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SOTM
Apr 24, 2007 18:21:17 GMT -6
Post by clw on Apr 24, 2007 18:21:17 GMT -6
I never saw this thread until Wildeye resurrected it. Being a fan of the film -- room for improvement, but the best yet by far -- I just wanted to add some thoughts.
Thank you, Elizabeth! Ruins the whole thing -- as if Custer looked like THAT in the saddle. Although I like Gary Cole's portrayal alot other than that. Did you know that Kevin Costner had a conflict with another shooting schedule at the last minute and Cole was a late substitute?
Olivia de Haviland -- perfect Libbie, Scout!
Someone please tell me why at first look into the village boiling with panic do we see a trooper with his hands tied being dragged along by two warriors. Where did HE come from? Leftover from the Rosebud maybe?
David Strathairn, though a favorite of mine, I thought was all wrong for Benteen. Who came up with that hairdo anyway? Weird.
The musical score set just the right mood for me.
I have had the book, SOTM, on backorder from Amazon for two months. Really looking forward to reading it if it ever gets here.
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SOTM
Apr 25, 2007 10:40:10 GMT -6
Post by wildeye on Apr 25, 2007 10:40:10 GMT -6
Boy, there's is NOTHING that ruins a wesyern for me, that watching somebody who's the star who can't ride a lick.....hopelessly bouncing along in the saddle, clinging to the horn, when they think the camera angle won't catch in. The guy who plays "Charlie Rivers" does it too.
Roseanna Arquette, was horrible as Libby, some people just should NOT be cast in westerns or any period peices. Like Mary McDonald, or whatever her name was in "Dances WW"
I think the trooper in the village was supposed to be one of the two troopers whose horses supposedly bolted at MTC? and were killed in the village, Connell wrote about it in SOTM. Supposedly Custer quipped, "Wait for us boys..... there's plenty of them for all of us" or some such nonsense.
I loved Strathairn as Benteen, but that blonde long haird wig was just ludicrous. Personally, I'd like to see a movie about LBH that spends some time developing the back storys of both the natives as well as the Custer clan and other officers and then tell the battle sequence in "real time". Something akin to the BOB mini that HBO did. Just like that, gritty, real attention to uniforms, period language, and no skimping on the native dress and storyline...and NO "Custer's standin tall at the end..." Hollyweird ending! Ah well.....per chance to dream.
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SOTM
Apr 25, 2007 11:10:34 GMT -6
Post by elisabeth on Apr 25, 2007 11:10:34 GMT -6
Sounds lovely.
"Gettysburg", I thought, was brave about period language (and period facial hair). Something like that is maybe what we need?
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SOTM
Jul 21, 2007 15:07:45 GMT -6
Post by willpix on Jul 21, 2007 15:07:45 GMT -6
I've only read selected passages from SOTMS. However, my partner, for whom I bought the book some years ago while we were visiting a bookstore on the Pine Ridge Reservation, utterly loved it, has read it from cover to cover several times, and considers it one of the two outstanding historical works (the other being George Tennant's somewhat scholarly tome on the conquest of Mexico) that she has ever read.
That said, I'd like to make a few observations about the VHS version of SOTMS that others have discussed above. I agree completely with previous remarks about the casting of Rosanna Arquette and David Straithern. Arquette was still a beautiful, sensuous woman when the mini-series was filmed in the early 90s, but she's a complete misfit as Libbie Custer. The voice, the face, the body type--what could they have been thinking? (By the way, I keep wondering if motion picture clips and/or sound recordings of Mrs. Custer exist, and where they can be accessed. Surely she must have been filmed before her passing in 1933, no?) As for Straithern, a fine actor whose work I almost invariably admire, he's utterly unbelieveable as Benteen. To even approach verisimilitude, they needed to cast someone pudgier and a bit older, whose face didn't clash so ludicrously with the prematurely white Little Lord Flauntleroy curls peeking out from his hat brim. (Sorry, but the only actor who comes to mind for the role would be a much younger, far less portly Charles Durning.)
As for Custer himself, I don't agree that Gary Cole was all that hot. He seemed to overplay the arrogance and megalomania of the man, but perhaps that shouldn't surprise us, given the relatively rushed and uninspired direction of the film as a whole. Compare Cole's wide-eyed portrayal of Custer with the more balanced and nuanced performance (albeit a much briefer one) turned in by Peter Horton in the 1996 Turner telefilm about Crazy Horse. (The only problem with the Custer portrayal in Crazy Horse being, as I see it, that the screenwriter bought into Stephen Ambrose's contention that Custer got plugged while reconnoiterring down at the creek, and was subsequently carried, with a bullet hole in his chest, all the way up to Last Stand Hill.)
Lastly, I agree with Elisabeth's comment about the period language and accuracy of facial hair in Gettysburg. In fact, Gettysburg shows a sensitivity for the look and feel of the era that's entirely missing in SOTMS. In almost every respect, from casting, to costuming, to dialogue, to the very LOOK of the production (e.g., eschewing the use of wide-angle lenses in order to gain a more flattened, painterly perspective reminiscent of actual 1860s photographic portraits and renderings of the battlefield), Gettysburg serves as an example of what SOTMS could have been.
About the only thing I liked about SOTMS was the casting of Rodney Grant as Crazy Horse. Too bad we'll never again have an actor so admirably suited for the role. Maybe they'll cast him as Gall in a future production.
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SOTM
Jul 22, 2007 7:59:24 GMT -6
Post by elisabeth on Jul 22, 2007 7:59:24 GMT -6
Charles Durning: nice idea! Or an equally younger/less portly Brian Dennehy. Or, for the fizzing energy (and with a wig), Michael Chiklis of The Shield might do it. But a word also for the chap who played Benteen in the recent BBC docudrama, Stephen Billington. He could have done with whiter hair, but apart from that he was pretty good -- and gave him a Virginian accent, which nobody usually thinks to bother with.
I'd rather like to see Helena Bonham-Carter have a go at Libbie, myself. True, she's a Brit, but she can do accents just fine; she's the right size and shape, and has the right sort of face; she knows how to play the period; and she has the capacity to bring out the darker side of Libbie (manipulativeness, flirtatiousness, ambition, etc.) if the script allowed for that. I think she could be good.
You're absolutely right, Libbie was filmed. She was in Robert J. Flaherty's silent short, The Potterymaker. Sadly that doesn't seem to have been issued on DVD or video -- but there is some footage of her in the American Experience: Last Stand at Little Big Horn documentary, which is still available on VHS. It's stunning stuff. Though she was obviously very old when filmed, she nonetheless exudes a grace, charm and radiance that would give great clues to any actress setting out to play her.
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SOTM
Jul 23, 2007 9:45:16 GMT -6
Post by crzhrs on Jul 23, 2007 9:45:16 GMT -6
I believe the Libbie film was made in the mid-late 1920s. I wonder who the kids were and if they may still be alive?
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