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A great actor, a vagabond in a great movie…Lee Marvin


The best of those studio directors who, more or less the same age as Orson Welles, began working in movies within a decade of “Citizen Kane” (1941) represent Hollywood’s “greatest generation.” Survivors of the Great Depression and often veterans of World War II, they fought the good war against assembly-line filmmaking. Robert Aldrich (1918-83) and Nicholas Ray (1911-79) were two.

Both men specialized in unconventional genre movies with larger-than-life antiheroes. Their vigorous melodramas and baroque action films were often self-consciously American. Like other members of the greatest generation, they were influenced by Ernest Hemingway’s emphasis on rites of midcentury existential manliness — although Aldrich’s “Emperor of the North” (1973), out on Blu-ray from Twilight Time, was inspired by the writing of and about Jack London, Hemingway’s precursor in literary swagger.

One of the strongest movies of Aldrich’s late career, “Emperor of the North” (a project originally intended for the mad macho man Sam Peckinpah) concerns the near-cosmic struggle between a laconic super-hobo known as A-No. 1 (Lee Marvin) and an implacably sadistic railroad employee (Ernest Borgnine) called simply the Shack, hobo slang for brakeman. The Shack is a killer who has never allowed a vagrant aboard his train; the ’bo who gets by him will be crowned Emperor of the North Pole, a pointedly meaningless honor that gave the movie its original title.

“The Road,” London’s memoir of riding the rails, was a tale of the 1890s; Christopher Knopf’s screenplay updates the action to 1933. The movie’s tone is post-“Bonnie and Clyde” Hollywood new wave, a scenic outlaw ballad mixing instances of extreme violence with ragtime high jinks. Lyrical passages with the sunlight streaming through the boxcar slats slam up against brawny Soviet-style montages of steel and steam. There are flickers of soft-focus period nostalgia, but the movie’s anti-authoritarianism is as resolute as the snub nose on Marvin’s fist-like face.
“Emperor of the North” opened a year after Martin Scorsese’s underappreciated “Boxcar Bertha” starred Barbara Hershey as a rail-riding union organizer. But Aldrich’s movie — a briefly glimpsed and appropriately hard-boiled young woman aside — plays out in an almost exclusively male world. Romantic interest, such as it is, is provided by a good-looking, aggressively callow aspiring hobo (Keith Carradine) named Cigaret (after London’s on-the-road nom de guerre), who functions as A-No. 1’s unwilling sidekick and pesky nemesis.
A-No. 1 is a canny operator, and so is Aldrich, who manages to spin a yarn at once discursive and streamlined. The action, filmed in and around Cottage Grove, Ore., on the same stretch of tracks as Buster Keaton’s “The General,” never leaves the sylvan Northwest. The ultimate battle, waged with chains, planks and axes between two primeval forces atop a speeding train, caps what finally comes to seem an abstract contest in time and space — a he-man illustration of the Johnny Mercer song “Something’s Gotta Give.”
“Wind Across the Everglades” (1958), directed by Ray from a screenplay by Budd Schulberg, a writer in the Hemingway mode, is another atmospheric, location-rich action film.
Set in the Florida Everglades in the early 1900s, the movie, out on DVD from Warner Archive, pivots on the mortal combat between two equally determined men. That this struggle pits Burl Ives’s brutal swamp rat, a poacher known as Cottonmouth (for the pet water moccasin in his pocket), against Christopher Plummer’s dedicated game warden, mockingly called Bird Boy, provides a backbeat of absurdity.
The movie’s tough-guy writer (brother to the producer Stuart Schulberg) and its bad-boy director were fiercely at odds. Fired before “Wind” wrapped, Ray rarely spoke of the film; Schulberg published his script but regarded the movie as a cobbled-together disaster. Yet in faraway France, the young critics of Cahiers du Cinéma saw “Wind” as additional proof of the director’s genius.
The war between Cottonmouth and Bird Boy (and perhaps Schulberg and Ray) makes for a compelling, occasionally brilliant mess. No one’s idea of an auteurist, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that while “Wind” “happens to be one of the most disordered professional motion pictures we’ve ever seen, it also happens to be unusual, robust and picturesque.” Not to mention deeply and perhaps unintentionally idiosyncratic.
The surrealism is heightened both by inserted wildlife footage worthy of the National Geographic Channel and the lacunae left by truncated subplots. Bird Boy gets moral support and a Star of David pendant from a family of Jewish immigrants whose back story is never fully explained. Similarly, the absence of scenes identifying Cottonmouth’s teenage protégé as his son suggests that the boy may be his paramour, adding a possible subtext to the swamp rat brotherhood. Aside from a brief scene in a bordello (run by the retired stripper GypsyRose Lee), there is little preparation for the drunken face-off between Bird Boy and Cottonmouth, which ends with the all-American declaration “Here’s to livin’ free!”
Creepy reptiles share screen space with colorful supporting players. Schulberg may have been responsible for packing Cottonmouth’s gang with the circus clown Emmett Kelly, the jockey Sammy Renick and the heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, as well as casting the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer MacKinlay Kantor as a local judge, although Ray, who once programmed folk singers (including Ives) for the Voice of America, was more likely responsible for recruiting the Florida R&B artist Rufus Beacham (uncredited) as a fancy-house piano player.
Neither “Emperor of the North” nor “Wind Across the Everglades” is “Citizen Kane” (or even Welles’s last studio film, “Touch of Evil”). But both attest to a time when Hollywood often produced unheralded, offbeat, personal works of art.
‘Emperor of the North’ and ‘Wind Across the Everglades’: Fighters in Nature and Showbiz
PROC. BY MOVIES

