U Turn (1997)

[shorty larsen]

Has anybody seen Oliver Stone's "U-Turn"?

It seems to me a little hommage to Leone.

Intrigue, betrayal, irony.

Bizarre characters, the "west", the sun, big zooms on the faces. A main character, completely unknown who arrives in a lost city in Arizona.

And above all, Morricone's music. I know that Stone asked him specificly to do a "spaghetti western" music.

Anybobody seen it? If so, what do you think about it?

[Jon]

Yeah,U Turn was very good!Oliver Stone normally does 'bigger',more self-important films,so it was good to see him do a film like this.there was difinately a Leone influence,I think it was also inspired a bit by really old 'film noirs'.I loved the really dark,cynical ending and Morricone,s score of course was good,it managed to be vaguely reminiscent of his spaghetti western scores while still being abit fresh and different.Some of the score I find really haunting and eerie.

[shorty larsen]

Yes, I have Morricone's CD. The haunting and Eerie theme that you mentionned is track 11 "Grace".

And the most "spaghetti" style theme is track 16 "Banjo in the desert". I think the title speaks for itself!!!!

Anyway, a beautifl score, vaguely reminiscent as you say. I totally agree that it's just vaguely. It's not so simple, even if you are Ennio Morricone, to get back 30 years ago and make the same style of music.

[Il Buono]

I saw it a couple of years ago...  I can't recall much of it, except that I hated it.  There aren't a lot of characters you can sympathize with.  I dunno, the film just didn't feel right to me.  And then, Jennifer Lopez was still a promising actress... instead of a fat-ass showgirl.

[shorty larsen]

"Fat-ass showgirl"!!!! Excelent!!

Just a question, when was she a promising actress? I really don't remember

[Il Buono]

   I must have typed wrongly...

[cigar joe]

Good description! Bravo!

[HEX]

DONT FORGET THAT THE "FAT ASS SHOW GIRL" IS NUDE IN THIS LITTLE PIECE OF CINEMA ****


GET TO SEE HER ASS AND TA TA'S

......OH EXCUSE ME...... UM.... THE FILM IS CRAP.

check out stones
jfk
born on the fourth of july







and as embarassing as this may sound... i liked alexander.... what?! it was good... oh well f**k u then.

[dave jenkins]

Has anybody seen Oliver Stone's "U-Turn"?

It seems to me a little hommage to Leone.

Intrigue, betrayal, irony.

Bizarre characters, the "west", the sun, big zooms on the faces. A main character, completely unknown who arrives in a lost city in Arizona.

And above all, Morricone's music. I know that Stone asked him specificly to do a "spaghetti western" music.

Anybobody seen it? If so, what do you think about it?

The film is a hoot, and one of the funniest things about it is the way Morricone spoofs his own repertoire. I didn't think it was spaghetti western music specifically that was being sent up so much as stuff Morricone did generally in the 70s.

[Dust Devil]

I remember I thought this was boring some 15 years ago when I saw it.

[dave jenkins]

You gotta be in the right mood. If you watch it with the eyes of titoli it's just a compendium of clichés. If you watch it with eyes of Jenkins it's one hilarious send up after another.

[Dust Devil]

Funny, you reminded me of that old joke:

[noodles_leone]

 

[cigar joe]

 

[dave jenkins]

While I was watching the film the other night (and laughing my ass off), I kept wondering if Morricone had been in on all the jokes. Maybe Stone took Morricone's score and repurposed it for individual scenes/gags? The new blu has a Stone commentary that answered my question. I've transcribed what he says (beginning at Chapter 5 where there's a harmonica cue):

“I had a fight with Ennio, now, during the editing, he said, now he had a rule that he would only come to America once and he came and we met and did all that we sent him rushes and this and that and he wrote the score and I was happy with a lot of it but not all of it. And, uh, definitely about forty percent of it.  And I insisted he come back which he rarely did, I think it was his second time he’d ever come back on a second trip, so we had it out in the editing room, he looked at the film and we talked, I talked him through it, you know, scene by scene, what I was looking for and at one point I said something, you know, a little bit abrupt, like, “I want you to do what you did back then, I want cartoon music.  I want to have. . . . “ and I showed him a Tom and Jerry cartoon where there’s a bang-bang-beep-bop-boom kind of a thing and I said, “That’s what we want . . . for these type of moments.” And he looked at me with a white face and he said, “You want me to write cartoon music.” He was insulted. Cause, uh, he was perhaps . . . language, Italian, doesn’t speak much English. He was insulted and that was a very dicey day, we . . . I think he was hurt, and then over night my music supervisor Budd Carr calmed it all down and we got together and had another few days together and we got it to a place where . . . he went back to Italy, he was pissed, but he wrote this music that you’re hearing which is interesting because uh it shows you sometimes you HAVE to push people out of a comfort zone to get more out of them. He could do it. He could obviously do it, but he had done it before twenty years, thirty years before ago so he didn’t, he wasn’t, he didn’t get this concept of the film, which is okay, he got the romantic side, certainly, with Grace’s theme and these other and the other part of the music, you’ll see a very lovely score, VERY lovely score, but, he didn’t get this comedic side that, or call it, whatever you want to call it, you can call it grotesque, but a, I wanted a bit of the Wile E. Coyote feeling, he resembles, Nick Nolte resembles Wile E. Coyote when you see his teeth  . . . ."