Shane Life

When we were growing up, we used to visit our friends who lived in Wyoming annually for a ski week. This was before the days of readily available DirecTV or Dish Network. If you lived where they lived, you had to spend a lot of money for one of those monstrous satellites that could bring down Sputnik. And I don’t even want to get into the monthly fees.

Yet, they had an extensive collection of movies. In fact, I loved their collection so much that I think it’s what inspired me to start collecting movies through college.

Their movie library included several Disney movies and more PG-fare, but the most prevalent type of movie represented was westerns. We grew up watching John Wayne and Clint Eastwood because Dennis wanted us to understand what it meant to be a “real cowboy” (despite the fact that these guys were far from it, this was his interpretation of “real cowboy”). My favorite movie of the genre for many years (and maybe even up to this day) is The Cowboys starring John Wayne and Bruce Dern. It’s about a group of kids who join forces with the grizzly John Wayne to drive his cattle because all the respectable ranch hands have left town to find gold.

I loved that movie. I suppose that looking back, it wasn’t particularly all that good and certainly not one of The Duke’s best, but it was my favorite.

3:10 to Yuma is a remake of a movie from the 1957 based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. While I haven’t seen the original, I loved the latest version. James Mangold, the director of Walk the Line, directed this movie and hit a home run.

Granted, he had some heavy hitters to do the work for him, but he crafted a great tale of good and evil and the lines that are blurred between them.

It’s been a while since I’ve been so impressed by Russell Crowe, but I think that this movie reestablishes him as one of Hollywood’s premiere acting talents. And someone I’d put right alongside him is his co-star, Christian “Don’t Call Me Batman” Bale. I think that Bale has more range as an actor, but Crowe is just downright good in everything he does. And he is great in this movie.

I also thought that Ben Foster was lights out as Charley Prince, Crowe’s second in command. Foster most recently guest-starred on the season premiere of My Name is Earl and was great in that as well. I expect him to be in more and more stuff soon (he was Angel in the last X-Men crap fest).

Thanks to mom and dad for the movie. It was good stuff.