Just not in the mood to pick up on some of the newsy bits around. If you click over to Fox and scroll down Bill O'Reilly has an interview with one of my favorite actors - Robert Duvall.
Not a bad interview - and if you enjoy westerns, Broken Trail is on AMC tonight and tomorrow.
It's getting a fair amount of coverage. I think Lonesome Dove and PBS' Civil War piece from Ken Burns may be two of the best television works in two decades.
Shot entirely on location in Alberta (which Duvall considers the next-best thing to Texas "without the accent"), "Broken Trail" -- AMC's first original made-for-TV movie -- is set in 1897, the waning days of the American West.
Veteran cowboy Print Ritter (Duvall) and his estranged nephew, Tom Harte (Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church) have agreed to undertake a 1,000-mile horse drive from Oregon to Wyoming, hoping to make their fortune on the sale of the herd.
Along the way, they become the reluctant guardians of five abused and abandoned girls (played by "Desperate Housewives"' Gwendoline Yeo, and Canadian newcomers Caroline Chan, Olivia Cheng, Jadyn Wong, Valerie Tian) who have been sold into servitude by their families in China.
Their attempt to care for the girls runs into problems due to language, custom and circumstance, including bandits intent on kidnapping the young women for illicit means. There's also the constant challenge of pushing the herd along.
Writer Alan Geoffrion drew on the true-life stories of Nebraska rancher Waldo Haythorn -- a friend of Duvall's -- whose grandfather at the turn of the century took a herd of 700 horses to South Dakota, and of Donaldina Cameron, a San Francisco woman who saved over 3,000 Chinese girls from prostitution during that time.
Too bad he didn't ask Duvall why they shot it in Canada. That might have explained how they brought it in for only 14 Mill. That's a lot of outsourcing. Americans won't work for that little. Especially Duvall, of course, who must get at least half of what Pacino gets. The world is full of phonies, and Mr. Nospinzone and his guest are two examples.
Posted by: Jim O'Sullivan | Monday, June 26, 2006 at 12:23 PM
I cannot believe you said something positive about Robert Duvall! After all, he is a (GASP!!) Hollywood liberal!!!
Posted by: jamie | Monday, June 26, 2006 at 07:56 PM