Some recent movies are all about the Cowboy State

Last week, movie nominations were announced for the annual Academy Awards and Wyoming was prominent in both the nominees and the passed over movies.

But first, on a recent dark and cold night (-13), I was being forced to watch “American Idol” by my wife Nancy and, as is normal in our household, I was leafing through a magazine and checking items on my iPad.

The latter drives her crazy for some reason. “You need to pay attention to what’s on TV,” she might say lovingly (or not so lovingly.)

While leafing through an issue of Time, it was hard not to notice the two big movies they were reviewing had big-time Wyoming connections.

The first was “The Hateful Eight”, a Quentin Tarantino bucket of blood that contains perhaps more swear words per minute than any movie ever made.

Time says the movie . . . “introduces us to a world – post-Civil War Wyoming, in which the Inuit’s quasi-mythical abundance of snow translates into an un-color wheel of satin grays, sable blacks and primal whites. In the opening, a dappled, ashy form that appears to be a gnarled tree turns out to be a stone crucifix, partly obscured by pillowy snow, a forgotten Jesus in a godforsaken land.” Well, so much for a touristy endorsement of the Cowboy State!

The review continues by bemoaning how long the last two hours of the three hour movie is, by stating: “ . . . what begins as a chilly adventure . . . evolves into a frostbitten, claustrophobic chamber piece in which an assortment of miscreants debase one another . . . until only bits of them, barely fit for crows, are left.”

Perhaps this movie is some kind of continuation of Tarantino’s earlier movie “Django Unchained”, which was partially filmed in Jackson Hole in 2010, with its emphasis on weather and crazy characters.

I am also anxious to see it also because the great composer, Ennio Morricone, supplied the music.

As I turned the pages of Time, here was another movie with Wyoming connections. “The Revenant” has received a dozen Oscar nominations and according to Time: “Never has film suffering looked so ravishing. . . a true-life tale of one man’s terrible adventures in unforgiving 1820s Wyoming.”

The movie is adapted from a novel by Torrington native Michael Punke, which was written in 2002.

The story is about Hugh Glass, a mountain man who was horribly mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead by his compatriots. It might be true, which Punke tells in his book about the amazing resurrection (the word revenant means that) of a near-dead man. Glass was left without any guns and horribly wounded. Yet he made a 200-mile trek back to civilization where he planned to wreak revenge on the men who abandoned him. Leonardo DiCaprio is reportedly magnificent in the lead role.

Neither of these movies were filmed in Wyoming, though.

A movie that got passed over for consideration in its animated category is also about Wyoming. “The Good Dinosaur” is an animated movie that is reportedly quite enjoyable.

Gov. Matt Mead and his wife Carol recently went to Hollywood for the premier.

The premise is that the movie takes place in early Wyoming and there are landmarks from our state in abundance. The idea is that the dinosaurs were not blown to extinction and ended up living next to humans. It is a story about a little boy who befriends a “good dinosaur” and their adventures together in early Wyoming.

Alas, although I have heard reports that the movie is outstanding, it did not get a nomination for an Oscar.

And lastly, while I was sitting there ignoring both my wife and “American Idol”, I picked up a recent copy of National Geographic that was highlighting the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. There was lots of copy and photos of Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first national park.

I loved the quote they attributed to Rudyard Kipling about Yellowstone: “Today I am in the Yellowstone Park, and I wish I were dead,” he complained. He was upset with all the crowds that were filling up the park.

Was he talking about 2015 when a record four million visitors were recorded at this great Wyoming venue?

Nope. That quote was in 1889!

Check out Bill Sniffin’s columns at http://www.billsniffin.com. He is a longtime Wyoming journalist from Lander who has written six books.