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All the Pretty Horses (film)

 
All the Pretty Horses (film)

 
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All the Pretty Horses (film)
 
 
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All the Pretty Horses is a 2000 film, directed by Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton

Billy Bob Thornton is an American screenwriter, actor and occasional Film director, playwright and singer. His rise to fame began in the mid-1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the film Sling Blade, for which he won an Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay; he has since established a successful career as a film actor in...
 and based on the novel
All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses is a novel by U.S. author Cormac McCarthy published in 1992. Its romanticism brought the writer much public attention....
 of the same title by American author Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy , is an United States novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, Western fiction, and Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction genres, and has also written plays and screenplays....
. It stars Matt Damon
Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon is an American actor and philanthropist. He won the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for his screenwriting in Good Will Hunting, and was nominated for his lead performance in the same film....
 and Penélope Cruz
Penélope Cruz

Pen?lope Cruz S?nchez , better known as Pen?lope Cruz, is a Spain actress. She gathered critical acclaim as a young actress for films such as Jam?n, Jam?n, La Ni?a de tus ojos, and Belle ?poque ....
.

movie tells the story of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year old cowboy, and his best friend Lacey Rawlins, crossing the border to move south to Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
.

They encounter, among others, a young boy named Jimmy Blevins, whom they befriend, and a young aristocrat's daughter, Alejandra, with whom John Grady Cole falls in love.






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All the Pretty Horses is a 2000 film, directed by Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton

Billy Bob Thornton is an American screenwriter, actor and occasional Film director, playwright and singer. His rise to fame began in the mid-1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the film Sling Blade, for which he won an Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay; he has since established a successful career as a film actor in...
 and based on the novel
All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses is a novel by U.S. author Cormac McCarthy published in 1992. Its romanticism brought the writer much public attention....
 of the same title by American author Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy , is an United States novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, Western fiction, and Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction genres, and has also written plays and screenplays....
. It stars Matt Damon
Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon is an American actor and philanthropist. He won the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for his screenwriting in Good Will Hunting, and was nominated for his lead performance in the same film....
 and Penélope Cruz
Penélope Cruz

Pen?lope Cruz S?nchez , better known as Pen?lope Cruz, is a Spain actress. She gathered critical acclaim as a young actress for films such as Jam?n, Jam?n, La Ni?a de tus ojos, and Belle ?poque ....
.

Plot summary

The movie tells the story of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year old cowboy, and his best friend Lacey Rawlins, crossing the border to move south to Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
.

They encounter, among others, a young boy named Jimmy Blevins, whom they befriend, and a young aristocrat's daughter, Alejandra, with whom John Grady Cole falls in love. In Mexico he becomes disillusioned by the atrocities of the world.

Editing

After Billy Bob Thornton completed his cut (said to be somewhere between three and four hours) producer/distributor Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein, Order of British Empire is an United States film film production and movie studio chairman. He is best known for his 26-year career as co-founder of Miramax Films; he and his brother Bob Weinstein have been co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, their new film production company, since 2005....
 forced him to cut more than one hour out of it. Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind

Peter Biskind is a journalist, former executive editor of Premiere magazine, and the author of numerous books depicting life in Hollywood, including Seeing is Believing, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Down and Dirty Pictures, and Gods and Monsters....
 suggests in Down and Dirty Pictures that this was at least partially done as payback for Thornton's refusal to cut Sling Blade
Sling Blade

Sling Blade is an Academy Award-winning drama film set in rural Arkansas, written, directed by and starring Billy Bob Thornton.It tells the story of a mental retardation man named Karl Childers who is released from a psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing his mother and her lover when he was 12 years old....
 down. In the end, Thornton was forced to cut the film down, which had an impact on the storytelling. Matt Damon was publicly critical of this decision, saying to Entertainment Weekly, "You can't cut 35% of the movie and expect it to be the same movie."

Some attempts have been made to release a director's cut DVD, but arrangements can not be reached with the original composer, Daniel Lanois
Daniel Lanois

Daniel Lanois is a Canada record producer, guitarist and singer-songwriter. He has released a number of albums of his own work and has produced albums for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Dylan, Parachute Club , U2, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Scott Weiland, Sin?ad O'Connor, Robbie Robertson, the Neville Brothers, Chris...
. As part of the re-cut, Weinstein scrapped the original score and hired Marty Stuart
Marty Stuart

John Marty Stuart is an United States country music singer, known for both his traditional style, and eclectic merging of rockabilly, honky tonk, and traditional country music....
. Lanois felt insulted, and has steadfastly refused to license his score (which, unusually, he owns) to any release of the film.

Critical response

Reviews of the film were generally negative, criticizing it as a poor adaptation of the novel and a dramatically un-involving film. The comment of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is a magazine published by Time Inc. in the United States which covers movies, television, music, Broadway stage productions, books, and popular culture....
 critic Lisa Schwarzbaum was typical: "Faced with a choice of blunt instruments with which to beat a good book into a bad movie, director Billy Bob Thornton chooses heavy, random, arty imagery and a leaden pace." The characters were also derided as undeveloped, and some reviewers considered there to be a lack of chemistry between the lead actors. The film's sweeping visuals, however, were consistently praised.

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