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Friday, February 5, 2010

Movies across America


Today I had a minor surgery. Not much – but it knocked me out of physical training for a day and my mind wasn’t up to reading. Besides which, we are having a beautiful snowstorm, so it’s a delightful day to curl up in bed or on sofa while the snow blows drifts outside my window.

So after surgery I dedicated to low-key movie watching and thinking about the movies to watch across America.

Tonight was Shane, a classic Western, complete with black hat bad guys and noble good guys. It fleshes out the conflicts of the ranchers versus the farmers – personally I thought the ranchers had a point. I got the book out of the library and it is beautifully written...Shane “road into the valley wearing no gun and riding a lone trail out of a closed and guarded past.” The valley in the movie was the valley of the Grand Tetons which we will see on Day 15 of our ride across America.

In fact, we can watch several movies depicting this incredible mountain range as described in a marvelous book, Rising from the Plains by John McPhee....”Hollywood cannot resist the Tetons. If you have seen Western movies, you have seen the Tetons. They have appeared in the background of countless pictures, and must surely be the most tectonically active mountains on film, drifting about, as they will from Canada to Mexico, and from Kansas nearly to the coast. After the awgon trains leave Independence and begin to move westward, the Tetons soon appear on the distant horizon, predicting the beauty, threat, and promise of the quested land. After the wagons have been moving for a month, the Tetons are still out there ahead. Another fortnight and the Tetons are a little closer.”

So now filling out the proposed movie list we have Little Big Man, Jeremiah Johnson, Brokeback Mountain, North by Northwest and probably some other old westerns since my husband, Tom, likes the old Westerns he grew up on. Maybe a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. He suggested Henry Fonda?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you should do a blog where you can post a picture of Kitty he is very photogenic =)