pony I always wanted…
0 Give Kudos?
Hello to you and your macbook, from me and my macbook!
It really is quite amazing, isn’t it? A couple of years ago I decided that life was too short to look at ugly Windows programs any longer. Everything is just so clever on macs.
I like clever. Congratulations, and I wish you many years of enjoyment.
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McCabe and Mrs. Miller:
It’s one of my favorites. The pacing of it pulls you into that time period too. It moves slowly and, much of the time, quietly. You have to just give yourself over to it and let it unfold at its own pace.
Don’t you think that “Dead Man” would make a perfect double billing?
I’ve looked (but not recently) for the soundtrack and have never found anything. I’d like to find it for Leonard Cohen’s guitar music that’s used throughout the film.
I just missed getting to see it on the big screen at the Pacific Film Archive nearby. Here’s how they described it:
“The Long View: A Celebration of Widescreen
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
7:30 p.m. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Robert Altman (U.S., 1971)
Far from the open plains of the classic Western, Robert Altman and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond created a radical and ravishing vision of the turn-of-the century Pacific Northwest, capturing the sodden grit of frontier life with impressive authenticity. The camera lingers below the horizon to take in the physical and social textures of the skeletal town of Presbyterian Church, where hustler McCabe (Warren Beatty) and Cockney madam Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) form a partnership to provide the services most needed by the local population: hot baths, booze, gambling, and whores. Their enterprise soon attracts the attention of bigger business interests prepared to call McCabe’s bluff; the climactic confrontation is not a showdown at high noon but a shambling pursuit through a blizzard. Viewers of Deadwood will recognize many inspirations here—the town evolving out of the muck, the lushly grungy sepia interiors, Keith Carradine.
—Juliet Clark
• Written by Altman, Brian McKay, based on a novel by Edmund Naughton. Photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond. With Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, Shelley Duvall. (120 mins, Color, ’Scope, 35mm, From Warner Bros.)
The cynic in me still says that if the black couple was instead, an interracial one, they would not have survived.
And on that cheery note…
Yes, A wonderful double bill. Dead Man– I remembered it in color, the first time I saw it. And Mcabe wears a grizzly bear coat that seeems.. mighty famiiar, haha!
It seems to me the town of Machine is mentioned in Mcabe, too, as the most recently bought town.
I love that movie. Like a lot of great 70s movies, I don’t think it’s got a great view of women, but there’s just so much to love about it. Have you read at all about how it was made? Altman took a bunch of actors into the woods, had them build a town, and then they lived in it for a month before he ever opened a can of film. When it seems like you’re being dropped down in the middle of an already existing community, it’s because you kind of are.
Let me know how the MacBook is working! I may be buying one — like maybe today. (There’s an offer through the school where if I buy it, I also get a new iPod.)
Also, does it make me an idiot if I get the black MacBook? It comes with a little more RAM, but mostly you pay more to get a cooler-looking computer.
I love that movie. Like a lot of great 70s movies, I don’t think it’s got a great view of women, but there’s just so much to love about it. Have you read at all about how it was made? Altman took a bunch of actors into the woods, had them build a town, and then they lived in it for a month before he ever opened a can of film. When it seems like you’re being dropped down in the middle of an already existing community, it’s because you kind of are.
Let me know how the MacBook is working! I may be buying one — like maybe today. (There’s an offer through the school where if I buy it, I also get a new iPod.)
Also, does it make me an idiot if I get the black MacBook? It comes with a little more RAM, but mostly you pay more to get a cooler-looking computer.
How much more ram? Unless you’re editing video, I think 60 gigs of hardrive is plenty… It comes with 1 gig of memory, and might cost me $50.00 to double that.
I’m all about the reverse snobbery of the white case. I might do a steampunk job on it anyways…
As for how it’s doing, omigod! I’m so happy! The speed makes me dizzy– especially compared to the old G3 which was never meant to run OS X point anything.
Oh, it’s interesting to look sometimes at early Hollywood films and see less racism than in current times. There’s a Buster Keaton movie about a rich man who’s been postponing proposing to his girlfriend, and it starts with him watching a newlywed couple driving by his house. They are black– but seeing them all dressed up and snuggling together spurs him to get up his nerve to talk to his girl.
When I saw that I thought– wow. Everyone talks about the racism of early Hollywood. But here’s Buster, writing a script that has a man from the upper layers of society seeing a black couple as a role model, at least for a moment. (He also gave the women in his movies a lot to do– I think he was deliberately pushing for greater equality)
I’ve seen movies from the 40s where the blacks, while stuck in jobs like porter or butler, show more common sense or keen observation than the whites around them.
Yet modern Hollywood tends to put blacks in certain roles: stripper, prostitute, pimp, gangster, and cop. There’s no reason why secretaries can’t be black, and yet one black woman showing up for auditions was told the secretary role wasn’t a black part. It was race neutral! There was no reason to think it needed to be filled by a white woman, but the casting director assumed any role that wasn’t about the underworld was for whites.
Very aggravating.
Oh, it’s interesting to look sometimes at early Hollywood films and see less racism than in current times. There’s a Buster Keaton movie about a rich man who’s been postponing proposing to his girlfriend, and it starts with him watching a newlywed couple driving by his house. They are black– but seeing them all dressed up and snuggling together spurs him to get up his nerve to talk to his girl.
When I saw that I thought– wow. Everyone talks about the racism of early Hollywood. But here’s Buster, writing a script that has a man from the upper layers of society seeing a black couple as a role model, at least for a moment. (He also gave the women in his movies a lot to do– I think he was deliberately pushing for greater equality)
I’ve seen movies from the 40s where the blacks, while stuck in jobs like porter or butler, show more common sense or keen observation than the whites around them.
Yet modern Hollywood tends to put blacks in certain roles: stripper, prostitute, pimp, gangster, and cop. There’s no reason why secretaries can’t be black, and yet one black woman showing up for auditions was told the secretary role wasn’t a black part. It was race neutral! There was no reason to think it needed to be filled by a white woman, but the casting director assumed any role that wasn’t about the underworld was for whites.
Very aggravating.