George Will Makes the Case for Westerns | Newsweek George F. Will

The Writing on the Wall
7/24/2009 12:00:00 AM
It was a Sunday morning in 1989, and Gary Cooper was all over Warsaw. Nearly 10,000 posters, plastered around the city at daybreak, bore the image of the marshal from the 1952 Western High Noon. His photograph was black and white, save for the red Solidarity logo placed on his chest, and he carried a paper ballot in place of a pistol. The poster's inscription was simple: IT'S HIGH NOON, JUNE 4, 1989.
MOVIES
When Two Heads Really Are Better
2/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
Someone should have told Paul Thomas Anderson that his script for "There Will Be Blood," nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture of the year, is an unholy mess. Or that Daniel Day-Lewis, with his cigarette holder and thespian limp, nominated as Best Actor, runs away with the movie and turns any possible moral contest between the foundational energies of American capitalism and American religion into an unfair fight.
MOVIES
Ansen Forecasts the Oscars
David Ansen 2/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
Nothing seems certain this year, in real or reel life. The political pollsters, normally so drearily accurate, emerged with egg on their faces after proclaiming a resounding Obama victory in New Hampshire. Why should the Oscars be any different? It feels as if this ceremony--which almost didn't happen thanks to the writers' strike--could produce some significant upsets for a change. The conventional wisdom may not apply to a field filled with more than the usual share of unconventional movies. Mainstream commercial movies are barely a blip on the Academy Awards landscape. Little "Juno" is by far the biggest hit among the five best-picture nominees, and the only one of the five that's considered a major studio movie, Warner Bros.'s "Michael Clayton," actually isn't: it was a pickup, financed by an outside company. The Oscars have become the Independent Spirit Awards on a bigger budget.
MOVIES
And the Oscar Nominees Are …
Ramin Setoodeh 1/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
For several long and suspenseful minutes this morning, it didn't look as if "Atonement"—the World War II epic long considered the Oscar front runner—would even be nominated for best picture. As Academy president Sid Ganis and Kathy Bates announced the top nominees at a press conference, it was snubbed in almost all the major categories. Both its stars, James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, were left off the roll call. Its director, Joe Wright, wasn't nominated either. But just when "Atonement" looked to be out of the fight, it landed a surprise slot as a best picture nominee, a victory as unexpected as Hillary Clinton's presidential primary win in New Hampshire.
FILM
The (Way More Than) Ten Best Movies of the Year
David Ansen 12/18/2007 12:00:00 AM
It was unusually hard coming up with a 10-best list this year. Not because there weren't enough good movies but because there were too many, and it hurt to leave so much good work off the list. So I'm appending a second 10 and a host of other highly recommended movies, many of which, depending on the day I made the list, might easily have crept into the first tier. These were the movies that made me feel like Anton Ego, in one of the year's most transcendent cinematic moments, tasting his first bite of glorious ratatouille.
Review: ‘There Will Be Blood’
David Ansen
Paul Thomas Anderson's extraordinary "There Will Be Blood" is a radical departure for the director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." Though epic in sweep—it covers 30 years in the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a fiercely driven oil baron in early-20th-century California—it's as singularly focused as those multi-character panoramas were sprawling. Because of its subject, its grand Western landscapes and its tycoon protagonist, Anderson's movie has already been compared, somewhat misleadingly, with "Giant" and "Citizen Kane." However, its uncompromising portrait of egotism and greed run amuck has more in common with Werner Herzog's hallucinatory "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." And as a harrowing account of an obsessively anti-social man, its emotional temperature is closer to "Raging Bull." What it shares with all of Anderson's work is a blistering intensity—and filmmaking that can make your jaw drop.