Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (2006, DVD)

I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals. Butch Most of What Follows is True from prologue It seems like we always remember the good things - when someone is dead and gone we tend to think of the bright spots of their character rather than some of the flaws they exhibited when they walked among us and that is how Director George Roy Hill treated the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The freeze-frame ending underscores how Hill kept the story sweet and light so we d remember his characters pleasantly, not how they ended. Hill cast superstar Paul Newman (Cool Hand...

Some movies survive the test of time, others don t. Sometimes choices made in regard to a film seem right for the time, and later on don t hold up as well. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released in 1969. Then as now it s a fine picture. It has all the makings of what a classic needs to be and for that reason it holds up so well to viewing all these years later. The stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford have a humorous friendly affection between them which is nice to see. There s a reason these two were tagged again a few years later to play off of each other again in The Sting. This...

How did those characters get into my wedding. They didn't crash it. They were invited. More in a bit. The year 1969 was an amazing year for me. I was in my late teens and a sports and movie fan. The NY METS won their first World Series. That was also the year JETS quarterback "Broadway" Joe Namath "guaranteed" a victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III and won. As an extension of the 1969/70 basketball season the NY Knicks kept the NY tradition going with a 4 games to 3 championship series over the Lakers. The only downer, but it was time, was Mickey Mantle announcing his retirement in 1969...

I think one of the reasons that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was such a stunning, classic hit almost 40 years ago, back in 1969, was that it was a dance of sunlight for American audiences in the dark and gloomy days of the Vietnam War. It lifted spirits and made people believe that beyond the raindrops falling on their heads that somewhere the sun was still shining. There were other reasons why it was a great movie, of course. For one thing it was an original twist on the genre of the Western; it laughingly exposed a lot of the truth behind a lot of the myths there. It was also one of..