Steve Carson (Charles Starrett) is wanted for murdering the Durango Kid!
I know that sounds confusing because Steve Carson is the Durango Kid. The bandit that Carson shot was just disguised as the Durango Kid but actually, he was just a dim-witted outlaw who was set up by Buck Prescott (Frank Fenton), a rustler who was run out of Texas by Steve and who was trying to find a way to stop Steve from investigating his new scheme to cheat a bunch of ranchers in Santa Fe.
Steve is taken to jail but luckily, Smiley Burnette is around to help him break out. Smiley and Steve head to Santa Fe, where they get jobs working as cowhands at the Eaton Ranch and work to expose Prescott and his gang as being responsible for a series of stampedes. Smiley sings some songs and Steve resurrects the Durango Kid from the dead.
This was one of the later Durango Kid films. The range war plot is one that showed up in many Durango Kid films but Prairie Roundup adds something new to the formula but having Steve framed for murdering himself. Steve could prove his innocence by revealing that he’s actually the Durango Kid but Steve is determined to maintain his secret identity. I’ve seen several Durango Kid films and I still don’t really understand why Steve felt he needed a secret identity in the first place. But Prairie Roundup shows the extent to which he’ll go to keep it.
There’s plenty of fight and horse chases, more than enough to keep western fans happy. Smiley Burnette gets to throw some punches along with singing all of his usual songs. It’s also nice to see the lovely Mary Castle in the role of Toni Eaton, the daughter of one of the ranchers who has been targeted by Prescott. Featuring less stock footage than usual, Prairie Roundup is a worthy entry in the Durango Kid series.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of my favorite character actors, Nicky Katt!
In 1993’s Dazed and Confused, Katt had a small but pivotal role as Clint. Clint is the guy who loves his car, drinking beer, smoking weed, and beating up people. Mike (played by Adam Goldberg) runs afoul of Nick at the end of the year party and later decides that he has no choice but to fight back. Needless to say, Clint is the better fighter of the two but at least Mike got one good punch in!
(For a while, there was talk of a Dazed and Confused sequel, in which Clint would have turned his life around and become both a born again Christian, and a respected member of the community while Mike would still be obsessing about their brief fight in 1976,)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
According to CheckiDay, today is Twilight Zone Day! In honor of this site’s favorite anthology show, it’s time for….
4 Shots From The Twilight Zone
Twilight Zone 1.8 “Time Enough At Last” (1959, dir by John Brahm)
Twilight Zone 1.22 “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” (1960, dir by Ronald Winston)
Twilight Zone 2.6 “Eye of the Beholder (1960, dir by Douglas Heyes)
Twilight Zone 2.17 “Twenty-Two (1961, dir by Jack Smight)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1953’s The War of the Worlds!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Bob Marley: One Love opens in 1976. With Jamaica torn by political violence, Reggae superstar and devout Rastafari Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) announces that he will be holding a concert for peace. When Marley, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), and several members of the band are shot in a home invasion, a disillusioned Marley sends his wife and children to stay with his mother in Delaware and then heads to London with his band.
The majority of Bob Marley: One Love centers around the years that Marley spent outside of Jamaica. In London, Marley struggles to come up with a concept his new album, finally finding inspiration in the soundtrack for Otto Preminger’s Exodus. Marley explains his philosophy and Rastafari beliefs to journalists and listeners, many of whom are shocked by Marley’s claim to not care about money. With more and more countries declaring their independence and freeing themselves from colonialism, Marley makes plans to perform in Africa and to spread his message of love and freedom. Rita, who eventually rejoins Bob when he tells her that he cannot create his music without her presence, tells Bob that he needs to return to Jamaica and perform his peace concert. Bob remains stubborn but when he’s diagnosed with a rare-form of cancer, he realizes that it’s time for him to return to his home and not just preach about peace and forgiveness but to extend it as well.
Musical biopics have been all the rage since the release of Bohemian Rhapsody and Bob Marley: One Love features enough of Marley’s music that it’s not surprising that the film was a crowd-pleaser when it was released in February. The film was clearly made by people who loved Marley’s music. Kingsley Ben-Adir has a strong screen presence and gives a charismatic performance as Bob but, for whatever reason, Bob Marley remains something of a distant figure throughout the film. We learn a bit about what motivated Bob Marley as a musician and as an activist but we still don’t really feel that we get to know him as a person. (Nor does the film delve too deeply into the details of Marley’s Rastafari beliefs, presenting it as being more about good vibes than a belief in the divinity of Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile Selassie I.) The film hits all of the expected biopic plot points like clockwork. It’s almost too efficient for its own good, lacking any of the spontaneity that makes real life so memorable. It leaves the viewer very much aware that they’re watching a well-made film.
But, one might be justified in dismissing that as just being nit-picking. The film is full of Marley’s music and it ends with a good deal of archival footage that allows the viewer to see both Bob Marley’s real-life charisma and the joy that he took in performing. As I said, the film is a crowd pleaser. While it doesn’t quite provide the insight into Marley’s life that Rocketman did for Elton John, it’s still a better-made and less cynical production than Bohemian Rhapsody. Even if the film is a bit too conventional for its own good, the love of the music still comes through.
