Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (little spoilers)

Decided to finally act on my desire to see more Italian westerns and went to see Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) yesterday, especially since it was its last day in Bristol. Wow, wow, wow. It was a bit too stretched out in some places, it was dubbed in English, and the new and improved edition did not improve the quality of the image as much as I hoped to, but still wow. That's how westerns should be.

I was wondering about the Finnish name of the movie, which is in plural (Hyvät, pahat ja rumat), and Anu suggested that it might be because the movie was translated from English and not from the original Italian, and by people who have never seen it (there is one of each: three characters that are designated as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, although they are all pretty bad and none of them is particularly ugly). She is probably right, but it's a scary thought.

The characters are colorful (that's an understatement), the gunfights awesome even though it's obvious that you'd never hit anything if you shoot like they do, and the relationship between the Good and the Ugly (who are apparently two heterosexual men, or at least the Ugly is wanted, among other things, for having too many wives) looks like a bad case of domestic violence where both parties are abusers and victims in turn, which makes it somehow even more amusing. The acting is good, at least in the case of the three main characters, and the Civil War makes a good background.

Young (well, fortyish) Clint Eastwood was fairly good-looking, which makes him a pleasant exception among Hollywood actors - for some reason Hollywood tends to avoid hiring good-looking men, or whatever I consider good-looking men, as actors. The same problem exists in all the other white countries. I have whined about it here before and will surely whine about it again.

Being inspired by the movie, I went home and also watched Per un pugno di dollari (A fistful of dollars) and liked that very much as well. Gotta see more Sergio Leone stuff. Also ones that are not westerns.

Been reading Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting in the subway lately. This morning I noticed that yesterday's movies are running severe interference with my enjoyment of this book, in the sense of making it somewhat unpleasant for me to read. It does not work the other way around: the book did not in any way interfere with the movies yesterday. I wonder whether it's just this book and these movies, or whether all the movies by Sergio Leone and all the books by Milan Kundera are somehow badly incompatible in my mind.