Once Upon a Time in the West
Sir Christopher Frayling is a globally renowned writer and film historian. In 2001 he was knighted for “Services to Art and Design Education”. One area of cinema that Sir Frayling has dedicated a significant amount of time to is the Italian-made spaghetti westerns of the mid-1960s and in particular the films of Sergio Leone who made classics such as The Good, The Bad and They Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. Sir Christopher has provided the commentary on many DVD releases of Leone’s films plus he wrote Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death, a book that many regard as the definitive biography of Sergio Leone.
On Saturday 28 November 2009 I recorded the following interview with Sir Frayling, which was played on The Casting Couch later that day in conjunction with the re-release of Once Upon a Time in the West at The Astor Theatre.
http://www.cpod.org.au/download.php?id=2628
Posted by Thomas Caldwell 
From the exhilarating train hijacking at the start of the film right through to the all out horse/motorbike/car chase across the desert before the final showdown, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a cinematic rush of adrenalin. Kim beautifully replicates Leone’s aesthetics of contrasting extreme close-ups with wide shots, depicting violence in a way that is both brutal and poetic, and establishing an overall tone that is frequently funny and self-conscious without ever being camp. As well as taking inspiration from various Leone films, Kim has also borrowed a few ideas here and there from Mad Max 2 and to a lesser degree Raiders of the Lost Arc. While contemporary action films are increasingly becoming a blur of quick edits, Kim has the confidence and logistical skills to set up complex action sequences and then film them in continuous shots. The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a very technical and modern film but it is also a return to the old-school discipline of simply presenting movement on screen in the most exciting way possible.