Steve Holden (Charles Starrett) is hired by an old friend, Jack Mahoney (played by Jock Mahoney), to serve as the sheriff of a frontier town. Steve soon discovers that his old friend has been corrupted by power and is plotting to cheat the locals out of their land and the gold that the land holds. Despite their friendship, Steve knows that Jack has to be stopped and made to see the errors of his way. It’s a good thing that Steve is secretly the Durango Kid and that his old sidekick, Smiley Burnette, is the town’s police chief. But even if Jack Mahoney does eventually see the error of his ways, will it be soon enough to stop his out-of-control henchmen?
This was one of the last of the Durango Kid films and it’s heavy on stock footage and Smiley Burnette musical numbers. It has all of the usual horse chases and gunfights but making the villain an old friend of the Durango Kid adds a little more emotional weight to this entry than some of the other Durango Kid films. As always, Charles Starrett is a strong western hero and Smiley Burnette’s antics are nowhere nearly as annoying as the antics of some of the other western sidekicks who were populating matinee movie screens in 1952. Western fans should enjoy this fast-paced and undemanding film.
This is not the first time that Jock Mahoney played a friend of the Durango Kid who is named Jack Mahoney, though I think the Jack Mahoney who appeared in Pecos River, Junction City, Smokey Canyon, The Hawk of Wild River, and The Kid From Broken Gun was meant to be a different character than the one who appeared in The Rough, Tough West. If Smiley Burnette could have a rotating cast of musicians who followed him from town-to-town, then the Durango Kid could very well have known multiple Jack Mahoneys.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Scottish director, David MacKenzie! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 David MacKenzie Films
Young Adam (2003, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Giles Nuttgens)
Starred Up (2014, dir by David MacKenzie, DP; Michael McDonough)
Hell or High Water (2016, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Giles Nuttgens)
Outlaw King (2018, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Barry Ackroyd)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, we’ve got 1992’s Double Trouble, starring David Carradine, Roddy McDowall and The Barbarian Brothers!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Double Trouble is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
When we first see Vinny (Michael Ward), he is watching a group of children play soccer. (Yes, I know that both this movie and the rest of the world calls it football. I grew up calling it soccer.) He looks at the jerseys of the players and provides a running commentary as they play. “We’ve got David Beckham, we’ve got a big Messi, we’ve got a little Messi, we’ve got a classic Brazilian Messi….” Finally, Vinny runs out onto the field and kicks the ball himself until the parents of the children tell him to go away.
Watching Vinny is a legendary scout named Mal Bradley (Bill Nighy). Mal approaches Vinny and convinces to come meet his “dream team,” a collection of homeless men who all play soccer. Mal explains that the men are going to be representing England at the annual Homeless World Cup tournament in Rome. Teams made up of homeless from all over the world will be competing. Mal explains that it’s not all about winning. It’s about giving the players a chance to prove something to themselves. Mal reveals that he wants Vinny to join the team. Vinny announces that he’s not homeless. He has a job. He has a family. Vinny then goes to the car in which he is currently living.
Eventually, Vinny changes his mind and agrees to accompany the team to Rome. The team is welcoming but Vinny still struggles to open up to them. Some of it is due to his pride. Unlike his teammates, Vinny actually did once play professional soccer, though not for long. Some of it is due to Vinny being in denial about his status as a homeless person. When a teammate opens up about being a recovering heroin addict, Vinny leaves the room. When one player reveals that he’s a compulsive gambler and another talks about his own failures as a father, Vinny tries to change the subject. What Vinny doesn’t know is that he and Mal have a past connection, one that has left Mal wracked with guilt.
There’s a lot going on in The Beautiful Game. The film focuses on Vinny, Mal, and England’s team but it also finds room for subplots involving the Italian team, the South African team, the American team, and the Japanese team. Adlar (Robin Nazari), a Kurdish refugee who plays for England, has to decide whether to play against a team led by a player who was on the opposite side of the Syrian Civil War. Sister Protasia (Susan Wokoma), coach of the South African team, struggles to get a visa for one of her players. Rosita (Christina Rodlo) of the American team hopes to play well enough to receive a college scholarship. Mika (Aoi Okuyama), the young coach of the Japanese team, struggles to inspire her older players. It can sometimes be difficult to keep track of it all but, at the same time, it does capture the idea of the Homeless World Cup being a truly international event, one that gives hope and opportunity to people across the world. For Rosita and Vinny, the competition is a way to change the direction of their lives. For the Japanese team, the competition is way to see the world and enjoy themselves. And for Mal, the competition is a chance to give something back to the game that he loves.
The Beautiful Game is overlong and a bit overstuffed but it still occasionally brought tears to my mismatched eyes. It’s a film with a big heart but enough of an edge that it avoids the trap of being overly sentimental. It’s a well-acted film, especially by Michael Ward and Bill Nighy. In the end, I think my favorite performances came from Aoi Okuyama and the members of the Japanese team. Early on, they say that all they want to do is score one goal against another team. When they do, their joy is infectious. One might even say it’s beautiful.
Steve Carson (Charles Starrett) is wanted for murdering the Durango Kid!
Through the Shattered Lens 