Red Dawn?
Red River?
The Hunt for Red October?
The Masque of the Red Death?
Le Rouge et le Noir?
Jolly Roger and the Red Falcon?

And it's not an Alabama sports team. Well Ok it is but that's not the "crimson tide" we're after here.

One burrito.

You know that things like "High Noon" are tropes that advertise their own artifice, rendering such oaters "romances" rather than realist films.

One of the many, many, many reasons <Altman> is such a true genius- a true artist- is that he is alchemical.

Viz- the woefully cast, ill-advised pairing of <Beatty and Christie>- virtually guaranteed to denude, by force, any vestige of verisimilitude in the film- "worked."

<McCabe and Mrs. Miller> is more "realistic" than any western I can think of.

Despite the "bankable stars", the soft lighting, the lyrical camera work, none of this deflects the viewer from really believing this story is happening.

This is why the moment when the young punk actually shoots the pistol- with murderous effect- is so very, very shocking.

So shocking that the viewer resents this intrusion- it's meant to be an intrusion.

It's meant to shatter you, and in <Altman's> hands, it does.

<Altman> is not a "genre" filmmaker.

He makes films - some of which are terrible and misguided almost beyond comprehension- like <Popeye> for example...

Pauline Kael loved <Altman> above all others because he was willing to risk all, and willing to follow "his vision" no matter where it took him.

And when that vision "worked," it produced masterpieces of cinematic art.

<McCabe and Mrs. Miller> is just that- beyond all shadow of doubt.

One of the most beautiful- and upsetting- films I've ever seen, and not one you can watch over and over- because you already remember every scene from the first viewing.

Where are the <Altmans> today?

You know we had high hopes for <Alan Rudolph>, who was regularly saddled with the "next Altman" mantle-

And you know what he came through all the same.

I regard many Rudolph films to be masterpieces as well.

But who shall make our films today, and tomorrow?

Dubna, of course, is also where the late Tony Miles got his final GM norm and won the Slater prize, a few weeks before I played him in 1976. That went 1.d4 e6 (obvious who was black, innit?) 2.e4 d5 3.Nd2 b6 draw. There were about 30 other moves but I forget them.

'Mutter' Slater - no known relation to the financier - is a former member of Stackridge now playing as the Mutter Slater Band. Beautiful stuff, some of which was on youtube last time I checked.

<Jess> McCabe and Mrs Miller was the very first film I ever wrote about - not for publication, but in a school exam. What struck me was the ending: the snow, the Leonard Cohen song, the shoot-out, the apparently standard victory for our hero - wounded but still standing, with Mrs Miller waiting back home in Presbyterian Church with her opium - and then the dream collapses into itself. He isn't gonna 'make it'. I told you when I came I was a stranger ...

There's also an episode of Stargate Atlantis called McKay & Mrs Miller: just a play on character names, nothing deeper. They've also used Miller's Crossing. This playfulness is why I prefer Stargate to the po-faced cosmic pentagon of the Trek franchise, essentially a Cheneyesque Republican administration making the galaxy safe for humanoids with rubber faces.

Carrickfergus, eh? Brian Ferry, of all people, did a good version. Marble stones as black as ink: I've seen them recently in Kilkenny Castle, which now contains an art gallery. The fate of fortresses everywhere.

I also wrote a parody beginning 'I wish I was in Bowlaverty' - a non-existent place based on the Irish name for an unbuilt sports stadium, aka the Bertie Bowl. Or was it Che Stadium?

The Norse God of Thunder still has a proclivity for mucking about in cumulonimbus clouds. It's what he does, and no one can take that away from him, even as men become gods by the blue Cherenkov glow of their test reactors.

As a hardworking Fischerperson herself, it is natural for Jess to be concerned about malignant Algae.

Algae? Wasn't he the blond Bosch poofter sidekick in the Biggles stories? In the words of Jethro Tull, 'where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?'