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What’s the First Color You See? The Answer Says a Lot

People may not always get the results they want on personality and IQ tests, but they are fun to take to pass the time. Based on the results of this personality test, the first color you see might tell someone something about you.

There are lots of fun and interesting personality tests you can take while you wait at the doctor’s office or the DMV. Even though they aren’t always true, they can be funny sometimes because the things they talk about are real. For example, this personality test looks at the first color a person sees to get a sense of how they see themselves and what kind of person they probably are.

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Purple

Purple is a color that is often linked to intelligence, creativity, and power. If the first color you see on this personality test is purple, you are probably a unique person who leans toward conservative values and might even be scary to other people. Still, your willingness to change things drives you to be that change, and your light shines through when you do.

Gray Appeared First in the Personality Test

Gray is a basic color that looks good with a lot of different things. This is a refined but more lively color than black or charcoal. It’s a better choice for business or formal wear because it’s lighter and more cheerful. This color can be used instead because it is nicer and brighter. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that finding a gray coloration early on could mean that you are calm, reasonable, and very sensible. On the other hand, people who have trouble controlling their feelings may feel threatened or in danger.

Yellow First

Kids use yellow to show that it’s sunny outside and to make their faces look happy. The connection between color and happiness is like the connection between light and color. People often associate this color with new life and the start of spring. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone who got a yellow on the personality test is seen as hopeful. This is because the color yellow is linked to hope in a good way. They love what they do and make the most of every moment by enjoying each wonderful moment and living each day to the fullest. The sad truth is that people who are always unhappy about life will never be able to connect with someone who is always positive.

It’s possible that you didn’t notice just one of those three colors, even though they can give you some clues about who you are. Instead, it’s more likely that you saw two or three of them. You are more likely to be the same if the second color you saw was blue, brown, or green. This might make people with shady goals question your intentions.

The third Color Noted in the Personality Test

As was already said, you are probably smart if you saw blue, brown, or green after seeing two other colors. This could scare other people who might feel weak or unprepared. These people might be scared of how smart you are.

This personality test is just for fun, but it’s a great way to kill time when you have some free time. If you have trouble going asleep, this could be what’s wrong. It’s a great way to kill time when you don’t have anything else to do. Please look at the following list of more interesting personality tests.

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Baby called ‘hideous’ is a gorgeous little girl now

Every person is beautiful in their own way, and the same goes for the newborn babies.

When a baby girl named Angelica was born in 2018, her family was overjoyed. She had beautiful facial features and a heart-shaped port wine stain which made her even more special. Sadly, not everyone saw the beauty of her unique mark.

According to Angelica’s mom, her family accepted her the way she is and even love her birthmark, but there have been those who give themselves the right to comment on this girl’s looks.

