An Afternoon With Two Great Movies - Patton and the Magnificent 7

George C.Scott as Patton - One of the greatest movie performances - EVER

After a week in Disneyland I took a break last weekend to resume watching old movies with my father-in-law who suffers from dementia. And yes, I can confirm that both Patton co-stars George C. Scott and Karl Malden are indeed dead. Interestingly enough, George C. Scott who refused to accept as Oscar also refused to mark his grave and Karl Malden who died in 2009 at the age of 97 was survived by his wife. He was married more to her than 70 years at the time of his passing. Patton is my favorite war movie to sit down and watch (at about 3 hours long). Six of the Magnificent Seven have also passed on to the great beyond with only actor Robert Vaughn still among the living. The Magnificent Seven is my second favorite Western ever behind Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter.

More trivia about the movies: George C. Scott apparently was one of the most intimidating actors ever. One well known actress who was appearing with Scott in a play on Broadway complained to the play's director Mike Nicolls (Academy Award / Tony Award winning director) "I'm a afraid of George." To which Nicolls replied "My dear, we're all afraid of George C. Scott".

Magnificent Seven costars Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen had a legendary dislike for each other. With Brynner getting the top billing, the actor was always thinking the McQueen was trying to steal the scenes in which the two actors appeared together (which he was if you watch the movie closely).

One of the great minor memories of my life was being able to see Yul Brynner live on stage in San Francisco give one of his great performances of The King and I. He did the role around the world more than 4000 times and won both an Academy and Tony Award for the playing the King. A great night once upon a time.

The Magnificent Seven

It Really Was A Fantastic Voyage

I saw Fantastic Voyage in the theater as a kid. Some years later, a science teacher showed the movie in a junior high science class (this was pre-video days so I'm assuming 20th Century Fox made the movie available as a teaching aid). Here is the premise. A government scientist goes into a coma after an assassination attempt. The only chance to bring him back to life is perform laser surgery to remove a clot to his brain. In 1966, this kind of laser surgery can only be done from inside the body so the government has a miniaturization program to shrink humans to a microscopic size and inject them into the body using a kind of miniature submarine to get from point A to point B, the point where the surgery must be performed. This is science fiction at its best,

But its the medical aspects of the story and actors interracting inside the human body that brings out the best of Fantastic Voyage. This isn't an A class list of actors. The dialog can be kind of hokey at times. But the movie itself is quite compelling and well worth watching. Or maybe Raquel Welch in a wet suit is compelling enough. The movie also has Donald Pleasence as the bad guy and I don't if there was ever a creepier actor in the movies. 

Anyway, the movie was just released on Blu-Ray and I couldn't get it fast enough to watch it and plan to watch it again soon. It is that good of a movie.