Word: gundown
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PETER GORDON: Innocent (CBS). JOHN ZORN: The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone (Nonesuch/Icon). Not for the squeamish -- or at least not for those who think serious music is something best carried on quietly by consenting adults in the privacy of a concert hall. Gordon, 35, and Zorn, 33, are both members of Manhattan's explosive avant-garde art-rock scene, reveling in hot-wired Farfisas, electric guitars, saxophones and synthesizers. But, as David Byrne says, this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around. Gordon's Innocent...
Zorn's Big Gundown strolls even farther afield for inspiration, to the spaghetti-western Italy of Composer Ennio Morricone and beyond. Zorn and his ensemble build up huge soundscapes of wailing guitars (a Morricone trademark in his scores for Director Sergio Leone) and screaming saxes, vamping freestyle on the thinnest of musical motives from such films as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Burglars. Not for every taste, to be sure. Call it The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but check...
There is a little shooting in The Shootist, to be sure, including the sort of climactic saloon gundown that is not only predictable but practically required by law. The movie is stately, even funereal, as it details the last week of J.B.'s life. Director Don Siegel excels at turning out saw-toothed melodramas (Dirty Harry), and likes to play along the grim edge where sullen threat turns to quick, obliterating violence. Not even in The Beguiled-a harrowingly beautiful gothic tale-has Siegel gone so far away from what is familiar...
...Gundown--Mr. Ugly hits town. At the PARAMOUNT, Washington St. across from Raymond...
Most of the movie's minor parts are played by experts, notably Pat Hingle as a sanctimonious judge who orders multiple executions, Ed Begley as a frightened outlaw, and Michael O'Sullivan as a hysterical, doomed criminal. But neither the performances nor the gundown-at-sundown story coalesce into more than a sanguinary celebration of vigilante justice. With some evocative photography and a touch of gallows humor, Director Ted Post tries to make Hang 'Em High stylish and spirited enough to swing. It swings all right-like a body at the end of a rope...
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