Back and Forth

I went for a lunch run today because I couldn’t muster the willpower to get a long aerobic effort in before work. My cat woke me up fairly early anyways, as he always does. The second he sees me stir for a moment he seizes the opportunity.

The park where I usually run was covered in snow and ice. Kids were sledding down one of the steeper hills, and I wished that I had a sled at that moment. Instead I ran, back and forth, along a clear road. For some quality I ran at high intensity up an incline, and then jogged back down. I felt sluggish, which I expected after being snowed in the last few days. Back and forth, back and forth. We adults are too linear when there’s a hill to sled down just a quarter mile away.

I watched the movie The Quick and the Dead (1995), a star-studded revisionist western that few people know about. It was one of Russell Crowe’s and Leo DiCaprio’s earlier films (before Gladiator and Titanic). It starred Sharon Stone in the lead role as “The Lady,” who is essentially the female version of the Man with No Name.

Overall I liked the film and you can clearly see the Raimi influence on the gunfights. The classic cartoonish zoom into a wound that we saw countless times in Evil Dead films works very well here.

Most of what I read on the film described it as a “revisionist western” because the film places a female in the role typically assigned to a male. I don’t think it shatters the mold so much as offers a fun spin on it. Maybe “adjustment western” is more accurate. The viewing experience is more or less the same. It’s a good viewing experience though, and the cast and crew did a grew job making the movie.

Sharon Stone was convincing in the lead role, blending grit with vulnerability to add depth to her character. Leo/Russell are always great. Gene Hackman always thrives as a villain.

I wish the film spent more time with the other scoundrels in the gun contest. They were an interesting bunch, a mixture of thieves, assassins, and escaped convicts. But at under 2 hours the film could only do so much. Still, if I were to write a western film today it would tell their stories.

I’m one episode into Creature Commandos and so far it’s doing nothing for me. I didn’t laugh or find any of the characters particularly compelling. I thought Gunn nailed the humor and characters in his Suicide Squad and was surprised that I didn’t care for this one. I’ll watch a few more episodes and see if I change my mind.