From Those Were the Days:

1934 - The first appointments to the newly created Federal Communications Commission were made. The governing body of the American broadcasting industry was first served by seven men named as commissioners.
10:44:23 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“We deal in lead, friend.”

So here’s my dilemma: I don’t have to work this evening, and I just want to kick back in a nice air-conditioned living room with a movie. My father, however, has commandeered the television remote and if we're unable to stop him in time he’ll gear up for a riveting History Channel documentary—“Hitler’s Landscaper.”

I tempted him with a DVD that he is powerless to resist, and the ‘rents and I ended up riding with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Brad Dexter, Robert Vaughn and Horst Buchholz in the Western adventure The Magnificent Seven (1960). As you’re probably well aware, the film is adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic The Seven Samurai—and having seen both movies I think each of them is pretty swell, so I’ll nip the comparisons in the bud. Yul and company are hired by a small Mexican peasant village to protect them from greasy and sleazy bandit Eli Wallach, whose gang terrorizes the population and steals their valuable crops. Directed by John Sturges (who knew his away around “big” adventure flicks, like The Great Escape [1963]}, the film also features a memorably rousing score by maestro Elmer Bernstein—a theme that later became a staple of endless cigarette television commercials (before they were yanked off the air in 1971, of course). McQueen shines in one of his best film roles here (I love when he asks a peasant boy he’s ladling out food to if he has a “grateful older sister”), and I also like Vaughn’s character—a wanted gunslinger who’s terrified at the prospect that he’s losing his nerve (Vaughn, who’s the only surviving member of the Seven, would later spoof his role in the 1980 Magnificent-Seven-in-Outer-Space cheapie Battle Beyond the Stars). Seven proved quite a franchise for MGM in the 1960s and 1970s, spawning three sequels: Return of the Seven (1966, with Brynner reprising his role), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972).

Dad was pretty juiced about the film; he commented: “This movie plays a lot faster without all the commercial breaks.” Then Mom mentioned something about having to urinate like a racehorse, so I guess she was the lone dissenter in Dad’s opinion.
10:42:46 PM    comment []  trackback []