My Ten Favorite John Wayne Westerns

It's Legends of Western Cinema Week over at A Lantern in Her Hand, and I'm joining the fun with a somewhat different version of my Ten Favorites series.  I've already posted about my ten favorite westerns, so today I'm listing my ten favorite westerns that star John Wayne.  You probably know this already, but John Wayne is my absolute favorite actor, and has been since I was a preteen.  Three of these also appear on the list of my favorite westerns, I might add.

1.  The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

Four brothers (including John Wayne and Dean Martin) reunite at their mother's funeral and work together to find out how their parents lost their ranch.  I've probably seen this more often than all the other movies on this list put together.

2.  Rio Bravo (1959)

A sheriff (John Wayne), his recovering alcoholic deputy (Dean Martin), a crippled old man (Walter Brennan), and a young gunfighter (Ricky Nelson) hold off a host of bad guys bent on springing a murderer from jail.  About as perfect as a western gets.

3.  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

A greenhorn lawyer (James Stewart) stands up a vicious outlaw (Lee Marvin), and what everyone believes happened during that shoot-out launches his stellar political career.  Also, he marries John Wayne's girl, which is really most unfair.  This has one of my favorite plot twists ever.   And both Wayne and Stewart turn in strong performances.

4.  North to Alaska (1960)

Gold-mining partners (John Wayne and Stewart Granger) vie for the attention of a former dance hall girl (Capucine) and fight off claim jumpers led by her slick-talking ex-boyfriend (Ernie Kovacs).  Much more comedic than the other movies on this list.  This is the first John Wayne movie I can remember seeing.

5.  Hondo (1953)

Hondo Laine (John Wayne) encounters a woman (Geraldine Page) and her young son living alone on their remote ranch right as an Indian uprising is about to start.  It's got a very sweet and unexpected love story, and also lots of action.

6.  The Searchers (1956)

Bitter, angry Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) spends years and years searching for his niece (Natalie Wood), who was kidnapped by Indians as a child.  He intends to kill her to end her shame and misery from being forced to marry an Indian.  Probably John Wayne's finest performance.  Even if you don't like westerns, you should see this once because it's a masterpiece.

7.  The War Wagon (1967)

Taw Jackson (John Wayne) gets released from an undeserved prison sentence and enlists some friends (Kirk Douglas, Howard Keel, Keenan Wynn, Robert Walker, Jr.) to help him steal a wagon full of gold from the man who sent him to prison in the first place.  Not actually a great movie, I'm sure, but I'm exceedingly fond of it.  You know me and wrongful imprisonments!

8.  Chisum (1970)

A retelling of the Lincoln County War, which pitted John Chisum (John Wayne), Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), and Billy "The Kid" Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) against the owner of a rival ranch.  The second John Wayne movie I can ever remember seeing.

9.  El Dorado (1966)

Basically the same story as Rio Bravo, only this time Robert Mitchum is the recovering alcoholic, John Wayne is a gunfighter, James Caan is the youngster, and Arthur Hunnicutt is the old coot.  Both movies were directed by Howard Hawks, and Leigh Brackett wrote/co-wrote both screenplays.

10.  Tall in the Saddle (1944)

A newcomer in town (John Wayne) discovers his prospective boss has been murdered and the town is full of all kinds of trouble for him to sort out.  I've only seen this one twice, but Ella Raines impressed me so much I consider it a favorite.  Also, John Wayne is at his prime here, handsome as can be.

20 Things You Might Not Know About Me

Kara from Flowers of Quiet Happiness has tagged me in this list thingie that's been going around the blogosphere lately.  Here are my answers!

Question 1: How tall are you?  5'7"

Question 2: Do you have a hidden talent? If so, what?  I'm very, very good at keeping secrets.

Question 3: What’s your biggest blog-related pet peeve?  I actually refuse to follow any blog that does not provide a way for me to navigate their old posts.  If there's no "labels" or "archive" section anywhere, I can't see if you've ever written about anything else that might interest me.  And I don't have time to hit "previous post" over and over and over.

