Combustibles

Had a very entertaining DVD watching day yesterday including some worthy recommendations to pass on.

School of Rock... Jack Black doing a pretty good Angus Young impersonation in this Sister Act for heavy metal fans. Light weight fare, certainly no This is Spinal Tap, but good innocent fun.

The Searchers... Following my comments earlier on John Ford and Terry Teachout's appreciation of Ford's "painter's eye", I had to return to the greatest western every made. This is a multilayered film about racism and obsession. There are all sorts of unanswered questions that take on meaning with each repeated viewing. Like the tension in the early parts of the film between John Wayne, his brother, and his brother's wife. Could Natalie Wood's character be the biological daughter of Wayne? Had never thought of that possibility before, but it struck me last night that might be the case. Would certainly add another layer to the fact that Wayne is ready to kill the girl after she has become the wife of the Indian war chief, Scar.

Finally, I ended my triple feature with Robert Aldrich's, Kiss Me Deadly... The Mickey Spillane classic starring Ralph Meeker in the role of Mike Hammer, with a very young Cloris Leachman (Blucher... neigh) as the blonde who sets the story in motion when Hammer picks her up on the road. The film contains the infamous suitcase full of ?????(could we say, combustibles?) that has been paid homage to in Alex Cox's Repo Man and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Next up... Evil Dead II