In no particular order:

I just got back from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. I found it consistently amusing and occasionally very funny, though I suppose YMMV depending on what you think about Parker and Stone -- it's very typical of what they do in general.

Saw THE RAINS CAME ('39 version) with a bunch of incredibly rowdy senior citizens on a day out from the resthome. (No joke, spilled popcorn everywhere, soda on the floor, shouted comments. One woman even snuck in a bbq chicken dinner.) Mostly pretty soapy and sleepy, although the flood sequences halfway through are really good and almost worth the price of admission. Almost. Tyrone Powers strikes me as the Tom Cruise of his era, for good and ill, and I'm not sure who thought shoving Myrna Loy is surgical scrubs was a good idea. Nigel Bruce and Ouspensky (sp?) are pretty good, though.

Finally saw THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY on the big screen -- it's my favorite movie, or at least the one I always say when people ask -- but I've never seen it on the big screen. You really need to see it on the big screen. I saw the restored version, I don't think the added scenes made all that much difference, really.

The next day I saw DUCK, YOU SUCKER, again the restored version. The early broad comedy doesn't gell well with the very somber seriousness of the second half, I think -- but the second half is incredibly good. Coburn is fantastic; I'm not sure if Steiger really "got" his character, though -- he's no Tuco.

doug

A Mobius vacation is good to clear the movie-criticizing palate as long as it's not a permanent one! Maybe we should let Todd take a five week break every year to get his own life and thoughts and site together, time enough to appreciate-and-resent life without-Mobius for all involved ;-)

I've delved deep into all sorts of unexpected movie avenues (home video, mainly) in the down time, and had the luxury (and non-embarassment) of reflection uninterrupted by immediate impulse-posting. Hope I stick to both these rules in future, and moderate my MHVF use to all our best advantage,

I too watched DUCK, YOU SUCKER, though only on foreign DVD, the first time I've really seen a semblance of the full thing after many lesser viewings in one cropped or other language video format (Never seen the laserdisc, for the record). I can only hope the film becomes a permanent repertory house item so I can watch it as Doug did, at last, and many more times the way it deserves to be seen.

This looms larger and larger in Leone's output every time I rewatch. It must be seen at optimal state. I hope ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA will follow and return theatrically to take us (or me, at least: the combo of theater viewings of it and ONCE...WEST a couple decades ago was a real epiphany) to the end of the trail. Sergio's career is one of building on each past effort towards his ultimate film. He traded on the good will earned in mastery of popular movies to do increasingly complex things as he felt able to attempt them, and it's an exhilarating ride to follow the full arc in the full format with the full public as his spectacular, ever deepening, art demanded then, and should keep on requiring. (Agree about the false, goofy start, however: for me, it's a delegated proxy-director's movie taken back in midstream)

For the rest, I've watched too many SANDOKAN films, the BEANY AND CECIL Robert Clampett dvd and all its extras, Antonioni's first feature CRONACA DI UN AMORE, a dozen other movies easily, and, of course, TEAM AMERICA whose fussiness as craft and its funniness as baggy pants are in weird disproportion...but I'm not complaining.

There was a mini week-long Leone film festival in Austin back in August as part of the Paramount Theatre's Summer Film Series. Like Doug, I saw a restored print of DUCK, YOU SUCKER. A restored print of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA also played, so it's definitely in circulation on the repertory circuit.