Question 4: What’s your biggest non-blog related pet peeve?  Cereal bags that are hard to open.

Question 5: What’s your favorite song?  "Mack the Knife," any version sung by Bobby Darin.

Question 6: What’s your favorite Etsy shop that isn’t yours?  I've bought more things from The Ring and the Lion than any other store.  The owner has made me a lot of custom LOTR-related items, and I've also randomly bought things she's made that have struck my fancy.

Question 7: What’s your favorite way to spend your free time when you’re alone?  Not being interrupted.  It's a rare privilege.

Question 8: What’s your favorite junk food?  Cheetos and Oreos.  Not at the same time, though.

Question 9: Do you have a pet or pets? If so, what kind and what are their names?  We currently have a purple Betta fish named Winter.

Question 10: What are your number one favorite nonfiction and fiction books?  Nonfiction would be the Bible.  Fiction would be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Question 11: What’s your favorite beauty product?  Pantene conditioner.

Question 12: When were you last embarrassed? What happened?  I felt mildly embarrassed on Sunday when I started explaining the craft to all the moms and little kids in Sunday school, and no one paid any attention because I was talking too quietly.

Question 13: If you could only drink one beverage (besides water) for the rest of your life, what would it be?  Coca-cola.

Question 14: What’s your favorite movie?  The Man from Snowy River.

Question 15: What were you in high school: prom queen, nerd, cheerleader, jock, valedictorian, band geek, loner, artist, prep?  I was homeschooled K-12, but in college, I was in the writerly group, on the fringe of the theatre group, and friends with lots of the artists.  Nerdly, vehemently non-preppy, unarguably non-jock.

Question 16: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?  I love my house, so here is good.

Question 17: PC or Mac?  PC.

Question 18: Last romantic gesture from a crush, date, boy/girlfriend, spouse?  My husband kissed me on the nose when I said good night to him.  He has a cold, so he went to bed early, and also kissed my nose instead of my lips so he wouldn't spread germs.  Even though I had the cold already.

Question 19: Favorite celebrity?  Hugh Jackman.  He reminds me a lot of myself, actually.

Question 20: What blogger do you secretly want be best friends with?  If by that you mean, "What blogger(s) would you like to meet in real life because you think you could be real life friends too," then Kara and Heidi :-)  EDIT:  And Joanna!  How did I forget Joanna?  Oops!  Let's blame it on Hugh Jackman distracting me with his kind smile.


I'm not tagging anyone because it's late and I'm tired, and I have miles to go before I sleep.  Well, miles of things to do, anyway.  If you want to play, here's the rules and regulations:

1. Copy and paste the questions below and then answer and turn them into a blog post. Or, record a video answering these questions and upload it to your blog post.

 2. At the bottom of your post, tag anywhere from 2-10 bloggers you want to see answer these questions. (I also suggest hitting up your tagged people via social media just to let them know you tagged them to do this tag challenge.)

3. Use the title: 20 Things You Might Not Know About Me Blog Tag. Once you’ve hit publish, leave a comment below with the link to your post.

 4. Use the hashtag #20ThingsBlogTag when sharing on social media so we can all find your awesome posts!

Would You Like to Own the Hornblower Movies?

PLEASE NOTE:  Someone has spoken for these now, so my offer to give them away has been fulfilled. 

I've loved A&E's movies about Horatio Hornblower for fifteen years.  I saw the first four in 1999, shortly after they first came out, and promptly bought the box set of them on VHS.  I bought the next two when they came out, and then the final set of two shortly before we got our first DVD player.  I've watched the first four many, many times, and the other four several times each.  I dearly love these movies -- they're dashing adventures, beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted by Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Bamber, Robert Lindsay, and their compatriots.

