Slow Progress

[poliphilo]

If a house is a machine for living then this house is a machine that's busted. The only running water is in the bathroom and the only cooking facilities are in the back living room.

The joiner has been here all day. I think he may have finished in the front living room, but I can't be sure because he left before I could ask him. The kitchen is so full of packaged kitchen units that I can't use the back door.

They're showing old John Wayne movies in the afternoons- not very good John Wayne movies. Yesterday it was The Undefeated- in which his co-star is Rock Hudson of all people. Rock Hudson with shoulder-length hair and a moustache looks like a beefier Keanu Reeves. Today it was some nonsense about a lost city co-starring Sophia Loren.  

The man from the stair-lift company rang to say he was coming to measure us up for a new track. He then rang again to say he was stuck in snow on a back street in Rochdale. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I remember the Undefeated. When it comes right down to it, most of John Wayne's movies were not particularly good. His work with John Ford was exceptional, because Ford was exceptional.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Undefeated is a John Ford movie manque. It has all the moves, but none of the poetry.

Ford pushed Wayne- and got him to go places no-one else did. Most of Wayne's movies are carried by his persona. You watch them because he's so intensely watchable- otherwise they're junk.

Actually that's unfair. Wayne made several good movies for Howard Hawks. And I like True Grit and The Shootist. I'm also a big fan of The Alamo- mainly because it's just about the first adult movie I ever saw.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

True Grit is an impressive performance, on Wayne's part, in an impressive movie. I liked it a lot, when I saw it as a youngster. I saw it again, a couple of years ago, and if anything it was even better than I remembered.

In general, though, I have mixed feelings about John Wayne. His movies capture something intrinsic about how America sees itself. To men like my father, those movies appear to offer sound and sensible advice on how to deal with real-world problems, a notion obviously quite insane.