Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Vile-Tasting Justice: Clint Eastwood’s Regrettable Dollars Trilogy Experience Expressed
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly combine to form what’s become known as one of the greatest trilogies ever made, turning Clint Eastwood into the epitome of on-screen cool. And yet, the director never viewed them as being connected at all. The…
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Clint Eastwood’s 20-Year Reflection: Clint Eastwood’s Unforgivable Delay in Crafting ‘Unforgiven’
Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s magnum opus, continues to stand the test of time as one of the finest films in the history of cinema. The picture, which is credited for ending the romanticization of the Western, as well as subverting the genre on its head, had a lot of things going for it. It was more…
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From B-Movies to the Open Sea: John Wayne’s Journey from Poverty Row to ‘The Long Voyage Home’
John Wayne had finally broken free of Poverty Row B-flicks as the lead of John Ford’s classic Western “Stagecoach” when he jockeyed for the lead in the filmmakers 1940 seafaring drama “The Long Voyage Home.” Like “Stagecoach,” this World War II-set yarn about a tramp steamer wending its way from the West Indies to Baltimore…
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Duke’s Right-Hand Men: Ranking John Wayne’s Top 10 Male Co-Stars in Film History
This article lists my favourite top 10 actors who have appeared opposite John Wayne, in ascending order. All of these actors have, at one time or another, appeared second in the cast list after John Wayne. Dan Dailey | The Wings of Eagles (1957) In The Wings of Eagles, Dan Dailey, as ‘Jughead’ Carson, plays…
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John Wayne’s Candid Take on Kirk Douglas and a Memorable Veranda Confession
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Kirk Douglas established himself as a genuinely titanic force in American cinema. With a chin sharper than a chef’s knife and eyes that blinded those who dared to look deep into them, Douglas transcended the very role of the movie star and became a force of artistic nature in the…
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Dust and Homage: Spielberg’s Artistry Mirrors John Wayne’s Classic in Unexpected Ways
The Indiana Jones franchise famously began as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas sought to pay tribute to the serials that inspired them in their respective youths, including Zorro, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, to name three. Spielberg was also driven by his admiration for the James Bond movies, but a classic western from two genre…
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True Grit’s Resonance: John Wayne’s Defining Performance and Unforgettable ‘Best Scene’
Throughout the 20th century, John Wayne burned himself into the minds of America with remarkable portrayals of the cowboy archetype. A true hero of the films of the old west, Wayne established himself as an actor who could consistently deliver the acting goods, whether firing a rifle from atop his horse or taking care of…
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John Wayne: Hidden Secrets of The Searchers That Struck Fear in John Ford’s Heart
John Wayne and John Ford collaborated on some of the Hollywood Golden Age’s best-loved Westerns from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to Rio Grande. But perhaps their most famous was 1956’s The Searchers, in which Duke played a Civil War veteran spending years searching for his abducted niece played by Natalie Wood. Still a student…
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The Wild West of Filmmaking: Unmasking the Turbulent Making of How the West Was Won
Back in 1962, MGM released its biggest Western yet, helmed by three directors in Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall. How the West Was Won had an ensemble cast of no less than 24 stars in a lengthy blockbuster of five parts, set over 50 years, and captured on three-lens Cinerama for projection on…
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El Dorado Enigma: Decoding Robert Mitchum’s Major Blunder, Shielded by John Wayne
John Wayne made three Westerns with director Howard Hawks about a sheriff defending his office from outlaws. In between 1959’s Rio Bravo and 1970’s Rio Lobo, they shot 1966’s El Dorado, which co-starred Robert Mitchum as the drunken lawman opposite Duke’s gunslinger. Interestingly, Wayne had replaced Mitchum just a decade earlier in 1955’s Blood Alley…
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