Monday, April 07, 2008

Charlton Heston

Here is a good retrospective on Charlton Heston.
I’ve always liked Heston despite his conservative political advocacy. I don’t let a person’s politics affect the way I look at their art or music. I was annoyed that Heston became such a strong public advocate for the NRA at a time when the organization was becoming much too extreme in its advocacy - assault weapons, cop-killer bullets, plastic guns, etc. But I also think he should get more credit for being one of the celebrities to embrace the Civil Rights movement early on.
My favorite Charton Heston movies are fairly obvious:

The Ten Commandments
Ben-Hur
Planet of the Apes
Omega Man

But then I was surprised by how few of Heston’s pictures I’m really familiar with. I know I have seen others, but I don’t remember them as well and would need to watch them again for a full appreciation. So here is a list of Heston movies I would like to revisit or see for the first time:

Arrowhead
Touch of Evil
El Cid
Major Dundee
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Will Penney
Soylent Green

The last time a saw Heston was probably in Michael Moore’s film “Bowling For Columbine” and my reaction was quite the opposite of what Moore intended. Moore took his film crew to Heston’s residence in Hollywood and tried to do one of his gotcha seens aka “Roger and Me” only to have it backfire on him. Heston came across as gracious and welcoming while Moore came across as crass and vindictive. In the end I left the theater feeling sympathetic for Heston (although still not sympathetic with his views) and thinking that Moore had behaved like a total jerk.

No comments:

Post a Comment