And I recently found them all on DVD for a price I couldn't pass up.  Which means that now, I don't need my VHS copies.  I tried selling them at my yard sale on Saturday, but had no takers.  I would really like to pass these along to someone who either loves them already but doesn't have their own copies, or who has wanted to see these for a long time, but hasn't been able to find them for whatever reason.  Like I said, they're VHS copies, but they all play fine.

I thought about holding a drawing for these, but instead, I'm just going to give them to the first person who asks for them in the comments here.  And if no one asks for them, I'll donate them to the library for their next fundraising sale.

I'll send them for free to any US address.  If you live elsewhere in the world, I ask that you'd pay shipping for them via PayPal.

I think these were rated TV-14 for violence and some salty language.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014) (An actual review this time) (Honest)

My friends, I have had the unparalleled delight of seeing this on the big screen for the third time.  My local theater brought it back for the long weekend, and thanks to my generous and understanding Cowboy, I just got home from spending two more hours in the company of Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men.  It's one of my happiest places.

(This moment isn't actually in the movie, but yummy!)

After my second viewing, back in June, I tried to write up a coherent review, but real life intervened, as it so often does.  This time, I'm going to write this while I take a few minutes to unwind so I'll actually fall asleep when I crawl into bed.  Absolutely everyone else is asleep, so for a few minutes, it's just me perched on the edge of the bathtub with the laptop, trying to put into coherent words what I love about this movie.  Because love it I do -- it might not be quite as jewel-perfect as X2, but for deeply personal reasons, I think I love it a little more.

This is a movie about friendship and love, loyalty and betrayal, hope and despair.  All the explosions and mutations and special effects are just window dressing.  At its heart, it's about two friends who are constantly pulled apart by their different ideologies, yet convinced they could work together if only things were different.  It's also the story of a handful of people desperate to save not just themselves, but also strangers they'll never meet, people they'll never know.  The trouble, of course, is that they don't all want to save the same group of people.

(Here be spoilage.)

(How priceless and adorable is this picture???)

Those two friends, of course, are Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr.  Over the past 14 years and four movies, we've watched them battle, unite, divide, unite again, hurt each other, help each other.  In some ways, they're like a star-crossed couple, always searching for a way to thwart their own selves in order to be together.  And I mean that in the non-slashiest way possible.

Of course, generally Eric wants to promote mutant welfare above human welfare, and Charles wants mutants to protect humans, and so they tend to butt heads and part ways a lot.  And in this movie, you've also got Mystique trying to take down the guy who's going to create the machines that will wipe mutants off the earth.  And that guy's just trying to protect humans from the mutants.

(Why are there so many pictures of Fassbender in this post?  But look at his beautiful hat!)

And poor Wolverine is trying to sort out this mess, get everyone to shut up and work together for a few minutes so he can save his "found family."  Because he's the best he is at what he does (even if what he does isn't always very nice), he succeeds.  As a reward, he gets to live in a new future where people he loves are safe, sometimes even no longer dead.  The final scene, as he walks through the halls of the School for Gifted Youngsters, never fails to bring me to tears.  The wonderment on his face, the dawning hope, and finally the joy when he sees Jean Grey -- they make me achingly happy.

(It's hard to find a picture of Wolvie smiling.  Best I could do.)

The rest of the movie's lots of fun too :-)  Quicksilver's "Time in a Bottle" scene is hilarious and brilliant, and every single scene that takes place on Professor X's plane could be six times as long and I would still be entranced.

(Also hard to find pics of the inside of that plane.  The internet is so silly sometimes.)

Okay, that's as coherent as I'm going to get at 1:34am.  A bit more lucid than last time, I hope!

I'm not sure why, but all summer long, this Beatles song has been reminding me of this movie.  So I'll end with it:

"Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014) -- Initial Thoughts

This may strike you as silly, but I'm being totally serious:  this is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that made me think, "This is aimed squarely at teenage boys."  I'm not saying that's a terrible thing, but that was definitely the vibe I got from it.  In fact, it reminded me of teenage boys I've known, thinking they're all cool and hilarious when really they're just stuck on themselves.

