Week 6 - Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood (born 1930) first became famous as an actor in the American TV cowboy series "Rawhide" (1959-1966) and in various spaghetti westerns. His violent police series "Dirty Harry" established him as a popular anti-hero of violent crime movies.

His first turn at directing was for the psychological thriller, "Play Misty for Me" (1971), in which he also starred. While the movie is not considered one of his greatest, it was highly praised and showed Eastwood's directing potential.

In recent years, Eastwood continues to act, but he gets the most attention for his movie directing. Several of the movies he directed have received the highest praise and awards. For the western movie "Unforgiven" (1992), Eastwood both starred and directed. This movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Eastwood received the award for Best Director. This movie was remade as a Japanese jidaigeki in 2013 (but not by Eastwood).

Eastwood again won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director with his boxing movie, "Million Dollar Baby" (2004), in which he also starred. Other excellent and critically acclaimed movies directed by Clint Eastwood are "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995), "Mystic River" (2003), "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006), "Letters from Iwo Jima" (2006), "Changeling" (2008), "Gran Torino" (2008), and "Invictus" (2009). A musical directed by Eastwood, "Jersey Boys" (based on the Broadway musical), came out in 2014, followed by "American Sniper" in the same year. In 2016, we saw "Sully" (2016), starring Tom Hanks. It was based on the true story of an emergency plane landing on the Hudson River, which happened in 2009. In 2019, Eastwood's film, "Richard Jewell", was released.

* Despite Eastwood's long acting career, he has never won an Academy Award for his acting, although he has been nominated twice (Unforgiven, 1992; Million Dollar Baby, 2004). He has been nominated for Best Director by the Academy Awards four times, winning twice.
* Eastwood was mayor of the town of Carmel, California, from 1986-1988.
* Eastwood is also an accomplished musician. He composed much of the music for the soundtracks to many of his movies.
* "Letters from Iwo Jma" (硫黄島からの手紙, 2006), is almost entirely in Japanese. It shows the battle for a strategic island in the Pacific during World War II from the point of view of the Japanese. Another movie, "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006), shows the same battle from the point of view of the Americans.

Many of Eastwood's movies are available in the Tsurumi University Library.

[My personal thoughts and recollections about Clint Eastwood and his movies were supplemented with details, dates and numbers from Wikipedia. - Kevin]

Clint Eastwood Biographies:
Wikipedia
IMDb
Biography.com

My Bag clip, from 'Million Dollar Baby' listening exercise for PDF handout.

Links to trailers & clips from some of Clint Eastwood's movies:
Play Misty for Me (1971) - psychological thriller; trailer
Pale Rider (1985) - western; axe handle fight scene
Mystic River (2003) - drama; trailer
Million Dollar Baby (2004) - boxing drama; trailer; also short boxing clip
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - war; trailer
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) - war; trailer; starring Ken Watanabe & Kazunari Ninomiya
Changeling (2008) - true historical drama; trailer; starring Angelina Jolie
Gran Torino (2008) - drama; trailer
Scene from Gran Torino (2008)
Invictus (2009) - true drama; South African history; trailer; starring Morgan Freeman & Matt Damon
J. Edgar (2011) - true biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, former FBI director; starring DiCaprio; trailer
Jersey Boys (2014) - musical about the American band, The Four Seasons; trailer
American Sniper (2014) - war movie about a soldier in Iraq; based on a true story; trailer
Sully (2016) - trailer; starring Tom Hanks
The 15:17 to Paris (2018) - trailer
The Mule (2018) - trailer
Richard Jewell - 2019 trailer; based on a true story
Cry Macho (2021) - trailer (Eastwood is now 91 and still acting and directing!

Gran Torino (2008)

Gran Torino - Gang Recruitment clip
Gran Torino - Get off my lawn clip

Two versions of "Unforgiven" (Japanese version not directed by Clint Eastwood)
Unforgiven (1992) - western; directed by Clint Eastwood
Unforgiven [許されざる者] (2013) - jidaigeki; Japanese remake; directed by Lee Sang-il

Morgan Freeman has starred in 3 movies directed by Clint Eastwood, and they all appear in this list of Top 10 Morgan Freeman Performances.

Watch as many Clint Eastwood trailers or clips as possible.

Movie Writing Assignment

Do Part II on the handout from last week. Introduce the story a little. Tell the situation the characters face and how they begin to deal with it. Don’t tell the ending and don’t write any spoilers (like which character dies).

If you want to chance the movie you will write about, it's OK, but you have to re-do Part I.

To Do List

1) Watch as many Eastwood trailers and clips as possible

2) Do the My Bag listening
3) Active and Passive exercise

4) Do the Movie Review Writing assignment, Part II. This is due next week (Oct. 27)!

____

Passive vs Active

Present

People say this class is difficult. (active)

This class is said to be difficult by many people. (passive)

Many people eat pancakes at breakfast. (active)

Pancakes are usually eaten at breakfast. (passive)

Past

I finished my homework in 10 minutes. (active)

My homework was finished in 10 minutes. (passive)

Everyone had fun. (active)

Fun was had by all. (passive)

In general, it's better to use active case, but sometimes, you need variation in your writing. Passive case is also useful sometimes for making the subject more vague.

Example of evading responsibility by using the passive case

I made a mistake. (active)

A mistake was made. (passive)

Passive vs Active Exercise