The Planet is ours - where are we going!? With the global population soaring towards 9 billion people by 2050 current levels of meat and dairy consumption are not sustainable on our limited earth.Film @ The Digital Fix. Hmmm, Michael Winner. What can possibly be said about this bon viveur, insurance salesman and part- time film director that hasn't been stated a million times elsewhere ? Well, without intending to mount a full scale defence of the man, I have to say that his reputation as one of the worst directors of all time is not entirely deserved. Stop sniggering at the back! For a director to be 'the worst', he would surely have to achieved absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever - Al Adamson and Ray Dennis Steckler immediately spring to mind. Complete technical incompetence would also be required, along with an inability to work with actors. He's certainly made an awful lot of bad films but he's also directed a few good ones. I won't hear a bad word against The Jokers, I'll Never Forget Whatsisname or The Mechanic. Nor are The Nightcomers, Death Wish and the deranged remake of The Wicked Lady entirely without merit. Find great deals on eBay for chatos land chato's land. Shop with confidence. Watch trailers, read customer and critic reviews, and buy Chato's Land directed by Michael Winner for $14.99. His technical competence is in slightly more doubt, although the films named above are reasonably workmanlike and occasionally very efficient. Winner's fondness for zooms is the main charge against him, alongside choppy editing choices and a notoriously bad sense of pace. As for his working with actors, some of the performances in his films are decent even when the films themselves are dire - Anthony Hopkins in A Chorus of Disapproval, Lia Williams in Dirty Weekend and Paul Scofield in Scorpio spring to mind. Watch full length Chato's Land Movie for Free Online. Streaming Free Films to Watch Online including Movie Trailers and Movie Clips. Chatos Land is a 1972. The Chatos Islands are a group of small islands and rocks lying south of Cape Adriasola, Adelaide Island. The descriptive name Islotes Chatos (flat islands) was given by the Argentine Antarctic Expedition of 1952–53. So I don't think that describing him as the worst of film directors is a very fair comment. However, I'm quite happy to describe him as variable at best and generally fairly mediocre, as a look at two Westerns released this week by MGM will testify. Lawman, from 1. 97. Chato's Land, on the other hand, is a complete and utter mess which still manages to be interesting, if for largely the wrong reasons. As you'll be aware, Bronson is one of those stars - like Clint Eastwood in his Harry Callahan persona - who can't have a drink in a bar without some form of human slime trying to work him over. Chato runs and the friends of the Sheriff, led by the very odd Quincey Whitmore (Palance), decide to chase him so they can string him up as an example pour encourager les autres. But, as the title suggests, this is Chato's territory and he knows it a good deal better than a load of squabbling rednecks. Gradually tensions arise among the group, coming to a head when some of them rape Chato's wife and burn his friend alive. Divided and hopelessly lost, the hunting party prove an easy target for Chato to pick them off, one by one. It's also entirely probable that Michael Winner and his regular screenwriter Gerald Wilson are intending to communicate a message about racial harmony. However, neither of these aims come to pass and the only message that comes across is that 'Indians' can be violent and cruel but that 'White Men' are even crueller. This is in a Hollywood tradition of crypto- liberal muddle of course; plead a serious message about racial harmony and historical revisionism while getting on with the dirty business of showing lots of bloodletting. Unfortunately, Chato's Land is a mess which is unsatisfying on both a cerebral and a visceral level. The characters generally fall into one of three categories - Indians (and Mexicans who are usually lumped in with them), who are noble and only use violence when provoked to it (after which time they find it hard to stop); Rednecks, who say slimy things like . The only exception to this rule is Quincey Whitmore and he's portrayed in such an odd way that he seems to be living on a different planet. You can see what Wilson was trying to do with Quincey; provide a thoughtful, distanced alternative to the Rednecks and the Uncertains, but Jack Palance's performance emphasises the isolated strangeness of the character to such a degree that he seems unbalanced rather than profound. The Civil War has become the archetypal primal scene for Westerners, a catch- all explanation for any personality disorder you care to mention. At its best, the idea of the defeated veteran can result in Ethan Edwards and all that results from his inner wounds in The Searchers. Generally however, it's simply used as a psychological catch- all. Quincey is given an extended speech about his experience in the war but it doesn't make a great deal of sense. After a vivid description of the carnage - . Several a priori assumptions have been made, the main ones being that the 'White Man' is guilty en masse and that the Indians, even the cruel Apache warriors, can claim an immediate moral superiority. Again, this is something which could usefully be explored but it's just taken for granted. It doesn't help that a very similar plot was used the following year by Alan Sharp in his script for Robert Aldrich's Ulzana's Raid, a film which has a moral complexity that is entirely beyond the grasp of Winner and Wilson. In Aldrich's film, the brutality of the Apaches is placed in immediate contrast with the brutality of the US Cavalry and both sides are found wanting. But the behaviour of the Apaches is given historical and cultural context and the fact that the they have been systematically betrayed and slaughtered has not done anything to make them more forgiving. Burt Lancaster, playing the ageing and reflective scout, says about the hatred of Apaches that it's . Kind of confuses the issue don't it.. Ulzana's Raid denies the audience the luxury of easy judgements or justifications and is consequently one of the most intelligent Westerns ever made. In comparison, Chato's Land, despite its pretensions, has the complexity and intelligence of a child's crayon scribble. The pace of the film is pretty good and it's never boring. He also does well in the largely silent scenes involving Bronson, who is photographed in a romantic isolation except in the rather beautiful moment when he comes home to his wife and son. However, the film is fatally compromised by his lack of finesse and his thudding insistence on sadistic brutality. As usual, he uses the zoom with a constancy that becomes wearing within ten minutes and becomes hilarious by the middle of the film. He allows the actors to go way over the top and this tends to be either irritating - as in the case of Simon Oakland's ageing racist - or embarrassing - as in Richard Jordan's shockingly hammy performance as the hysterically anti- Mexican young buck. The film looks pretty horrible too, despite some attractive Spanish locations, and the day- for- night photography is abysmal. Worst of all, the violence is emphasised in the most exploitative manner possible. A rape sequence in the middle of the film is particularly distasteful, to little narrative point, and there is a plethora of shootings, stabbings, burnings and even more exotic deaths. By the last third of the film, with Chato picking off his hunters one by one, we're in slasher movie territory with Bronson as a stone- faced killer. As for the final scene, which has caused some discussion, it's either a brilliantly profound comment on the pointlessness of violence or a convenient place to come a halt because no- one could think of an ending. I tend towards the latter explanation. Continuing their policy of releasing their back catalogue on basic, rather careless discs, they have offered us a DVD which is weak on every well. Hell, we don't even get a proper menu, just some slightly bewildering icons. It's not a particularly good transfer, lacking fine detail and offering rather washed- out colours and weak blacks. Minor artefacting is a problem and there are example of print damage evident throughout. It's good to see this in its correct ratio for the first time but I know that MGM can do better than this. It's perfectly acceptable and does justice to Jerry Fielding's derivative but rousing music score. The film is divided into 1. English. It's probably worth pointing out that, bar 1. European version of the film and not the 'soft' American version. It's a big letdown after Winner's first Western, the thoughtful Lawman. Even fans of Charles Bronson or the film will be disappointed by this MGM which lacks any sign of real care.
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