Sunday, July 11, 2010




I lived in Vancouver when 'Quick and the Dead' came out. My mind escapes me on the name of the theatre where I saw it, but it was this great Mayfair type place that was right beside a bowling alley and showed Ed Wood movies, Planet of the Apes, animation fests and all kinds of cool stuff. I'm pretty sure they used it recently in an episode of Fringe (with the fake alternate universe movie titles on the marquee) but I might be wrong about that.

Anyhow, onto the topic at hand. Some people seem to dismiss this movie 'cause it stars Sharon Stone. Yes, I can't really admit to being a fan of hers either. If only for willingly appearing in movies the likes of 'Catwoman' and 'Basic Instinct 2' one should be heavily reprimanded.

Here is what she should be defended for though...especially for her actions in the year 1995 (or at least for her two films released in 1995). Her other movie that year was 'Casino', which of course was directed my Martin Scorsese. And Scorsese is a genius and can do no wrong and is the most respected filmmaker of our time if not all time. So if he wants to put that lady from 'Sliver' in his movie, clearly she's got some kindah talent hidden underneath there somewhere. She even got herself an Oscar nomination out of it.

The other movie she had released that year was the one for the blog topic at hand, 'The Quick and the Dead'. It's like a Clint Eastwood 'Man With No Name' type story, except change the man to a woman. In this case, that woman being Sharon Stone. She got a producer credit on the film, and used her Hollywood power of the time to throw her weight around on two interesting points of cinema history. One, she fought to give an unknown (to North America) actor by the name of Russell Crowe a lead part. Check out his imdb resume post and pre Quick & the Dead and see how that effected his career. Two: She also fought for a director named Sam Raimi who had just come off of a big flop of a movie that some geeks are a little bit familiar with by the title of 'Army of Darkness'.

So just for one night, put your Sharon Stone hatred aside, and come out to see a real kick ass western at the Mayfair.

Quick and the Dead, presented by Invisible Cinema – Sunday Night Geek Night – July 11th – 9:30pm

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