And it's not that I didn't enjoy this movie, because I did.  It was funny, and a sadder than I'd expected.  And by the end of the scene with Star Lord dancing his way over to his Indy moment, I was charmed.  It kept me engaged, though in the final Big Battle, I did start to feel like everything was taking a little longer than it ought to.

But there were moments sprinkled throughout that I loved.  (Here comes the spoilage.)  Him dancing through the weird alien planet, that cool force-field net thingie they put over the bad guy's ship, the whole idea of turning off the artificial gravity, and pretty much anything with Groot in it.

The trouble is, Groot was my favorite character.  He's the only one that touched me and made me curious to know more about him.  And, alas, they saddled him with zero backstory, the inability to say more than three words, and no character growth.  Okay, there was literal growth, but not inner growth.  He started out sweet and nice and kind and protective, and he remained that way throughout.  The other characters did have growth, but I didn't care that much about them.

So while this was a nice ride, that was pretty much all it was.  I'm not left with a need to see it again; I'm not left wanting to spend more time with these characters.

I've heard that some people thought this was better than The Avengers.  Um.  Except, it's pretty much exactly the same story as The Avengers, only with less compelling characters.  With no Loki.

Perhaps that's the best thing I can say for this movie:  it's made me really appreciate Loki.  Wow.  What a villain he is!  I never cared a whit about what did or did not happen to this Ronan person -- admit it, if he hadn't been played by Lee Pace, he would have been completely forgettable.  Pace did at least make me notice that he had really pretty eyes, and he did the best he could with what he was given, but in the end... I didn't care about him at all.  Now, Loki?  I have spent countless hours wishing so hard I could like Loki!  Remember how angry I got over his non-death?  I've got some serious emotion invested in that guy.  Ronan?  Well, he had really pretty eyes.

And so, in the end... I liked this better than I'd expected, but I didn't love it.  I'm sure I'll rent it from Redbox when it comes there because I saw in the end credits that Nathan Fillion does the voice for one of the inmates, so I'd like to listen for him.  And I think Cowboy will get some good laughs from the movie, it's worth seeing once with him.  But I have no desire to own this or watch it over and over.

I have never before posted a gif on my blog, as I find them sometimes fun and mostly annoying, but... this was probably my favorite moment in the whole movie, so I'm taking the plunge:

(Source)

Ukrainian Independence and Christmas Shopping

Would you like to support Ukraine's fight to remain independent from Russia, but you don't live anywhere near Ukraine and don't know how you could possibly help?  Cowboy has had a brilliant idea:  search Etsy for Ukrainian sellers (here's a handy link), and buy things from them to give people for Christmas.  (All images in this post are also links.)

Cowboy says, "At the very least, you'll be helping someone whose income has likely dropped 20-40% this year.  At best, you'll be helping Ukraine with badly needed foreign exchange AND supporting the Ukrainian troops against the (pro-Russian) separatists, because much of the Ukrainian army's financial support is coming from private fundraisers and donations."

If you're concerned that your money might be going to Russian-supporters instead, Google the city name listed in the Etsy shop.  The farther west, the more likely to be pro-independence.  Some sellers might even have pro-independence blurbs in their shop descriptions or items in their shops.  I even found this awesome shirt that says "Ukraine blooms in my heart."  Not only that, but the shop owner says that "This t-shirt is being sold to support Ukrainian military units fighting to free Eastern Ukraine. The entire amount earned from selling t-shirts will be transferred to the proven volunteer organizations engaged in logistical support of Ukrainian military forces."

So if you're someone I buy Christmas or birthday gifts for, don't be surprised if you get something made in Ukraine this year!  I bought my kids some puzzles from this Ukrainian Etsy store last year, and I'm totally getting some for our little friends this year.  And maybe some more for my kids too :-)

(And yes, I start my Christmas shopping early.  If I'm not starting to buy gifts by May, I feel behind.  I hear this is an ISFJ trait, actually, the desire to find the perfect gift for someone we hold dear.)

