Showing posts with label paul newman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paul newman. Show all posts

July 14, 2010

The Hustler - 1961

Paul Newman


Paul Newman in The Hustler Framed Art Print
11 in. x 13 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com


A dramatic, realistic character study based on Walter Tevis' novel. A young, arrogantly-cocky, anti-hero, pool-hall hustler, "Fast Eddie" Felson (Newman), challenges acclaimed, cool, professional Minnesota Fats (Gleason) in Ames Billiards Room in New York City. The naive, talented, and ultimately self-destructive challenger loses. Defeated and self-pitying, he meets and falls in love with another loner - alcoholic, desperate, waifish cripple Sarah Packard (Laurie) - whom he ultimately forsakes. He attracts the attention of slimy, calculating, venal, and repulsive promoter Bert Gordon (Scott). With financial backing from the pimpish entrepreneur, Felson struggles to get back on top - at a great cost to his own self-esteem and soul. Reprised twenty-five years later, with Paul Newman as an older, wiser Eddie Felson in director Martin Scorsese's Color of Money.

July 11, 2010

Cool Hand Luke - 1967

Cool Hand Luke


Cool Hand Luke Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com


Based on Donn Pearce's novel and one of the great prison-chain-gang films. A spirited, irreverent, social misfit Luke (Newman) is arrested for destroying parking meters and imprisoned in a tough Southern prison farm, commanded by a sadistic, prison officer Captain (Martin). After boxing with the chain-gang boss Dragline (Kennedy), he eventually becomes a hero to his fellow inmates, earning the title "Cool Hand Luke" because his will cannot be broken. A visit by Luke's dying mother (Van Fleet) reveals facts about his past. The stubborn, unruly and independent rebel refuses to submit and continually and cooly defies the authorities with repeated escape attempts. As the inmates start worshipping him as a folk hero, he risks everything in order to live up to their expectations, and is sacrificed in the tragic climax. With the memorable line of dialogue: "What we have here is failure to communicate," and the classic egg-eating scene.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 1969

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid


Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com


One of the most-popular, appealing, beguilingly star-driven, tragi-comedy Westerns ever made. About two charming, turn-of-the-century, train-robbing outlaws - with comedy, drama, action, a witty script, and two handsome leads. The romanticized buddy film is loosely based on real-life, legendary outlaws Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longbaugh (The Sundance Kid) and the Hole in the Wall gang. The film's early 1900's anti-heroes are free-wheeling, non-chalant Butch (Newman) and sharpshooting Sundance (Redford), both with human fallible traits - their specialty is robbing trains, until they bungle their second attempt on the Union Pacific Express and are relentlessly pursued by authorities in a posse. With Sundance's beautiful, school-teacher lover Etta Place (Ross), they flee to Bolivia to seek further wealth. In the end, they are outnumbered and die in a blazing, hail of bullets, freeze-frame shootout, reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde. Features the song "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" while Etta and Butch share a bicycle ride.