“The worst comment online that I’ve gotten is when someone asked if her face had been pushed onto a skillet. Basically, saying her face looked grilled,” Angelica’s mom, Marianna Bowering told the Mirror.

Marianna further said that there were times when her daughter was labeled “hideous” and a “defect.” This affected the family in a negative way and only added to the challenged they faced, but they were determined to overcome the negative effects of the mean words and comments.

No matter what others said, Angelica’s family taught her to love herself the way she is.

In order to help her daughter feel better, Marianna decided to paint her face with what resembled a birthmark just like the one of Angelica.

“I got the idea from vascular birthmark awareness day, where they encourage people to paint a heart on the cheeks,” the mom said, according to The Epoch Times. “Initially I just did the heart with my makeup look but then I thought why don’t I go all out and do Angelica’s port wine stain.”

Whenever someone tried to ‘comfort’ Marianna that her daughter’s mark would eventually fade away or that she could hide it with makeup once she gets older only crushed this mother even more as she couldn’t help but wonder if Angelica would be forced to hide her natural beauty instead of embracing it.

It was a reminder that societies have these norms about what a person needs to look like in order to fit the group and be accepted.

 

Her family has always told Angelica that she should love herself for who she is. There were times when Marianna would cover her daughter’s wine port stain with glitter so that it could shine bright.

“Thankfully, we’ve done tests and Angelica is totally healthy,” Marianna said of her girl, referring to the fact that children with these types of birthmarks can develop other health conditions. “We just need to have regular check-ups, especially for her eyes as glaucoma can be a concern.”

 

We are glad Angelica is taught how to love herself and embrace her birthmark.

She is a very beautiful young lady, don’t you agree?

Please SHARE this article with your family and friends on Facebook.

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After 20 Years in Captivity, See a Circus Lion’s Emotional Reaction to Freedom (VIDEO)

The Sad Story of Mufasa: A Circus Lion’s Path to Freedom
For more than twenty years, a magnificent lion called Mufasa endured a life filled with unimaginable suffering. While part of a traveling circus in Peru, he found himself stuck in the back of an old, rusty pickup truck, chained up in a way that represented not just his physical confinement but also the freedom that had been taken from him. Mufasa went through some tough times that really stripped away the dignity and peace he should have had.

His story hit the headlines back in 2015 when Animal Defenders International (ADI) found him during a major rescue operation aimed at shutting down illegal circus activities in South America. Peru just put a ban on wild animals in circuses, but the enforcement is dragging, and a lot of animals are still suffering behind the scenes. Mufasa was among the final animals that ADI liberated through this initiative.

When the rescuers came across him, Mufasa was tied up tight in a truck bed, his body showing the toll of years of neglect and mistreatment. The truck had pretty much been his prison for most of his life, and he carried the scars from that tough experience. His story really highlights the harsh reality of how animals are often mistreated just for our entertainment.

But, sadly, his freedom didn’t last long. In late 2015, just a few months after being rescued, Mufasa sadly passed away from kidney failure and issues related to his old age and years of neglect. His rescuers were really upset, but they found some comfort in knowing that his last months were filled with care and compassion, something he hadn’t had for a long time.

Mufasa’s story really highlights the harsh reality of exploiting wild animals for our entertainment. Even though he went through a lot, his rescue and short experience of freedom really shine a light on how crucial groups like ADI are and the worldwide push to end the use of wild animals in circuses. His journey and freedom keep sparking demands for tougher safeguards and better enforcement against animal exploitation.

Rescuing them was quite the challenge. The circus folks were pretty hesitant at first, not wanting to let go of the lion they had been using for years. After weeks of back-and-forth and some serious legal maneuvering, ADI finally managed to get him out. After being freed, Mufasa was taken to a wildlife sanctuary, where he could enjoy his remaining days in a natural setting—so different from the chains and confinement that had marked his life before.

Mufasa’s first moments in the sanctuary are captured on video, showing him carefully checking out his new digs. After decades without it, he finally felt the grass under his paws, the trees providing shade, and the vast open sky overhead. His eyes, which used to look so dull and resigned, now sparkled with a fresh sense of curiosity and peace. After more than two decades, Mufasa finally got to live the life that every wild animal should enjoy.

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