"The Seven Samurai" (1954) -- Initial Thoughts

(Source.)

I've wanted to see this for many years, ever since I found out that The Magnificent Seven (1960) is a western remake of it.  Over the years, I've seen this named on a lot of "greatest films" lists, "movie-lover must-watch" lists, etc, so I have to admit I came to it with high expectations.  But I was also half-expecting to be disappointed, since so often when a movie gets that much hype (::cough:: Citizen Kane ::cough::), I end up underwhelmed.

I'm happy to say that I did like The Seven Samurai.  However, I didn't like it nearly as well as The Magnificent Seven, and not just because one is about cowboys and the other isn't.

What surprised me the most about this is just how closely The Magnificent Seven follows it.  Not just the same basic story -- poor villagers being repeatedly pillaged by outlaws hire champions to defend them -- but down to how some characters were introduced and some of the characterizations.  Cowboy and I had a lot of fun pointing out the similarities to each other.  That might be what I enjoyed most about the movie, in fact.

Let's start with the characters and how they were similar to those magnificent gunfighters.  The main character, Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura), was awesome.  Brave, resourceful, not above resorting to trickery to save a hostage child... he was one cool cat.  He was quite a bit like Chris (Yul Brynner), only even more world-weary.  And he had hair.  Eventually.

My next favorite was Kyuzo (Sieji Miyaguchi), a master swordsman who had about six lines -- almost exactly like the nearly wordless Britt (James Coburn) who competes only with himself.  I really loved one scene where he just ran off into the night to singlehandedly capture some enemy firepower.  Comes back several scenes later, exhausted and triumphant.

Then there was the young kid, Katsushiro (Isao Kimura), out to prove himself and become a grown-up samurai.

And probably the most memorable character was Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), a clownish swordsman who pretends to be a samurai.  In The Magnificent Seven, those two characters got combined to become the humorous youngster, Chico (Horst Bucholz).  Kikuchiyo annoyed me at first, with his apelike antics and childish humor.  But later on I became kind of fond of him, like the samurai did, so that was a very effective bit of characterization.

Another of the samurai was introduced exactly the same way as Bernardo O'Reilly (Charles Bronson), chopping wood in exchange for a meal, quipping drily about his situation.  There was also one who was an old friend of Kambei's, just like Harry (Brad Dexter) is an old friend of Chris'.  And there was a cheerful, resourceful guy who was basically Kambei's second-in-command, like Vin (Steve McQueen).  Sadly, I had a hard time keeping those three apart, as I'm not familiar enough with Japanese actors or names to remember who these they were.

So.  Four very memorable characters and three I got all mixed up.  Considering this is a foreign film, entirely peopled with actors I've never seen before, that's quite good.

Only a handful of the villagers were at all interesting or had any development at all.  ("Yohei!  What's wrong with your face?")  But to be honest, as many times as I have seen The Magnificent Seven, I really can only pick out about six of the Mexican villagers as different characters, and I don't know most of their names (so I give them little nicknames, like "Traitor" and "Mr. Purple Shirt" and "Excitable Guy"), so that's not a big difference.

The bandits, though, were a big disappointment.  Even if I wasn't used to Calverra, Eli Wallach's charming rogue of a bandit leader, I would have been disappointed by them.  They're mostly just faceless baddies.

Um, yeah, this has kind of turned into a comparison between the two movies, not a straight review, but... my reactions to it are all tied up with the remake that I consider to be the finest western ever filmed.  Would I watch this again?  Maybe some day, but not over and over and over.  It starts slowly and gets saggy in places, though not enough that I ever got bored.

Is this a family-friendly movie?  Um.  The violence is non-gory.  There are a lot of scenes of guys wearing nothing but these loin cloth things, so you can see the sides of their butts.  And although it's not shown, it's made clear that one character sleeps with a village woman.