Word: epical
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...anyway, undersung. Turner Classic Movies did run a four-day tribute to Mann last month, and that was nice, even if TCM didn't include his late masterpiece, the epic El Cid. I also hear that Jeanine Basinger's excellent 1978 study of the director may be issued by Wesleyan University Press, though at the moment the book can be found only in a bilingual edition published two years ago by the San Sebastian Film Festival, and then only if you ask the author to send you a copy. (Thank you, Jeanine...
...trap with rancid cheese as the bait. The westerns Mann made with James Stewart - Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country - constitute the strongest body of work, for that time, in that uniquely American form. El Cid is, to my mind, among the very finest of epic films, second only, perhaps, to Lawrence of Arabia...
...Alton's masterpiece with Mann was not, strictly speaking, a noir. It was a historical epic called The Black Book also known as The Reign of Terror, and it concerned the head-chopping horrors of the French Revolution, with Basehart as a rabid Robespierre and Robert Cummings as yet another Mann hero serving in the noble role of secret agent. (Instead of counterfeit plates, Cummings is looking for a Robespierre diary with an enemies list inside.) Yet, from force of habit, or in anticipatory tribute to the French critics who would later give a name to the genre, Alton concocted...
...Mann and Alton would soon cease their partnership. And the director would move on to the wide open spaces of the western and the epic. But his characters would remain as gnarled, and noirish, as ever...
...have lived here all my life, but my friends and I first began congregating at the court during our sophomore summer at Regis High School. Usually five or six guys strong, we’ve played countless games and endured epic battles of knock-out, twenty-one, and three-on-three. Quickly, we established traditions: watching movies afterwards at the theater next door, eating all our post-game meals at the nearby Gemini Diner, constantly joking and talking trash. Each day, someone would inevitably hear a gibe about their mother and/or sister which would have made Marco Materazzi blush...